Zionist denials/Post 2000

Zionist Denials - post 2000 is a sub-page of Zionist denials.

See the main page for details.

In general, cases listed here are occasions when Israel itself has deliberately and falsely denied actions which it almost certainly committed (and in some cases, has admitted).

2010 Flotilla

First use of violence

Veteran war correspondent Ron Ben Yishai told Ynet that the commandos were under instruction to verbally convince activists to give up whereas Dror Feiler on board the Sofia testified that he had tried to talk with the soldiers but was beaten up. The first weapons to be used were said to be paintball guns though several witnesses attested to the attack on the flotilla beginning on the Mavi Marmara with stun grenades, tear gas, and rubber-coated bullets. Film footage shows firing from zodiacs before the ship was boarded.

Kuwaiti lawyer Mubarak Al-Mutawa said: "Israeli commandos started shooting from the air without warning. They killed a number of volunteers even before landing aboard the ship". Former US Marine and Gulf War veteran Ken O’Keefe said that two activists were already dead when he helped to disarm the first commandos that boarded the Mavi Marmara. Journalist Muna Shester said: "a helicopter deployed men in black, armed from head to toe, who asked no questions and killed two Turkish men immediately".

Violence on other boats

On 1 June 2010 in answer to a question from Jon Snow on Channel 4 News Mark Regev, spokesman for the prime minister of Israel replied "There were six interceptions yesterday, six interceptions. All done by the Israeli Navy, all, five of them were done peaceably without violence without harm to soul to people"

This is dramatically different from the stories as collected by "a review of media sources" which claims that on MV Eleftheri Mesogeio people were attacked by rubber-coated bullets and tasers, handcuffed and mistreated; on MV Challenger 1 one woman had her head banged on the deck and trod on, another was hit on the nose by a projectile, while other passengers were tasered, dragged around the deck and hit with rifle butts; on MV Sofia one person was tasered, one shot with a rubber-coated bullet and one beaten up. On MV Sfendoni - one man was shot with a rubber-coated bullet, beaten in the groin and the head and kicked on the deck, another was thrown to the deck twice and then kicked or hit on the head, and the captain suffered a punctured ear drum along with neck and back injuries. Tasers were also used. A witness to the unprovoked violence on the Mavi Marmara was former U.S. Ambassador Ed Peck. The Irish Ambassador to Israel said that four of the five Irish prisoners held in Be’er Sheva prison had been ‘roughed up’ in one form or another.

BBC "Death on the Med"

This documentary caused a great deal of consternation to the members of the flotilla who had cooperated with it, as they felt that Israel denials were given unwarranted precedence over their own eye-witness testimony.

2008/9 Gaza War

All entry to Gaza was blocked during the action (known in Israel as Operation Cast Lead) and access since has been severely restricted. All investigations made by independent bodies have been blocked from questioning potential Israeli participants. The Wikispooks article covering these incidents in more detail is Gaza War.

White Phosphorus use in Gaza

Initially denied and then later admitted by Israel. The Wikispooks sub-article is White Phosphorus.

UN Board of Inquiry

Israel claimed that militants had fired from within U.N. premises. A UN Report report into Israeli attacks and damage to seven of their buildings in Gaza stated that these allegations were untrue, continued to be made after it ought to have been known that they were untrue, and were not adequately withdrawn and publicly regretted. Israel paid $10.5 million to the UN for the damage it had caused to seven UN buildings, reported to be the first time they've ever done this.

Explosives left in Gaza

Not in the category of denial, but Israel appears to have carried off a deceitful ploy to re-arm the militants with many tons of unexploded ordnance, presumably in order they attack Israel again. Well referenced is the way that Israel deliberately blocked international bodies from safely disposing of the deadly material they had left scattered in Gaza. The obstruction continued for a year, by which time the depleted Hamas policemen (240 of whom had been deliberately targetted and killed by Israel) had lost control of the dumps they had tried to guard. Fuller account and references at the Wikispooks sub-article on Unexploded Ordnance.

