Monday, July 31, 2006

"If You Haven't Left, You're Hezbollah"

By Dahr Jamail

SIDON, Lebanon, Jul 30th

The Israeli attack on Qana has taken the biggest toll of the war, but it is only one of countless lethal attacks on civilians in Lebanon. Large numbers fled the south after Israelis dropped leaflets warning of attacks. Others have been unable to leave, often because they have not found the means.

The Israelis have taken that to mean that they are therefore Hezbollah. Israeli justice minister Haim Ramon announced on Israeli army radioThursday that "all those in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah." Justifying the collective punishment of people in southern Lebanon,Ramon added, "In order to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should beflattened by the Israeli air force before ground troops move in."

This policy explains the large number of wounded in the hospitals of Sidon in the south. Wounded people from southern Lebanon narrate countless instances of indiscriminate attacks by the Israeli military.

Thirty-six-year-old Khuder Gazali, an ambulance driver whose arm was blown off by an Israeli rocket, told IPS that his ambulance was hit while trying to rescue civilians whose home had just been bombed. "Last Sunday people came to us and asked us to go help some people after their home was bombed by the Israelis," he said from his bed in Hamoudi Hospital in Sidon, the largest in southern Lebanon. "We found one of them, without his legs, lying in a garden, so we tried to take him to the nearest hospital."

On way to the hospital an Israeli Apache helicopter hit his ambulance with a rocket, severely injuring him and the four people in the back ofthe vehicle, he said."So then another ambulance tried to reach us to rescue us, but it too was bombed by an Apache, killing everyone inside it," he said. "Then it was a third ambulance which finally managed to rescue us."Khuder, who had shrapnel wounds all over his body, said "this is a crime, and I want people in the west to know the Israelis do not differentiate between innocent people and fighters. They are committing acts of evil.. They are attacking civilians, and they are criminals."

At Labib Medical Centre in Sidon, countless survivors of Israeli bombardment had similar stories to tell. Sixteen-year-old Ibrahim al-Hama told IPS that he and his friends were hit by an Israeli bomb while they were swimming in a river near avillage north of Tyre. "Two of my friends were killed, along with a woman," said al-Hama. "Why did they bomb us?"

In an adjacent room, a man whose wife and two small children were recovering from wounds suffered in Israeli bombing told IPS that they had left their village near the border because the bombings had become fierce, and the Israeli military had dropped leaflets ordering them tol eave. "We ran out of food, and the children were hungry, so they left with my wife and her sister in a car which followed a Red Crescent ambulance,while another car took the two other sisters of my wife," he said. "They reached Kafra village, and an F-16 bombed the car with my wife's two sisters. They are dead."

Such killings have been common throughout the south. On July 23, a family left their village after Israelis dropped leaflets ordering them out. Their car carried a white flag, but was still bombed by an Israeli plane. Three in the car were killed. The same day, three of 19 passengers in a van heading away from the southern village Tiri were killed when it was bombed by an Israeli plane. A 43-year-old man from Durish Zhair village south of Tyre lay at the Labib Medical Centre with multiple shrapnel wounds and half his body blackened by fire."Please tell them to stop using white phosphorous," he said. "The Israelis must stop these attacks. Do not allow the Israelis to continue murdering us." He and his family were bombed in their home.

Zhair said his family were scattered in hospitals and refugee centres in Sidon and Beirut. But in the hospital hallway outside his room, head nurse of the hospital Gemma Sayer said "all of his family is dead. We cannot tell him yet because he is so badly injured." United Nations forces have been targeted again by the Israelis.

Two soldiers with the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon were wounded after their observation post was damaged in an Israeli air strike. Last week, an Israeli missile killed four UN observers; an attack that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described as "apparently deliberate."Thousands of angry protestors stormed the UN building in Beirut Sunday after at least 34 children and 20 adults were killed inside a shelter targeted by an Israeli air strike in the southern town Qana.

As Israeli military drones buzzed over the capital city, smoke was seen rising from the building as UN troops struggled to control the crowds. Efforts to evacuate the wounded in Qana have been hindered because roads around the town have been destroyed by air strikes.

The Israeli military refused to take responsibility for the Qana deaths, because they said Hezbollah had used the village to launch rockets. Lebanese President Emile Lahoud told reporters Sunday that the Qana attack was a "disgrace" and that there was no chance for peace talks until an immediate ceasefire was called. "Israel's leaders think of nothing but destruction, they do not think of peace."Prime Minister Fuad Siniora described the bombing in Qana as a "war crime."

At least 600 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 51 Israelis havebeen killed since the conflict began.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can thank Hesbollah and the pussies in the Lebanese government who let hezbollah hijack their country.

Instead you blame Israel for retaliating for the kidnapping of its citizens from its territory and the indiscriminate rocketing of Israeli cities.

Pretty sick picture - and you make excuses for it.

Look in the mirror!

Anonymous said...

http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/was-the-qana-massacre-staged-by-hezbollah
Was The “Qana Massacre” Staged By Hezbollah? | Sweetness & Light
http://tinyurl.com/zpzwg

Anonymous said...

davboz said...

http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/was-the-qana-massacre-staged-by-hezbollah
Was The “Qana Massacre” Staged By Hezbollah? | Sweetness & Light
http://tinyurl.com/zpzwg

Davboz the above is a lie. But the Below is Truth to the core..

