Perpetuating myths with cheap emotion on tap

The following photograph by Paolo Pellegrin, complete with its misleading caption, remains on the Magnum Agency Website, and is part of an exhibition currently at the Western Australian Maritime Museum, despite strong evidence that photgraphs from the site of this incident are highly suspect:



"LEBANON. Qana. 56 civilians were killed during an Israeli air strike in the early hours of July 30th, 2006."

Image Reference
NYC60903




[In fact there were 28 confirmed deaths, but suspicion that the bodies had been transported to the site from a nearby morgue. Refer to the posting below - SL]

From a report that I have prepared from a number of sources [It's too long for this blog - follow the link to the full report]:

On the morning of July 30, 2006, in the Lebanese town of Qana, during the war between Hezbollah and Israel, a three-story building collapsed, burying the Lebanese civilians who were sleeping in the basement. Immediately the news media went into high gear denouncing this latest example of Israeli callousness. They reported that 55-60 civilians were “massacred”.

The initial estimate of 54 persons killed was based on a register of 63 persons who had sought shelter in the basement of the building that was struck, and rescue teams having located nine survivors.

... at least 22 people escaped the basement, and 28 are confirmed dead, according to records from the Lebanese Red Cross and the government hospital in Tyre. Thirteen people remain missing....

...There was little blood… all the victims… appeared to have died while as they were sleeping -- sleeping, apparently, through thunderous Israeli air attacks. Rescue workers equipped with cameras were removing the bodies from the same opening in the collapsed structure. Journalists were not allowed near the collapsed building.

Rescue workers filmed as they went carried the victims on the stretchers, occasionally flipping up the blankets so that cameras could show the faces and bodies of the dead.

But Israelis steeled to scenes of carnage from Palestinian suicide bombings and Hezbollah rocket attack could not help but notice that these victims did not look like our victims. Their faces were ashen gray…The bodies looked like they had been dead for days.

… accumulating evidence suggests another explanation for what happened at Kana. … a setup in which the time between the initial Israeli bombing near the building and morning reports of its collapse would have been used to "plant" bodies killed in previous fighting -- reports in previous days indicated that nearby Tyre was used as a temporary morgue -- place them in the basement, and then engineer a "controlled demolition" to fake another Israeli attack….

…. at this time, it looks like in the case of Qana, the world's media was duped in a cruel and colossal hoax by a terror organization that knows no moral bounds …

… it is increasingly clear that the Qana “massacre” was a stage-managed Hizballah production, designed precisely to enflame international sentiment against Israel .... Some of the principal evidence for this:

• The Israeli bombardment took place about midnight, but the house where the civilians were gathered reportedly did not collapse until 8AM. …
• Photos of the rescue operation...are extremely suspicious. ...the same bodies were paraded before reporters on different occasions, each time as if they had just been pulled from the rubble.
• The very existence of these pictures raises more questions. ...“While Hezbollah and its apologists have been claiming that civilians could not freely flee the scene due to Israeli destruction of bridges and roads, the journalists and rescue teams from nearby Tyre had no problem getting there.”
• The Christian Lebanese website LIBANOSCOPIE has charged that Hizballah staged the entire incident in order to stimulate calls for a ceasefire... “We have it from a credible source that Hizbullah, alarmed by Siniora’s plan, has concocted an incident that would help thwart the negotiations. ….Hizbullah gunmen placed a rocket launcher on the roof in Qana and brought disabled children inside, in a bid to provoke a response by the Israeli Air Force. In this way, they were planning to take advantage of the death of innocents and curtail the negotiation initiative.”....

Follow the link to the full report, which is too long for me to post in full.