Canada Whitewashes the Death of Its Own

Subject: Canada Whitewashes the Death of Its Own Sat Feb 16, 2008 12:20 am

February 10, 2008 - 5:43pm — Gary

By Marc J. Sirois, The Daily Star (Lebanon), February, 09 2008

Canada's official report on the deaths of four United Nations peacekeepers - including a Canadian officer - at Israeli hands during the summer 2006 war in Lebanon is a slap in the face to those who died and their families, to those who wear the same uniforms, and to those who selflessly serve the UN around the world. In essence, it took an official board of inquiry almost 17 months to determine less than what was obvious within hours of the attack: that the incident was "tragic," that the deaths were "preventable" and that the Israeli military was "responsible."

Many facts of the case are not in dispute. On July 25, 13 days after Israel began making war on Lebanon in response to Hizbullah's capture of two of the Jewish state's soldiers in a cross-border raid, Major Paeta Hess-Von Kruedener and three colleagues were on duty at Patrol Base Khiam, operated by the UN Truce Supervision Organization's Observer Group Lebanon (OGL). In the hours preceding the fatal attack, 14 aerial bombs landed within 500 meters of their position, and 19 artillery shells impacted within 150 meters. Some munitions actually hit the compound, resulting in severe damage. Repeated protests were lodged with the Israeli military, but the firing continued. In fact, the last thing the observers did was to report three consecutive incidents of "firing close" at 7:15 p.m, 7:16 p.m., and 7:17 p.m.

A few minutes later an air strike destroyed the base's main building, killing Hess-Von Kruedener and his colleagues. The weapon involved was a "Joint Direct Attack Munition" (J-DAM), a high-precision, satellite-guided 500-kilogram bomb supplied to Israel by the United States. When efforts to reach the position by radio failed, an evacuation plan that had been scheduled for the next morning was moved up, and a team from the Indian Battalion of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon headed for Patrol Base Khiam. There they found the main building in ruins and spent the next several hours recovering bodies; they located three (including Hess-Von Kruedner's) but had to call off the search the next night because special equipment was needed and because the area remained under fire. The fourth body was recovered in early August.

According to the report, neither the Israeli military nor the UN was "fully" cooperative with the investigation. Especially in the case of the former (seeing as how it was Israeli fire that killed the victims), one expects to find at least a degree of resentment in the relating of this refusal to be forthcoming. Instead there is only the bland prose of the cautious bureaucrat. And in other parts of the document, every effort is made to excuse questionable Israeli actions, to ignore them altogether, and even to shift the blame elsewhere.

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Canada Whitewashes the Death of Its Own

Canada Whitewashes the Death of Its Own

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