Hezbollah rocket hidden in Qana cookie bin By Tom Clonan
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=345
Hizbullah rockets cannot be fired from buildings
Hizbullah has fired almost 2,000 missiles into Israel over the last fortnight, killing more than 50 Israelis and forcing almost one million into air raid shelters.
Despite this provocation, however,
IDF spokespeople are maintaining that Hizbullah had been mounting missile attacks on Israeli territory from Qana in recent days. The IDF has claimed it targeted the three-storey house in Qana at
Any investigation into the targeting of this house will have to consider precisely what kind of Hizbullah "asset" could possibly have been hidden in a modest, low-rise building among the narrow streets of a village such as Qana.
The type of missiles being fired by Hizbullah at Israeli cities cannot be fired from within houses, mosques, hospitals or even UN facilities as has been suggested by the IDF. Due to the massive "back-blast" caused by the rocket launchers of these missiles, they can only be fired from open ground. To fire them from within a building would result in the instant death of the missile crew and probable destruction of the missile before launch. Most of the missiles are truck-mounted and are fired - on open ground - from the backs of flat-bedded trucks or larger four-wheel-drive vehicles.
When fired, these missiles generate an enormous flare of light, heat and sound energy - a heat and light signature which is readily detected by IDF target-acquisition systems. Accurate retaliatory fire can be directed at Hizbullah launch sites by IDF aircraft and ground artillery in seconds. Such a reaction would be considered by international military norms to be proportionate and within the general "rules of engagement".
In these circumstances, having fired their missiles, Hizbullah tends to disperse as rapidly as possible. It is unlikely that a flat-bedded truck with a multilaunch rocket-system mounted on it could be easily and rapidly hidden in a village as small as Qana. Nor is it likely that such a truck-mounted weapon or four-wheel-drive vehicle could easily be hidden in a house such as the one targeted by the IDF yesterday.
The pattern and circumstances of the attack are sinister. With no telltale scorch marks from a Hizbullah missile launch visible near the destroyed house, and with no Hizbullah fighters among the dead and injured, the question remains as to what kind of "asset" the IDF could credibly allege to have been contained within the building.
The timing of the attack, taking place as it did during a period of relative calm and not in the immediate aftermath of a Hizbullah missile launch, speaks of a punitive strike designed simply to kill members of the Shia community from which Hizbullah is drawn and receives its moral support. The targeting of unarmed Shia women and children would represent a deliberate targeting of innocent civilians for retaliatory or punitive purposes, and may well constitute a war crime.
Tom Clonan is The Irish Times security analyst.
© The Irish Times
posted by walid @ 1:44 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Of course Hizbullah rockets cannot be fired from buildings, and Hizbullah never uses civilians as human shields.
What purpose, in your opinion, does blending within civilian areas serve Hizbullah's cause?
What purpose, in your opinion, does blending within civilian areas serve Hizbullah's cause?
None. If your government tells you that the civilian areas they are targeting contain Hezbollah militants or that the Hizbullah is ‘blending’ within civilian areas 2 possibilities arise: 1. there truly is Hezbollah militiants in these areas (however none have been killed with air strikes until now) and the reason why only civilians (women and children and when men are killed they are often the fathers sitting in their houses with their wives and children) are being found dead after the strikes is that maybe the human shield theory can be explained as being literal: a Hezbollah can hide behind a pregnant woman and when the 2 ton missile falls down on the building he can survive because the woman acts as a human shield and he can run intact. Of course this is bullshit to say the least. The second option is that your army is indeed targeting areas where the Hezbollah has strong popular support (from the Shiaa community) and randomly killing civilians and calling them fighters or terrorists or people who are hiding weapons and so on – in this case it fits perfectly the Geneva convention’s definition of a genocide and reminds one of the strategy the IDF applies in Gaza: everyone is a terrorist until otherwise proven, or in other words kill and call them terrorists and then it is fine.
