Vincent Warren on the Corrie Trial

Vincent Warren has published two articles on the new Rachel Corrie trial, and each one has been long on opinion on short on substance. In his most recent one, the person writing (someone who works for Warren, not Warren himself) spends most of her time talking about the size of the courtroom (small, indicating Israel doesn't want people to know THE TRUTH) and the screen separating the bulldozer driver from the rest of the courtroom.

The writer, Katherine Gallagher, is more interested in editorializing than reporting facts, despite the name of the piece being "Live from the Rachel Corrie Trial". Here's some quotes:

"Everyone asked the same question: why hasn't a bigger court room been provided for this case -- or at least for the testimony that the court knew many people would come to hear? When members of the press, human rights observers and the general public cannot watch the proceedings, it is hard to describe the process as transparent."

"Because of the screen, the lawyers' and the judge's gaze and attention was focused on a part of the court room that only they could see. We, in the audience, felt very much "outside" of the proceedings, privy to only half of the story."

Even when Gallagher reported facts, they weren't really facts.

"Credible? Y.F.'s testimony was often confused and at points lacked credibility. A 38-year-old who immigrated to Israel from Russia in 1995 and said he learned Hebrew on his own after he arrived, Y.F. appeared to have difficulty with Hebrew and struggled to read the affidavit he signed less than six months ago. He also said he could not remember basic facts, such as the date of Rachel's killing or time of day it happened."

"At times during the lengthy cross-examination by the Corrie's lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, Y.F. contradicted his own testimony, contradicted statements he had made to the military police in 2003, contradicted his signed affidavit and contradicted testimony given by other witnesses called by Israel."

 I guess we're supposed to take Gallagher's word that Y.F.'s testimony lacked 'credibility' since she never tells us what he actually says or how he contradicted himself. The basic facts of the date and time aren't extremely relevant to how credible Y.F's testimony is, seeing as how the accident happened several years ago at this point.




Gallagher mentions one fact at least, that Y.F. stated there was no mound of dirt between the bulldozer and Corrie. I guess this is significant because it contradicts what some soldiers said, but it hardly proves the point of the story. After all, if people were discredited completely because their stories weren't perfect, none of the ISMers would be allowed to talk.

But here's where it gets interesting. I asked Mr. Warren about the lack of actual facts in Gallagher's article, and he responded with the following:

So here's the link to the Independent article he linked me to. Check out what the headline of the article is: Bulldozer Driver Insists He Did Not See Rachel Corrie. Don't you think that would have been an important part of his testimony to cover in this HP blog post? Warren quotes the sections about the mound of earth, the "dead" vision area, whether he left his vehicle or not, etc. but he doesn't quote the key part of the article, and neither does Gallagher.

I asked Mr. Warren why that part of the bulldozer driver's testimony didn't make it into the article and at the time of this blog post going up he has not responded. But I think we can see here pretty clearly that the goal of this blog post, and the HP's decision to publish it, is not to inform its readers about the actual content of the Rachel Corrie trial. Gallagher picked out the one fact of the testimony that made the anti-Israel side look better, and emphasized that. But the most important part of the testimony, the statement that will determine whether Corrie's death was murder or an accident, was conveniently left out of the article altogether. So much for the pretense of the HP being an 'unbiased news source'.