Originally posted in August 06, 2006. Reposted and edited Sept. 22, 2016.
"RIGHT ON, ISRAEL TEACH THOSE LEBANESE WHO THE MASTERS ARE "SAYS PM STEPHEN HARPER !
(EVEN AFTER EIGHT LEBANESE CANADIANS ARE KILLED and U.N. POST IS ATTACKED BY ISRAELI FORCES KILLING FOUR PEACEKEEPERS )
( PARODY OR REALITY ) all Pics Posted by Picasa
NAZIS ARREST JEWISH BOY IN WARSAW GHETTO / ISRAELI SOLDIERS ARREST PALESTINIAN BOY AS SUSPECTED TERRORIST ! CAN YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE ?
MY LAI MASSACRE : US TROOPS MURDER HUNDREDS OF VILLAGERS INCLUDING INFANTS ! AMERICA WINNING THE HEARTS and MINDS OF THE VIETNAMESE PEOPLE -
SOUTH VIETNAMESE OFFICER PERFORMS SUMMARY EXECUTION ON SUSPECTED INSURGENT DURING VIETNAM WAR ; AMERICAN OLD WEST STYLE JUSTICE SPREADING DEMOCRACY and CHRISTIAN VALUES
GIRL IN VIETNAM IN AGONY WHILE SKIN BURNS FROM NAPALM : AMERICA SPREADING DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM
ETERNAL FORCES: LEFT BEHIND VIDEO GAME FOR CHRISTIANS ONLY.
HEY KIDS ITS ARMAGEDDON SO KILL ALL THOSE HERETICS, LIBERALS, LEFTIST, HUMANISTS etc.
DO IT ALL IN THE NAME OF JESUS THE WARRIOR KING OF JUDEA ! LOOKS A LOT LIKE IRAQ OR LEBANON
US MARINES IN IRAQ SHOOT WOUNDED MAN IN MOSQUE MASSACRE IN IRAQ ; FILM FOOTAGE AMERICAN MEDIA REFUSED TO AIR
SCORES OF HIGH RISE APARTMENT BUILDINGS DESTROYED BY ANOTHER EXAMPLE of ISRAELI PRECISION BOMBING and ITS CAVALIER ATTITUDE OF DISREGARD FOR CIVILIAN CASUALTIES ...
BEIRUT REDUCED TO RUBBLE BY ISRAELI BOMBINGS WITH THE BOMBS SENT BY USA TO SUPPORT ISRAEL - OR WAR BY PROXY
CITY IN RUINS AFTER ISRAELI BOMBING IN LEBANON
GRAFFITI BY ISRAELI EXTREMIST IN THE AREA OF AN ILLEGAL ISRAELI SETTLEMENT-
ISRAELI GIRLS SIGN BOMBS AS PRESENTS TO LEBANESE CHILDREN - LESSONS TO BE Carefully TAUGHT ?
And this they call civilized behavior.
RED CROSS RESCUE WORKERS CARRY WOUNDED LEBANESE CHILD FOUND IN RUBBLE OF BUILDING DESTROYED BY PRECISION ISRAELI BOMBING ... IS THIS CHILD A TERRORIST ?
"...Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hezbollah," roared Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon on July 27.
"Every village from which a Katyusha is fired must be destroyed," bellowed an Israeli general in a quote bannered by the nation's largest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth.
"One who goes to sleep with rockets shouldn't be surprised if he doesn't wake up in the morning," said Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman....
There are several issues which arise whenever we attempt to analyze Israeli policies to decide whether or not these policies are justifiable & so we have to consider these issues before we begin to lay them to rest .
Firstly whenever someone criticizes polices of the Israeli government & military they are accused of being anti-Semitic . This accusation is sometimes true & sometimes not but when the accusation is made whether true or not can lead to the discrediting & dismissal out of hand of whatever criticism is being made . It also has a chilling effect so that those who are sensitive to such issues may hesitate before raising reasonable questions about Israeli domestic or foreign policies .
Of course we do not want to come across as being anti-Semitic so we have to be careful in how we criticize Israeli policies.
It may seem that I am belaboring this point but it is a charge made quite often in the same way as criticism of a particular US policy leaves one open to the criticism of being anti-American or if the individual is American they are seen as Un-American & a traitor especially in a time of War.
I am not anti-Israel since I believe that Israel as set up the United Nations in 1948 is a legitimate state & has the right to exist & has as much right to defend itself against attack as any other nation does but the response must be reasonable & must be done according to International Law & Geneva Conventions & the basic rules of Engagement .
