Israeli-Hizbullah Battles in Deep South
Israelis Bombed Qana while Relief and Rescue troops worked
Update: Israeli war planes conducted further air raids Monday morning, despite Israeli officials' earlier pledge to cease for 48 hours. The Israelis bombed a car with a Lebanese Army officer and soldiers, killing him. They have repeatedly bombed Lebanese army bases and facilities and have killed over a dozen Lebanese troops and officers, but this is the first time I remember them apologizing for it. What does this change of attitude mean?
The Israeli government announced a 48-eight-hour cessation of its air raids on Lebanon while it investigated itself for the killing of large numbers of innocent civilians, especially children, at Qana. During this time, it is also allowing a 24-hour window for Lebanese in the south to leave the area safely without fear of being bombed by the Israeli air force and they flee (a fate that befell some Lebanese refugees in the past few days). Since emptying south Lebanon of people is part of the Israeli war plan, it wasn't actually altruistic of them to allow people to leave.
Nicholas Blanford reports on the horror at Qana.
Courtesy al-Hayat.
Blanford reveals that Israeli warplanes actually continued to bomb the town while the rescue workers were pulling ragdoll-dead children out of the building. That's cold, man. Cold:
' An earth-mover ground down the lane and began clawing chunks of concrete away from the building. Even as the rescue team toiled to recover the dead, Israeli jets continued to roar overhead and the thump of air strikes and exploding artillery shells reverberated around the steep valley. '
Israeli forces and Hizbullah fighters continued to fight on land in the border regions on Sunday. Hizbullah also fired numerous rockets into Israel, though they appear mostly to have been ineffectual, they did cause some damages and injuries.
Max Blumenthal on "The Israeli Checklist"
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/31/2006 11:25:00 AM
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Save the Lebanese Civilians Petition.
"Killing innocent civilians is NOT an act of self-defense. Destroying a sovereign nation is NOT a measured response."
A petition has been set up to Save the Lebanese Civilians (Note that the server may be under heavy load so if you cannot connect, try again later).
http://julywar.epetitions.net
"Update: Israeli war planes conducted further air raids Monday morning, despite Israeli officials' earlier pledge to cease for 48 hours. The Israelis bombed a car with a Lebanese Army officer and soldiers, killing him. They have repeatedly bombed Lebanese army bases and facilities and have killed over a dozen Lebanese troops and officers, but this is the first time I remember them apologizing for it. What does this change of attitude mean?"
It means there has been a rupture in the space-time continuum.
To further explore the current official Israeli position, we conduct this interview with Israeli Air Force Major General Ira Dunnit.
General Dunnit, your cabinet members have announced a 48 hour cessation of the arial bombardment of Lebanon. Yet, we see IAF fighters in the air and there is the sound of explosions, presumedly bombs. Would you care to comment?
Yes. We have announced and we intend to cease the bombing of militant women, children and the elderly for a period of 48 hours.
But General, there are fighter/bomber jets in the air. How do you explain that?
Summer camp. Our pilots are fathers, too. Some of them want to take their sons to summer camp in style like no other. There goes one now. (Motions to F16 flying low over Lebanese dairy.)
General, that jet just released several of what look to be missles.
Children, they love to play with buttons.
General, it looks as though the missles are aimed at the dairy farm. There are dozens of workers in that building.
Regrettable. But to know that an Israeli child could aim so well, makes a father proud. (Explosions)
General, it looks as though that facility and all the people inside were just killed by missles from your jet.
Regrettable if there were any civilians, but our intelligence tells us those were milking machines of mass destruction.
General, you said there would be a 48 hour cessation of violence, but just now your air force attacked unarmed civilians for no apparent reason.
Perhaps the pilot was an animal rights activist.
General, your ceasefire lasted only two hours and this is the third time your jets have been used to destroy the Lebanese people. When will you carry through on your word?
Our ceasefire started two hours ago. There have been brief interludes, a minute each at the most, when, regrettable, ordnance left the aircraft and found its way to the ground. So, in effect, the ceasefire has been in place for one hour, fifty seven minutes.
General, that's ridiculous.
Did we say it would be continuous? No, only that it would last for 48 hours. Now excuse me, I have some regrettable accidents to prepare for.
