Israël, Libanon/Gaza, oorlog #48

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 18:39 schreef -scorpione- het volgende:

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Ik ben geen Arabier

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 18:46 schreef erodome het volgende:

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Krijg ik les van jou dan?

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 18:46 schreef erodome het volgende:

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Krijg ik les van jou dan?

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 18:43 schreef Incomplete het volgende:

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Praat het eens recht dan.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 18:47 schreef opgebaarde het volgende:

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ow wacht, door een bom waarbij 39 kinderen omkomen is dat nu ineens Libanon de schuld, dat is krom (lees: ik praat hezbollahs acties met schilden niet goed maar bommen gooien en dan verantwoordelijkheid afschuiven is wazig)

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 16:37 schreef Super7fighter het volgende:

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Dit betekent dus enorm gezichtverlies voor Olmert die een paar uur van te voren aan een gehypnotiseerd en in extase verkerend publiek verklaarde dat de gehele Hezbollah-infrastructuur vernietigd was.
Hezbollah heeft Israel weer afgetroefd. Hoe lang nog zullen de Hezbollah-commando's het Israelische leger tarten en te kijk zetten?

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 18:44 schreef Super7fighter het volgende:

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Een man, die tegenwoordig een leermeester voor islamofoben/moslimhaters is geworden, zei ooit:

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. -- Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945

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Jan Egeland, the UN humanitarian chief, has accused Hezbollah of "cowardly blending" among Lebanese civilians and causing the deaths of hundreds during two weeks of cross-border violence with Israel.

The militant group has built bunkers and tunnels near the Israeli border to shelter weapons and fighters, and its members easily blend in among civilians.

Egeland was speaking to reporters at the Larnaca airport in Cyprus late Monday after a visit to Lebanon on his mission to coordinate an international aid effort. On Sunday he had toured the rubble of Beirut's southern suburbs, a once-teeming Shiite district where Hezbollah had its headquarters.

During that visit he condemned the killing and wounding of civilians by both sides, and called Israel's offensive "disproportionate" and "a violation of international humanitarian law."

On Monday, he had strong words for Hezbollah, which crossed into Israel and captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12, triggering fierce fighting from both sides.

"Consistently, from the Hezbollah heartland, my message was that Hezbollah must stop this cowardly blending ... among women and children," he said.

"I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men."

"We need a cessation of hostilities because this is a war where civilians are paying the price," said Egeland, who was heading to Israel.

At least 384 people have been killed in Lebanon, including 20 soldiers and 11 Hezbollah fighters, according to security officials. At least 600,000 Lebanese have fled their homes, according to the World Health Organization.

One estimate by Lebanon's finance minister put the number at 750,000, nearly 20 per cent of the population.

Israel's death toll was at least 40, with 17 people killed by Hezbollah rockets and 23 soldiers killed in the fighting, according to authorities.

During his visit to Lebanon, Egeland issued an urgent call for $150 million (¤118.74 million) to help Lebanon through the next three months.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 18:49 schreef -scorpione- het volgende:

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Het gaat er niet om dat je Israel niet mag veroordelen, maar het is een beetje raar om daar alle schuld te leggen terwijl H&H ook aantoonbaar hun kinderen aan gevaar blootstellen misschien zelfs direct verantwoordelijk zijn voor het Qana incident. Het is wat mij betreft nogal hypocriet.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 18:55 schreef lionsguy18 het volgende:

Dat nest met terroristen wordt tot de laatste man uitgeroeid.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 18:44 schreef Super7fighter het volgende:

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Een man, die tegenwoordig een leermeester voor islamofoben/moslimhaters is geworden, zei ooit:

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. -- Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 18:56 schreef opgebaarde het volgende:

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of net gecreeerd, zeker voor de toekomst

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 18:56 schreef lionsguy18 het volgende:

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Die worden bewaard tot de volgende oorlog

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 18:47 schreef opgebaarde het volgende:

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ow wacht, door een bom waarbij 39 kinderen omkomen is dat nu ineens Libanon de schuld, dat is krom (lees: ik praat hezbollahs acties met schilden niet goed maar bommen gooien en dan verantwoordelijkheid afschuiven is wazig)

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ik praat hezbollahs

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 18:59 schreef Incomplete het volgende:

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Ik las het alsof je een wilde zeggen dat je een vreemde taal sprak.


