Israël, Libanon/Gaza, oorlog #51

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Op zondag 6 augustus 2006 13:57 schreef Ulx het volgende:

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Die ene gevangene war het Hezbollah om te doen is, die in 1979 een vader doodschoot voor de ogen van zijn tweejarige kind en daarna het kind op de rotsen de hersen insloeg terwijl de moeder die zich verstopt had zo bang was dat ze haar baby -om haar maar stil te houden- verstikte, die blijft gewoon in de gevangenis. Die komt echt niet vrij, hoewel Hezbollah dat als een van de eisen heeft.

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Op zondag 6 augustus 2006 13:54 schreef Integrity het volgende:
Is het niet gewoon zo dat, als Israel niet van zich af bijt, zij zelf ooit eens van de kaart geveegd worden?

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Op zondag 6 augustus 2006 14:00 schreef sp3c het volgende:

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hoe weet iedereen dit eigenlijk, ik hoor dit iedere dag bijna, Iran geeft Hezbollah raketten, heleboel, iedere dag, vandaag weer, morgen is het een heilige dag maar overmorgen komt het driedubbele, en daarna komen ze raketten brengen, vinden ze helemaal niet erg, kost ze nix en overmorgen weer, vette raketten, dunne rakette, domme raketten allerlei soorten raketen, raketten, raketten, raketten, allemaal van Iran want die hebben nix beters te doen met hun geld blablabla
iedereen roept het maar zijn hier eigenlijk een beetje betrouwbare bronnen van?

het lijkt net of er dagelijks treinladingen vol raketten vanuit Iran naar Libanon gaan ofzo

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Israeli pilots 'deliberately miss' targets

Fliers admit aborting raids on civilian targets as concern grows over the reliability of intelligence


Inigo Gilmore at Hatzor Air Base, Israel
Sunday August 6, 2006
The Observer

At least two Israeli fighter pilots have deliberately missed civilian targets in Lebanon as disquiet grows in the military about flawed intelligence, The Observer has learnt. Sources say the pilots were worried that targets had been wrongly identified as Hizbollah facilities.

Voices expressing concern over the armed forces' failures are getting louder. One Israeli cabinet minister said last week: 'We gave the army so much money. Why are we getting these results?' Last week saw Hizbollah's guerrilla force, dismissed by senior Israeli military officials as 'ragtag', inflict further casualties on one of the world's most powerful armies in southern Lebanon. At least 12 elite troops, the equivalent of Britain's SAS, have already been killed, and by yesterday afternoon Israel's military death toll had climbed to 45.

As the bodies pile up, so the Israeli media has begun to turn, accusing the military of lacking the proper equipment, training and intelligence to fight a guerrilla war in Lebanon. Israel's Defence Minister, Amir Peretz, on a tour of the front lines, was confronted by troubled reserve soldiers who told him they lacked proper equipment and training.

Israel's chief of staff, Major-General Dan Halutz, had vowed to wipe out Hizbollah's missile threat within 10 days. These claims are now being mocked as rockets rain down on Israel's north with ever greater intensity, despite an intense and highly destructive air bombardment.

As one well-connected Israeli expert put it: 'If we have such good information in Lebanon, how come we still don't know the hideout of missiles and launchers?... If we don't know the location of their weapons, why should we know which house is a Hizbollah house?'

As international outrage over civilian deaths grows, the spotlight is increasingly turning on Israeli air operations. The Observer has learnt that one senior commander who has been involved in the air attacks in Lebanon has already raised concerns that some of the air force's actions might be considered 'war crimes'.

Yonatan Shapiro, a former Blackhawk helicopter pilot dismissed from reserve duty after signing a 'refusenik' letter in 2004, said he had spoken with Israeli F-16 pilots in recent days and learnt that some had aborted missions because of concerns about the reliability of intelligence information. According to Shapiro, some pilots justified aborting missions out of 'common sense' and in the context of the Israeli Defence Force's moral code of conduct, which says every effort should be made to avoiding harming civilians.

Shapiro said: 'Some pilots told me they have shot at the side of targets because they're afraid people will be there, and they don't trust any more those who give them the coordinates and targets.'

He added: 'One pilot told me he was asked to hit a house on a hill, which was supposed to be a place from where Hizbollah was launching Katyusha missiles. But he was afraid civilians were in the house, so he shot next to the house ...

'Pilots are always being told they will be judged on results, but if the results are hundreds of dead civilians while Hizbollah is still able to fire all these rockets, then something is very wrong.'

So far none of the pilots has publicly refused to fly missions but some are wobbling, according to Shapiro. He said: 'Their target could be a house firing a cannon at Israel and it could be a house full of children, so it's a real dilemma; it's not black and white. But ... I'm calling on them to refuse, in order save our country from self-destruction.'

Meron Rappoport, a former editor at the Israeli daily Haaretz and military analyst, criticised the air force's methods for selecting targets: 'The impression is that information is sometimes lacking. One squadron leader admitted the evidence used to determine attacks on cars is sometimes circumstantial - meaning that if people are in an area after Israeli forces warned them to leave, the assumption is that those left behind must be linked to Hizbollah ... This is problematic, as aid agencies have said many people did not leave ... because they could not, or it was unsafe to travel on the roads thanks to Israel's aerial bombardment.'

