Photo: Israeli children happily write messages to the Lebanese. What a dreadful indoctrination of a nation of children. I call it child abuse.
There is no excuse for this.
"In the case of crime, you try to find the perpetrators, you bring them to justice, you try them. You don't kill innocent civilians.
Like if somebody robs my house and I think the guy who did it is probably in the neighborhood across the street, I don't go out with an assault rifle and kill everyone in that neighborhood. That's not the way you deal with crime, whether it's a small crime like this one or really massive one like the US terrorist war against Nicaragua, even worse ones and others in between."
-- Noam Chomsky, 2001
After the Biblical Flood, God promised he wouldn't use collective retribution again. That story has been told for thousands of years. Jewish people as a group have suffered from and railed against collective punishment.
So, Who are these monsters who are slaughtering the innocent? God's People?
Photo: The Lebanese child who got the message.
There is no excuse for this.
But there was a plan.
The American GOP Neo-con PNAC has been discussed before.
And a war started by proxy is as good as a war started by lies.
The American taxpayers will pay dearly for what is happening in Lebanon today.
And the sheep will be shorn when they go to hell for having elected Bush and his rubber stamp congress.
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An atrocity that only aids the cause of Hizbollah
Published: 31 July 2006
The Independent, UK
Cana is a town implanted on the hearts of Christian Europe. The marriage scene, which was the site of Christ's first miracle, turning water into wine, was a much-loved theme for artists of the Renaissance. Sadly, Qana, as it is now known, has gained a new and very different fame today, as the site of an atrocity. Moreover, what took place there is a symbol of everything that is most wicked and foolish about the American and British-backed war against Hizbollah in Lebanon.
It is hypocrisy for Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, to claim that the dozens of dead civilians, of whom many were children, trapped in the apartment block in Qana, had time to get out of the way before Israeli jets bombed their hideaway. In its scattergun approach to dealing with Hizbollah militants over the past 19 days Israel has deliberately bombed Lebanon's roads and petrol stations, making escape from the war zone difficult. In any case, where were these people supposed to have gone?
Why the pamphlets were a phony cover for the atrocity:
Ten years ago the citizens of Qana (Cana) were slaughtered in a way that must have convinced them to stay put this time... and they were massacred again...
From Terrorism & Tyranny (2003):
On April 18, 1996 the IDF artillery shelled a United Nations compound near Qana that was overflowing with 800 Lebanese civilians “who had fled from their villages on IDF orders.” The barrage killed 102 refugees and wounded hundreds of others. Hezbollah guerillas had fired Katyusha rockets a few hundred yards from the compound. A spokesman for United Nations forces in Lebanon quickly denounced the attack as a “massacre.” Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, the commander of the Israeli offensive, insisted that the shelling of the camp could not possibly have been deliberate because “that thing cannot happen in a democratic country like Israel.” Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres declared that “the sole guilty party, still on the ground, is Hezbollah. . . . We are dealing here with a horrible, cynical and irresponsible organization. Hezbollah’s grand strategy all along has been to hide behind the backs of civilians.” A United Nations investigation concluded that “it is unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of gross technical and/or procedural errors.” The IDF insisted that it was unaware that the camp was chock full of refugees; the UN report retorted: “Contrary to repeated denials, two Israeli helicopters
and a remotely piloted vehicle [drone] were present in the Qana area at the time of the shelling.” An Amnesty International report concluded that the IDF “intentionally
attacked the UN compound.” A few weeks after the attack, two of the Israeli gunners involved in the shelling were interviewed by a Jerusalem newsweekly. One of the gunners commented: “In a war, these things happen. . . . It’s just a bunch of Arabs.” A second gunner said that, after bombarding the refugee camp, a commander told the gunners that “we were shooting well and to continue this way and that Arabs, you know, there are millions of them.” Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit, who had fought at Qana 18 years earlier while serving in the IDF, observed: “An Israeli massacre can be distinguished in most respects from an Arab massacre in that it is not malicious, not carried out on orders from High Above and does not serve any strategic purpose. . . . An Israeli massacre usually occurs after we sanction an unjustifiable degree of violence so that at some point we lose the ability to control that violence. Thus, in most cases, an Israeli massacre is a kind of work accident.”