Israel is en was en blijft schuldig aan het bombardement en de doden die
daardoor gevallen zijn. (imo)
Anderzijds willen veel mensen niet inzien dat hezbollah kinderen/burgers regelmatig bewust
in the line off fire plaatst waardoor er dus burgerslachtoffers te betreuren
zijn die op het bordje van Israel terechtkomen. Ook dat is krom.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:00 schreef lionsguy18 het volgende:
Israel is niet verantwoordelijk voor dat incidentje in Qana

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:03 schreef opgebaarde het volgende:

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[quote]haha, nice one

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dat is een smerige tactiek van Hezbollah maar begrijpelijk en de mensen zijn bereid mee te werken (wat een haat). Militair gezien wint Hezbollah nooit en zijn ze in 2 dagen weggevaagd maar door deze smerige tactiek kunnen ze zich beter verdedigen.

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'Oops, Sorry' Doesn't Let Israel Off the Hook

Israel claims Hezbollah tactics are responsible for civilian deaths in Lebanon. We should expect better.
By Adam Shatz
ADAM SHATZ is literary editor of the Nation.

August 1, 2006

IN THE WEST, Qana, a small Lebanese village southeast of Tyre, is believed by some to be the place where Jesus performed his first miracle, turning water into wine. In Lebanon and throughout the wider Arab and Muslim world, however, the village's name has for the last decade been synonymous with something else: the killing in April 1996 of more than 100 men, women and children who had taken refuge in a U.N. compound, hiding from Israeli shelling directed at Hezbollah. Over time, Qana has been sculpted by Hezbollah into a symbol of martyrdom, a Shiite version of Sabra and Shatila.

The Qana massacre, as it soon became baptized, sparked outrage throughout the Arab and Muslim world and raised the stature of Hezbollah. It also nourished the fury of Al Qaeda. "The horrifying pictures of the massacre of Qana, in Lebanon, are still fresh in our memory," wrote Osama bin Laden in August 1996, in his first fatwa declaring war against the United States.

Although Israel expressed "regret" for its "mistake," it justified the attack as a response to Hezbollah's firing of two Katyusha rockets and eight mortars from areas near the compound. The architect of Israel's "Operation Grapes of Wrath," Prime Minister Shimon Peres, argued that Hezbollah bore responsibility for the Qana disaster, claiming it cynically used civilians as human shields.

History repeated itself Sunday with grisly precision when Israel, in the midst of another war with Hezbollah, bombed a residential apartment building in Qana, killing as many as 56 civilians, 37 of them children. Once again, Israel insisted that it had made a "mistake" for which Hezbollah was ultimately responsible because it was launching rockets toward Israel from the village of Qana.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in a speech Monday announcing that Israel would not adhere to the 48-hour cease-fire to which it had agreed under American pressure, said, "I am sorry from the bottom of my heart for all deaths of children or women in Qana…. We did not search them out … they were not our enemies, and we did not look for them."

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Israel did, in fact, make the same mistake twice in Qana — or, to take another recent example, in Gaza, where a family of eight spending an afternoon on the beach was killed by an errant Israeli shell in June. If Israeli assertions are true that these killings of scores of civilians were unintentional, does that mean that Israel can claim the high ground in its battle with Hezbollah and Hamas? Is Israel's "accidental" violence against civilians somehow better, or more morally acceptable, than that of a Hamas suicide bomber who steps into a pizzeria seeking to kill civilians? Or a Hezbollah guerrilla firing a Katyusha in the direction of a Haifa residential neighborhood? In short, do Israel's declared intentions make a difference?

To the victims in Qana and Gaza, the answer to these questions is obviously no. Nor will Olmert's "condolences" be greeted with anything gentler than sarcasm in the Arab and Muslim world, particularly because Israel barely paused after Qana before resuming airstrikes against Lebanon.

Of course, Israel is not really addressing its "apologies" to the Arab world but to the West, the club of "civilized" democracies in which it proudly claims membership. The argument Israel and its supporters make to this audience is that Hezbollah and Hamas deliberately target civilians, whereas Israel only accidentally kills them in the noble cause of antiterrorism. Israel may be guilty of manslaughter, but not of murder.

But this distinction is meaningful only up to a point, and Israel, consistent with its history of violent raids in refugee camps and crowded cities, passed this point almost as soon as the offensive began.

Rather than limiting its strikes to key Hezbollah positions and pursuing all available diplomatic channels, as might be expected of a mature regional power with nuclear weapons, Israel launched a vengeful war on Lebanon, which, it has since been reported, was planned over a year in advance. It has displayed a callous disregard for human life, for Lebanon's infrastructure (which only in recent years had begun to recover from Israel's 1982 invasion), for the stability of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's fragile government and for the country's natural environment, now facing an ecological catastrophe from an oil spill caused by the bombing. An estimated 750 Lebanese, overwhelmingly civilians and many of them children, have died, a dozen times more than the 50-plus Israelis (more than half of them soldiers) killed by Hezbollah.