I have for instance criticized the United States for its unwarranted Invasion & continuing occupation of Iraq . But part of this criticism is due to disagreement over the tactics used by US & its forces in Iraq i.e. a disregard for civilian casualties & its refusal to keep an account on the numbers of innocent civilians killed. For instance if the US kept such record of civilian casualties , at the very least, it could then decide whether its military strategy is the most reasonable to follow or whether it should adjust its strategy to prevent unnecessary civilian deaths where this is feasible .
The same could be said about any country’s involvement in such military actions & this would therefore also include the military strategy & tactics of Israel whether in Palestine or in Lebanon .
Israel cannot merely throw up its hands & say that these International Law & the Geneva Conventions do not apply to them . Though Israel has argued this in some form or other as has the Bush Regime since 9/11 claiming that the trrrorist are a different kind of enemy but this is merely a rationalization for secret kidnappings referred to as “ Renditions “ or torture of suspects & keeping such suspects in jail for years without recourse to normal legal channels & not giving the Red Cross or other humanitarian agents full access to these prisoners or not informing the suspects families , friends or even the country of which they are citizens. The irony here is that the US revolutionary war with Britain was in part over the British rounding up citizens of the colonies without warrants & without giving out the details of accusations against the individuals.
The Americans are also accused of setting up death-squads in Iraq in order to eliminate insurgents & those who may be critical of the American occupation.
During the Invasion of Iraq American forces ill-legaly targeted the infrastructure of Iraq i.e. highways , airports , power plants, sewage treatment facilities , hospitals etc. & did not protect certain public buildings from looters or insurgens which under International Law they were required to do & further by dis-banning most of the Iraqi army the safety of the Iraqi people then became the responsibility of the American forces but these things they failed to do.
So to criticize a particular Israeli government for its domestic policies or foreign policies is not therefore, to called out of hand as it were anti-Semitism or Anti-Israel . Israel is to be judged on its actions in the same way as any other country while taking into account its historical & geo-political circumstances . ( Again I would say this about any country that it should be jusdged given its individual historical & Geopolitical circumstances .)
Another problem with critiquing Israeli policies in regards to Palestine & Israel’s War with Lebanon is that many of the questionable tactics it has used & is using are similar to the illegal actions committed by the Americans which helps explain why the Americans & her staunchest supporters are having trouble criticizing these Israeli actions which in the view of many people constitute War Crimes & Crimes Against Humanity. To criticize one to be consistent one must criticize the other . If the Americans believe that the various International Agreements & the Geneva Conventions do not apply to them then other nations including Israel can try to make the same claim as for instance Turkey is now claiming it should be permitted to attack the Kurds in Iraq because of clashes on the border with the Kurds & accusations of Kurdish terrorist attacks within Turkey .If this rationale is widened we may see border skirmishes turn into full scale wars around the world . This the Neocons would like to see since it leads to more chaos & a form of Balkanization around the world with one country after another being weakened by a war they cannot sustain which leaves a military & political vacuum which the US & her allies can take advantage of .
The list of atrocities & War Crimes committed by Israel can be found in the fifty page report published by Human Rights Watch .
As even the conservative Patrick J. Buchanan said in a recent article “ Our Moral Culpability for Qana “ (massacre) referring to the above mentioned quotes of the Israeli Justice Minister & Israeli general:
(Found at :http://www.worldnetdaily.com)
08/01/06 " WorldNetDaily" -- -- The Israeli paper then summarized what the justice minister and general were saying: "In other words, a village from which rockets are fired at Israel will simply be destroyed by fire." That was Thursday.
Sunday, in Qana, 57 of Haim Ramon's "terrorists," 37 of them children, were massacred with precision-guided bombs. Apparently, Katyushas had been fired from Qana, near the destroyed building.
Also see series of articles by Robert Fiske in The Independent
from July 13 through to August 7 for a first hand account of the Israeli Attacks on Lebanon & in depth analysis from a Middle East Expert
www.independent.co.uk
Robert Fisk attempts to give a more human face to the conflict rather than just some sort of high-handed unemotional rationalization of the Israeli-Lebanon War.
Many who support the Bush Regime & the Regime’s backing of Israeli actions in Lebanon would not appreciate the emotional response & outrage of Robert Fisk or of other journalists on the ground in Lebanon since the Americans see only the demonized terrorists at work & not the innocent civilians including children & infants being torn to peieces by the American supplied bombs which Israel is using to kill indiscriminately & to ultimately pulverize all of Lebanon .
