Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

I wrote earlier about the death of Fadel Shana, the Gaza Reuters cameraman, whose spine was severed by metal flechette darts fired by an Israeli tank, which also killed five other civilians in the same incident. Human Rights Watch has denounced the attack:

New York-based Human Rights Watch has said it has evidence suggesting that the tank fired “recklessly or deliberately” at the Reuters news crew.

When I earlier wrote about this I was under the mistaken impression that the cameraman was the only person killed. But two others died with him and two others died subsequently–all from the same single shell. This clearly indicates how savage, destructive and heinous the flechette weapon is. It is a tank version of a cluster bomb which explodes in the air above the target and sprays sharp metal darts indiscriminately throughout the vicinity.

The tank attack took place shortly after a Hamas ambush which resulted in three IDF soldiers being killed. Could we surmise that the tank was outfitted with such weaponry and the tank crew eager to fire in order to avenge the deaths of their comrades–even if the Palestinian target was of no military value? An act of sheer, naked vengeance?

One of my readers has attempted to argue that one of the victims was armed as an attempt to explain the tank’s firing. I haven’t even heard the IDF claim this and one would think it would be eager to do so if there was any evidence at all to support it (hell, they’re not even above lying in these types of circumstances so I truly doubt if that charge can be supported). Others have argued that the tank crew might’ve confused the cameraman’s camera for an RPG launcher. But there were at least seven, and probably more civilians standing at the scene of this incident. Can anyone credibly argue that Hamas militants gather in groups this large in the open air when they fire an RPG?

Fadel Shana’s flak jacket (Said Khatib/Reuters)

I think it’s important also to document how one dies when hit by such a shell:

Shana’s body armour, which bore a blue-on-white “PRESS” marking, was ripped off by the attack, which medical examination showed had thrust several 1.5-inch (38-mm) metal darts through his neck, shredding his flesh and severing his spine.

I seem to spout the same old almost cliches by now about how Arab life is so cheap to the IDF. But it bears repeating until Israel learns the lesson if it ever will. A man wearing a clearly marked flak jacket indicating he was a journalist, and whose vehicle was similarly marked, was blasted to kingdom come by an Israeli tank using ultra-lethal anti-personnel weapons. It’s unfortunately par for the course for this conflict.

The total inadequacy of the Israeli Supreme Court in policing the IDF’s overaggressive tactics is indicated by this passage:

The Israeli army has defended its use of flechettes, noting that the Israeli Supreme Court turned down a petition to ban their use as a danger to civilian bystanders.

Maybe they’d want to reconsider their previous ruling in light of the death toll from this incident and the international opprobrium that will attach to it. Even if a sense of humanity doesn’t move Israel to act properly, sometimes just plain embarrassment will do the trick. Whatever it takes.

Angry with his treatment at the hands of the Republican Party and its Congressional leadership, Mark Foley threatened to found a party for pedophiles: “All the good I did for children in Congress and this is what I get for it? They’re a bunch of ingrates is all they are. Well, now that I’m an outed sexually abused gay pedophile I’m going make a clean break with it. No more Mr. Squeaky Clean Traditional Values. I’m going to let it all hang out. And if the Republicans don’t like it they can suck my horny [censored].”

No, that didn’t actually happen. But the following item in today’s NY Times got me thinking:

The Netherlands: Pedophile Party Lacks Support

A political party formed by pedophiles will probably not succeed in gathering the 570 signatures needed by Tuesday to run in national elections next month, the party’s secretary, Norbert de Jonge, said. The party, formed in May, has managed to attract just about 100 supporters. It seeks to lower the legal age of consent to 12, from 16, and to legalize child pornography.
–NY Times via Reuters

Mark Foley’s gotta be thinking: “Man, if only I’d served in the Dutch parliament instead of Congress. Then I wouldn’t have gotten into this mess in the first place. And just think of how much page head I could get if the age of consent was 12 instead of 18 like in D.C.!”

They oughta sack this guy de Jonge and bring in a real professional…like Foley. What they need is some of his financial clout and political organizing skills plus a little more of that horny factor and they’d be on the ballot in no time. The Dutch could use a good dose of pedophile horniness right about now. Mark Foley’s got to be feeling a little left out of the Party/party so to speak. What better idea than to hop on a plane and make a new life for himself as an outed and now public pedophile?

Ehud Olmert is losing his mind. Well, perhaps it’s not quite that bad (though my blogging colleagues in Lebanon might disagree). But he’s definitely lost all inhibition against twisting historical facts in a feeble attempt to get the world off Israel’s back for its barbarity in Lebanon:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told European leaders to stop preaching to him about civilian war casualties in an interview published on Sunday in the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

Olmert also said it would not be possible to completely destroy Hezbollah and insisted he did not underestimate them.

“Where do they get the right to preach to Israel?” Olmert said when asked about criticism from European capitals of Israeli military operations that have led to a heavy civilian toll.

“European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians. Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that from a single rocket.

Where to start in unraveling the mendaciousness? First, Olmert is collapsing the Serbia war against Kosovo in 1998-99 which killed many thousands of Kosovars (Wikipedia estimates that 10,000 were killed) and the subsequent NATO campaign against Serbia which attempted to pry Serbia’s death grip off of Kosovo’s throat. Olmert seems to want us to believe that NATO (”European countries”) killed 10,000 civilians. This is a bald-faced lie since Serbia did the lion’s share of the killing well before NATO came along. As distinguished an organization as Human Rights Watch tells us that NATO killed 500 Serbian civilians during its campaign, not 10,000. And Israel has already far exceeded killing that number of Lebanese in a much shorter time (78 days in Serbia and 26 days in Lebanon).

But even if Olmert wishes to confuse the issue by claiming that Serbia was one of the “European countries” participating in the Kosovo mayhem, the analogy still blows up in his face. Because Milosevic and his inner circle pursued precisely the same type of scorched earth campaign against Kosovo that Israel is pursuing against Lebanon. If anything NATO is at fault for letting Serbia carry on with the killing as long as it did. In this, the analogy to the Lebanon war is apt. The world has also allowed this bestial horror to go on far longer than it should. It should bring Israel to heel just as it did Serbia. But not by bombs this time. Rather, Israel’s patron state, the U.S. must take a firm stand for an immediate cessation of hostilities. It must tell the Israelis to stop their firing in Lebanon just as NATO told Milosevic to stand down from Kosovo.