Amnesty researcher admits that Palestinian "eyewitnesses" often lie

Thursday, May 08, 2014 Elder of Zyon

Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty field investigator, wrote aninteresting article about the challenges of fact finding in war situations. 

One of her main points is that eyewitnesses are often unreliable. For example:

In Gaza, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, and other places I interviewed civilians who described what they thought were artillery or bomb strikes being launched by far away government forces and striking near their homes – whereas in reality the loud bangs and tremors were caused by mortars or rockets being launched by opposition fighters from their positions nearby. For the untrained ear it is virtually impossible to distinguish between incoming and outgoing fire, and all the more so for those who find themselves close to the frontlines.

Another factor she mentions:

Even if they disregard it, investigators must be alert to the fact that disinformation and misinformation can contribute to shaping the perception of events, the narrative surrounding the events, and the behaviour of people who take it in good faith and internalize it, including victims, witnesses, and others potential sources.

Here Rovera  is referring to lies that spread quickly and then become widely believed - including by "unbiased" NGOs - before anyone has a chance to investigate. How many times have we seen that?
She gives a specific example from Gaza:

Fear can lead victims and witnesses to withhold evidence or give deliberately erroneous accounts of incidents. In Gaza, I received partial or inaccurate information by relatives ofcivilians accidentally killed in accidental explosions or by rockets launched by Palestinian armed groups towards Israel that had malfunctioned and of civilians killed by Israeli strikes on nearby Palestinian armed groups’ positions. When confronted with other evidence obtained separately, some said they feared reprisals by the armed groups.

Meaning that "eyewitnesses" will often claim that there was no terrorist activity in the area of an airstrike and Israel wantonly and indiscriminately killed people for no reason.  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

5-May-14: The making of a martyr: it takes more than a village

"The funeral of the remains of the martyr who gave his soul for the struggle of a nation that strives for freedom" (that's a direct quote) received significant coverage on the government-controlled official Palestinian Authority news outlet, PA Television, this past Wednesday, April 30, 2014.

The televised [see brief YouTube extracts here and here] and widely photographed (see below) event was made possible, first, byIsrael's incomprehensible handing over last week of the decomposed remains of Izz Al-Din Al-Masri. He was the human bomb whose explosion caused a massacre in the center of Jerusalem on August 9, 2001.

The savagery celebrated by the Palestinian Arab crowd cost 15 human lives, 8 of them children, all of them Jews. One was our daughter Malki, 15.

The woman who set up the massacre and selected the site - the Sbarro pizza store at the corner of Jaffa Road and King George Avenue in the commercial heart of Jerusalem - has gone on record proudly asserting that she sought a target where she and the human bomb could murder a large number of (a) religious Jews and (b) religious Jewish children. (A sixteenth victim, a young mother, has been left in a comatose state for more than a dozen years.)

Wednesday's funeral celebration took place in the northern Samarian town of Tubas. Personages representing both the Mahmoud Abbas-controlled PA and the Hamas terror organization took part. A PA National Security Forces military vehicle provided transport for the human bomb's remains. The PA military adorned the funeral procession, and the PA-appointed governor of Tubas, Rabih Al-Khandaqji, took part and eulogized al-Masri and his barbarism. So did the PA-appointed mayor of the human bomb's town.

Palestinian Media Watch, an indispensable source for anyone wanting to know what the Palestinian Arabs here from their leaders when they think no one else is listening, this afternoon published a summary of the media coverage. Some key statements:  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading