Photostory: The Qana Massacre
Arjan El Fassed, Electronic Intifada | 30.07.2006 19:07 | Lebanon War 2006 | Anti-militarism | Repression | World
Today, when Israeli war planes attacked Qana, at least 56 civilians, including over 30 children, were killed. It is the deadliest single strike since Israel unleashed its war on Lebanon.
When Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982, using the latest and most sophisticated US weaponry, the human and material cost was devastating. Tens of thousands civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands were made homeless. Over 80 percent of the casualties were civilians, Lebanese and Palestinian.
Today, when Israeli war planes attacked Qana, at least 51 civilians, including at least 22 children, were killed. It is the deadliest single strike since Israel unleashed its war on Lebanon. Israel, the US and several European governments are in no rush to reach a ceasefire. Dozens of other villages in the region around the southern port city of Tyre were also bombarded for two hours overnight with fire from the Israeli navy, air force and artillery. Israeli planes also tore up the Masnaa border crossing into Syria, leading to the closure of the main Damascus-Beirut route.
Israel's attack on Qana's residents came shortly after rejecting a UN call for a 72-hour humanitarian truce to allow the delivery of relief items to Lebanon. UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland had appealed for a truce to allow casualties to be removed and food and medicine to be sent into the war zone, saying one third of the casualties were children.
The Israeli military says Hizbollah bore responsibility for using the town to fire rockets at Israel. "We were attacking launchers that were firing missiles," said Captain Jacob Dallal, an Israeli army spokesman. However, the principle of military necessity cannot excuse the massive destruction of buildings and the number of civilian casualties which result from Israel's assault on Qana.
Diplomats must wonder at what point do the number and catastrophic consequences of 'mistakes' allow for the conclusion that Israel has been indiscriminate in its acts of violence. Israeli bombardments have been directed at targets regardless of the consequences for civilians. There can be no doubt that Israel uses fragmentation weapons in Lebanon. The use of these weapons in an environment where there is a high concentration of civilians, the widespread impact and destructive effects of these weapons and thir delayed-action nature also point to the total disregard of human lives.
It is not the first time Israel attacked Qana. Ten years have passed since 105 Lebanese civilians were killed by an Israeli artillery barrage on a UN compound in Qana. As such Israeli attacks on UN posts are not new. Two Indian UN peacekeepers were wounded and four UN military observers were killed last week in an Israeli strike on their observation posts.
On April 18, 1996, when Shimon Peres was Israel's Prime Minister, approximately 800 civilians were sheltering in the UN base. Most residents of Qana and neighboring villages had fled north a week earlier seeking refuge in Beirut. Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk reported:
"It was a massacre. Not since Sabra and Chatila had I seen the innocent slaughtered like this. The Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their heads or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disemboweled. there were well over a hundred of them. A baby lay without a head. The Israeli shells had scythed through them as they lay in the United Nations shelter, believing that they were safe under the world's protection. Like the Muslims of Srebrenica, the Muslims of Qana were wrong."
The absence of precautions prior to the attack in close proximity to the town of Qana and the UN base located there, as well as the means and methods of attack chosen by the Israeli army (a sustained artillery barrage without lines of sight to the target), put Israel in violation of international humanitarian law.
Like Israel's assaults today, the US administration gave the green light to Israel's 1996 campaign against Southern Lebanon. The Clinton administration tried unsuccessfully to suppress a UN report blaming Israel for the massacre. On April 25, 1996, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution, characterising Israel's actions during the "Grapes of Wrath" offensive as "grave violations of international laws relating to the protection of civilians during war." The US and Israel vigorously contended that the attack had been an unfortunate mistake, and the story gradually disappeared from all but the memories of those civilians, UNIFIL personnel and journalists who had witnessed the carnage at Qana.
Leading up to the Qana massacre, 17 villages had been flattened, over a half million people had been rendered homeless, more than 200 had been killed, and hundreds were wounded.
The tragedy at Qana today is that this is not unique in its general features. Israel's wars on Lebanon have been attended by violence, death and destruction of enormous proportions. Israel does not have any grounds to rely on the provision of the Charter of the United Nations concerning self-defence, while the means used to effect Lebanon's invasion totally lack proportionality.
Israel's kind of war effort obliterates the very idea of innocence as fully in its own way as does nuclear war. The irony here is very great because it is in these conflicts where the need for law is the greatest - that is, where battlefield tactics often tend to concentrate their firepower on civilians, civilian sanctuaries (hospital, churches, schools) and cultural centres, and to ignore the distinction between military and non-military. Governments that designate their enemies as 'terrorists' or 'criminals' treat their conflicts as outside the law.
