Robert Fisk: Israeli disinformation sullies a rare moment of wartime compassion
For years, the Israelis have used this wartime operation to justify their mass killing of civilians
When will the Israeli government stop misusing the RAF’s wartime raid
on the Gestapo’s Danish headquarters to justify their killing of
children? Their shameful and dishonest version of the 1945 air attack in
Copenhagen is repeated constantly by Israeli spokesmen whenever the
world responds in horror to the
country’s pulverisation of Arab civilians. It popped up again last week
when the Israeli spokesman, Mark Regev, tried to avoid Channel 4’s
questions about the UN’s latest report on the 2014 Gaza bloodbath and
the killing of four children on a beach a year ago.
The four had been playing next to a fisherman’s hut – witnessed by many
foreign journalists at the time. A tragic mistake, announced Regev. The
Israelis had not intended to kill the children. And he launched into an
old canard. The RAF had attacked Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, he
said, “and the bombs went astray and hit an orphanage and that was a
tragedy, a real tragedy”. It wasn’t an orphanage, but no matter. The
Israelis went on promiscuously shooting into built-up areas of Gaza,
eventually killing around 2,200 Palestinians – 1,492 of whom were
civilians.
