24 July 2006

Antioch Abouna: Lebanongrad

Antioch Abouna: Lebanongrad asks some pertinent questions about the apparent approval with which the Blair-Bush Axis of Evil regards Israel's destruction of Lebanon, including the killing of civilians in a manner which can only be described as war crimes, which I noted in my other blog. Coupled with this is the deliberate destruction of educational institutions, churches, hospitals and schools.

Of course, we've seen it all before. In 1999 Blair and Clinton did it themselvers in Yugoslavia, instead of using a surrogate like Israel.

In Lebanon Christians were formerly fairly well-disposed towards Israel, but after their churches have been bombed and members killed, any goodwill that there was is dissipating rapidly, as the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports.

But even that report cannot resist the temptation to brainwash Americans still further, when it adds the nasty little factoid: "Hezbollah triggered this latest Middle Eastern war when their fighters mounted an ambush two weeks go in Israel and kidnapped two Jewish soldiers."

These factoids are slipped in, almost unnoticed, so that people are hardly even aware of reading them, but end up firmly convinced that "Hezbollah started it."

Even some Israelis don't swallow that sort of guff -- see http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/736009.html.

So it may be worth looking at the ancient history of two months ago (before living memory, if not pre-historic for American journalists) to see just how the present conflict escalated.

CHRONOLOGY - how the conflict escalated in the last 2 months

2006-06-09 Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing 8 civilians and injuring 32. Following this, Hamas calls off 16 months of military truce.

2006-06-13 Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a van in an attempted extrajudicial assassination. The successive barrages killed nine innocent Palestinians.

2006-06-20 Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a car in an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between Jabalya and Gaza City. The missile missed the car. Instead it killed three Palestinian children and wounded 15.

2006-06-28 Palestinian militants launch a raid and kill two Israeli soldiers and capture a third, Cpl Gilad Shalit.

2006-06-29 Israel troops, having pushed into Gaza, detain Hamas lawmakers and cabinet members. Air strikes.

2006-07-12 Hizbollah captures two Israeli soldiers and kills eight. Israel calls it 'act of war' and widens Gaza offensive, killing 24 civilians. Air strikes destroy 10 bridges in Lebanon, and hit power stations and a water facility.

Israel claims that the soldiers were captured on Israel territory, Hizbollah claims that they were captured during an incursion into Lebanon.

2006-07-13 Israel bombs Palestinian Foreign Ministry and Beirut airport. Israeli Navy blockades Lebanese ports.

2006-07-14 Israel bombs Beirut-Damascus road and Shia suburbs of Beirut: 67 Lebanese civilians dead. Hizbollah launches 130 missiles at Israel, killing at least
two civilians. Israeli ship is hit by an explosives-filled drone, four dead.

2006-07-15 Israel warns inhabitants of village of Marwaheen in southern Lebanon, to leave. While they are fleeing they are attacked by Israeli aircraft and several families die.

If the last incident was not a war crime, what is? Ordering civilians to leave their town, and then shooting them up as they try to leave?

US President George Bush vetoed a bill on embryonic stem-cell research because he believed it crossed a moral boundary. But does not incinerating these children cross the very same moral boundary?

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another thing that interests me about this why Hezbollah are patrolling southern Lebanon anyway? The Israelis claim of an act of war would be far less convincing if their soldiers had been picked up by the Lebanese military rather than an internationally recognised terrorist organisation. Also about Marhaween my Christian friends in Beirut are saying that the villagers were forced to remain by 'gunmen' until it was too late to avoid the Israeli attck on the same gunmen. No matter how anti-Israel you are you can't avoid that Arab terrorists/freedom fighters use human shields. Think all the little kids singing outside Arafat's HQ day in and day out.

Steve Hayes said...

Well I don't know whether they actually vowed to do that, but Israel is actually doing it, vows or no vows.

Both (well, all, since there are more than two) sides are shooting at one another, but a much higher proportion of Hizbollah's victims are military, yet Israel is the one that has precision weapons. Nato would have far more justification in bombing Israel now than they did in bombing Yugoslavia in 1999 (not that I want them to -- I'd much rather they all stopped shooting and started talking to each other).

Kevin Beck said...

Odd how Mr Bush is only pro-life while babies are in the womb. Once they are breathing air, they must fend for themselves. Very sad.

Steve Hayes said...

Yes, people who claim to be "prolige" are rarely consistent about it.

Servant said...

It's hard times for the Hasbara Committee.

People are more likely to assess your actions and then try to align those with what comes out of your mouth. Actions speak louder than words.

This week Alan Dershowitz changed the definition of civilian to anyone who does not live in Lebanon. Everyone who lives in Lebanon is a terrorist, therefore Israeli pilots do not have to discriminate among targets.

Subscribing to such flexible logic is a double edged device for Jews everywhere, because the same flexible rule may just as easily be turned against them. Backlash is going to happen. People are not going to tolerate lies or the liars who tell them, regardless of ethnic accouterments or what some invisible beardless man supposedly said about real estate arrangements in the middle east.

Israel exists by a concensus of nations, which it now chooses to ignore; therefore it cannot appeal to it's "right" to exist while at the same time disregarding the community which created it.

God bless the Jews whereever they live. But zionism is now seen as racism, and it corrupts the people who subscribe to racist ideals.

Never get between a Jew and his real estate.

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