The IDF has formally exonerated the tank crew which killed Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana and eight others in Gaza several months ago.  You’ll recall that Shana was filming the tank crew from his car, which was clearly marked with a large PRESS sign as was his own chest.  Shana, in the process of filming the tank’s movements, actually filmed his own death.

The IDF investigator’s defense of what some might call negligent homicide or even outright murder is telling:

“The tank crew was unable to determine the nature of the object mounted on the tripod and positively identify it as an anti-tank missile, a mortar or a television camera,” Brigadier General Avihai Mendelblit of the Israel Defence Forces wrote.

…Their blue flak jackets, like the car, were marked “PRESS”. The army said the troops could not see those signs. Journalists in Gaza say they have rarely seen militants wear flak jackets.

Mendelblit wrote: “In light of the reasonable conclusion reached by the tank crew and its superiors that the characters were hostile and were carrying an object most likely to be a weapon, the decision to fire at the targets … was sound …

We’re in rhetorical never-never land when such reasoning can be seen as legitimate.  What the general is saying is that if an IDF officer is not certain what he is seeing he is free to assume the unknown object is “most likely a weapon” and mow it down.  If you can’t “positively identify” whether something is an “anti-tank missile or a television camera” how are you justified in presuming that the object is “most likely to be a weapon?”   Such thinking strains credulity and basically allows the IDF to engage in whatever behavior it wishes in the expectation a rationale, no matter how lame, can later be found to justify it.

Recently, a 14 year old boy killed a hiker here in Washington, mistaking her for a bear.  Regardless, the district attorney is prosecuting the boy for negligence.  He couldn’t clearly identify the target but shot her anyway assuming she was a bear because that is what he was hunting.

If the local DA followed the IDF advice the boy would go scot-free.  I’m glad there is accountability somewhere in the world even if it’s not Israel.

Mohammed Omer, Gaza photojournalist roughed up by Shin Bet

If you’re an award-winning Gaza journalist, the Shin Bet has a message for you: get out and don’t come back.  Inter-Press Service photographer Mohammed Omer just won the distinguished Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in London.  He traveled to Jordan on his way home and stopped to coordinate his return with Israeli authorities.  Once he was given proper approvals he went to the Allenby Bridge to cross into the Occupied Territory.  Here is what happened:

Accompanied by Dutch diplomats, Omer passed through the Jordanian side of the border without incident. However, after arrival on the Israeli side, trouble began. He informed a female soldier that he was returning home to Gaza. He was repeatedly asked where Gaza was, and told that he had neither a permit nor any coordination to cross.

Omer explained that he did indeed have permission and coordination but was nevertheless taken to a room by Israel’s domestic intelligence agency the Shin Bet, where he was isolated for an hour and a half without explanation.

“Eventually I was asked whether I had a knife or gun on me even though I had already passed through the x-ray machine, had my luggage searched, and was in the company of Dutch diplomats,” Omer said.

His luggage was again searched, and security then proceeded to go through every document and paper he had on him, taking down the names and numbers of the European parliamentary officials he had met.

The Shin Bet officials then started to make fun of the European parliamentarians, and mocked Omer for being “the prize-winning journalist”.

The Gazan journalist was repeatedly asked why he was returning to “the hell of Gaza after we allowed you to leave.” To this he responded that he wanted to be a voice for the voiceless. He was told he was a “trouble-maker”.

The security men also demanded he show all the money he had on him, and particular attention was paid to the British pounds he was carrying. His Gellhorn prize money had been awarded in British pounds but he was not carrying the entire sum on him bodily, something the investigators refused to believe.

After being unable to produce the prize money, he was ordered to strip naked.

“At first I refused but then I had an M16 (gun) pointed in my face and my clothes were forcibly removed, even my underwear,” Omer said.

At this point Omer broke down and pleaded for an end to such treatment. He said he was told, “you haven’t seen anything yet.” Every cavity of his body was searched as one of the investigators pinned him down on the floor, placing his boot on Omer’s neck. Omer began vomiting, and fainted.

When he came round his eyelids were being forcibly opened and his eardrums probed by an Israeli military doctor, who was also armed. He was then dragged along the floor by his feet by the Shin Bet officials, with his head repeatedly banging on the floor, to a Palestinian ambulance which had been called.

