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Thursday, May 27 2004Terrorists' use of UN ambulances
Well, this intelligence site says Reuters has a video cassette of pictures taken during the Israeli army operation in the Zeitun quarter of Gaza City on May 11, 2004. It shows armed Palestinians using UNRWA ambulances to transport terrorists and possibly also remains of fallen Israeli soldiers. How about making that video public, Reuters? [UPDATE: Here it is, thanks to Access Middle East] Also, Israel's Channel 10 aired pictures of armed Palestinians using UNRWA ambulances to flee undercover (see the damning still shot above). And Haaretz reports: Israeli police have uncovered a network that smuggled PA officers, including members of Arafat's elite Force 17 personal protection unit, into Israel in fake ambulances, and may also have smuggled terrorists into Israel using the same method. Police recently arrested an Arab with Israeli citizenship suspected of posing as an ambulance driver and illegally bringing into Israel dozens of Palestinians disguised as sick patients. The "patients" were hooked up to medical devices inside the ambulances and presented forged documents at Israeli checkpoints. Police recently raided a warehouse near Jerusalem in which commercial vehicles were transformed into ambulances. For more background on Palestinians' use of ambulances for terror, see this and this from the Foreign Ministry. UPDATE: Police Seize 2 Fake Palestinian Ambulances
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» International Court of We Make the Rules from Thought Mesh CommentsAnother use of ambulance by combatants is the use of an ambulance by Israeli special forces to catch Marwan Bargouthi. "The Dukhifat soldiers were packed into a http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?itemNo=153175 Does it make Israeli ambulances a legitimate target for palestinian militants ? The links are in hebrew.... The english version of the events do NOT say that... And I can find no other mention of a military use of an ambulance by the Israelis. Perhaps the hebrew version was mistaken? If you have a PICTURE of Israeli masked armed men using an ambulance for military purposes, the world would want to see it. The whole world would condemn it, and I am sure the UN would issue a resolution condemning it. Unlike what happends when we see the PA doing the same thing. This is a translation of the second link, sorry for the rough translation: Last Thursday Haaretz' military correspondent, Amos Harel, described the capture of Marwan Bargouthi: "Soldiers from a battalion of an armored brigade and a platoon from the Dukhifat infantry battalion took part in the initial siege on Barghouti's house. The Dukhifat soldiers were packed into a shielded ambulance in order to reach the house where Barghouti was hidden as fast as possible and close it off from all sides." The possibility that IDF soldiers used an ambulance as part of a military operation sheds embarassing light on the serious accusations Israel raised against the Palestinians, that armed men and terrorists are cynicaly using the immunity of medical vehicles for combat purposes. I have sent the IDF spokesperson unit a question about it. On Monday evening a partial answer arrived: The above mentioned vehicle is used for medical and "other purposes". I have tried to clear up the question and asked: Does the vehicle carry the sign of david - signifying that the vehicle is used for medical purposes only ? And if not, what kind of vehicle was it and how does it look like. I was promised that the answer will be given in a "few minutes". Despite repeated requests no answer was given by the time the paper was sent to print. In addition, according to Maariv (sorry again for the Hebrew) after his capture, Bargouthi was carried away by a military ambulance, which is protected by the Geneva Convention: I guess its hard to play by the rules and win. I still think there is a difference however - because by using a UN ambulance there is a sign of UN complicitly siding with the Palestinian terorrists (gasp...what a revelation) which definitely does not help to bring peace. If Israel used an ambulance to capture a guilty terorrist then so be it. I see a difference between using an ambulance to capture a known terrorist (and not kill him) to the use of UN ambulances (by either side) in order to smuggle bombs across borders, fight Israeli soldiers, or kidnap Israeli soldiers. What a despicable comperison. Comparing the arrest of the arch mass murderer Marwan Bargouthi to the murder of inocent Israelis is as sick as homicide bombing. It goes hand in hand with palestinian USUAL Criminal Use of Human Shields. Who cares if the Lefty Haaretz says it or not in "english". Peter Hansen ought to be a familiar name; he was one of the principal promoters of the Jenin blood-libel. Never held to account for his lies, he apparently feels unconstrained about perpetuating new ones. A bit of background: Peter Hansen, the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) told a Danish newspaper, the Internatavisen Jyllands-Posten, on April 19, that 300-400 Palestinians had been killed in Jenin. He told CNN: "I had, first of all, hoped the horror stories coming out were exaggerations as you often hear in this part of the world, but they were all too true" (CNN, April 19, 2002)."And : A final word about Mr. McCann's boss, UNRWA commissioner-general Peter Hansen. No man has done more to circulate lurid fictions about an Israeli mass murder of unarmed civilians in the West Bank's Jenin refugee camp--or done it with greater relish--than Peter Hansen. As Paul McCann reminds us, Hansen once spoke of bodies 'piling up' in Ramallah Hospital, site of an entirely separate, and equally fanciful, Israeli 'atrocity.' But Hansen has otherwise devoted the bulk of his imaginative energies to Jenin. The official transcript admits of no other interpretation: His reference to 'incidences of mass graves,' during an April 5 teleconference from UNRWA's Jerusalem office, involved not Ramallah but Jenin. Ditto for Hansen's report, to the Reuters news agency, that 'armed activists who were there obviously slipped away before the Israelis moved in--so the exercise of force was mainly vis-a-vis the civilian population.' Ditto for Hansen's April 7 announcement that 'helicopters are strafing civilian areas,' something that simply never happened, though McCann now bizarrely suggests there is film of it. i just wanted to say that I really enjoy this page. I have a friend who sides with the Palestinian cause and has gone far enough to question the legitimacy of Eretz Yisrael. And we have had the UN ambulance debate and finally I got the upper hand with this hard evidence. It's a travesty this goes on. Ironically, i read CNN on a daily basis and haven't found mention of this save maybe a sidenote comment by an IDF spokesman. The same occurs with the tunnels in Rafah - NO pictures on the site even though they have them. They also make sure to point out that anything pro-Israel comes from an IDF spokesman right at the beginning but don't mention that most of their information comes from Palestinian sources until 3-4 paragraphs in. The bias is sickening but at least we have a few voices of truth in this struggle which entrenches the media almost as much as the fighters. israel commonly attacks ambulances: The petition, as posted to Israel IndyMedia
