Hezbollywood? Evidence mounts that Qana collapse and deaths were staged

It was to be a perfect Hollywood ending for Hezbollah. Just as the Israeli bombing of the village of Qana in 1996 brought a premature end to Israel's "Grapes of Wrath operation," so too a sequel of Qana II could change, once and for all, the direction of Israel's current summer blockbuster, "Change of Direction." Ten years ago, world condemnation of an errant Israeli shell that hit a civilian compound forced then-PM Shimon Peres to curtail the offensive against terror bases.

The setting was also perfect: Kana was again being used as a primary site for launching rockets against Israeli cities. The IDF reported that more than 150 rockets had been launched from Qana and its vicinity at Israeli civilians, wreaking destruction in Kiryat Shmona, Maalot, Nahariya and Haifa. It was only a matter of time before the Israeli Air Force would come for a visit, using pinpoint targeting of the sites used to launch rockets, Hezbollah logistical centers and weapon storage facilities.

On the morning of July 30, according to the IDF, the air force came in three waves. In the first, between midnight and one in the morning, there was a strike at or near the building that eventually collapsed. There was a second strike at other targets far from the collapse building several hours later, and a third strike at around 7:30 in the morning. There too the nearest hit was some 460 meters away, according to the IDF. But first reports of a building collapse came only around 8 am.

Thus there was an unexplained 7 to 8 hour gap between the time of the helicopter strike and the building collapse. Brigadier General Amir Eshel, Head of the Air Force Headquarters, in a press briefing, told journalists that "the attack on the structure in the Qana village took place between midnight and one in the morning. The gap between the timing of the collapse of the building and the time of the strike on it is unclear."

Gen. Eshel appeared genuinely mystified by the gap in time. He "I'm saying this very carefully, because at this time I don't have a clue as to what the explanation could be for this gap," he added.

The army's only explanation was that somehow there was unexploded Hezbollah ordnance in the building that only detonated much later.

"It could be that inside the building, things that could eventually cause an explosion were being housed, things that we could not blow up in the attack, and maybe remained there, Brigadier General Eshel said.

Eshel reported that as recently as two days ago, military intelligence reported the building area had been used by the terrorists for storage or firing of weapons. It was a bad place to cram dozens of women and children.

There are other mysteries. The roof of the building was intact. Journalist Ben Wedeman of CNN noted that there was a larger crater next to the building, but observed that the building appeared not to have collapsed as a result of the Israeli strike.

Why would the civilians who had supposedly taken shelter in the basement of the building not leave after the post-midnight attack? They just went back to sleep and had the bad luck to wait for the building to collapse in the morning?

What we do know is that sometime after dawn a call went hour to journalists and rescue workers to come to the scene. And come they did.

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.

Lebanese rescue teams did not start evacuating the building until the morning and only after the camera crews came. The absence of a real rescue effort was explained by saying that equipment was lacking. There were no scenes of live or injured people being extracted.

There was little blood, CNN's Wedeman noted: all the victims, he concluded, 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. Their limbs appeared to have stiffened, from rigor mortis. Neither were effects that would have resulted from an Israeli attack hours before. These were bodies that looked like they had been dead for days.

Viewers can judge for themselves. But the accumulating evidence suggests another explanation for what happened at Kana. The scenario would be 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.

The well-documented use by Palestinians of this kind of faked footage -- from the alleged shooting of Mohammed Dura in Gaza, scenes from Jenin of "dead" victims falling off gurneys and then climbing back on -- have merited the creation of a new film genre called "Palliwood."

There is increasing evidence that the Kana sequel is another episode in this genre, a variety which might be called Hezbollywood. The Hezbollah have evidently learned their craft well.

The current suspension of Israeli military air activity is supposedly intended, among other things, to be used for the investigation of what really happened at Qana. It is to be hoped that there are real journalists on the scene, and unbiased medical examiners, who will have the courage and intelligence to sort out the anomalies and contradictions, and get to the buried truth of what happened.

There is no shortage of victims in Lebanon and Israel these days. From this vantage point, 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 in its exploitation of suffering and anti-Israel hatred. But, as usual, the only party expected to pay the full price will be Israelis.

Yes, it would be a Hollywood ending for it all to end in Qana, exactly as it did a decade ago. But perfect endings, and perfect crimes, are rarely pulled off in real life.

Israelis will not be able to investigate this claim directly. The question remains whether honest men and women of other nationalities will let this likely lie stand or press for the revelation of the improbable and inconvenient truth.

Here is the story:
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2002/03/15/saudia3801.htm

A "cleaned up" version by the Human Rights watch -- who hate being "unkind" to Islamists.

Saudi Arabia: Religious Police Role in School Fire Criticized
(New York, March 15, 2002)

Saudi authorities should conduct an independent, thorough, and transparent investigation of the March 11 fire at a girls' public intermediate school in Mecca that claimed the lives of at least fourteen students, Human Rights Watch said today. The tragedy has focused attention on the role of the religious police as well as the state agency responsible for the education of girls and women in the kingdom

Women and girls may have died unnecessarily because of extreme interpretations of the Islamic dress code. State authorities with direct and indirect responsibility for this tragedy must be held accountable

Hanny Megally
Executive Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch.