“I eventually woke up in a Palestinian hospital with the doctors trying to reassure me,” Omer told IPS.

Reuters adds to the story that Omer’s ribs were broken during his manhandling.

This, of course, is not the first time that Palestinians accompanied by western diplomatic personnel have been roughed up.  It’s not even the first time that western diplomatic personnel themselves have been roughed up by Israeli goons masquerading as representatives of the security apparatus.  The last time something like this happened, the prime minister’s office was abject in apologizing and swearing something like this wouldn’t happen again.  Well guess what–it has.

What’s the Israeli explanation?  They have many, all of which appear lame:

A spokeswoman at the Israeli Foreign Press Association said she was unaware of the incident.

Lisa Dvir from the Israeli Airport Authority (IAA), the body responsible for controlling Israel’s borders, told IPS that the IAA was neither aware of Omer’s journalist credentials nor of his coordination.

“We would like to know who Omer spoke to in regard to receiving coordination to pass through Allenby. We offer journalists a special service when passing through our border crossings, and had we known about his arrival this would not have happened.

“I’m not aware of the events that followed his detention, and we are not responsible for the behaviour of the Shin Bet.”

So you have a rogue Shin Bet answerable to no one taking it upon itself to brutalize Palestinian journalists merely because they’ve distinguished themselves by winning an international journalism prize.  Of course, what the Shin Bet really wants is for Gaza’s best journalists to leave Gaza and never return so there will be no one to report to the world on Israel’s behavior there.  They’ve already prohibited Israeli journalists from reporting there.  Much too uncomfortable to have Israelis knowing from their own journalists about the hell that Israel is making there.

One wonders whether the Shin Bet and CIA are sharing “interrogation techniques” in the hunt for dangerous “Islamist terrorists” like Mohammed Omer.  I suppose Omer should be happy he didn’t receive the treatment recently accorded another Gaza photojournalist, Fadel Shana–a flechette blade to the neck courtesy of an IDF tank, severing his spinal cord and killing him instantly.

This story was also covered by Democracy Now.  Thanks to reader Ellen Rosner for tipping me off to the story.

Fadel Shana’s flak jacket

When you write as much as I do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you come to be almost on a first-name basis with some of the official spokespeople on both sides. So it is that I’ve read Mark Regev’s attempts to paint Israel in the best light possible in news stories around the world. I’ve heard him regularly on BBC radio as well. I can’t decide whether he’s just a decent bloke trying to do a thankless job; or whether he’s a more perfidious, fork-tongued figure for the role he plays.

This Ynetnews report on continuing Palestinian protests against the Israeli murder of Gaza Reuters photographer Fadel Shana, makes me lean toward the latter view:

NPPA

“We have expressed regret and the army is conducting an investigation. It’s a tragedy,” said Spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Mark Regev. “There was no identification that he was a journalist. Had it been clear he was a journalist, the shell would not have been fired.”

Regev’s claim isn’t merely a mistake since every media report on Shana’s death clearly states that not only was the journalist wearing a press marking on his person, his vehicle too was clearly marked (see photos).

No Israeli source has ever contradicted this part of the story. So that would make Regev an outright liar. If he had wished, Regev could’ve claimed that the tank crew didn’t SEE the markings. That at least might be somewhat credible. But you’ll notice Regev dispenses with such nuance making a far more sweeping claim.

A shameful performance but unfortunately par for the course. If Regev had been in the hotel room with Olmert and Talansky when they exchanged envelopes filled with cash, the PR flack would’ve pointed out that the envelopes had no identification that there was cash inside and had they been clearly marked as “Cash” or “Bribe,” they would’ve been refused on the spot.

I wrote earlier about the death of Fadel Shana, the Gaza Reuters cameraman, whose spine was severed by metal flechette darts fired by an Israeli tank, which also killed five other civilians in the same incident. Human Rights Watch has denounced the attack:

New York-based Human Rights Watch has said it has evidence suggesting that the tank fired “recklessly or deliberately” at the Reuters news crew.

When I earlier wrote about this I was under the mistaken impression that the cameraman was the only person killed. But two others died with him and two others died subsequently–all from the same single shell. This clearly indicates how savage, destructive and heinous the flechette weapon is. It is a tank version of a cluster bomb which explodes in the air above the target and sprays sharp metal darts indiscriminately throughout the vicinity.