2006 Lebanon

Use of White Phosphorus

Initially denied and later admitted by Israel. A further allegation that Depleted Uranium ammunition had been fired was rejected by the UN, amid doubts as to the scientific testing of samples.

2004 accusations against Peter Hansen

In October 2004, Israel demanded that Danish diplomat Peter Hansen, UNRWA's head, be removed from office, based on UAV video documenting what they claimed was a group of Palestinian militants loading a rocket into a UN-marked vehicle.

Hansen responded that the footage was of UNRWA crew members carrying a stretcher into the UN ambulance, stating "While the quality of the video clip is poor, its analysis shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that the object carried and thrown into the vehicle is not/cannot be a Qassam rocket". Moreover, Hansen accused Israel of making "baseless accusations" amounting to "malicious propaganda" that endangered UN lives. A team of investigators sent by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to look into the Israeli claims determined them to be false.

The Israeli authorities initially dismissed UNRWA's reaction, blaming Hansen for being "anti-Israeli". Later Israeli General Yisrael Ziv recognized having doubts over whether the object was a rocket launcher or a stretcher. Eventually, the Israeli military changed some of its earlier statements and conceded the possibility that the object could have indeed been a stretcher, but did not offer the apology Hansen had demanded.

A short time later, Jan 2005, Peter Hansen's contract with UNRWA, that he'd held since 1996, was terminated to widespread alarm by NGOs in Gaza. The US was the only member of the advisory board opposing Mr Hansen's reappointment, a UN official told Reuters.

2002/2003 Death of activists

Rachel Corrie

The Corries were told the report on her death was secret until they found that the Israeli government was covertly distributing it among members of the US Congress to prevent an independent investigation.

James Miller

James Henry Dominic Miller died on the 2nd May 2003, allegedly killed by a single shot fired by Bedouin Arab Captain Hib al-Heib while filming a documentary in Rafah. The Israeli Military Police investigation into Miller's death closed on 9 March 2005 with an announcement that the soldier suspected of firing the shot would not be indicted as they could not establish that his shot was responsible, though he would be disciplined for violating the rules of engagement and for changing his account of the incident. On 6 April 2006, the inquest jury in London declared that Miller had been murdered. The Attorney General Peter Goldsmith sent a formal request to his Israeli counterpart in June 2007 for prosecution proceedings to be enacted within six weeks against the soldier responsible for firing the shot. The requests were ignored by the Israeli government and prosecution proceedings were never enacted. On 1 February 2009 it was reported that James Miller's family have accepted a £1.5 million payout from Israel.

Tom Hurndall

The family's insistence eventually "forced the IDF to investigate and to acknowledge that Tom had been wearing the fluorescent jacket of a non-combatant and had not been caught in Palestinian crossfire" as claimed. In 2004 Taysir Hayb, an IDF soldier, was convicted of Tom's manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in prison. The army investigation had said that a sniper in a watchtower fired at a man wearing camouflage clothes and carrying a gun.

Iain Hook

Head of reconstruction, inside the UNRWA compound of Jenin. According to the Times "The army falsely claimed he was shot while standing among Palestinian gunmen in the UN compound. Israel paid compensation to Hook's family but attached confidentiality clauses which suppressed a public admission of culpability for what some of the UN worker's colleagues have called "cold-blooded murder"". and "All three families [Hook, Turndall, Miller] have accused the authorities of fabricating evidence, suppressing investigations and covering-up deliberate killings."

2002 Assault on Jenin

c. April 5th to April 11th. All humanitarian aid and journalists refused entry until late on 14th and was very restricted until 18th and further endangered by shootings for months afterwards. Humanitarian relief was hampered by explosives (UN report quotes the government of Jordan saying that the explosives had been laid by IDF, the IDF claims Palestinians did so). EU equipment to defuse bombs was refused entry for two weeks. The UN investigation team was refused entry to Israel/the West Bank.