No shrapnel found in Gaza victim's body

...the Palestinians (or covered up by Palestinian doctors) in an attempt to defame the IDF borders, uncontroversially, on some of the most extremely cruel and unfounded rhetoric I've ever seen at DU. It reaches a level of denial of flat facts which, if applied to other tragedies, would likely be illegal in at least a few countries.

To use such circumlocution of thought in an attempt to evade culpability evokes pathos. Eyl, since you did not comment in this thread on support of this proposition, I do not connect you with the sentiments which the selected excerpts tend to imply.

PB

covering up something.

...before the patients were transferred to the hospital. That seems the most reasonable explanation to me. Being a believer in the conspiratorial view of history (as opposed to the 'accidental' or 'catastrophic'), almost any combination of reasonable or tenuous explanations are able to be proposed. However, some are certainly more likely, based on the available facts, than others.

PB

you usually don't remove shrapnel if you can avoid it, especially not before you reach the hospital; you're likely to do more harm than good in the process.

I should note that I'm not a doctor; however, this was something stressed in the first-aid course I took. Being a military course, it focused on trauma, including how to treat someone with shrapnel; and it was stressed that if we had to treat someone who had something sticking out of him, you bandage around it and immobilize it, but you do not remove it.

But there are many details like who treated them, their level of ability, the tools available to them, what kind of stress they were under which are missing. This void of information serves neither of our positions and the temptation to fill that void with speculation might best be avoided. In addition, because of the extreme level of poverty in the area I think it is reasonable to assume the medical training and trained medical personnel is more limited than in Israel.

It should also be noted that this curiosity is limited to a single patient and not indicative of the bulk of the patients, from whom shrapnel was removed.

I have seen both Palestinian and Israeli citizens carrying severely wounded victims away from the scenes of terror attacks. From my understanding of treatment of the severely wounded removal in such a fashion (i.e. without a backboard) is highly inadvisable. However, the stress, emotion and lack of professional training involved often result in some level of "improper" or nonstandard care when a large number of casualties result.

PB

inconsistencies. This doesn't necessarily have sinister implications*, it could be a simple screw-up; but it should be noted.

*Or for that matter, given that, as you pointed out, only one patient was apparently "cleaned", one could also argue there was an attempted coverup, but it was whoever initially treated her's private initiative rather than something systematic.

I really doubt it. But are you seriously the Palestinians are so pure they would never ever cover up something to make Israel look bad? (especially if they suspected, at the time, there was a possibility Palestinian explosives had caused the injuries)

And if your point is that the Palestinian doctors would never be party to such a thing; well, I'm sorry to dissapoint you, but it's hardly unprecedented. For example, I don't recall the exact details, but there was an incident in which IDF fire killed several Palestinian civilians, and they subsequently pulled bodies out of the morgue to "pad" the body count. For that matter, in the earlier part of the intifada, practically everyone who died in the Territories was reported to have died due to ISraeli actions, even if they had nothing to do with it. There was a rather "popular" (i.e. news sources kept running it for a long while) photo of a funeral of a Palestinian boy (this was in the first year of the intifada, IIRC), showing his funeral procession with his head wrapped in a bloody bandage, supposedly the result of IDF fire. Later, it turned out that he had actually died from a disease.


Now, I don't know it happened in this case; but the lack of shrapnel (or are you accusing the Israeli doctors of lying?) is puzzling.

...this conflict have their share rogue elements who will do almost anything, even acts against their own people, in order to propagate the enmity inherent in this conflict. To wit: Baruch Goldstien (wearing his IDF uniform so as to provoke more attacks against Israel), Saeed Hotari (bombing a purely civilian target, a discotheque).

OnEdit: Response #4 of mine might address your query as well.

PB

EVEN shrapnel related?
With artilery shells a large percentage of the casualties are caused by the concusive (sp?) effects of the explosion. Ask Zarqowi (Sp?).

Concusion, concusion caused ruptures = equals wounds with no shrapnel.

Flavin

is still alive.

The article notes:



I assume they know to distinguish between shrapnel wounds and wounds caused by concussion (which, as I understand, tends not to cause external wounds, but rather damages internal organs).

Also, the Hebrew version of the article also notes that the wounds (were shrapnel had apparently been) had been sutured, so there was something there.

I recall reading that Israeli victims of Palestinian suicide bombers sometimes show very little outward signs of terminal trauma. The overpressure wave of the blast, and it's been a while since I read up on it, can cause something called "Blast Lung" which has a high fatality rate. For the curious, I did find refresher material on the topic here.

I do believe that 155mm shells mostly rely on thousands of razor-sharp pieces of shrapnel though, with a kill zone of 50+ meters overpressure effects cannot be discounted.

PB

I recall reading that Israeli victims of Palestinian suicide bombers sometimes show very little outward signs of terminal trauma

palestenain suicide bombers pack their bombs with lots of nails and other sharp objects that tend to rip their victims bodies apart and leave the wounded with scars all over....dont know where you got such an idea from