The news agencies are having a field day over the story that the IDF fired on a car full of Reuters reporters. They go into great detail about how the car was clearly labeled, blahblahblah, press, blahblahblah, and then you read, buried deeply in the AP article, these paragraphs:
The white sport utility vehicle was emblazoned with the Reuters logo and had “TV” and “Press” written on it in English, Arabic and Hebrew.
“This is a cold-blooded crime,” said Mohammed Dawdi, head of the local journalists union.
Capt. Noa Meir, an army spokeswoman, said the vehicle was the only one in the combat area, was driving suspiciously and came near Israeli forces during the nighttime raid.
The only words that matter are the ones in bold. It doesn’t matter how clearly the car was labeled. It was nighttime. And it was a battle zone. IDF troops fired on a car heading towards them in the middle of a battle.
Somehow, that fact keeps getting minimized, and yet, it is the reason the car was hit. The Reuters report:
“This car was not identified by the army as a press vehicle,” she said. “If journalists were hurt, we regret it.”
The missile struck the vehicle after dark. The Reuters armored car was clearly labeled as a media vehicle, with signs on all sides, including the roof.
Right. Nighttime raid, combat zone, soldiers not about to stop and read the sides of the car. And, gee, it’s not so easy to read letters on a vehicle at night. Ever driven next to a commercial vehicle at night? Can you read the letters, no matter how clear the markings, unless you’re right next to them? Yeah, me neither.
Yet another example of the anti-Israel media bias, Israeli Double Standard Time, and a host of other biases.
Take a look a the photos of the journalists’ car (I think AFP has them). They look a lot like the Lebanese ambulance Israel is supposed to have rocketed—not a burned and mangled frame, but a scattering of what look like shrapnel marks across the roof. Looks to me like the car was close to some other target (as might happen if, say, it was in a combat zone) and was a collateral victim. Here we go again.
The AP story is consistent with paul’s interpretation. The two Reuters cameramen were getting out to film the raid when the missiles exploded and wounded them with shrapnel. The other casualties were “bystanders” not Reuters correspondents. Plus, as Meryl says, how was the IDF supposed to know it was a Reuters car from a distance at night? I wonder if the “bystanders” were Pali combatants?
Check out Power Line’s take on it, might have been staged. Wouldn’t surprise me if it were faked.