In 1948 the nations of the world adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides that 'if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, human rights should be protected by the rule of law'.
Israel's use of terror has been qualitatively and quantitatively much higher than that of the Lebanese and Palestinians. The number of civilians killed as the result of actions by Israel, both before its creation and after, has far exceeded the number of Israeli civilians killed by others.
Dehumanization by way of political language has an anaesthetizing effect and it paralyses normal human empathy and disrupts moral inhibitions. The predominant terminology employed by Israeli spokespersons, the American administration (and Foxnews for that matter) is an additional factor in creating conditions in which human rights violations and gross violations of humanitarian law, including war crimes are tolerated.
The level of what has been tolerated has been moved a step again. Every minute the world remains silent and inactive the level has been set further. More is tolerated. Someone has to stop this. Someone has to take action. Before it is too late.
- Arjan El Fassed is one of the co-founders of The Electronic Intifada and Electronic Lebanon.
http://www.electronicintifada.net/lebanon/
- Photos reposted from As'aad Abukhalil's Angry Arab News Service
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
Today, when Israeli war planes attacked Qana, at least 51 civilians, including at least 22 children, were killed. It is the deadliest single strike since Israel unleashed its war on Lebanon. Israel, the US and several European governments are in no rush to reach a ceasefire. Dozens of other villages in the region around the southern port city of Tyre were also bombarded for two hours overnight with fire from the Israeli navy, air force and artillery. Israeli planes also tore up the Masnaa border crossing into Syria, leading to the closure of the main Damascus-Beirut route.
Israel's attack on Qana's residents came shortly after rejecting a UN call for a 72-hour humanitarian truce to allow the delivery of relief items to Lebanon. UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland had appealed for a truce to allow casualties to be removed and food and medicine to be sent into the war zone, saying one third of the casualties were children.
The Israeli military says Hizbollah bore responsibility for using the town to fire rockets at Israel. "We were attacking launchers that were firing missiles," said Captain Jacob Dallal, an Israeli army spokesman. However, the principle of military necessity cannot excuse the massive destruction of buildings and the number of civilian casualties which result from Israel's assault on Qana.
Diplomats must wonder at what point do the number and catastrophic consequences of 'mistakes' allow for the conclusion that Israel has been indiscriminate in its acts of violence. Israeli bombardments have been directed at targets regardless of the consequences for civilians. There can be no doubt that Israel uses fragmentation weapons in Lebanon. The use of these weapons in an environment where there is a high concentration of civilians, the widespread impact and destructive effects of these weapons and thir delayed-action nature also point to the total disregard of human lives.
It is not the first time Israel attacked Qana. Ten years have passed since 105 Lebanese civilians were killed by an Israeli artillery barrage on a UN compound in Qana. As such Israeli attacks on UN posts are not new. Two Indian UN peacekeepers were wounded and four UN military observers were killed last week in an Israeli strike on their observation posts.
On April 18, 1996, when Shimon Peres was Israel's Prime Minister, approximately 800 civilians were sheltering in the UN base. Most residents of Qana and neighboring villages had fled north a week earlier seeking refuge in Beirut. Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk reported:
"It was a massacre. Not since Sabra and Chatila had I seen the innocent slaughtered like this. The Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their heads or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disemboweled. there were well over a hundred of them. A baby lay without a head. The Israeli shells had scythed through them as they lay in the United Nations shelter, believing that they were safe under the world's protection. Like the Muslims of Srebrenica, the Muslims of Qana were wrong."
The absence of precautions prior to the attack in close proximity to the town of Qana and the UN base located there, as well as the means and methods of attack chosen by the Israeli army (a sustained artillery barrage without lines of sight to the target), put Israel in violation of international humanitarian law.
Like Israel's assaults today, the US administration gave the green light to Israel's 1996 campaign against Southern Lebanon. The Clinton administration tried unsuccessfully to suppress a UN report blaming Israel for the massacre. On April 25, 1996, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution, characterising Israel's actions during the "Grapes of Wrath" offensive as "grave violations of international laws relating to the protection of civilians during war." The US and Israel vigorously contended that the attack had been an unfortunate mistake, and the story gradually disappeared from all but the memories of those civilians, UNIFIL personnel and journalists who had witnessed the carnage at Qana.
Leading up to the Qana massacre, 17 villages had been flattened, over a half million people had been rendered homeless, more than 200 had been killed, and hundreds were wounded.
The tragedy at Qana today is that this is not unique in its general features. Israel's wars on Lebanon have been attended by violence, death and destruction of enormous proportions. Israel does not have any grounds to rely on the provision of the Charter of the United Nations concerning self-defence, while the means used to effect Lebanon's invasion totally lack proportionality.