Israel's "humanitarian intervention," as Defense Minister Amir Peretz risibly characterized the war in Lebanon, has been far more costly of civilian life than Hezbollah's rocket attacks into Israel. Faced with mounting, televised evidence of Israel's behavior, the country's supporters abroad have taken great pains to portray the Israeli Defense Forces as a uniquely moral army, governed by a rigorous moral code yet forced to make tough decisions in a cruel environment. According to Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, for instance, Israel deserves praise for warning civilians to evacuate areas it has targeted for bombing.

Those who remain may be civilians, he says, but they are less than innocent. This conveniently overlooks the fact that many people, particularly the elderly, are in no position to leave their homes at a moment's notice. Moreover, a number of Lebanese civilians who have followed these warnings have been killed on roads that have come under constant Israeli fire. As a result, many Lebanese, including those in Qana, have chosen to stay put rather than brave the roads.

ANOTHER ARGUMENT made by Israel's defenders is that it cannot be held responsible for killing civilians in militant strongholds.

Michael Walzer, the influential Princeton moral philosopher and author of "Just and Unjust Wars," recently opined in the New Republic that when Arab guerrillas "launch rocket attacks from civilian areas, they are themselves responsible — and no one else is — for the civilian deaths caused by Israeli counterfire." One expects this rationalization of collective punishment from a defense minister; coming from a "just war" theorist it is most odd. (By this criterion, the French Resistance would have been "responsible" if the Nazis had destroyed a village sheltering anti-Fascist partisans.)

In fact, Walzer's logic is explicitly repudiated by human rights groups. They weren't persuaded by this argument in 1996; in its damning report on the first Qana attack, Human Rights Watch concluded that the use in Qana of "deadly anti-personnel shells designed to maximize injuries on the ground — and the sustained firing of such shells, without warning, in close proximity to a large concentration of civilians — violated a key principle of international humanitarian law." And Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, has rejected it again this time: The most recent strike on Qana "suggests that the Israeli military is treating southern Lebanon as a free-fire zone."

When Israel targets densely populated areas in hopes of killing one or a handful of militants, knowing that it may end up killing dozens of civilians, it can hardly claim to be showing concern for humanitarian law or civilian life. And by asking that we judge it by its professed intentions, rather than by its actions, Israel is asking too much of us and far too little of itself.


Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

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Livni: Qana attack led to turning point in support for Israel
By Yoav Stern, Yuval Yoaz and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents

The deaths of dozens of civilians in an Israel Air Force attack on the southern Lebanese village of Qana marked a significant diplomatic turning point against Israel, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Tuesday.

The foreign minister said that following the events in Qana, Israel's scope for political maneuvering had been reduced, as was the amount of European support Israel is receiving for its operation in Lebanese soil.

Livni said this change was exemplified in the "problematic" Russian and French stance towards Israel.

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She said that despite the pictures of civilian casualties coming from Qana of it was important not to stray from implementing UN decision 1559.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel on Tuesday urged Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to establish a state commission of inquiry into the killings at Qana.

As the Israel Air Force continues to investigate the air strike, questions have been raised over military accounts of the incident.

It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.

The Israel Defense Forces had said after the deadly air-strike that many rockets had been launched from Qana. However, it changed its version on Monday.

The site was included in an IAF plan to strike at several buildings in proximity to a previous launching site. Similar strikes were carried out in the past. However, there were no rocket launches from Qana on the day of the strike.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese Red Cross workers reported on Monday that 28 bodies, 19 of them children, were removed from the rubble.

The count is lower than the some 60 bodies reported by news agencies, quoting Lebanese security officials. Survivors say 60 people were in the building at the time of the strike.

Additional bodies are expected to be found in rescue operations.

Elsewhere in southern Lebanon, 49 bodies were removed Monday from the ruins of buildings in ten villages. Medical sources in Lebanon say dozens more are buried in the rubble.

IDF sources said the warning pamphlets the IAF disseminated to residents, calling on them to leave the area, were dropped several days before the strike, and not over the weekend.

The IAF does not have a way to verify whether villages have been vacated, or whether civilians remain hidden in bomb-shelters in locations otherwise believed to have been vacated, the sources said.

Paratroopers who fought in Bint Jbail last week said they noticed civilians hiding in the rubble while the fierce battle with Hezbollah militants was taking place.

The IDF account and those of survivors present contradictory versions of the Qana deaths. The IDF said that there is an unexplained gap of about seven hours between the IAF strike and the first report that the building had collapsed. Residents' accounts say only 10 minutes went by between the strike and the collapse.

The survivors say rescue teams arrived only in the morning, as night conditions made the rescue mission difficult. The Red Cross in Tyre received a call for help only in the morning, explaining their late arrival.

Sami Yazbek, chief of the Tyre department of the Red Cross, said his office received a call only at 7 A.M. The ambulances were further slowed by the bombed roads leading to Qana.

