Qana

Taken Sunday morning July 30, the picture shows the house where Israeli air strikes killed sixty people, including somewhere between 27 and 37 children. The BBC reporter on scene described it as having been "crushed sideways into an enormous crater" by the strike, which took place in the dead of night (midnight or one o'clock).

An Israeli Air Force general claims that the house didn't collapse until eight in the morning, and hints that explosives stored inside, rather than IAF bombs, collapsed the building. He provides no evidence whatsoever to support this claim, and none has come from press, rescue workers, survivors, or any other source. But that hasn't stopped the atrocity deniers, who are being quoted in comment sections of respectable blogs and linked prominently from less respectable ones. Max Sawicky calls them out, bless his heart. In comments to that post, I provide links to another of the deniers (which I won't do here) and to the reporting that refutes them: Ha'aretz, Lebanon Daily Star, BBC.

Update: 8:15 pm 31 July - Okay, most of the denialism is disgusting, but some of the attempts to make the case for a staged massacre are almost funny. One of the bright lights at Powerline saw the picture below of the demonstrations in Beirut on Sunday, and decided that there hadn't been enough time to produce it in the hours that passed between the news of the massacre and the demonstration. Ergo, the "massacre" had to have been planned, and the banner prepared ahead of time.

Well, neither the grasping-at-straws blogger nor I read Arabic, but I'm betting that the words on the banner don't refer specifically to Qana. My guess is that they refer to Secretary Rice's "birth pangs" comments, which may have inspired the design and production of the banner as soon as they hit the news ten days ago. I'd be pleased for anyone who reads Arabic to translate the banner. No, this is not a caption contest.

Blogger not posting the photo, grrrr.

Update 2: 3:45 pm 1 Aug - Image now up in new post.