Israel's kind of war effort obliterates the very idea of innocence as fully in its own way as does nuclear war. The irony here is very great because it is in these conflicts where the need for law is the greatest - that is, where battlefield tactics often tend to concentrate their firepower on civilians, civilian sanctuaries (hospital, churches, schools) and cultural centres, and to ignore the distinction between military and non-military. Governments that designate their enemies as 'terrorists' or 'criminals' treat their conflicts as outside the law.
In 1948 the nations of the world adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides that 'if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, human rights should be protected by the rule of law'.
Israel's use of terror has been qualitatively and quantitatively much higher than that of the Lebanese and Palestinians. The number of civilians killed as the result of actions by Israel, both before its creation and after, has far exceeded the number of Israeli civilians killed by others.
Dehumanization by way of political language has an anaesthetizing effect and it paralyses normal human empathy and disrupts moral inhibitions. The predominant terminology employed by Israeli spokespersons, the American administration (and Foxnews for that matter) is an additional factor in creating conditions in which human rights violations and gross violations of humanitarian law, including war crimes are tolerated.
The level of what has been tolerated has been moved a step again. Every minute the world remains silent and inactive the level has been set further. More is tolerated. Someone has to stop this. Someone has to take action. Before it is too late.
- Arjan El Fassed is one of the co-founders of The Electronic Intifada and Electronic Lebanon.
http://www.electronicintifada.net/lebanon/ - Photos reposted from As'aad Abukhalil's Angry Arab News Service
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/
Arjan El Fassed, Electronic Intifada
Comments
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Blair offers us a world devoid of all life- will we really choose this?
30.07.2006 22:54
The level of what has been tolerated has been moved a step again. Every minute the world remains silent and inactive the level has been set further. More is tolerated. Someone has to stop this. Someone has to take action. Before it is too late.
UNQUOTE
When Blair ordered the GENOCIDE of Fallujah (Bush had refused over and over to fully destroy the city, so in the end Blair was forced to move British troops into support positions around Fallujah, and start a major propaganda campaign to try to put Bush on the spot. Even so, Bush waited until his second election was a confirmed win, before sending in extermination squads) he was preparing for the day when Lebanon could be destroyed.
Lebanon in its turn is intended to act as a model for Blair's massively greater genocide of Iran (when millions will be butchered).
When the cold-war ended, the Human race stood at a cross roads. The last of the post WW2 excuses for depraved military planning and weapons systems had gone. Man was free to walk the path of moral purity, and see to it that the evil of racist states like apartheid South Africa, segregation USA, and zionist Israel were never again allowed to stain the Human soul. The cost of dismantling the racist state of Israel, and compensating all of Israel's victims was nothing compared to the cost of running the cold war.
With the forcible removal of Israel's depraved weapons of muslim mass murder (nuclear, chemical, and Israel's favourite, biological), all other non-super-power states across the Earth would have happily given up their own similar programs. The pressure that would then have fallen on the so-called super powers to mostly divest themselves of such weapons would have been overwhelming.
WE DIDN'T TAKE THAT PATH. Israel's supporters were ready and waiting to strong arm the Human race down the path of endless racist mass murder instead. They didn't care, for this time the victims were to be the economic and political enemies of Israeli power- namely the muslims.
NOW WE ARE CLOSER TO THE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS THAN AT ANY TIME SINCE THE EARLY 60'S. In reality, nuclear weapons have had occasional use since Japan. These weapons have been deployed when the rapid murder of large concentrations of exposed soldiers was needed, such as was the case on at least one occasion during Blair's invasion of Iraq. People think of nuclear weapons destroying whole cities, so are easily persuaded not to notice the use of weapons with a very different radiation and energy profiles.
However, Blair is preparing to use nuclear weapons of a type that everyone will recognise. They are commonly called 'bunker busters' (for obvious black propaganda reasons) but can better be understood like this. Consider the pictures of Israeli atrocities in Lebanon, where massive buildings have been hit, destroying the whole block. Well the purpose of Blair's nuclear weapons is to increase the destruction to tens of meters below ground level- which will increase the level of destruction above ground to a radius that includes all surrounding blocks of buildings.
Now the reason for doing this is manyfold. Civilians with good shelters are this deep, and are thus hard to murder with Blair's conventional bombs (military shelters are far deeper, and are thus unaffected). The crucial infrastructure of major cities are often found this deep, and can be quickly repaired after conventional bombing. The greatest cost of city building often lies in the need to reshape the basic land. Blair's nuclear 'bunker busters' destroy the fundamental shape of the land, increasing the cost of rebuilding a hundred fold (handling a massive crater is very expensive). Finally, and most importantly, the radiation poisoning of the land by such a weapon makes even the effects of DU seem like a mother's kisses.
