[You do a disservice to their memory by mistating the truth. For shame.]

Missed a tag above. Read this one.

Posted By: Tim (142.177.98.142)
Date: 8/30/02 at 6:57 a.m.

In Response To: Refugees at Qana *WERE* attacked by an Israeli Apache helicopter (Zak)

The FACTS - as I outlined them in the post in which you allege I was lying - are that the UN "safety" camp at Qana was attacked by the Israeli army (including by an Apache helicopter) on 3 April 1966

The Qana massacre took place on April 16th. The first link references an incident that took place in April 13th– not April 16th, and that took place at Mansouri, not Qana, and involved an ambulance, not a refuge camp. It is not proof American Helicopters – which was your original charge -- were used to massacre refugeesat Qana. To suggest it does is deceitful

The second link confirms that, as I said, Qana was shelled. No reference to helicopters. To suggest otherwise, is decitful.

The third link doesn’t even mention Qana. To suggest that it vindicates you is nonsense.

I did not bother to check the rest of your links, since none of the first three vindicate your claim. But you know what? We went through this same exercise last fall when you suggested we were all implicated in the massacre of civilian refugees at Qana. You were deceitful then, and you’re deceitful now.

Worse, by misrepresenting the truth, you make your veracity the issue of concern, rather than the deaths of those people. Instead of arousing our sympathy for those who died too soon, and too terribly, we are merely disgusted with your tactics. You do not honor, nor do you serve the innocents in this conflict by misstating the truth.

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Sorry, but you are WRONG

Posted By: Zak (159.134.226.48)
Date: 8/31/02 at 1:18 a.m.

In Response To: Missed a tag above. Read this one. (Tim)

Yes, I mistakenly gave the date of the Qana massacre as 3 April 1996 when it should have been 18 April 1996 (not 16th, as you stated). Apart from that, however, the facts are as I stated them.

The first link references an incident that took place in April 13th– not April 16th, and that took place at Mansouri, not Qana, and involved an ambulance, not a refuge camp. It is not proof American Helicopters – which was your original charge -- were used to massacre refugees at Qana. To suggest it does is deceitful

Wrong. The attack on the ambulance was carried out by a US-supplied Israeli helicopter (an Apache), on 13 April (Video Clip of Attack (ambulance packed with women and children blown up by Israeli terrorists).

Paid for by US tax dollars

This was one of the first in a continuous series of attacks on civilian targets carried out by the Israeli army over a two week period(codenamed "Grapes of Wrath"), culminating in the massacre at Qana.
Apache helicopters were involved in all the attacks leading up to Qana.
The links I posted were to websites giving accounts of the series of massacres, as they are generally collectively referred to as the Qana attacks. You can see the whole sequence here:
http://www.geocities.com/Nashville/9591/qanapage.html
And here:
http://web.cyberia.net.lb/qana/IsraelOperation.html#THE%20QANA%20MASSACRE

My original charge, as you say, was that Israeli Apache helicopters were involved in the raid at Qana. This is perfectly true. Although the Israeli government denied that its helicopters had taken part in the attack on the camp at Qana (since this would belie its claim that missiles had hit the camp by accident: helicopters are used to guide missiles to their targets), eye-witnesses, including UN personnel and journalists reported sighting an Israeli helicopter close to the Qana camp at the time of the attack (Video of aftermath - not for the squeamish. The veteran war correspondent, Robert Fisk, reporting for the London Independent, was one of those who observed the Israeli helicopter over Qana. The following is his verbatim description of events (he's narrating a film taken at the time of the attack):

"Listen for the next minute and you will begin to hear that sound of that plane which is very important, the shelling is going on and you hear the plane. There. That is the noise of the drone and the shelling is continuing, it's over Qana, as the shells fall. This soldier is going to look up again, it is about to go left up high as you can hear the sound, he is looking for the drone and now the, there is the sound, shells fall on Qana, the camera will move up, and you will see the drone just wait a second, and there it is taking photographs right in the middle of the street, the Israelis also said they had no helicopters there, you hear the shells fall, in fact there was a helicopter watching the scene, you can see it coming up in just a moment, there is Qana still under fire..."
http://www.flipside.org/vol1/apr98/rf4-712.htm
Also:
http://abbc.com/islam/english/toread/qana2.htm

We went through this same exercise last fall when you suggested we were all implicated in the massacre of civilian refugees at Qana. You were deceitful then, and you’re deceitful now.

