From today’s NY Times:
In one overnight airstrike, a convoy of some 500 vehicles carrying civilians and Lebanese security forces, escorted by United Nations peacekeepers and fleeing north from Merj’ Uyun with permission negotiated with Israel, was struck near Shtaura in the Bekaa Valley.
Witnesses and hospital officials said at least six people were killed, including a Lebanese Army officer. The Israeli military said the convoy was fired upon because of a “suspicion” it might contain Hezbollah fighters. TV images showed wrecked cars, a woman’s shoes and other belongings scattered across the road.
Incomplete casualty figures flowed in through the day: at least 15 dead in the village of Rachef, 8 near the ports of Sidon and Tripoli, 3 in airstrikes on Kharayeb, and a Lebanese soldier in an airstrike near a military base in the Bekaa Valley.
And also from today’s Times:
Mr. Pazner, the Israeli spokesman, when asked about the attack on the convoy, insisted that the Israeli Army did not aim at civilians. “This is our pride, that we only hit Hezbollah,” he said.
So let’s get this straight. UNIFIL states that the IDF gave permission for the convey to proceed to Beirut. Pazner does not dispute this (though an unnamed Israeli source did dispute this contention yesterday). But someone else in the IDF hierarchy decided there was a “suspicion” it might contain Hezbollah fighters. Suspicion? How about proof? If you want to break your word and kill people in a civilian convoy you’ve promised to avoid, you do so merely on a suspicion it contains insurgents? This is perfidious beyond belief.
Today’s Lebanese death count clearly gives the lie to Pazner’s “pride” that Israel doesn’t kill civilians. The vast percentage of Lebanese killed by IAF missiles are civilian:
In Lebanon, the Higher Relief Council, the government agency compiling casualty reports, says that 1,056 Lebanese have been killed, the vast majority of them civilians and about a third of them children. It says that 3,600 people have been injured. Because of the chaotic conditions here, it is impossible to independently verify the figures. They could well be higher because relief workers hampered by road damage and shelling have not been able to reach many villages where bodies may be buried under rubble.
If Israel cared about civilians one iota it could easily kill less of them. The IDF is beyond the pale and the norms of international law when it comes to its lethal actions against Lebanese civilians. It’s too bad you can’t prosecute government spokespeople before international tribunals for lying through their teeth.
I am sure glad being a Judaeo-phile doesn’t mean you have to be a Zion-ophile in the sense I see coming out these days.
It is with tears that I consider the actions in Lebanon and Israel–and iraq, and Washington, and Afghanistan….what is most unbecoming of us as Anthrophiles.
All the anti——isms are easier to understand when you consider the misbehavior our all those who adhere to –isms of one sort or the other.
May God help us to come to some more gentle notions of what Zion is really all about.
Who shall ascend to the Mount? Who shall enter into his place of sanctity. He that has clean hands and a pure heart. –Psalm 24. I will lift up mine eyes to the Hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord. Psalm 121. …His truth endureth forever…his mercy is efficacious. Psalm 117.
Somehow I think we’re going astray as humans. Maybe we need to go to the Psalms and reevaluate what Zion is all about: Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike.
Richard, I don’t what to be inflammatory, but when the likes of what came out today in the new you share, it becomes difficult to maintain dispassionate objectivity.
Jim
This may sound bitter, but it seems to me that since Israel had killed thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians by the fifth week of the 1982 invasion, and killed a total of 19,000 that whole summer, then this summer’s butchery is certainly much less than it could have been. It’s way too much for me, mind you. I am devastated and sickened by the death in my father’s homeland. But I do remember how very many people Israel killed in 1982, and I realize that to a sick mind, this month’s carnage may look like “progress”. “Surgical precision.” Etc.
In fact, I think it’s just the usual denial people live in so they can do their jobs, no matter how awful.
My “IDF Rules for Arab Civilians’ addresses this confused contradictory attitude.
Vicious satire has become my refuge and consolation. I know it’s bad for me, like drinking rotgut, but right now I just can’t stop.
In the name of god, who of his creators was to hear the praying sounds of wives and mothers, the screams of orphans scared children, the sounds of ghosts in the desserted homes, to see the murdered children, women, babies, old people….To smell the smell of bombs, weapons, crops………
For I shall speak to whom shall listen, where is the humanity in you????????
Where is the civilisation???? Go ask the frensh, who fought for justice and independence, see them in the great heavens, let them judge the shame of her holy lands silence, or the noble britian the center of civilisation, or the chinese let them see the noble and honourable death of mwariors. To them who worship god let me hear their bible, Toraaht, Zabour,and leaders say that what happened wasnt’t a disaster, let them be shamed of their silent worshipers…..