Deep Blade Journal

Intentional accidents

Following its ususal practice (adopted by the US in Iraq), Israel ignores the Geneva Conventions and targets ambulances. See Dahr Jamail for details about this photo.

According to Human Rights Watch (via Angry Arab), a new report, Fatal Strikes, Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon,

documents serious violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war) by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Lebanon between July 12 and July 27, 2006, as well as the July 30 attack in Qana. During this period, the IDF killed an estimated 400 people, the vast majority of them civilians, and that number climbed to over 500 by the time this report went to print. The Israeli government claims it is taking all possible measures to minimize civilian harm, but the cases documented here reveal a systematic failure by the IDF to distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Since the start of the conflict, Israeli forces have consistently launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military gain but excessive civilian cost. In dozens of attacks, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some cases, the timing and intensity of the attack, the absence of a military target, as well as return strikes on rescuers, suggest that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians.

Perhap Gwynne Dyer should peruse this information, when pondering that awful-looking “40:1 kill ratio”.

While Israel is on a rampage through Lebanon, Roger Payne points to the latest “offical” word on that other war:

The British ambassador to Iraq has returned home, but William Patey’s last official confidential diplomatic telegram provides…“a “devastating official assessment of the prospects for a peaceful Iraq”… the pessimism reflected in the leaked memo “stands in stark contrast to the public rhetoric”

This leaked memo joins a parade of behind-the-scenes reports and cables about what is really going on in Iraq–nothing short of a complete breakdown of the society and a civil war spiraling out of control.

This should be blockbuster news because it reveals that the rosy public rhetoric President Bush likes to use on Iraq is contradicted internally within the occupation coalition. Will the mainstream media treat this news with any urgency? Not if they treat it like they have before, when similar information became availble.

Israelis merciless

Before watermarked “Google Digital Globe”, after watermarked “Digital Globe”; see http://bloggingbeirut.com/ for more information

To her credit, CNN’s Paula Zahn last night did show this massive destruction of civilian areas of South Beirut by Israeli bombardment. But, naturally, Zahn had to speak for Israel, “And, of course, the Israelis would argue that they had actionable intelligence that would make them want to bomb that part of Beirut, because that’s where Hezbollah is operating from,” and “But the Israelis would argue, they wouldn’t be targeting these parts of Beirut if Hezbollah wasn’t operating among the civilian population. You have to concede that Hezbollah is blended in to that part of life in southern Beirut,” in response to a desperate Lebanese official.

Last night Zahn did not mention Article 33 of the 4th Geneva Convention prohibiting collective punishment. Her Lebanese guest did point out that, “Article 50 of Protocol 1 of Geneva Conventions, the presence of individuals within the population which doesn’t come within the definition of civilians doesn’t deprive the population of its civilian character.”

In my opinion, this is far beyond a “war on Hezbollah.” The Israeli aggression is a salvo in the US neoconservative plan to apply US power to ethnically cleanse and reshape the world to neoconservative liking.