To whom it may concern, We, the undersigned, are staff members of the United Nations, but we write in our personal capacities. All of us work in the West Bank and Gaza Strip bringing badly needed humanitarian relief to a population in distress. In the course of our duties we have witnessed much tragedy on both sides of the conflict. We have come from all over the world to work, without bias or favour, to try to alleviate some of the pain and suffering that has for too long afflicted this land. Now we find that, once again, tragedy has touched us. For us, expressions of sadness and grief are not enough. The diplomatic language of the bureaucrat will not suffice. We write to express our absolute condemnation at the senseless killing of Iain Hook in Jenin on November 22. Based on publicly available information, we condemn the Israeli army in the strongest possible terms for this wanton act against an unarmed man--a man shot in the back by a military sniper while negotiating with the Israeli army to evacuate the women, children and UN staff who were in the UN compound at the time. Our condemnation is reinforced by the knowledge that the soldiers refused to allow an ambulance called to evacuate Iain to travel the last few yards needed to reach him. Instead, UN staff here [were] forced to seek an alternative route to rescue him. This caused a delay and made sure that the work done by a bullet was completed by the Israeli army's refusal to respect the most elementary standards of humanity. The shock of that day's events does not come in isolation. For two years, United Nations staff have been subject to escalating harassment and violence by Israel's military, so that the protection supposed to be afforded by the blue letters of the UN is being steadily eroded. UN staff--international and Palestinian alike--have been verbally abused, stripped, beaten, shot at and killed by Israeli soldiers. There has been armed interference with UN employees and vehicles, including attacks on UN ambulances and medical personnel. UNRWA schools, health clinics and offices have been hit by bombs, rockets, tank shells and gunfire even during daytime, thereby endangering the lives of staff and, in the case of schools, the lives of refugee children. Buildings occupied by UN staff have been repeatedly damaged during Israeli airforce bombing. Tragically Iain Hook was not the first person working with the UN to die at the hands of the IDF this year. In March, Kamal Hamdan was shot and killed while travelling in a clearly marked UNRWA ambulance in the West Bank. In April, Husni Amer died in Israeli military custody in Jenin after, according to witnesses, receiving a brutal beating by the soldiers at the time of his arrest. From its silence, we presume the Israeli authorities have ignored UN requests for an investigation and report of these two incidents, and have not seen fit to take any disciplinary action against the soldiers involved. To us, this seems to confirm a pattern of utter contempt on the part of the Israeli army for the lost lives of these men, the safety of UN staff or the minimum standards imposed by international law which should protect UN staff and other humanitarian workers. The official military spokesperson's statement on the initial investigation into Iain's killing asserts that shots were fired from UNRWA's compound in the Jenin refugee camp towards Israel's forces. This contradicts eyewitness accounts of our colleagues in Jenin and the information relayed to UNRWA's Field Office by Iain just prior to his death. The most charitable characterization one can make of this statement is that it lacks any credibility. To us, it has all the makings of propaganda designed to tarnish the reputation of the UN, excuse the killing of an unarmed man and perpetuate the false charge that UNRWA shelters terrorists, in the public mind. We strongly request that any investigation carried out by the Israeli government will be independent, transparent and impartial. We strongly request that the Israeli government will bring those responsible for Iain's killing promptly to justice. Only the most lawless societies allow gunmen in uniform the impunity to kill aid workers without fear of punishment. We are confident Israel does not wish to see its troops painted in the same colours as the militiamen who have stalked some of the world's other conflicts. As UN staff, we expect the protection of the Israeli government to enable us to undertake our humanitarian responsibilities wherever they are needed. This is not a matter of courtesy or favour, but rather an implementation of Israel's own obligations under international law and its express commitment to UNRWA to facilitate the Agency's operations in the occupied territories. Israel's often stated regret at the loss of civilian lives is not an impervious shield that can deflect all criticism. It is a shield that is, in our view, tarnished by the attempts of Israeli spokespersons to link Iain's death to wider political issues or to claim that the UN was somehow culpable for his killing. In these tragic circumstances, rather than easily uttered regrets, we expect the Israeli Government take the necessary steps to stop the harassment, beating and killing of UN staff. We expect respect and protection as United Nations employees. As international staff members, we hope and expect to return alive to our own countries and families after our work here is done. We hope and expect no less for our Palestinian colleagues so they can live and work in safety until the parties to the conflict eventually find the road to peace. see link for list of names http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/un-petition.htm Post a comment[Comments are held for approval before appearing.]
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