Martin Chulov on the offensive (Updated)

Following link from this page on Little Green Footballs, I have found another reporter, enraged by the Israeli murderous policies, and also at Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer - for saying in the open that he can't stand the biased reports coming through media from Lebanon:

"What concerns me greatly is the evidence of dishonesty in the reporting out of Lebanon ... it is beyond serious dispute that this episode [of faking attack by the IAF on Red Cross ambulances in Lebanon] has all the makings of a hoax"

For those of you who do not remember this, here is the link to Zombie's investigative article on the subject of Israeli Air Forces shooting missiles on Lebanese Red Cross ambulances. As Zombie's website shows, largest media outlets immediately picked up the story and blamed Israel for anything between breaking Geneva conventions to genocide. On the same page, Zombie brings an example from ITV news on how the media outlets, without even looking at the evidence, immediately went on to blame Israel for "slaughter of Lebanese civilians":

ITV reporter Julian Manyon: ...Lebanese ambulance men, shocked and bleeding, brought in as casualties to a hospital in Tyre. They were hurt when Israeli aircraft rocketed two ambulance crews. ... On the face of it, it is difficult to understand just how the Israeli military could possibly have mistaken two clearly marked ambulances for a legitimate military target. ...
ITV host: Well we've seen it there, haven't we, Captain Delall [Israeli spokesperson]? This can't go on, this indiscriminate slaughter of Lebanese civilians.
Captain Delall: "We have nothing against the Lebanese civilians. We never intentionally target civilians, and certainly not ambulances or aid workers.
ITV host: Excuse me, but with the greatest respect, we're talking about the Israeli army. Do you accept that hitting a Red Cross ambulance and a convoy of civilians fleeing are acts that are flagrant breaches of the rules of war?
Captain Delall: We never intentionally target civilians or ambulances. ...
Julian Manyon: ...I would say that those ambulances were strafed from the air by helicopter fire. ...
ITV host: ...The U.N. tells ITV News that Israel is breaking the rules of war.

Julian Manyon: The air attack on two Red Cross ambulances has increased the controversy surrounding the Israeli assault on Lebanon. ... It's noticeable that one burst of fire struck the exact center of the cross on the roof of one of the ambulances. ... Because of the extreme dangers of the roads, journalists have not visited the scene. These pictures were taken by a local amateur cameraman.
ITV host: Israel's enemies are saying attacks like that one are tantamount to war crimes.

(Link to the video here)

Apart from the questions like how would Julian Manyon know what would a vehicle look like when strafed with helicopter fire, it is clearly seen that the media did not think twice - as usual - before blaming Israel for the non-existent incident.

Now, back to the subject of this article, Mr. Chulov goes on to say that the rust, seen in the pictures of the ambulances, appeared due to humidity in the coastal area Tyre's located in. Also, Chulov says that Israelis use many different kinds of rockets, and that mostly they use rockets with small warhead only to hit a target itself and nothing around.

I have two problems with that. First of all, if the Israeli do have such missiles, why aren't they use them in Gaza? In many cases bystanders on Gaza streets were seriously injured or even killed at times of assassinations by the IAF - because Israel used Hellfire missiles launched from - usually- Apache IAF helicopters. If IAF does in fact has these missiles - why don't the use them in Gaza? And if they don't use them in Gaza because they're such murderers and want to kill as many Palestinians as possible - or just don't care for Palestinian casualties - why do they use them in Lebanon, where IDF and IAF have even less restraints than in Gaza or other Palestinian-controlled areas?

Chulov says that the people from the ambulances - the 14 years old kid and his father and the Red Cross workers were injured and he'd seen it with his own eyes, which I will not doubt. What troubles me, though, is lack of basic skepticism in Chulov's mind. After all, there are enough known cases of Muslim terrorists shooting other Muslims by accident (which happened numerous times to the Palestinians) and other cases of misleading or simply making up events or evidence (like this case shown in Herald Sun).

Another question is what is exactly the point of firing a rocket at an ambulance, while the only damage it does is to hurt several people - some of them lightly - and doesn't even burn the inside of the attacked vehicle? Is IAF gone completely mad and shoots thousands of dollars at cars just to lightly wound the people inside? As far as I know - being part of the IDF in the past - the IAF attacks targets to destroy them.

Last but not least, Tim Blair made an interesting comparison between this latest report by Chulov and his first one, finding several severe inconsistencies between the two reports:

The “first ambulance”, no. 782, was speeding in a convoy AND stationary;

The six people on board the convoy were all severely injured except Shalin the driver AND only two were severely injured;

Shalin was protected by the driver’s canopy AND by the vehicle’s rear ramp;

The ambulance/convoy was struck by a rocket/s AND missile/s fired by an Apache helicopter that was also a drone;

The missile pierced the centre of the red cross on ambulance 782 AND “an explosion thundered” into the ambulance;

Shalin “remembers nothing” after the flash-bang-crunch of the crash AND he remembers that “then there was a battle for the next hour” and “we hid in a building convinced we were going to die”.

And The Australian's readers apparently agree with the claims that Chulov intentionally goes on with the story, knowing it's a hoax:

Tim Chandler of Memphis, Tennessee

31/08 at 02:42 AM

And now it’s also your columnist Martin Chulov v Downer. It’s hard to believe that anyone with an IQ over 70 could believe all the lies and “fauxtographs” from the terrorists when they have been exposed as blatant fraud; so I must assume he too pushes the lies with an agenda in mind. And that agenda is not the truth, and he is not on our side!

Apparently Mr. Chulov should do better next time. However, this is only one small case of apparent "targeted misleading" of readers by reporters in international media outlets. Mr. Downer was right here - it is extremely hard to trust the media nowadays. If once the journalists believed the should bring out the truth to the people, it is quite apparent now that they set themselves continuously bashing Israel as a target.

After the Gaza beach bombing The Independent reported that the family was killed by the Israeli gunboats - a claim no major media outlet picked up first, as most were stating it was the artillery fire that killed the family. Here, Independent were clearly going for the scoop, believing that while everyone were saying it was an artillery shell - they had some different information which, if proven true, would make them more reliable in the eyes of many readers. This attitude, however, proves that media outlets don't really care if what they say is true - they care about what's hot, and they don't mind simply retracting their statements later. These "apologies" are mostly never seen by the readers - who remember only that the Israelis murdered a family by all means possible - from artillery to gunboats to helicopters.

It is quite clear, that what people like Mr. Downer wish for is for the old-style journalism to come back, where journalists cared more about how reliable would their articles look and not to sell as many copies of the newspaper as possible - no matter what's written on it.

Update: Andrew Bolt talks with a military expert considering the ambulance story. As I've said previously in this post - and as this expert says, as well as many others - a missile fired from aircraft or helicopter would do a lot more damage than what we've seen:

A weapon deploying UAV [Unmanned Aerial Vehicle] would be one of the remaining three without technical specifications. Let’s assume it is similar to the US Predator an armed UAV. Here are its specifications and some photos. As you can see from the front page it deploys a Hellfire missile. Here are the hellfire missile specs and some photos. The missile itself is 64 inches or about 1.5m long, weighs around 100lb and has an explosive payload of around 35 lbs. Clearly something like that slamming through a vehicle is going to destroy it even if it doesn’t go off, after all the missile is designed to kill a 70 tonne tank, so a half ton unarmoured ambulance doesn’t stand a chance.