Annan, US expert doubt Gaza beach blast findings

Former Pentagon analyst, now senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, says evidence gathered in Gaza points to Israeli shell as cause of blast that left seven Palestinians dead; Annan: I don't believe it is plausible that the Palestinians planted charges in a place where civilians often spend their time

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3262700,00.html

<snip>

"While the IDF committee investigating the explosion that left seven members of a Palestinian family dead on a Beit Layiha beach in northern Gaza determined that the chances the blast was caused by an IDF artillery shell are slim, there are those who doubt the army’s version of the events.

Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon analyst who's now a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said all the evidence he had gathered in Gaza pointed to an Israeli shell as the cause of the explosion.

“Based on what I have seen, I'd be shocked if it was anything other than that," Garlasco said.

He said it was impossible to rule out the possibility that terrorists had rigged an Israeli shell into a makeshift bomb, but that the shrapnel injuries - all to the upper body - suggested that the chance of that was remote and that a 155 millimeter shell caused the explosion."

<snip>

"UN Secretary General Kofi Annan also doubted the IDF committee’s conclusions.

"The Israeli claim that the beach blast was caused by an explosive charge at the site sounds strange to me. I don't believe it is plausible that the Palestinians planted charges in a place where civilians often spend their time," Annan told the London-based Al-Hayat daily."

He has specifically what in his background that makes him an expert in this?

Y'know, the evidence that supports the claim that a 155mm artillery shell fired from
an idf Howitzer as part of an artillery barrage killed a family having a picnic on the
beach in Gaza last week. Since that's he found, shrapnel from an idf 155mm artillery shell,
that had most likely just been fired into Gaza, from Israel.

when it comes to munitions

If the ngo is so clueless as to employ as their senior military analyst, a 'so-called expert', who
can't tell the difference between different types of shrapnel, then a boycott of HRW is on the
cards, shurely?

The "clueless, so-called expert" Galasco

Has a nice ring to it.

Unless he's a munitions and/or forensics expert, why drag him out as knowing something. Maybe he's a hotshot in some things, but not this

Since the question I asked was completely ignored, but the points made were not, would it be
fair to surmise that HRW is now a source that now no longer has credibility for yourself? It would
be logical to surmise that if the senior military analyst for a ngo is believed to be a 'clueless,
so-called expert', then you're boycotting HRW from now on?


'Innocent Accounting Errors


November 5, 2004


BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. On Thursday, U.S. airstrikes pounded the City of Fallujah in preparation for a major offensive there. Five civilians were reportedly killed in the bombing, bringing the total number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war to, well -- we don't know. Rough estimates range from ten- to thirty-thousand, until last week, when the British medical journal The Lancet published a study placing the figure closer to 100,000. In it, public health researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore compared mortality estimates from the 15 months before the invasion with the 18 months following it, and subtracted the difference.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Critics immediately pounced on the methodology, claiming that sampling errors rendered the findings meaningless. Some accused Lancet editors of trying to influence the election by fast-tracking the study for publication. But has the debate over how many died shifted attention from how they died and if it can be prevented? Last year, a Human Rights Watch report examined why civilian casualties occur in Iraq. It was authored by Marc Garlasco, someone well versed on the topic.

MARC GARLASCO: Right before I took my job at Human Rights Watch, I was the chief of high value targeting working out of the Pentagon, and was pretty heavily involved in the war in Iraq. I think the most aim points I had going down in any one night was about 411 weapons. On the 11th of April of 2003, I left. I, I worked my last air strike. And so I'm intimately familiar with targeting and how bombs actually meet their targets.

http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/transcripts_110504_f.html

Israeli announcements. Of course there will be an accusation of "clueless" and much worse.

Of course now, Israel is saying that indeed it may have been an Israeli shell.

btw, Scurrilous covered this in one of his posts in this thread...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x127697#127742

<snip>

"Marc Garlasco is the senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch (HRW), and is HRW’s resident expert on battle damage assessment, military operations, and interrogations. Marc also leads HRW’s work on Abu Ghurayb, civilian military contractors, and non-lethal weapons.

Marc is the co-author of two HRW reports: “Razing Rafah: Mass Home demolitions in the Gaza Strip,” and “Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq.” He led a team of researchers in July 2004 on a one-month mission to Gaza, Israel, and Egypt to investigate home demolitions in Rafah. Before that he led a five-week mission in 2003 throughout Iraq to assess the conduct of the war in Iraq.

Marc has been featured in articles in such papers as the New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as other leading dailies. He has also been a regular on National Public Radio, and has been featured on television news, including CNN, ABC, BBC, and others.

Before coming to HRW, Marc spent seven years in the Pentagon as a senior intelligence analyst covering Iraq. His last position there was chief of high-value targeting during the Iraq War in 2003. Marc was on the Operation Desert Fox (Iraq) Battle Damage Assessment team in 1998, led a Pentagon Battle Damage Assessment team to Kosovo in 1999, and recommended thousands of aimpoints on hundreds of targets during operations in Iraq and Serbia. He also participated in over 50 interrogations as a subject matter expert.

Marc has a B.A. in Government from St. John’s University and a M.A. in International Relations from the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University."

http://www.motherjones.com/radio/2005/10/garlasco_bio.html

that he has ANY forensic experience. Given that his degrees are in government not engineering or metallurgy etc. one should be skeptical of his conclusions.

...but he does have a background in Battle Damage Assessment, and in this capacity has stated that he doesn't think the explosion and subsequent injuries were caused by a mine.

There has already been a call for the UN to further investigate what happened. Let them bring in the forensic experts, metallurgists, or whatever and let's have a real probe. Not an IDF whitewash.

...If you do some googling on this guy you'll find he's been involved in civilian death investigations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. There's a lot of info about him out there. It funny how some (not you) can be so easily dismissive of his credentials and expertise without doing even the most cursory check on his baxckground.

IMO a thorough investigation of this incident by the UN is warranted.

consider that the chain of evidence is compromised to hell.

On the one hand, critical parts of the evidence is IDF reports - which are the ones you're doubting. On the other hand, the Palestinians reportedly sanitized the beach, and how do you confirm any fragments they hand over came from this incidents.

n/t

didn't have the same problems (or not all of them) because as far as it was concerned the IDF records are reliable (and they did point out the problems caused by the Palestinians' clearing the beach).

Basically, my point is that with an Israeli investigation saying one thing, and Palestinian allegations saying another, an investigation will likely prove futile, as far as changing minds is concerned. As an example, look at the Jenin "massacre". HRW's report explicitly said there wasn't a massacre; yet that hasn't prevented people here from http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x127407#127575">claiming there was a massacre (ironically enough, using the same report as "evidence").

Even in this forum, and indeed this thread, I've seen enough knee-jerk responses to be aware that any independent investigation would be pooh-poohed as being a bunch of non-experts UNLESS the findings were what the knee-jerkers wanted to see. The idea of an independent investigation is to get to the truth, something I personally don't believe IDF investigations are motivated by...

Would it make you happier if I referred to the Jenin massacre as the Jenin War-Crimes, Indiscriminate Killing Of Civilians, And Gross Violations Of Human Rights Incident? :)

"Even in this forum, and indeed this thread, I've seen enough knee-jerk responses to be aware that any independent investigation would be pooh-poohed as being a bunch of non-experts UNLESS the findings were what the knee-jerkers wanted to see."

is this any different than the "knee-jerkers" who dismiss just about any report out of Israel? What if the UN does prove it wasn't Israel, do you not think that it would be 'pooh-pooed' by the same knee-jerkers that always think Israel is guilty?

I just doubt it will do much good in this case. Nor am I sure it matters much.

As I see it, there are six possible scenarios:

1) An Israeli shell deliberately intended to kill civilians
2) An Israeli shell which was misaimed or otherwise killed the family by accident
3) A dud, fired by Israel at some earlier point, which went off.
4) A Qassam dud, fired at some earlier point, which went off.
5) Misaimed Palestinian ordnance used at the time, either a straying Qassam or a mine
6) A deliberate "false flag" operation by Hamas

As I see it, 1 & 6 are extremely unlikely (though I've already seen Israel accused of 1) - besides probably being unprovable. 4 has apparently also been ruled out by all parties. If the culprit is Israeli shelling, the Israeli response would be to stop the shelling - which has already been done. However, even if it was not caused by an Israeli shell, it doesn't matter in that regard - the shelling is ineffective, and thus doesn't justify the dangers of using it. On the other hand, if the fault in this instance was Palestinian, I doubt it would change much in Hamas' conduct - previous incidents haven't.

As for Jenin, call it whatever you want - but not something it patently wasn't (certainly when basing your allegations on a source which specifically refutes that accusation).

EDIT - apparently, I posted to soon - there's now a seventh version:German paper doubts Gaza beach reports

...I read that ynet article.

An Israeli newspaper's translation of an article in a German newspaper (whose name they got wrong) claiming that a cameraman on the scene said something that doesn't jibe with what they think they see in the video footage therefore means the whole event was 'staged.'

BTW... it's not exactly a new version. The 'staged' meme has been pushed from day one.

THE Israeli Army has admitted to The Times that its official account of the explosion that killed eight Palestinians picnicking on a Gaza beach last week was flawed. The account is also contradicted by a UN radio transmission.
The army has told The Times that its report was flawed because it failed to mention two gunboat shells fired at about the time of the deaths. It insists, however, that they landed too far away to have been responsible.

<snip>

The investigation relies heavily on timing. It cites surveillance footage of the beach showing that it was quiet between 4.54 and 4.57pm, and film of ambulances apparently arriving at the scene at 5.15.

It says that the incident must therefore have happened between 4.57 and 5.10pm — at least nine minutes after it says it stopped firing land artillery.

But The Times has established that at 4.43pm the UN received a radio call from one of its officials in northern Gaza that said: “At 16.33hrs IDF artillery shelling has started again targeting the northern area, two artillery shells so far. One of the shells fell down at the coast west of the evacuated old Dugit settlement, some casualties among the people spending their day at the . . . ” Transmissions could be picked up by anyone with a scanner, which are widely available in Gaza.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2230076,00.html

(according to radio news reports) - they claim the Times misquoted the officer.

Not unexpected...slower than anticipated...

back where the vehicle full of munitions exploded, killed a bunch of people and Israel was immediately blamed, though Israel had NOTHING to do with it. And where was the UN investigation on that one?

back when they took photos of a UN worker moving a stretcher from a vehicle and falsely claimed it was a missile. Let's not forget all the other instances involving deaths of Palestinian civilians where the IDF has lied about the circumstances. While it may be very difficult for some to break out from their *Israel Never Does Anything Wrong* mindset, in this case it'd help if they did, because in the indecent haste to blame the Palestinians themselves, there's a disgusting lack of sympathy or concern from one or two in this forum for the civilians that were killed in both attacks...