The Israeli ambassador to Ireland Zion Evrony was given another of his regular platforms in The Irish Times on Friday to rewrite the recent history of the Middle East. Even allowing for the low priority he has given to the concepts of truth and accuracy after Israel began its assault in Gaza at Christmas, his article was a sneaky piece of work.

Evrony was responding to a piece in the Times two days previously by MEP Proinsias De Rossa, who had just returned from Gaza. Given the scale of the destruct­ion he witnessed there, De Rossa's piece was restrained. He wasn't propagandising or proselytising; merely reporting and observing. "Progress requires Europe and the United States to be hard-headed and even-handed, and to apply common demo­cratic norms to all concerned," he wrote.

Evrony berated De Rossa for seeing only one side of the story. He then broadened his criticism to include pretty much anybody who had raised concerns about the indiscriminate cruelty which marked much of Israel's invasion of Gaza. He praised his country's army for the restraint it had shown, and blamed Hamas for the deaths of its own people. He referred to a series of untruths he says have grown up around the attack on the Gaza, and denied any suggestions that the Israeli Defence Forces had committed war crimes.

So far, so standard and, it should be conceded, fair enough as far as it goes. The ambassador is there to defend his country against attacks on its honour. In writing for The Irish Times, he was merely doing his job.

However, it was the means he used to do so which gave cause for concern. On the subject of Israel's use of phosphorus gas, for example, he referred to a comment made on 14 January by Jacob Kellenberger, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who said there was no evidence that phosphorus had been employed by the IDF. Again, fair enough as far as it goes. What Ambassador Evrony conveniently ignored, however, because it didn't suit his purposes, was a subsequent report in the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv that IDF officers had admitted using phosphorus, which burns deeply through muscle and into the bone. He also ignored an Amnesty International report on 19 January, citing "indisputable evidence", that the IDF had used white phosphorus in densely populated areas. He also ignored reports in the Western media about the use of white phosphorus in a strike on the al-Quds hospital in Gaza city on 15 January, the day after Kellenberger's comments were reported in The New York Times. (Neither did he mention comments by Kellenberger that conditions in Gaza were the worst he'd ever seen).

Ambassador Evrony was anxious in his Times piece, as he has been in the past, to praise the restraint of IDF personnel. "However, in any war, accidents are unavoidable and regrettable", he said. "The fact half of the Israeli soldiers killed were victims of friendly fire demonstrates this".

That last statement is such a magnificent misuse of established facts, such a shameless redrawing of the boundaries of good taste, that I'm almost tempted to attribute genius to it. Suffice it to say, and without wishing to conjure up memories of a recent Oireachtas performance by Aengus Ó Snodaigh, that any propagandist worth his salt would have been proud of Evrony on Friday.

The death toll amongst Gazans during the siege by Israel was approximately 1,500. Hundreds of these were children. The death toll amongst Israeli soldiers was 10, four of whom were shot in error by their colleagues. Evrony seeks to divert attention from this glaring disproportion by suggesting that the accidental deaths of four Israelis should be seen as a kind of justification of, or explanation for, the killing of hundreds of civilians in Gaza. "Sure we're even killing our own fellas," he seems to say. "We all suffer the consequences of error in times of war."

Some more than most. Israel breached its June 2008 ceasefire with Hamas in two different ways and took advantage of the inevitable violent response to launch the destruction we saw on our television screens in December and January, and which Proinsias De Rossa saw for himself a few weeks ago. So far, in addition to its 10 soldiers, it has lost 13 civilians. In so baldly misrepresenting the truth of the war which cost them their lives, Ambassador Evrony discredits their memory. As for all those dead Palestinians, all the rest of us can do is honour them by resisting the kind of blatant propaganda we had to read on Friday.

ddoyle@tribune.ie