Human Rights Watch Suggests Unexploded Israeli Shell May’ve Caused Gaza Beach Massacre

There’s the truth and then there’s the Jerusalem Post’s version. These two are often as mismatched as Beauty and the Beast. The Post, in typically sloppy journalistic fashion has published a misleading report on a meeting between Human Rights Watch bomb damage assessment expert Marc Garlasco and IDF Maj. Gen. Meir Kalifi, who conducted the investigation into the Gaza beach massacre. The latter’s initial findings suggested that an IDF shell did not cause the deaths and that the actual cause was most likely a Hamas landmine buried at the beach to inhibit IDF landings there which targeted Qassam launching cells. This is from Haaretz on June 12th:

[A] committee, headed by Major General Meir Kalifi, is due to present its findings to the defense minister and the chief of staff Tuesday night. Its tentative conclusion is that the deaths stemmed from a bomb that Hamas planted on the beach in order to ambush Israeli naval commandos operating in northern Gaza…

Israel has amassed considerable information indicating that over the past few weeks, ever since Israeli commandos infiltrated Gaza and killed a rocket-launching cell, Hamas has been systematically mining the northern Gaza beach in an attempt to keep Israeli commandos from landing there again.

While Garlasco originally said that it was most likely that an Israeli shell fired at the beach killed the beachgoers, he now appears to have amended this view. After meeting with Kalifi, he still believes an Israeli shell killed them. But he believes it is possible the shell had been fired earlier, did not explode on impact, and later exploded. This is the Human Rights Watch statement about the Garlasco-Kalifi meeting:

During the two-and-a-half hour meeting with Kalifi, the IDF agreed with Human Rights Watch that it is possible that unexploded ordnance from a 155mm artillery shell fired earlier in the day could have caused the fatal injuries. The IDF fired more than 80 155mm shells in the area of the beach on the morning of the incident. Sand would increase the possibility of a fuse malfunction leading to a dud shell that may have sat in the sand waiting to be set off. The shelling between 4:31 p.m. and 4:50 p.m. could have triggered a dud shell, as could the human traffic on the beach that afternoon.

I will admit that this would be a whole lot less damning to the IDF than raining live shells on their heads. At least this makes the tragedy an accident. But it by no means gets the IDF off the hook. They still caused the deaths. If anyone reading this wants to pooh pooh this distinction let me present an example: if I collect guns and store them in my home and sell my home to you–then leave a gun behind and your child accidentally fires it killing itself or someone else–am I in the clear? Certainly not. I left the weapon there. It’s my fault though I didn’t deliberately set out to kill anyone.

Now let’s return to the Post which wrote:

On Monday, the Human Rights Watch…conceded for the first time since the incident that it could not contradict the IDF’s exonerating findings.

That’s NOT what HRW said. HRW said that a piece of unexploded IDF ordnance MAY HAVE killed the Palestinians, not that a Hamas-planted mine killed them as the IDF contends. And HRW’s theory of what may’ve happened, if true, still does NOT “exonerate” the IDF.

The main argument between Klifi and HRW surrounded the timeline of the blast…

This is only one of the arguments between them. An equally important argument was whether the shrapnel in the wounded Palestinians was of IDF origin or not. The IDF report still swears up and down it wasn’t.

The Post learned that the IDF was currently inspecting a second piece of shrapnel doctors had retrieved from one of the Palestinians wounded in the blast and currently being treated at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba…The second piece of shrapnel, sources said, was currently being examined in an IDF lab.

This is apparently the shrapnel referred to in the Israeli Channel 10 report which the station claimed was proven to have come from an IDF shell (a report the IDF denounced yesterday as “falsehood”). I’m betting that the IDF is now backpedaling because it knows the Channel 10 report was accurate. And undoubtedly Garlasco brought with him to his meeting with Kalifi pieces of the Israeli shrapnel he found on the Gaza beach during his visit to the site shortly after the explosion. But an important question is: if the IDF did such a thorough report why didn’t it test this ‘second piece’ of shrapnel? Why is it only testing it now? Doesn’t this justify the doubts that so many have about the credibility of the original IDF investigation?

UPDATE: After I wrote to Human Rights Watch eight hours ago, castigating them for allowing the Post to be the first media source to characterize the results of the Garlasco-Kalifi meeting, one of my intrepid readers points me to a new statement published today on the HRW site. Read it and you’ll wonder whether we and the Post are even in the same universe. Needless to say, the Post article appears even more outrageously fatuous after reading HRW’s version of the meeting.

It’s also important to note in today’s HRW statement the utterly obtuse attitude of Kalifi toward any evidence that might shake his firm resolve in IDF innocence:

The IDF…dismissed as “unimportant” evidence gathered by Human Rights Watch indicating that the IDF’s suggested timeline surrounding the fatal incident is flawed. Yet, the IDF originally claimed that the timing of the incident was the most important factor absolving it of responsibility. According to the IDF, the eight civilians were killed after the IDF shelling ceased at 4:50 p.m. on June 9, 2006.

However, evidence collected by Human Rights Watch researchers and many independent journalists on the ground in Gaza indicates that the civilians were killed within the time period of the shelling. That evidence includes computerized hospital records that show children injured at the beach were treated by 5:12 p.m., and hand-written hospital records that show they were admitted at 5:05 p.m. In light of the 20-minute round trip drive between the hospital and the beach, this evidence suggests that the blast that caused the family’s death occurred during the time of the IDF shelling.

…Kalifi confirmed that the IDF had removed and tested one piece of shrapnel from one of three injured Palestinians moved to Israel and that the test results revealed that it was weapons-grade alloy, but not from a 155mm shell. He stated that the IDF was not removing shrapnel from the other injured Palestinians. However, last night an Israeli news report contradicted this information, stating that the IDF had removed two additional pieces of shrapnel from one of the other injured and found them likely to have come from a 155mm shell. The IDF spokesperson today acknowledged the removal and testing of one additional piece of shrapnel, but claimed that there were no test results yet.

Kalifi also dismissed artillery fuse shrapnel removed by Palestinian doctors from a 19-year-old man injured in the blast, and examined by Human Rights Watch. He questioned the chain of custody, stating that anyone could take shrapnel and dip it into the blood of the injured…

“If the Israeli allegations of tampered evidence are to be believed, many Palestinians would have to have engaged in a massive and immediate conspiracy to falsify the data,” said Garlasco. “The conspirators – witnesses, victims, medical personnel and bomb disposal staff – would have had to falsify their testimony, amend digital and hand-written records, and dip shrapnel into a victim’s blood. It beggars belief that such a huge conspiracy could be orchestrated so quickly.”

Kalifi is clearly a guy, like George Bush and Dick Cheney, who has a desired outcome and will force all the evidence to fit it. If it doesn’t fit, he’ll reject it out of hand without even so much as analyzing it. That’s some way to conduct a rigorous, credible inquiry.

In this passage, HRW closes in on what may’ve been the ultimate cause of the tragedy:

During the two-and-a-half hour meeting with Kalifi, the IDF agreed with Human Rights Watch that it is possible that unexploded ordnance from a 155mm artillery shell fired earlier in the day could have caused the fatal injuries. The IDF fired more than 80 155mm shells in the area of the beach on the morning of the incident. Sand would increase the possibility of a fuse malfunction leading to a dud shell that may have sat in the sand waiting to be set off. The shelling between 4:31 p.m. and 4:50 p.m. could have triggered a dud shell, as could the human traffic on the beach that afternoon.

The IDF has fired more than 7,700 shells at northern Gaza since the Israeli withdrawal in September 2005, creating a problem of unexploded ordnance in heavily populated areas.