One wonders as Gymn Dyer points out what if England had responded in the same way to the IRA attacks on London & went ahead & pulverized Northern Ireland including blowing to pieces both Catholic Protestant civilians including children what would the world 's response had been . ( of course in the 1920's this is just what the British did in Ireland which quickly led to the establishment of an Independent Irish State EIRE. & in India again the British used this tactic as in the Amritzar Massacre which turned the tide for the India Independent Movement when overnight world opinion shifted away from the side of Britain etc. , etc ).
For instance here is an excerpt from one of his articles:
THE INDEPENDENT
Robert Fisk: Entire Lebanese family killed in Israeli attack on hospital
Published: 03 August 2006
An attack on a hospital, the killing of an entire Lebanese family, the seizure of five men in Baalbek and a new civilian death toll - 468 men, women and children - marked the 22nd day of Israel's latest war on Lebanon.
The Israelis claimed that helicopter-borne soldiers had seized senior Hizbollah leaders although one of them turned out to be a local Baalbek grocer. In a village near the city, Israeli air strikes killed the local mayor's son and brother and five children in their family.
The Israelis sent paratroopers to attack an Iranian-financed hospital in Baalbek in the hope of capturing wounded Hizbollah fighters but, after an hour's battle, got their hands on only five men whom the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, later called "tasty fish". The operation suggests what Hizbollah has all along said was the purpose of the Israeli campaign: to swap prisoners and to exchange Hizbollah fighters for the two Israeli soldiers who were captured on the border on 12 July.
The obscene score-card for death in this latest war now stands as follows: 508 Lebanese civilians, 46 Hizbollah guerrillas, 26 Lebanese soldiers, 36 Israeli soldiers and 19 Israeli civilians.
In other words, Hizbollah is killing more Israeli soldiers than civilians and the Israelis are killing far more Lebanese civilians than they are guerrillas. The Lebanese Red Cross has found 40 more civilian dead in the south of the country in the past two days, many of them with wounds suggesting they might have survived had medical help been available.
And further Robert Fisk comments in another article " Robert Fisk: This draft shows who is running America's policy... Israel
Published: 07 August 2006 about the peace proposals of European countrie & the U.N. he says:
So the great and the good on the East River laboured at the United Nations Security Council - and brought forth a lemon. You could almost hear the Lebanese groan at this draft resolution, a document of such bias and mendacity that a close Lebanese friend read carefully through it yesterday, cursed and uttered the immortal question: "Don't these bastards learn anything from history?"
And there it all was again, the warmed-up peace proposals of Israel's 1982 invasion, full of buffer zones and disarmament and "strict respect by all parties" - a rousing chortle here, no doubt, from Hizbollah members - and the need for Lebanese sovereignty. It didn't even demand the withdrawal of Israeli forces, a point that Walid Moallem, Syria's Foreign Minister - and the man the Americans will eventually have to negotiate with - seized upon with more than alacrity. It was a dead UN resolution without a total Israeli retreat, he said on a strategic trip to Beirut.
A close analysis of the American-French draft - the fingerprints of John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, were almost smudging the paragraphs - showed just who is running Washington's Middle East policy: Israel. And one wondered how even Tony Blair would want to associate himself with this nonsense. It made no reference to the obscenely disproportionate violence employed by Israel - just a sleek reference to "hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides" - and it made only passing reference to Hizbollah's demand that it would only release the two Israeli soldiers it captured on 12 July in return for Lebanese and other Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.
The Security Council said it was "mindful of the sensitivity of the issue of prisoners and encouraging the efforts aimed at settling the issue [sic] of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel". I bet Hizbollah were impressed by the "mindful" bit, not to mention the "sensitivity" and the soft, slippery word "settle" - an issue which can be "settled" in maybe 20 years' time. Then came the real coup de grâce. A demand for the "total cessation by Hizbollah of all attacks" and the "immediate cessation" by Israel of "all offensive military operations". Bit of a problem there, as Hizbollah spotted at once. They have to lay down their arms.
And more articles on the current situation in Lebanon:
Robert Fisk: A NATO-led force would be in Israel's interests, but not Lebanon's
Published: 01 August 2006
Robert Fisk : Slaughter in Qana, August 6, 2006
Entire Lebanese family killed in attack on hospital, August 3, 2006
How Can we stand by & let this go on ? , July 31, 2006
Robert Fisk’s Beirut Diary : “ What are you doing to us ? ” July 30, 2006
On a Red Cross mission of mercy when Israeli air force came calling, July 28, 2006
Paradise Lost : Robert Fisk’s elegy for Beirut, July 19, 2006
The child lies like a rag doll- a symbol of the latest Lebanon war ,July 20, 2006
Robert Fisk reports from Beirut on the innocents killed & injured as a result of the crisis in Lebanon...
