south of Tyre to meet an ambulance and transfer the wounded to the hospital. “When we have wounded outside the city, we always used two ambulances,” Deebe said. The rocket attack on the two vehicles wounded six ambulance workers and three civilians – an 11-year-old boy, an elderly woman and a man, Deebe said. “One of the rockets hit right in the middle of the big red cross that was painted on top of the ambulance,” he said. “This is a clear violation of humanitarian law, of international law. We are neutral and we should not be targeted.” Kassem Shalan, one of the ambulance workers, told AP Television News that nine people were injured. “We were transferring the wounded into our vehicle and something fell and I dropped to the floor,” he said. Amateur video provided by an ambulance worker confirmed Deebe’s account of damage to the vehicles, showing one large hole and several smaller ones in the roof of one ambulance and a large hole in the roof of the second. Both were destroyed. July 24: ITV News That evening, Britain’s ITV News ran a breathless report about the attack, accusing Israel of serious war crimes. Significantly, however, the ITV report states that journalists did not see the ambulances themselves, and instead shows a film taken by a “local amateur cameraman.” It’s important to watch this entire video if you can, because it not only contains the fullest account of the incident – with scenes of injured ambulance drivers, and videos of the ambulances – but it conveys the typical inflammatory tone of the media coverage of this conflict. For those who can’t view the video, here is a partial transcript of the noteworthy sections of the report: 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? 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. 48, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, October 2006
ITV host: Israel’s enemies are saying attacks like that one are tantamount to war crimes. July 25: Time magazine The following day, Time was the first American publication to print a full account, with even more details not yet reported anywhere else: “But on Sunday night, the emblem of the Red Cross was not enough to deter an Israeli helicopter gunship from firing missiles into a pair of ambulances loading casualties in the village of Qana” ... “As Shaalan closed the back of the ambulance, however, a missile punched through the roof of the vehicle and exploded inside. “There was a boom, a big fire and I was thrown backwards. I thought I was dead,” Shaalan recalls. ...”Then a second missile struck the other ambulance.” ...”The father’s leg was severed by the exploding missile.” ... “There was no immediate comment from the Israeli authorities on why a helicopter gunship had attacked a clearly marked Red Cross ambulance.” July 25: The Guardian Britain’s Guardian weighed in on the same day, with a worshipful article about the ambulance crew, as the damage continued to mount: The ambulance headlamps were on, the blue light overhead was flashing, and another light illuminated the Red Cross flag when the first Israeli missile hit, shearing off the right leg of the man on the stretcher inside. As he lay screaming beneath fire and smoke, patients and ambulance workers scrambled for safety, crawling over glass in the dark. Then another missile hit the second ambulance. Even in a war which has turned the roads of south Lebanon into killing zones, Israel’s rocket strike on two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances on Sunday night set a deadly new milestone. ... Two ambulances were entirely destroyed, their roofs pierced by missiles. ... One of the members of the three-man crew from Tibnin radioed for help when another missile plunged through the roof. ...He was adamant that the ambulances, with their Red Cross insignia on the roof, were clearly visible from the air. “I don’t think there can be a mistake in two bombings of two ambulances,” he said. The detailed specificity of the descriptions – who was injured, their ages, their exact injuries, a second-by-second account of what happened, and so on – make the report seem extremely credible. After reading the Guardian’s account and watching the ITV News video, who could question the veracity of the incident? July 25: The Austin American-Statesman On July 25, there was a brief flurry of three articles providing the same vague or paraphrased quote purportedly from the IDF acknowledging the strikes. All three are cited here. But strangely, none of the hundreds of subsequent articles mention the IDF acknowledgement. As one reader pointed out, “The Israelis routinely offer apologies for incidents that they haven’t even made cursory investigations into. So even if this were to turn out to be a factual quoting about that incident I wouldn’t give it anything other than a cursory consideration.” Anyway, the embroidery on the tale of woe becomes ever more elaborate with each retelling. Now, the driver reports that he had a psy-