The 2 Israeli Arab Children that were bombed and killed in Nazereth it is said that the Missle came from Nazereth Elit which is the Jewish upper Nazereth. The Arabs live in Lower Nazereth at the bottom..Of the Valley. It sounds like the Yehude is trying to Ignite strife among the Israeli Arabs as well they want them out of Israel as well. They will do anything to get rid of any Arab wether they are Christian, Muslim or Druze..This is not a religious war this is an Ethnic war. Also this is typical of the Yehude because the truth is getting out about what the yehude have done to innocent Muslims and Chrisitians in Lubenan. They want the media and communication stopped so the outside world want know the truth. They want Lying Fox and Lying CNN to spread blashemous lies like they have been doing..

Anonymous said...

Lebs, you should have realized that disarming Hezb was a matter of life and death to you. You didn't and decided to let Israel deal with that problem. Now they are doing so. Don't bitch about what they're doing or why--you knew the problem had to be taken care of and you were too scared/lazy/cowardly to do it. So when someone else comes along and does it in a way you don't like, there's no one to blame but yourselves. Got that? YOURSELVES, LEBS, YOURSELVES!!!! YOU'RE THE ONES WHO LET HEZB DRAG YOU INTO THIS!

Want peace with Israel? Disarm Hezb. And as for why ambulances get blown up as targets, the Israelis know that Hezb respects NOTHING in the way of rules of war. They've been taught that lesson over and over again and they've finally learned it. When Hezb finally starts fighting in the open and not hiding behind Leb civilians maybe there will be fewer Leb civilian deaths. Until then, their blood is on Hezb and that's international law. That cartoon going around the Web showing an Israeli soldier standing in front of a woman and child protecting them while being shot at by a Hezb terrorist hiding behind a woman holding a child is dead on target and worth a million words.

Ibrahamav said...

It is starting to appear that Hezbullah did have something to do with the dead of Qana.

More Misleading Reporting by Washington Post Reporters

On Tuesday night Israeli forces launched a raid in the
northern Lebanese town of Baalbek in which they entered what
was described as a "hospital" and took five Hezbollah
members prisoner. Yesterday's article cited above devoted
six paragraphs to this raid, the first five of which were
misleading and designed to make Israel look bad. They
depicted Israel as having attacked a hospital and killed
many innocent civilians. The last of the six paragraphs,
almost as an aside, slipped in a few facts that amounted to
a complete reversal. Here's the way it was set up:

paragraph 1: Tuesday night Israeli special forces launched a
"raid ... on a hospital in the northern Lebanese town of
Baalbek. Lebanese officials and witnesses said 24 civilians
had been killed by Israeli fire, while a top Israeli
commander said five Hezbollah fighters had been taken
captive and 10 killed."

paragraph 2: "Halutz said the Israeli raid ... had been
conducted to demonstrate that Israeli forces could strike
anywhere. It began ... with a large gun battle at the Dar
al-Hikma Hospital on the edge of the city...."

paragraph 3: "Other raids on a half-dozen sites around
Baalbek quickly followed...."

paragraph 4: "The road from the entrance to Baalbek to the
hospital was littered with more than 20 strafed cars, the
charred bodies of their drivers still in the front seat,
witnesses reported by telephone Wednesday morning." Keep in
mind that this is the road leading to the supposed
"hospital" and readers of the article will at this point
still be under the impression that these are supposed
"civilians."

Ibrahamav said...

paragraph 5: "Eleven other civilian motorists were killed
in their cars as they drove along the road to the hospital,
according to witnesses and local officials, who provided
names for all the victims." Again, this is the road to the
supposed "hospital" and readers of this article are being
explicitly told by the reporters that these are "civilian
motorists."

paragraph 6 - The Revelation: "Halutz said the hospital
building was being used as a Hezbollah logistics base and
storage site for weapons. Hezbollah fighters prohibited
reporters from approaching the hospital, which they said had
been emptied of patients at the beginning of the war. Local
officials said a number of Hezbollah fighters and guards
were inside."

What should have been called a former hospital or at least
made clear right from the start was not being used as a
hospital, was reported as an attack by Israel on a
"hospital." By Hezbollah's own admission there had been no
patients in it since the beginning of the war. The supposed
"civilians" killed were on the roads leading to the
hospital:

"...road from the entrance to Baalbek to the hospital..."

"civilian motorists were killed in their cars as they drove
along the road to the hospital"

Who were these "people," and why were they on the road to
the hospital? Were they simply innocent civilians who didn't
know Hezbollah had taken over the hospital and were driving
there to seek treatment? Or were they Hezbollah fighters
who, when the alarm was sounded that an Israeli raid was in
progress, were hightailing it to what Hezbollah, by its own
admission, indicated was a former hospital being used as a
Hezbollah base? This appears to be one more of many
instances of Post reporters misleading their readers by
portraying Hezbollah fighters, vehicles, buildings,
infrastructure and strongholds as civilian. This is
confirmed by the IDF, which reported on its web site that
Baalbek is a Hezbollah stronghold located close to the
Syrian border, that the target of the raid was "Hezbollah
targets, infrastructure, and logistics," that no civilians
were killed in the operation and that Hezbollah fighters
outside the hospital, some of whom were responding as
reinforcements, were killed.