Deceitful, for speaking the truth?
The women and children massacred at Quana (and in the atrocities leading up to Qana) were deliberately murdered by the Israeli army, which is funded (to the tune of over $3billion per annum) and equipped by the US government. Furthermore, the US government refused to condemn these massacres, and has continued to support Israel despite the fact that it has consistently violated every international law and treaty, and has refused to obey repeated UN sanctions ordering it to give back the land and property it took by force from the Palestinians.

The allegation that I lied about an (American-made) Israeli helicopter being involved in the Qana massacre is FALSE.

Apache helicopters, as I said, took part in ALL the "Grapes of Wrath" attacks, including the massacre at Qana.

And if anyone has done a disservice to the memory of the people killed at Qana it is yourself, Pierre and Bob Marks, who are prepared to quibble over what is, in the final analysis, a minor technical detail in a horrendous series of attacks by the Israeli army on innocent women and children. For what reason? In order to try to prove that I "lied" about these events? That's SAD.
It's you who ought to be ashamed of yourselves.

And by the way, Admin, if you're archiving the posts above, I presume you will also be archiving my reply? Or will you be doing what you usually do?

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You're just throwing up the same old smokescreen.

Posted By: Tim (142.177.106.4)
Date: 8/31/02 at 5:09 a.m.

In Response To: Sorry, but you are WRONG (Zak)

The amublance attack was not the attack on Qana. Plain and simple. There is nowhere any evidence of helicopters being used in the attack at Qana -- not from any of your sources, not in Amnesty International's repoting of the incident -- surely you're not suggesting they are involved in a cover-up -- not in the UN'sassesment of the situation.

Give it up,Zak. You have no credibility on this board.

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You're just plain wrong.

Posted By: Zak (159.134.226.183)
Date: 8/31/02 at 7:32 a.m.

In Response To: You're just throwing up the same old smokescreen. (Tim)

The amublance attack was not the attack on Qana. Plain and simple

Never said it was. It was, however, part of the same chain of attacks.

There is nowhere any evidence of helicopters being used in the attack at Qana

You're wrong. A number of eyewitnesses reported seeing an Israeli helicopter over the Qana camp at the time of the attack. There was also video footage (which I've seen) which showed a helicopter in the area immediately prior to the attack. I cited Robert Fisk's account. He was there, and he saw the Israeli helicopter in the vicinity of the Qana camp at the time of the attack. Are you suggesting that Robert Fisk is lying too?

-- not from any of your sources, not in Amnesty International's repoting of the incident -- surely you're not suggesting they are involved in a cover-up

You're wrong again. Amnesty International's investigation of the massacre at Qana concluded that the attack was deliberate (the Israelis had claimed that it was a mistake), and gave, as one of the reasons for this conclusion the fact that two Israeli Apache helicopters had been observed over the Qana camp at the time of the attack. Here's a section from the Amnesty report:

An Israeli drone (unmanned, remote controlled reconnaissance aircraft) and two helicopters were present in the area around the time of the attack, a fact eventually confirmed by the IDF after repeated initial denials (the presence in the area of the drone and at least one helicopter was documented by video footage taken by a member of another UNIFIL position overlooking Qana).

The full Amnesty report is at:
http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/MDE150421996

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The question is...

Posted By: Zak (159.134.227.198)
Date: 8/31/02 at 5:37 p.m.

In Response To: They saw helicopters in the "vicinity?" (Bob Marks)

... whether I was *lying* when I said, in my original post on this subject, that an Israeli army helicopter had been involved in the attack on the Qana camp.

This is the allegation that has been made.

Apache helicopters are used by the Israeli army to guide missiles to their targets. They don't have to fire weapons themselves in order to take part in attacks.

The Israeli government initially denied that there had been IDF helicopters in the vicinity of the Qana camp at the time of the attack. They claimed that the camp had been shelled by accident.

The presence of an army helicopter is significant because it would mean that the shelling of the camp had not been accidental, but had been directed from a helicopter.

Unfortunately for the Israeli government, the IDF Apache helicopter was caught on video camera (and observed by a number of reliable witnesses, including journalists and UN personnel), and it was subsequently forced to admit that two IDF Apache helicopters had been in the Qana area at the time of the attack.

There is NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER that IDF Apache helicopters were involved in the attack on the Qana camp (just as they were used in all the other "Grapes of Wrath" attacks leading up to Qana).

If the persons who made the allegation that I had lied about this had any class, they would admit that they were mistaken. Since they apparently *don't* have any class, I won't be holding my breath.

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