Bending the truthHuman rights group B’Tselem’s statistics are far from being trustworthy
Tamar Sternthal Published: 09.24.08, 19:42 / Israel Opinion
On Jan. 17, 2002 Abdul Salaam Sadek Hassouneh of Nablus burst into a bat mitzvah celebration
at a Hadera reception hall, shooting dead six and injuring 35 before Israeli security forces ended
the bloodbath by killing him.
But Hassouneh has another, lesser known claim to notoriety. He was the first of several
Palestinian terrorists killed while attacking Israelis to appear that year in B'Tselem's list of
"Palestinian civilians killed by Israeli security forces." He was followed by numerous other so-called Palestinian "civilians" in 2002, including Omar Mahmoud Abu Rub and Yusef Muhammad Abu Rub, killed by border police gunfire after they murdered six Israeli civilians in Beit She'an. Both attacks were claimed by Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades.
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Most importantly, B'Tselem's research is as shoddy and unreliable as ever.
Take for instance, the case of 11-year-old Muhammad Ali Abu al-Wafa, killed Dec. 31, 2007 in
Khan Younis. B'Tselem lists him as one of those killed by Israeli security forces, although he
actually died in Hamas-Fatah clashes, a fact undisputed by Palestinian sources such as the
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and Ma'an News Agency.
Even more shocking, perhaps, is that B'Tselem continues to blame Israeli security forces for
the Sept. 30, 2000 death of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura, despite the fact that a number of
independent investigations have definitively ruled out that possibility.
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