The media first heard of the bombing at 8 A.M. The foreign press quoted Lebanese sources explaining the late announcement, saying the electricity and phones in the village of Qana were almost entirely cut-off by IAF attacks.

An IAF investigation into the bombing is underway.

The IAF admits the village was struck three times between Saturday night and Sunday morning. Two bombs were dropped on the building in the first strike. Channel 10, however, said on Monday that the initial investigation shows the bombs did not immediately explode, and an explosion in the early morning caused the casualties.

The IDF provided no explanation for the second explosion, and it is not clear whether the bomb was moved, or whether Hezbollah ammunition stored in the building caused the explosion.

Civilians continued to leave their homes en masse in southern Lebanon on Monday, taking advantage of the temporary slow-down in the fighting, imposed by the IAF after the Qana attack.

The United Nations and the Red Cross delivered emergency assistance to villages in the south on Monday. The UN also delivered food and medical equipment to Qana residents.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:04 schreef opgebaarde het volgende:

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welk incident? Hezbollah is verantwoordelijk?

Hey als iemand een klap op zijn kop krijgt en omdat die een tere schedel heeft (die niet veel voorkomt) en daardoor overlijdt zegt justitie echt niet: ow maar de dader kon dat niet weten dat het slachtoffer een zeer tere schedel heeft.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:12 schreef lionsguy18 het volgende:

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Hizbollah is verantwoordelijk.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:12 schreef opgebaarde het volgende:
al die lappen gejatte tekst, veel te veel leeswerk, zet de belangrijkste dingen eens in vet of bouw korte samenvatting met daarna de link naar de artikelen

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:12 schreef lionsguy18 het volgende:

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Hizbollah is verantwoordelijk.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:16 schreef Slayage het volgende:

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lees laatste artikel eens, er was die dag helemaal geen katoesja aanval van de hezbollah in qana

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:14 schreef Slayage het volgende:

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luiert

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:17 schreef lionsguy18 het volgende:

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Die was er wel. Vanaf de plaats waar dat gebouw stond.
Elk leger schiet dan terug.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:17 schreef lionsguy18 het volgende:

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Die was er wel. Vanaf de plaats waar dat gebouw stond.
Elk leger schiet dan terug.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:17 schreef opgebaarde het volgende:

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klopt maar met simpel wat artikelen plaatsen schiet geen mens iets op toch?

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:18 schreef Slayage het volgende:

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waarom niet? een artikel kan heel verhelderend zijn

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:19 schreef lionsguy18 het volgende:
Olmert heeft dit zelf verklaard en dat is een betrouwbare bron

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:20 schreef sp3c het volgende:
wtf doet het er nu toe wie verantwoordelijk is

oorlog vecht je niet in je eentje en met 'hij begon' heeft nog nooit iemand een argument gewonnen

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:20 schreef sp3c het volgende:
wtf doet het er nu toe wie verantwoordelijk is

oorlog vecht je niet in je eentje en met 'hij begon' heeft nog nooit iemand een argument gewonnen

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:20 schreef opgebaarde het volgende:

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ja klopt maar ik doelde op iets anders maar denk dat jij dat wel snapt en dat ik niet zoveel terechts te zeiken heb Wow en ik kan nog wazigere kwats neerkwakken

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:21 schreef lionsguy18 het volgende:
Ik geloof Olmert maar de Hizbollah kontkruipers doen dat niet.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:20 schreef sp3c het volgende:
wtf doet het er nu toe wie verantwoordelijk is

oorlog vecht je niet in je eentje en met 'hij begon' heeft nog nooit iemand een argument gewonnen

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:21 schreef lionsguy18 het volgende:
Ik geloof Olmert maar de Hizbollah kontkruipers doen dat niet.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:22 schreef opgebaarde het volgende:

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als we zo redeneren ben jij een pro-Jood, dus wat schieten we hier mee op?

De waarheid ligt ergens in het midden, beide zijn niet te vertrouwen

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:22 schreef elcastel het volgende:

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Mee eens, maar toch is dat 'hij begon' principe precies waar het hele conflict op drijft.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:23 schreef lionsguy18 het volgende:

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Zelfs die opmerking is onjuist, dus ik ben het niet met je eens.

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:24 schreef opgebaarde het volgende:

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maar dan kijken we naar aanvallen zoals met die Hezbollah raketten, zo is onze wereld maar gelukkig krabbelt de EU al een beetje terug

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Op woensdag 2 augustus 2006 19:24 schreef opgebaarde het volgende:
maar dan kijken we naar aanvallen zoals met die Hezbollah raketten, zo is onze wereld maar gelukkig krabbelt de EU al een beetje terug