Letters to the Editor
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more evidence that Hizballah fires its rockets from amidst civilians
Last week I caught some msnbc programming by mistake. They were interviewing an American kid who was being evacuated from Lebanon with his family. The kid described how they were woken up by two loud explosions in the middle of the night. The Israelis had bombed two buses that were parked in the street outside. The kid went on to explain how the Israelis must have thought that Hezbollah fighters were firing Katyusha's from atop of the buses. The anchorwoman just shook her head and said something schmaltzy about chattered innocence. I do not remember if they said that this incident took place in Beirut, but I am almost sure this family was not in the South within the Katuysha or even Fajr range of Israel. I get the feeling that this is the level of scrutiny most American media give to stories of Hizbollah firing from amidst civilians.
The true motivation for the Israeli bombardment can be told by the slip made by the Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz when he declared that "for every Katyusha barrage on Haifa, 10 more buildings in the Dahiya neighborhood of south Beirut will be bombed." The general apparently withdrew the statement when the Association for Civil Rights in Israel complained to his boss, defense minister Amir Peretz, that "Striking civilians and civilian infrastructure and using intentional means of intimidation and terrorizing civilian populations is forbidden by international humanitarian law, and could be war crimes," but he went on with the bombing of the Dahiya nonetheless (reverting to the old pretext of targeting Hizbollah figheter).
Here is a link to the story in the right-wing Isreali Yedioth Internet:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3280788,00.html
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Israel is morally wrong here!
So, by the logic of some of the commenters here, the fact that American soldiers and support services are garrisoned among civilians throughout Iraq, suicide bombers are justified in killing as many Iraqi civilians as they can? After all, the Iraqis civilians are not kicking out the Americans.
Or, during the troubles in my current home country, Ireland, Britain would have been justified in levelling Dublin, Galway and Cork for the crimes committed by the IRA?
Frankly, I don't care if Hezbollah is hiding among civilians. What Israel is doing is still morally wrong. They are collectively punishing the entire population of Lebanon for the actions of an essentially uncontrollable military faction. Not only that, but Israel's actions are extremely out of proportion to the original incident that touched off this insanity two weeks ago. Israel is both morally wrong and in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Call me anti-Semitic, but I am Jewish and I lived on a kibbutz (Hanita) located ON the border of Lebanon. A false charge of anti-Semiticism will only point out that you have no valid argument.
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so, the NYT report flatly asserting the contrary is wrong?
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28refugees.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin
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to Joshstrike
“And to take it further, if Americans as a whole are expected to be held responsible, as Salon has implicitly suggested, for our government and soldiers' actions in Iraq, then how is it that the Lebanese Shiites are not to be held responsible for the extremely popular, and extremely violent political organization that they allow to operate in their midst?”
Dear Josh, you must realize at some level that making the argument that some people bear a certain moral responsibility for their political sympathies, or on account of the way they voted, or for not voicing their opposition to some misguided policy is quite a different proposition from advocating the spilling of their blood.
“just because the political wing of an organization keeps itself shielded from the military wing's tactical decision-making, presumably does not mean that they have no power to control their military wing. By definition, the rhetoric they espouse and their calls to murder Israelis are a central, underlying feature of the organization's military strategy. As in the GWB regime in America, the sloganeer and politicians are just as responsible as the foot-soldiers, if not more so.”
Does this apply to the offices of the government of Israel? Israeli courts, public schools, orphanages run by the government? How about racist Israeli ministers and MK’s? How about a large sector of the Israeli public and certain “supporters” of Israel in the U.S. and elsewhere who have called for the carpet bombing of Lebanon, bombing it back 20 or 50 years, or even the application of the “Biblical solution,” (sometimes also referred to as the “Midianite solution;” basically killing all men, women and children)?
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story is ridiculous, self contradictory, false
I refuse to defend Israel in this counter attack, they have been operationally and tactically incompetent and strategically foolish; and that their actions rise to war crimes even though defensive in intent. But Hezbollah's actions and intent are both war crimes. Their intent is destruction of all Israel. Their actions are to kill civilians and soldiers, anybody, by crossing internationally accepted bounadaries and initiating agressive war. And they do comingle not in uniform among civilians. All are war crimes. And everybody including the UN has said that Hezbollah is comingling with civilians, firing missiles from within civilian areas. Reports in both lebonese arab press (Star) and left leaning israeli press (Haaretz) about civilians getting killed when using hardened shelters taken over by hezbollah. The article contradicts itself repeatedly... opens with story of Hezbollah mingling with civilians; then says Hezbollah wouldn't trust civilians due to betrayal, then says it bullies its way into using civilian areas, then says it is too popular and too ubiquitous to be attacked without hitting civilians. I am so terribly sorry that the american reporter was not trusted to co-mingle with hezbollah fighers, but that just suggest they are less foolish than he. Meanwhile the lebonese and israelie and palestinian people suffer, even though the end game is known to all (two state solution; near 1967 border; split jerusalem; return to golan height demilitarized with early detection on both sides.).
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Leave or Israel Assumes You're Hezbollah
The other point that needs to be made is that one of the rationalizations for not targeting civilians is that Israel gave 'fair' warning that they were going to attack and that anyone that chose not to leave could then 'fairly' be assumed to be Hezbollah.
Not fair. Not reasonable. Not unlike several other weak assumptions offered to justify killing innocents and non-combatants masquerading as unfortunate collateral damage that could have been avoided if Lebanese had just simply left like they were asked. Shameful!