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Friday, June 16, 2006
Steinberg: HRW's rush to judgement -- launches another PR attack against Israel

Friday, 16 June, 2006

HRW is clearly under pressure to "prove" that its support for the
Palestinian version is correct --- and the subheading "Palestinians Agree to
Independent Inquiry" could have been used in the Jenin "massacre" myth
campaign, and on many other occasions. For HRW and the Palestinians,
"independent" means the UN or another body dominated by anti-Israel
ideologues, where the outcome is never in doubt.

In today's press release, like the previous one, Garlasco and HRW present
the narrow claims that might support their version, while ignoring all of
the contradictory data. The claim that the Israeli government has
attributed this explosion to a mine planted by the Palestinians is also
incorrect -- there is some unofficial speculation, particularly in the
media, but no official statement on the possible cause. And it is
interesting that while Garlasco portrays himself as a military expert, we
know very little about his actual combat experience, if any. What is his
political agenda, and why has he not provided a report on the sources and
manufacture of Palestinian rockets and missiles? For the mass media, the
NGO "halo effect" remains intact, at least for now.

Gerald Steinberg
www.ngo-monitor.org

----- Original Message -----
From: HRW Press
To: HRW Press
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2006 1:26 AM
Subject: Israel: More Evidence on Beach Killings Implicates IDF

For Immediate Release

Israel: More Evidence on Beach Killings Implicates IDF

Palestinians Agree to Independent Inquiry

(Gaza, June 15, 2006) - A digitally dated and time-stamped blood test report
of a victim treated at a Palestinian hospital that admitted wounded from the
June 9 killings on a Gaza beach suggests that the attack took place during
the time period of an Israeli artillery attack, Human Rights Watch said
today. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have denied responsibility for the
killings, saying that although they fired six artillery shells onto the
beach between 4:32 p.m. and 4:51 p.m., the fatal incident must have occurred
after that.

Human Rights Watch first challenged this conclusion, concluding that the IDF
most likely caused the killings, in a press release,
www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/06/13/isrlpa13544.htm , based on an
investigation by its researchers in Gaza.

Human Rights Watch researchers examined the computer-generated record from
the Kamal Adwan hospital, which documents the blood test of a victim from
the beach incident being taken at 5:12 p.m. on June 9. Furthermore,
hand-written hospital records log patients from the incident as having been
admitted starting at 5:05 p.m. If the records are accurate, based on the
time needed to dispatch an ambulance and drive from the hospital to the
beach and back, this suggests that the fatal explosion took place at a time
when the IDF said they was firing artillery rounds. Both sets of records
also directly call into question the account of the IDF that ambulances did
not reach the beach until 5:15 p.m. that day.

Altering the records would require re-setting the computer's clock and
re-writing pages of the hospital's admissions log. Human Rights Watch
researchers said that the pages they saw documented patients un-related to
the beach incident, followed by two pages of victims from the beach. The
first of those were admitted at 5:05 p.m. The researchers saw no evidence
that the times might have been altered.

Israeli military officials have also suggested the explosion, which killed
seven members of the Ghalya family and wounded many others, might have been
caused by a mine. But Human Rights Watch researchers also examined
blood-crusted shrapnel given to them by the father of a 19-year-old male who
suffered abdominal wounds in the beach explosion. They determined that the
shrapnel is a piece of fuse from an artillery shell.

"The likelihood that the Ghalya family was killed by an explosive other than
one of the shells fired by the IDF is remote," said Marc Garlasco, senior
military analyst at Human Rights Watch. "This new evidence highlights the
urgent need for Israel to permit an independent, transparent investigation
into the beach killings."

Human Rights Watch received a fax today from the office of Palestinian
Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, saying that the president's office,
which is holding much of the shrapnel removed from the blast victims, would
cooperate and share evidence with an independent inquiry team.

For further information, please contact:

In Jerusalem, Lucy Mair: +972-548-167-775

In Gaza, Marc Garlasco: +972-548-067-027 (mobile)

In Gaza, Bonnie Docherty: +972-548-067-027 (mobile)

In New York, Sarah Leah Whitson: +1-212-216-1230

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