Hello Juan,
I've thought often during this offensive against lebanon that if the southern cities are so isolated presently, there must be more casualties that haven't been accounted for.
This link seems to make that point.
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/lebanon/000438.php
BEIRUT, Jul 28 (IPS) - Lebanese doctors, aid workers and refugees are all reporting that the official number of dead in Lebanon is far lower than the actual.
"I think that the real number is at least 750 dead so far," Dr. Bachir el-Sham at the Complex Hospital in Sidon city told IPS in a telephone interview. Sidon is 43 km south of Beirut, and just north of Tyre. This region has seen the worst of the Israeli bombing.
Sham said that by coordinating casualty figures with other hospitals and clinics in the south, he believes that an average of 40 civilians are being killed by Israeli air strikes each day.
"One day we had 100 dead. The authorities in Beirut can only estimate -- we never have official statistics about anything in Lebanon," he said. "Regarding the number of dead, we can say for sure that by the numbers we're seeing down here, it is at least 750, if not more."
One reason the real number will be higher is that "so many people are buried in the rubble," he said.
Footage during the 48 hour lull in bombing has revealed the horrific extent of the war-crimes committed in the South of Lebanon. Whole villages have been completely flattened and a flood of rotting corpses are being pulled from the ruins of simple homes.
Yet America continues to support and arm Israel and deliberately delays the implementation of a cease-fire so that the carnage can continue.
Where are the people of conscience in America? Why aren't they rising up to protest this brutal, calculated genocide?
I remeber when I was 13...listening to the radio tell tales of Israeli bravery as they fought off the Arabs in the battle of 1967. I was trying to write a novel, and I remember feeling such pity, such rage, on behalf of the Israelis, as I sat at my desk, punching an old Underwood, and I wanted so badly for them to prevail. I wanted them to turn the tide after the horrors of the Holocaust. I thought they were the bright shining knights of the new world order, an order that would usher in a world of justice and humanity.
Now my eyes are open to the Palestinian plight, and it's like an onion, forever peeling, forever revealing new and more horrible atrocities. Now the oppressed use the license of victimhood to become oppressors themselves, and they seem to remember no humanity at all, no time when they themselves cried for mercy.
The world spirals into the maelstrom of the mideast now, and we are all being drawn into choosing sides, in a conflict that may very well destroy us. Why can't we figure this out? What is the problem?
The problem is that we are so terrified at the thought of putting ourselves into another's shoes, that we shut down our hearts and allow anything--anything--to be done in our name.
Forgive us.
Israel’s military incursion into Lebanon will be characterized as a “failure” as it serves Neocon and Israeli strategists two purposes: 1) it provides a reason to expand the campaign into Syria and beyond, and 2) to provide the impetus to get the United States military to attack Syria and beyond as Israel’s proxy army. Despite the ‘official reasons’ we are given for Israel’s actions, the objective is not to fight terrorism, but rather to establish hegemony over the region…this is the unspoken objective. Hezballah, Hamas, and/or the terrorist group de jour should only be viewed as a means to Israel’s unspoken strategic objective for the region.
To claim success in Lebanon would prematurely put the breaks on this enterprise.
I have to agree. What Israel is doing would not be wrong under some circumstances. When you have nation states warring (again I hate to bring up WWII but thats what I mean) that's the kind of thing that has to happen. This is not a national war. Lebannon is not fighting back. Cannot fight back at this point.
My problem with Israel has been the intensity of their response. Not only is out of proportion but it is proving a kind of counter-productive madness.
Iwonder how long it will be until Sadr starts to hold continuous non-violent demonstrations around the road access points into the green zone to shut down the foreign cancer?
Here in America, our mass media thinks their job ends once the statistics are reported. It's all numbers and geopolitics to these people, while Condi plays Brahms with a little extra legato for the times.
I thought it would be instructive for people to understand what bombs really do, in human and medical terms. I have the story here.
Sen. Chuck Hagel broke with Pres. Bush today to call for an immediate ceasefire and appointment of a "stateman" as Bush's envoy to the ME. This is a clear rebuke of both Bush and (Hagel's potentatial 2008 rival) Rice.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/07/31/hagel.mideast/index.html
Of course, Sen. Hagel repeats the American error of characterizing the ME conflict as between Muslims and Jews, wholly ignoring the significant suffering Israel has wreaked on the Arab Christian community.
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