Numbers don’t lie, but people lie about numbers

It seems that our credulous press, always the first to believe any bad story about Israel, was once again hoodwinked by the Hezbollah propaganda machine. While it’s true (and tragic) that children died in Qana, it’s becoming equally clear that (a) not as many died as were first claimed (and staged) for photographers and (b) the building didn’t collapse until hours after the bombing, by which time it should have been evacuated. Here’s Thomas Lifson on numbers and facts that fall apart on closer scrutiny:

Something is very, very wrong with the reporting on Qana, for the moment, the worldwide symbol of Hezbollah’s media offensive. It is already reasonably clear that major media photographers were willingly made into tools of propaganda, accomplices in the hideous desecration of corpses of children. The timing of the building collapse hours after the actual air attack raises very awkward questions. Why were women and children kept inside the building for so long? Were they murdered?

Now, the previously-announced toll of 57 appears to be as phony as the picture of the dust-covered baby with a sparking clean pacifier. Haaretz reports:

… the number of fatalities in the incident appeared to be much lower than originally published. The Red Cross announced yesterday that 28 bodies, including those of 19 children, had been found at the site. Additional bodies are expected to be found over the coming days.

The timing is once again in question:

None of the survivors said that the building only collapsed several hours later. [….]

Ibrahim Shalhoub described how he and his cousin had left to find help following the strike on the building. “It was dark and there was lots of smoke,” he said. “No one could do anything until morning. I could not stop crying; I couldn’t help them.” The fact that the Red Cross in Tyre was informed of the incident only in the morning is another reason why assistance was late in arriving. The director of the Red Cross office in the city, Sami Yazbek, said that he received word of the incident only at 7 A.M.

Do NOT expect the world’s media to be the least bit curious about all the inconsistencies. They’ve got their story, and they’re sticking to it.