Last month, LGF noted that the International Committee of the Red Cross had deliberately removed from their web site, with no notice or explanation, a very clear high-resolution image of the Lebanese ambulance supposedly attacked by the IDF.

Blogger David Amior managed to get a reply from an ICRC spokesman … and I was right. They did deliberately remove it, and it was in response to the blogosphere controversy over the transparently false claims made about this incident.

The ICRC’s reason for surreptitiously removing crucial evidence, like a criminal in the night?

They did it “to keep the moral high ground.”

David’s Blog: ICRC Spokesman: Photo Removed to Keep ‘Moral High Ground’.

An International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman explained that a photo of a damaged Red Cross ambulance, which was said to have been hit by the Israeli Defence Force during the Lebanon conflict, was removed from the ICRC website following allegations of a hoax by a blogger “in order to keep the moral high ground on the issue”.

An essay published by Zombietime soon after the picture appeared on the ICRC website criticized perceived factual inaccuracies in the reporting of the incident. It argued that the circular hole in the roof which was said to have been caused by a missile corresponded with the size and position of ventilation covers on top of other ambulances. It was also claimed that, “The presence of rust on every part of the roof where the paint has been scratched away proves that the damage to the metal happened long before July 23”, the date the incident was said to have taken place.

The photo showing the damaged ambulance was removed from the ICRC website shortly after this post was made. Roland Huguenin-Benjamin, an ICRC spokesman who was in Lebanon during the conflict and saw the ambulance in question, told The Guardian that the ICRC “categorically rejects and denies” the claims made by Zombietime.

When subsequently asked why the photo was removed, he replied to your correspondent that the ICRC held a meeting, at which it was decided that Zombietime would not be directly confronted. “The Institute in Geneva decided not to go into a controversy in order to keep the moral high ground on the issue”, he said.

Here’s the photograph the ICRC doesn’t want you to see: Ambulance 782.