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Howl
by Nicholas von Hoffman
Guernica, Again
[posted online on July 20, 2006]
The Nation
It's Guernica, again. The photos out of Lebanon and Gaza have the same excruciating quality of pain and despair as the mother with her dead child in Picasso's painting. The terrified horse, the body parts, decimation and death abstracted are made imperishably awful.
Pablo Picasso began work on his mural Guernica within three weeks of the destruction of the town from which the painting derives its name. It was completed not many weeks later in a fury of horror born of the event.
Monday, April 26, 1937, was a market day in Guernica, a Basque town in Spain, then wracked by civil war. As the town was filling up with peasants from the hinterland, warplanes appeared in the sky. What happened next was described by correspondent George Steer of the Times of London:
"Guernica, the most ancient town of the Basques and the centre of their cultural tradition, was completely destroyed yesterday afternoon by insurgent air raiders. The bombardment of this open town far behind the lines occupied precisely three hours and a quarter, during which a powerful fleet of aeroplanes consisting of three German types, Junkers and Heinkel bombers and Heinkel fighters, did not cease unloading on the town bombs weighing from 1,000lb. downwards and, it is calculated, more than 3,000 two-pounder aluminium incendiary projectiles. The fighters, meanwhile, plunged low from above the centre of the town to machine-gun those of the civilian population who had taken refuge in the fields.
"In the form of its execution and the scale of the destruction it wrought, no less than in the selection of its objective, the raid on Guernica is unparalleled in military history. Guernica was not a military objective. A factory producing war material lay outside the town and was untouched. So were two barracks some distance from the town. The town lay far behind the lines. The object of the bombardment was seemingly the demoralization of the civil population and the destruction of the cradle of the Basque race."
The attack from the sky by Adolf Hitler's Condor Legion was unparalleled in 1937. Doubtless the Nazis, like the Israelis now, thought terror raining down from the sky would break the spirit of the people. Hardly. Seventy years later, some Basques are still fighting. What they learned from that day was to copy the tactics: kill civilians through ETA, the Basque terror organization.
Three years later, German bombers dropped out of the clouds to destroy the English cathedral town of Coventry. The plan, more than likely, envisioned England's spirit cracking at the destruction of this landmark building and the annihilation of the ancient town in which it sat.
Military theorists and historians came to believe that slaughtering civilian populations via air attacks does not demoralize them but more often than not unites them in hatred of their killers. Morality aside, attacking civilian populations seldom succeeds in accomplishing what the attackers are after.
The Israelis have come up with a new approach to targeting civilians as they go after Hamas and Hezbollah: kill 'em all but kill 'em slowly. The bombings by Germany of Guernica and Coventry and by Americans of Dresden and Tokyo happened in a night. By the morning, the deed was done.
The Israeli Defense Forces apparently believe that if the work is done a bit at time over weeks, there will be less fuss and fewer incriminating photos. Less for a present-day Picasso to memorialize. Naturally a few NGOs like Doctors Without Borders will complain, but only Unitarians and other peace-loving people will pay them mind.
The Israeli approach is to X out the airports, the roads and the harbors, thereby trapping the prey. The trick is to cut off the food and medicine. Ruin the electrical grid, destroy the water system and wreck the sewage disposal facilities, and then sit back and wait for their enemies--and the innocent among them--to perish.
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Meanwhile, back in Gaza
by Philip Rizk
SojoMail 7-26-2006
I sat in the courtyard of Jamal's parent's house. We had just finished a cup of Arabic coffee. Jamal was sharing his heart: "If someone digs a 400-meter tunnel to carry out an attack, we need to think about what would cause them to do that."
The attack Jamal was referring to was the capture of 19-year-old Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on June 25 at an army outpost at the Gaza-Israel border. He continues to be held by Palestinian militants. His captors demand the release of children and women from Israeli prisons.