These revelations raise further serious questions about the airstrike in Qana last Sunday that left dozens dead, which continues to arouse international outrage. From the outset, the Israeli military's version of events has been shrouded in ambiguity, with the army releasing a video it claims shows Katyusha rockets being fired from Qana, even though the video was dated two days earlier, and claiming that more than 150 rockets had been fired from the location.

Some IDF officials have continued to refer vaguely to Katyushas being launched 'near houses' in the village and to non-specific 'terrorist activity' inside the targeted building. In a statement on Thursday, the IDF said it the air force did not know there were civilians in what they believed was an empty building, yet paradoxically blamed Hizbollah for using those killed as 'human shields'.

Human rights groups have attacked the findings as illogical. Amnesty International described the investigation as a 'whitewash', saying Israeli intelligence must have been aware of the civilians'.

One Israeli commander from a different squadron called the Qana bombing a 'mistake' and was unable to explain the apparent contradiction in the IDF's position, although he insisted there would have been no deliberate targeting of civilians. He said he had seen the video of the attack, and admitted: 'Generally they [Hizbollah] are using human shields ... That specific building - I don't know the reason it was chosen as a target.'

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Op zondag 6 augustus 2006 14:25 schreef venomsnake het volgende:
Sky: AFP: Syrian foreign minister says Syria is ready for regional war.

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Op zondag 6 augustus 2006 14:16 schreef Disciple_of_Guinness het volgende:
Voor degene die geen Sky kunnen ontvangen.

Interview met George Galloway

Wat een nare man is het toch eigenlijk

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'Nee, Hezbollah is geen terroristische organisatie'.

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Op zondag 6 augustus 2006 14:00 schreef sp3c het volgende:
hoe weet iedereen dit eigenlijk, ik hoor dit iedere dag bijna, Iran geeft Hezbollah raketten, ...

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Op zondag 6 augustus 2006 15:01 schreef Super7fighter het volgende:
Een van de machtigste legers die de mensheid ooit gekend heeft, wordt beschimpt en bespeeld door de Hezbollah.

Hezbollah-commando's hebben inmiddels al minstens 12 elitesoldaten van Israel gedood. Of zouden die elitesoldaten gewoon niks voorstellen in vergelijking met de goed getrainde, gedisciplineerde en geharde Hezbollah-strijders?

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“We killed ten, and the artillery must have killed thirty or forty,” said a soldier who, like his colleagues, was not allowed to give his name. He had simply lost count of Hezbollah’s attacks. “Many, many, it was very bad because you don’t know where they are coming from. But we succeeded.”

Another soldier said that serving in the Palestinian militant stronghold of Jenin in the West Bank, as he had, was nothing compared with fighting Hezbollah’s guerrillas. “It was horrible,” he said. “You don’t know what it’s like, with every second a rocket- propelled grenade shooting over your head.”

A third soldier said: “All the time, they fired missiles at us. They never come face to face, just missiles. When we find them we kill them. It’s just not right, the way we are doing it. Our air force can just bomb villages and not risk our lives fighting over there.”

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Op zondag 6 augustus 2006 14:53 schreef elcastel het volgende:

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Ik moet je eerlijk zeggen dat ik er (ook) nog geen geschreven bron van heb gevonden. Toch ben ik er van overtuigd, mede op basis van een Iraanse vluchteling die ik ken en heb gesproken voor het helemaal uit de klauwen liep. Zijn verhaal sluit naadloos aan op de beweringen in dit topic en in sommige media.

Met zekerheid kan ik het niet zeggen, dus verder dan een zekerheid grenzende waarschijnlijkheid kan ik niet komen. Maar ik ben ervan overtuigd dat de steun voor Hezbollah uit Iran komt en dat Syrië daaraan meewerkt zolang het ze niet te heet onder de voeten wordt. Ik denk ook niet dat er nu nog hele raketinstallatie's over de grens gaan, ik denk dat ze er al zijn.

Maar het is allemaal wat suggestief ja.

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Mughniyeh, wanted for a quarter of a century by the FBI for the huge bombing attacks he orchestrated on the US embassy in Beirut and American and French troops, as well as a spate of hijackings and murders, is important enough to take orders from no-one ranking lower than Iran’s supreme ruler, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Those orders come through the Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Rahim Safavi.

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Op zondag 6 augustus 2006 15:01 schreef Super7fighter het volgende:
Een van de machtigste legers die de mensheid ooit gekend heeft, wordt beschimpt en bespeeld door de Hezbollah.

Hezbollah-commando's hebben inmiddels al minstens 12 elitesoldaten van Israel gedood. Of zouden die elitesoldaten gewoon niks voorstellen in vergelijking met de goed getrainde, gedisciplineerde en geharde Hezbollah-strijders?

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Op zondag 6 augustus 2006 15:15 schreef schatje het volgende:
DEBKAfile (wel een gekleurde bron) meldt dat Iran de volgende man naar Libanon heeft gestuurd.

[afbeelding]
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volledig artikel

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Op zondag 6 augustus 2006 15:13 schreef damian5700 het volgende:
De bronvermelding van de Daily Telegraph die ik een aantal post hierboven heb geplaats laat voor het eerst zien dat de suggestieve berichtgeving over mogelijke Iraanse wapenleveranties aan Hezbollah wordt bevestigd door Iraanse officals.
('We wisten het al, maar nu is dan eindelijk toegegeven')