Related Material

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Press Release, February 5, 2002

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Eyewitnesses, including civil defense officers, reported that several members of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (mutawwa'in, in Arabic) interfered with rescue efforts because the fleeing students were not wearing the obligatory public attire (long black cloaks and head coverings) for Saudi girls and women. The mutawwa'in, a law-enforcement agency that has sought to ensure the application of the kingdom's strict gender segregation and dress code for women, has drawn criticism for abusive practices including harassment, physical abuse, and arbitrary arrest.
"Women and girls may have died unnecessarily because of extreme interpretations of the Islamic dress code," said Hanny Megally, Executive Director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. "State authorities with direct and indirect responsibility for this tragedy must be held accountable."

There were 835 students and fifty-five women teachers in Intermediate School No. 31 when the blaze started at about 8:00 in the morning, according to Saudi press reports. Saudi newspapers suggested that the school, located in a rented building, was overcrowded, and may have lacked proper safety infrastructure and equipment, such as fire stairs and alarms.

The government's investigation should also examine unsafe conditions at the school, which is administered by the General Presidency for Girls' Education (GPGE), Human Rights Watch added.

Yesterday's edition of Arab News (Jeddah) cited a report prepared by Mecca's Civil Defense Department about the rescue effort at the school. The report noted that mutawwa'in were at the school's main gate and, "intentionally obstructed the efforts to evacuate the girls. This resulted in the increased number of casualties." The religious police reportedly tried to block the entry of Civil Defense officers into the building. "We told them that the situation was dangerous and it was not the time to discuss religious issues, but they refused and started shouting at us," Arab News quoted Civil Defense officers as saying.

"Whenever the girls got out through the main gate, these people forced them to return via another. Instead of extending a helping hand for the rescue work, they were using their hands to beat us," Civil Defense officers were quoted as saying. The officers also said they saw three people beating girls who had evacuated the school without proper dress. A Saudi journalist told Human Rights Watch that the mutawwa'in at the scene also turned away parents and other residents who came to assist.

The tragedy has prompted Saudi journalists to call for greater openness on the part of the GPGE in response to inquiries from the media for information about its policies and practices. All aspects of state-financed education for girls in Saudi Arabia, including the renting of buildings for schools, is under the authority of the GPGE, an autonomous government agency long controlled by conservative clerics. "A free flow of information would. . . help the press to prepare an investigative report on other schools in the Kingdom where conditions might also endanger the lives of students and teachers," Deputy Editor-in-Chief Jamal A. Khashoggi wrote in yesterday's Arab News.

He urged that the GPGE provide information about fire safety in its schools for girls, including the number of fire extinguishers, the frequency of fire drills, as well as details about the contracts for the thousands of rented school premises in the kingdom, including provisions for installation of emergency exits and fire alarms.

The kingdom's intermediate public schools, which are segregated by gender, provide three years of education for children between the ages of twelve and fifteen, following a six-year program of elementary education.

Saudi Arabia is a state party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women.

Megally added that in the midst of this tragedy it was encouraging to see relatively open discussion of need for investigation in the traditionally very quiescent Saudi press.

The Arabs don't seem to have any problem at all, killing their own children....
The just object to others doing it...

Here's another article on the Arab love of children....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1874471.stm

This is by the BBC who would NEVER critize their "champions' the Saudis..

Saudi police 'stopped' fire rescue

The Mecca city governor visited the fire-damaged school

Saudi Arabia's religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, according to Saudi newspapers.
In a rare criticism of the kingdom's powerful "mutaween" police, the Saudi media has accused them of hindering attempts to save 15 girls who died in the fire on Monday.

About 800 pupils were inside the school in the holy city of Mecca when the tragedy occurred.

15 girls died in the blaze and more than 50 others were injured

According to the al-Eqtisadiah daily, firemen confronted police after they tried to keep the girls inside because they were not wearing the headscarves and abayas (black robes) required by the kingdom's strict interpretation of Islam.

One witness said he saw three policemen "beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya".

The Saudi Gazette quoted witnesses as saying that the police - known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice - had stopped men who tried to help the girls and warned "it is a sinful to approach them".

The father of one of the dead girls said that the school watchman even refused to open the gates to let the girls out.

"Lives could have been saved had they not been stopped by members of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice," the newspaper concluded.

Relatives' anger

Families of the victims have been incensed over the deaths.

Most of the victims were crushed in a stampede as they tried to flee the blaze.

The school was locked at the time of the fire - a usual practice to ensure full segregation of the sexes.

The religious police are widely feared in Saudi Arabia. They roam the streets enforcing dress codes and sex segregation, and ensuring prayers are performed on time.

Those who refuse to obey their orders are often beaten and sometimes put in jail.

Semper Fi

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