Israel Matzav

'The US has no right to preach to us'

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman let the US and the European Union have it on Wednesday over demands for an investigation into the deaths of two 'Palestinians' at a Naqba Day demonstration in Beitunia on Thursday.

“"We don't need an American request to inquire the subject,” Liberman said on Wednesday during a visit to Ariel University in the Samaria region of the West Bank.

“I reject any request and the hypocrisy we see worldwide,” Liberman said.

...

In response to a reporter’s question about the incident in Washington, US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that America expected Israel to conduct a prompt and transparent investigation.

The European Union missions in Ramallah and Jerusalem also spoke of the need for a more thorough investigation and denounced the use of lethal force. “We reiterate the need for security forces, whether Israeli or Palestinian, to refrain from the use of lethal force, except in cases where there is a real and imminent threat to life,” the missions said.

Liberman said in response, “the IDF is the most moral military in the world, and the IDF is checking his actions continually.

“I only wish that this sort of requirements will appear in other cases, in Syria around 170,000 people were killed and I didn't see any request from the international community to inquire these killings.

“Hamas has executed two men in the Gaza strip after accusing them of spying for Israel, without a lawyer or a fair trial. I didn't see any request to investigate that.

“We will inquire this event do to our obligation to the moral code of the IDF,” Liberman said.

“Furthermore, I find it odd that the video was published with a large gap from the occurrence of the events in question, and all of these things will be examined,” he said.

The IDF has also attacked the authenticity of the video footage published, including those from B’Tselem.

The NGO had taken footage from security cameras used by store owners on the street where the teens were shot and produced two short videos that showed the moments of their death.
It said that it had 12 hours of footage, from the incident, which are available to those who are interested.

Well, yeah. Except that the full videos are only being made available to 'the media' rather than being publicly posted. So the video that's posted (I'm embedding one of them below) shows the shooting in isolation. It's not clear who shot, and it may not have been the IDF. The IDF says that it only used rubber bullets, which are not usually lethal. And the 'Palestinian police' just happened to be at the demonstration.

Let's go to the videotape.



By the way, anyone think that running toward someone who has been shot is a normal reaction? Shades of al-Durah....

Labels: Avigdor Lieberman, B'Tselem, IDF, Mohamed al-Dura, Naqba day, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian police, Pallywood

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:47 AM