I have never met Shalit, but I know others who serve in Israel's army. They have rarely entered the Occupied Palestinian Territories and if so, either at a young age when Palestine was more accessible to them, or while carrying out an army mission. They are fulfilling their mandatory military duties and believe they are defending their nation from the enemy that lies in wait to destroy it. Rarely have they had the chance to encounter this unseen enemy, to touch his wounds, to look into her eyes, to understand their suffering.
In a recent meeting I had with a White House confidant I was informed that the case of Shalit is of utmost priority in Washington. When I asked how the situation on the ground would change if the soldier were released, he asserted that Israel would be willing to negotiate. I didn't believe him; I will tell you why.
The statement Jamal made over Arabic coffee reflects the Palestinian psyche. What are the events that lead up to the abduction of an Israeli soldier four weeks ago? Since its democratic election - certified by The Carter Center - the new Hamas government has been severely boycotted. All Western aid to the Palestinian Authority has been cut off. Consequently, government employees have been unpaid for five months. In Gaza they make up more than 30% of the workforce. All imports and exports to and from Gaza are routed through a checkpoint controlled by Israel. Since the beginning of the year it has been closed to imports for nearly half the time and closed nearly 80% of the year to exports. The Gazan economy is in shambles; 73% of Gazans lack access to basic foodstuffs. Medicines have run out in hospitals and clinics and are only replenished temporarily when Israel allows aid through the border. For 1.4 million Palestinians electricity is limited to six to eight hours a day, while urban areas have water for only two to three hours daily. All this will not change with the release of one soldier.
(NOTE: Israel's ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people and their continuing expansion of Jewish settlements into the West Bank foments extremist reactions to them. When Israel pulled 8,000 settlers out of Gaza (compensating each family $400,000), they put 12,000 more settlers into the West Bank. Israel confiscates Palestinian homes and land without giving them any compensation. Israel's 30-foot wall under construction surrounds key Palestinian towns, and is turning them into prisons. Palestinians have lost access to their farm lands, to jobs outside of their towns (their movements are so heavily restricted), and in many cases to relatives who live in other parts of the West Bank. The contrast is striking between the walled-in Palestinian towns and the many Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The former look like two-thirds world countries (often dry, shops closed down, unemployment, rubble from Israeli demolished buildings to make way for the wall), and the latter looking like American developments with beautiful gardens, trees, swimming pools, shopping centers and state of the art schools. Water is rationed so that the Israelis are given access to 80% of the water and the Palestinians, though their population is larger, are rationed only 20% of the water. The U.S. gives enormous sums to Israel but now blocks aid to the Palestinians.
The U.S. has approved new delivery of heavy weapons to Israel (e.g. 100 GBU-28 bunker busters bombs). The U.S. is once more showing that is not capable to bring a real ceasefire nor freedom agreements rather than it is putting his whole effort in his complete partisanship with the unjust government of Israel.)
With a U.S. policy in the Middle East that ostensibly pushes for "democratization," Palestine must be a thorn in its side. The West must continue to expect Hamas to recognize Israel and renounce violence, while having the same expectations of Israel - to recognize Palestine and to renounce violence. But the comments of my American conversation partner demonstrate that decision makers in Washington have not noticed the shedding of innocent blood in Gaza, neither before nor after the fateful abduction.
Since Shalit's capture, 110 Gazans have been killed in Israeli attacks, according to Agence France Presse, the majority of them innocent bystanders including children and women. On July 13 the U.S. vetoed a Security Council ruling that Israel's attacks on Gaza were too extreme. Why is the life of one Israeli soldier more valuable than that of the more than 100 Palestinian civilians who have been killed since his capture? Why wasn't the U.S. taking serious action to end the dire conditions of Gaza prior to the capture of Gilad Shalit?
Since June 25 one soldier has entered hell. The inhabitants of Gaza live there every day.
Philip Rizk is an Egyptian-German Christian working with the Foundation for Reconciliation in Gaza.
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