Etc, etc.
And as Gwynne Dyer comments about the situation & how for the US & Britain it is a matter of SPIN & Propaganda to convince their voters that Hezbollah has been involve in an allout attack on Israel since this current crisis began though this is all blatantly untrue but Propaganda is the name of the Game:
Dyer: End game between Israel and Hezbollah
By Gwynne Dyer/ Syndicated Columnist
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
The kill ratio is becoming a problem: Israel has been killing about 40 Lebanese civilians for every Israel civilian who is killed. They are all being killed by accident, of course, but such a long chain of accidents begins to look like carelessness, and even in Israel and the United States many people are getting uneasy about the slaughter. Elsewhere, the revulsion at what is happening is almost universal, and the death of so many women and children at Qana has greatly intensified the pressure on Israel and its de facto allies, the United States and Britain, to stop the war.
The real trick, in terms of keeping American and British public opinion on side, is to blur the sequence of events that led to the war and present it as a desperate Israeli struggle against an unprovoked onslaught by thousands of terrorist rockets. As Prime Minister Tony Blair told the BBC, "It cannot be that Israel stops taking the action it's taking but Hezbollah continue to kill, kidnap, and launch rockets into the north of Israel at the civilian population there."
The Web site of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs goes further, claiming that the operation in which Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed three others and the rain of Hezbollah rockets on Israeli cities were "simultaneous." Obviously, these are mad terrorists who must be removed from Israel's border at once by any means possible. But unless "simultaneous" means "on the following day" in Hebrew, the Web site is deliberately distorting what happened.
There WAS an unprovoked Hezbollah attack on the Israeli army on July 12, seeking to kidnap soldiers who could be held as hostages and eventually exchanged for Lebanese prisoners who have been illegally held in Israel since the latter ended its 18-year military occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000. And no doubt the reason Israel held onto those prisoners in the first place was to have them as hostages in some future prisoner exchange with Hezbollah. That's how the game is played locally...
Also see more articles from Gwynne Dyer at :
http://www.gwynnedyer.net/
ON Orwell’s Newspeak & doublethink
www.duplipensar.net
Former President jimmy carter:
Stop the Band-Aid Treatment
We Need Policies for a Real, Lasting Middle East Peace
By Jimmy Carter
08/01/06 "Washington Post'
Also check out :
Originally posted August 06, 2006.
www.arabamericannews.com/
Ten thousand rally for Lebanon, Palestine
By Aatif Ali Bokhari -- The Arab American News --
And for Canadian content see:
Ottawa rally protests destruction of Lebanon
By Reuel S. Amdur -- The Arab American News --
Human Rights Watch Accuses Israel of War Crimes
By Jim Lobe
08/02/06 "IPS" -- -- In systematically failing to distinguish between Hezbollah fighters and civilian population in its three-and-a-half-week-old military campaign in Lebanon, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have committed war crimes, according to a report released by Human Rights Watch Wednesday.
The 50-page report, "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon," detailed nearly two dozen cases of IDF attacks in which a total of 153 civilians, including 63 children, were killed in homes or motor vehicles.
In none of the cases did HRW researchers find evidence that there was a significant enough military objective to justify the attack, given the risks to civilian lives, while, in many cases, there was no identifiable military target. In still other cases cited in the report, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians.
"By consistently failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians, Israel has violated one of the most fundamental tenets of the laws of war: the duty to carry out attacks on only military targets," according to the report.
"The pattern of attacks during the Israeli offensive in Lebanon suggests that the failures cannot be explained or dismissed as mere accidents; the extent of the pattern and the seriousness of the consequences indicate the commission of war crimes," it concluded.
The report, which was based on interviews with victims and independent witnesses of attacks, as well as investigation of the sites where the attacks occurred, called for the United States to immediately suspend transfers to Israel of arms, ammunition, and other material credibly alleged to have been used in such attacks until they cease.
In addition, it called on United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to establish a formal commission to investigate the
And check out views & news at:
Neil Young’s
Living With War Today website
( all war all the time )
www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday
Anyway so long for now,
GOOD NIGHT & GOOD LUCK
GORD.
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