BLAIR'S NUCLEAR BUNKER-BUSTERS NOT ONLY ALLOW A CITY TO BE UTTERLY DESTROYED, BUT ENSURE THAT IT STAYS DESTROYED.
Why not use a conventional massive yield nuke? Stupid question- Blair will when he can, but even the dimmest bulb knows that Blair cannot hope to get away with such an act yet.
Today, Blair has put a major psychological operation into play. All Blair's major UK news agencies are reporting a 'rift' between Blair and his ministers (and particularly Blair's architect of the current Gaza and Lebanon atrocites, Jack Straw). This is for domestic consumption only, for at the same time, Blair is giving his most war-like speeches promising attacks against Syria and Iran, side by side with Bush in the US (Whitehouse).
It is interesting to note that headline portals are working hard to limit the amount of international exposure Blair's Whitehouse conference gets (nothing is hidden, but most people only notice the news PUSHED at them). The speech linked to above is designed for the US population only.
Any events that Blair is involved with in Lebanon are to be presented to the UK public as proof of Blair having to give in to domestic pressure, and to the US public as preparation for attacks against Syria and Iran. Why do we have to make it THIS easy for Blair.
Now it is too late to repair the world simply by removing the racist terrorist evil of Israel. Israel's supporters are vastly more useful to Blair in their capacity as masters of the majority of the mass media outlets. Israel was never supposed to do Blair's dirty work (but if they HAD directly triggered a war with Syria and Iran, Blair would have been happy enough). Instead, Israel's depraved acts of racist mass murder serve the same purpose as all the vindictive and murderous acts that the nazis piled on the jews prior to the 'final solution'.
Blair pushes the temperature ever higher, and defines his victim group ever more clearly. It's a good thing for Blair that the nazis didn't take out a patent on this method. Blair simply waits for the world to catch fire, knowing that he has smashed the fire service as much as possible. EVERYTHING BURNS IF YOU ARE ABLE TO TURN THE HEAT UP HIGH ENOUGH.
Of course, Blair has already won- it is the extent of his victory that we wait to discover. Millions dead? Tens of millions? Hundreds of millions? Billions? Whole continents? The whole planet?
In our universe, what is the difference between a living planet and a dead one? You really think it is just the physical circumstances of the planet's creation? Well circumstance gave us our chance, and that's for sure, but what about now? Why have humans planned and worked to give themselves the option of returning our planet back to a dead world? Do you not think, perhaps, that THIS is the true definition of the word EVIL?
Let me ask you a question. Do YOU have on you, or available on demand, the explicit and purposeful means of ending your life, and that of your loved ones? NO? Well, what would we call such a person that did (excluding the seriously ill, and their own plans to reasonably end their suffering)? Same question about you and your neighbours. Do you actively plan to have the ability to take them out? NO? What would we call such a person who did?
You would not tolerate such behaviour in yourself, and you would not tolerate such behaviour in those around you, and yet this is the only quality by which you judge those that lead us.
Blair is the name I give to the greatest evil currently on this planet, and the purpose of the greatest evil is to convert living worlds to dead planets. A death force to match our life force. An evil ant will achieve nothing. An evil rat likewise, and so on through every species on this Earth excluding man. It takes great intelligence and great effort to actively cleanse a whole planet. So many things have to be prepared, so many individuals have to work toward a common goal.
What aspect of war and warlike behaviour makes sense at the level of the individual? Absolutely nothing. Evil is that which attempts to solve this paradox. Funny, isn't it. To persuade life to destroy life, you have to guide life to the point of extraordinary achievement.
Have other worlds survived our coming fate, or have each of them had their own 'Blair' neatly concluding the inevitable consequence of generations of war, science, and engineering. We have no reason to be optimistic, given that once life moves beyond its originating world, self-replicating machine technologies allow the linear spread of that life in all possible directions from that world. Maybe the purpose of EVIL in the universe is to prevent exactly this, to stop the possibility of life from one world 'polluting' the space occupied by other worlds. Maybe without evil, the first early intelligent life would simply spread throughout the galaxy, denying the possibility of countless future worlds.
Are we thus a flower that gets to truly bloom only once? If this was right or proper, it would feel right and proper. Does Blair's genocide in Iraq or Lebanon feel right or proper to you? Does it feel like the true purpose of the Human race? I vote for living on, and 'polluting' our galaxy with the 'new and improved' Human Race. I vote for looking the devil in the eye, and damning Blair back to the depths of Hell from where he came.
twilight