The Guardian has responded to Zombie’s excellent expose of the Red Cross Ambulance incident in predictable fashion: by categorically dismissing the points raised. Their conclusion?
The zombietime version invites the conclusion that the Lebanese Red Cross conspired in an elaborate anti-Israel propaganda plot to dupe the world’s media. I do not think that is proven at all.
Based on what? I hear you ask.
Based on “expert” opinion…..the “experts” being a Guardian picture doctorer archivist (that is a job description? – ed.)…
What the zombietime website, which takes issue with both of these Australian rebuttals, does show is a fairly large number of inconsistencies and anomalies in the reporting and pictorial coverage of the event across the media: whether these are larger in number than might normally be expected to occur in reporting from a war zone is a matter for conjecture. A Guardian picture archivist with a special interest in images from areas of conflict, who carried out extensive research for me, concluded that there was cause for doubt about the nature of the munitions involved and the manner of their delivery, but not in the reality of the attack.
..and Suzanne Goldenberg, a reporter who’s anti-Israel views are so well known, that she is quoted on such sites as From Occupied Palestine and Western Journalists in Support of Palestine.
Suzanne Goldenberg told me: “I remain confident that the story was true.” She points out that she and Sean Smith reported the story first hand and independently and did not rely on what purported to be amateur video footage of the incident.
What is really interesting is that while Goldenberg claims first-hand experience, this is not borne out from her reports. The incident occurred on the evening of June 23rd, yet her report the next day made no mention of it, even though it did mention Red Cross ambulances.
Red Cross ambulances were no safer; a spokesman said an ambulance had narrowly escaped a missile near the village of el-Qlaile, south of the city
You would have thought that if Goldenberg had witnessed the incident first-hand, it would have been the first thing she would have reported. Especially given her anti-Israel proclivities. But she only reported it the next day (June 25th), and based it completely on the testimony of others.
In other words, she is lying.
The Guardian also relies on the statements of a Red Cross spokesperson.
Roland Benjamin-Huguenin, the UK spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), joined the organisation in 1983, visiting prisoner of war camps set up in south Lebanon by Israeli forces after the invasion of 1982. He was in south Lebanon throughout the present conflict. He said he and other ICRC delegates had worked daily alongside the volunteers of the Lebanese Red Cross in Tyre and elsewhere in Lebanon. He had seen the ambulances and saw no reason to question that they had been subjected to an attack. He told me that the Red Cross “categorically rejects and denies” the version being circulated on the internet.
Yet how could this possibly refute the contention that the Lebanese Red Cross conspired in an elaborate anti-Israel propaganda plot? Surely, if they had conspired, they would not admit to it. As such, their denial is meaningless.
So to summarize, The Guardian has rejected Zombie’s expose on the basis of a Guardian picture archivist, a pro-palestinian reporter who is clearly lying, and a Red Cross official.
I rest my case.