The tank attack took place shortly after a Hamas ambush which resulted in three IDF soldiers being killed. Could we surmise that the tank was outfitted with such weaponry and the tank crew eager to fire in order to avenge the deaths of their comrades–even if the Palestinian target was of no military value? An act of sheer, naked vengeance?

One of my readers has attempted to argue that one of the victims was armed as an attempt to explain the tank’s firing. I haven’t even heard the IDF claim this and one would think it would be eager to do so if there was any evidence at all to support it (hell, they’re not even above lying in these types of circumstances so I truly doubt if that charge can be supported). Others have argued that the tank crew might’ve confused the cameraman’s camera for an RPG launcher. But there were at least seven, and probably more civilians standing at the scene of this incident. Can anyone credibly argue that Hamas militants gather in groups this large in the open air when they fire an RPG?

Fadel Shana’s flak jacket (Said Khatib/Reuters)

I think it’s important also to document how one dies when hit by such a shell:

Shana’s body armour, which bore a blue-on-white “PRESS” marking, was ripped off by the attack, which medical examination showed had thrust several 1.5-inch (38-mm) metal darts through his neck, shredding his flesh and severing his spine.

I seem to spout the same old almost cliches by now about how Arab life is so cheap to the IDF. But it bears repeating until Israel learns the lesson if it ever will. A man wearing a clearly marked flak jacket indicating he was a journalist, and whose vehicle was similarly marked, was blasted to kingdom come by an Israeli tank using ultra-lethal anti-personnel weapons. It’s unfortunately par for the course for this conflict.

The total inadequacy of the Israeli Supreme Court in policing the IDF’s overaggressive tactics is indicated by this passage:

The Israeli army has defended its use of flechettes, noting that the Israeli Supreme Court turned down a petition to ban their use as a danger to civilian bystanders.

Maybe they’d want to reconsider their previous ruling in light of the death toll from this incident and the international opprobrium that will attach to it. Even if a sense of humanity doesn’t move Israel to act properly, sometimes just plain embarrassment will do the trick. Whatever it takes.

Wounded Gazans and jeep in which Reuters cameraman was killed by IAF missile (Mohammed Abed/AFP-Getty)

I’m pretty jaded when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the depths of depravity to which it often sinks. But why, in heaven’s name would the IAF fire a missile at a clearly marked journalist’s jeep, killing him while wounding innocent civilians?

Fadel Shana, 23, a cameraman for Reuters, was killed when a missile struck his clearly marked jeep in the area, Reuters’ Gaza bureau said.

Asked about the many civilian casualties, Maj. Avital Leibovich, an Israeli Army spokeswoman, said the military had struck an armed group. “It could be that civilians were nearby; it would not be the first time,” she said.

Major Leibovich said that if a cameraman had been killed, “we apologize for that.”

“It was not intentional,” she said, adding that journalists took a risk by operating in fighting zones.

In the accompanying picture you see the cameraman’s vehicle clearly marked (“TV”) and the wounded civilians. Where is the “armed group” that the IDF struck? I realize the spokesperson wasn’t there and is probably talking out of her ass, but this is so clearly mendacious as to be almost laughable (in a very dark sort of way).  [UPDATE: Reuters makes clear that he was killed by a tank shell and not a missile, which changes the complexion of some of the things I wrote above.  It is more difficult to tell from inside a tank what you're shooting at.]

Why would Israel want to kill journalists? Clearly, they would prefer no journalists cover Gaza as they’ve prevented their own Israeli journalists from doing so as Gideon Levy often laments in Haaretz. But killing them? Why are the lives of journalists as cheap as the lives of Palestinian civilians to the IDF? I realize I’m asking a rhetorical question. But I’d still like to know the answer.

The IDF lost three of its own in a firefight with Hamas militants yesterday, one of the largest losses of Israeli life I can remember in Gaza. The army must be seething. I guess it’s easier to kill an unarmed TV cameraman than it is to find and liquidate the gunmen who killed those Israeli boys. But isn’t taking it out on the media going a bit far?

In a related matter, Haaretz reports that one of the three IDF soldiers who died, a Bedouin, is slated to have the home he just built for his new bride demolished since Israel refuses to provide building permits for Bedouin. Let’s add insult to injury why don’t we? He can die for his country. He just can’t live in his own home.