Only a few days ago, June 9, the Guardian’s “reporter” (scare quotes quite deliberate) Chris McGreal began his article from Jerusalem as follows:
A barrage of Israeli artillery shells rained down on a busy Gaza beach yesterday, killing seven Palestinians, three of them children. The attack put further strain on the 16-month truce between Israel and the governing Hamas movement.
Witnesses described several explosions that also injured dozens of other people who lay on the beach, screaming and pleading for help. Some ran into the sea for fear of more shells hitting the sands at Beit Lahia, in the north of the Gaza strip.Among the dead were three children, aged one, three, and 10. Their sister was swimming and survived.
The beach was packed with picnicking families enjoying the Muslim day of rest, and the explosions landed among them, scattering body parts along the dunes. Television footage showed a woman and a child laying dead on the sand, and another child screaming in agony while a lifeless man was carried away by an ambulance crew.
Associated Press reported that a tearful man held the limp body of what appeared to be a girl or young woman. “Muslims, look at this,” he shouted.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, called the killings a “bloody massacre” and demanded international intervention.
Nowhere in the Guardian “report” – that includes a highly emotional photo of crying Palestinian children – is there the slightest indication that something other than Israeli artillery caused these deaths. The evidently all-too-eager McGreal swallowed whole earlier “reports” from the Associated Press with virtually no skepticism about suppopsed Israeli atrocities. Even the Israelis were temporarily cowed by this propaganda, as well they might be considering the outrageous bias of the press. Now we learn from CNN:
An explosion on a Gaza beach that killed seven people last week was caused by explosives planted there by Palestinian militants, not artillery fire from an Israeli navy gunboat, Israeli military sources said.
The Israeli investigation concluded that the possibility any of the six artillery shells fired from the gunboat last Friday could have landed on the beach was “almost nil,” the sources said.
Ho-hum. Should anybody be surprised? Not really. I don’t even think Mr. McGreal is. Surely he is aware of the controversy surrounding the Mohammed Al-Dura case, but apparently he pays such matters scant attention because it does not fit the narrative of his “progressive” publication. (What a comic use of the word progressive.)
Meanwhile, Palestinian rocket attacks have continued on Southern Israel and the Israelis have responded. What would you do if someone was firing rockets into your back yard?
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