As for your videos I do not see how they can act as an argument for killing until now 950 at least civilians and the systematic destruction of whole villages. I do not deny the fact that the Hezbollah hide part of their arsenal in buildings, however this does not mean you have the right to destroy every building in a random manner and say it is the Hezbollah’s fault. If your intelligence work is not good enough you do not resolve in war crimes, and you cannot hold the Hezbollah guilty because you can’t find their weapons – in other words it is 100% the responsibility of the IDF. As for the videos I do not see how they can justify the destruction that the IDF has scattered all around the country. I do not ask you to say that the Hezbollah are angels but just face the fact that the IDF is not an army but a terrorist organization. How do you explain the systematic killing of Palestinian civilians since the operation on Lebanon has began? How do you explain that more than a third of the people who were murdered in the Israeli attacks on Lebanon are children? How do you explain that until now not more than 60 hezbollah fighters have been killed while 950 civilians have been murdered? How do you explain that Red Cross vehicles are being targeted or in best cases are being prevented from getting to the attacked zones to save families trapped under the rubble (more than 50 people have been killed because help could not get on time – on time being some days later – people are complaining in villages that families are trapped under the rubble of their houses screaming for days before they die), how do you explain targeting the press (3 times until now) and targeting TV station antennas ? how do you explain the destruction of the airport, the ports, the civilian infrastructure and the deliberate pollution of the Lebanese coast? How do you explain the targeting of the Lebanese army while your government is asking them to protect the borders? How do you explain the attack on trucks carrying medicine from the Emirates (2 times) knowing that the Red Cross sign is clearly visible on them? How do you explain the targeting of the UN quarters in the south and the killing of 4 UN officers? How do you explain the destruction of every bridge in the country from north till south? How do you explain that you kidnap 5 civilians and kill 17 others and call it a great successful operation? How do you explain turning 900 000 Lebanese citizens (95% if not 100% Shiites) into refugees in their own country and destroying their homes, lives and properties? How do you explain the systematic targeting of everyone who voted for Hezbollah or Hamas and call for democracy? How do you explain the arrogance with which you talk about human rights? How do you explain the racism that flows constantly from the ‘Jewish state’? How do you explain that the Hezbollah has said that if you stop bombing we stop launching missiles and that your government is still refusing?
It is not for me to explain, the way I see it i expect many many explanations from you because you should know that it is not you who are defending yourselves it is us. And it is not me who should be justifying the act of resisting overwhelming fire power and systematic killing and destruction but you should start justifying why the IDF has the right to attack without the attacked having the right to retaliate. Until you think about some answers for the questions I just asked, you can start by reading something that is more realistic than the Israeli press – by the way it is too bad that the Israeli army has put so much censorship on the Media, it reminds me of the Nazi age and propaganda strategies:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,1834063,00.html
http://hrw.org/reports/2006/lebanon0806/
The report by the Human right watch details all the bullshit the IDF is saying, and makes a good presentation of how civilians are butchered everyday in Lebanon while holding that Hezbollah is not the one with the axe.
Walid,
1. You published an article on the possibility of firing missiles from within buildings, to show why the IDF explanations regarding the Qana offence are ridiculous. VU published a comment with photographic evidences in order to show why the arguments of the article are not based on reality. In your long reply you continued with condemning the Israeli offence (which is of course very legitimate and in my opinion very true) but you did not respond to the point VU made. For the sake of the dialog, I would like to read how you mediate between the arguments of the article and the photographic evidences.
2. On the one hand you wrote that Israel always justified its actions by returning to the holocaust. On the other hand, when you want to comment on Israeli censorship you write:
“The Israeli army has put so much censorship on the media, it reminds me of the Nazi age and propaganda strategie”. And I wonder: why does not the Israeli censorship remind you of the American press? Or, Egyptian radio broadcasts in 1967 war? Can you please specify the exact similarities of the Nazi propaganda with the Israeli media? If not, please stop comparing Israel with Nazi Germany, because in this state of mind you promote only aggression and justify the Israeli victimizing post.
What do you really know about Israeli press? You are fed by information from Arabic and international media (which sometimes is not written and edited objectively when it comes to Israeli affairs). What I want to say is: you never find something unless you were looking for it in the first place. If you are looking for examples why Israeli media is bad and blindly support the war I can give you hundreds of examples, but I can also give you dozens of examples of free press (articles against the war and publications by Lebanese writers) which in times of war is not common everywhere.
(BTW, the link to the guardian article is broken. Can you please repost it?)
Have a good and quiet week,
Gal
First the link:
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/07/31/isrlpa13882.htm
it is the same article.
Second the replies.
For your first point, I will just say that if you revise my reply I did acknowledge the possibility that the article’s conclusions are false and that indeed maybe missiles can be launched from buildings (even though the video does not really look like a Katyusha rocket launch since as I saw it the rocket was going more or less horizontally and not towards the air which makes it more like an anti-vehicle rocket – but nonetheless I am no military expert). Assuming that the video uv posted is correct what I said in my reply is that this does not justify targeting buildings in a random manner as is being done (what proves that the buildings that are targeted are civilian targets is first that there are no traces of Hezbollah missiles found in the rubbles not to mention no Hezbollah militants – perhaps some of the buildings were in deed concealing weapons but until now no evidence is found to hold this theory as every building is collapsing over the heads of a whole family. This is for the first point, I am not denying the photographic evidence nonetheless I am not convinced wither that they represent any kind of argument – I still believe that what is shown in this video is not a Katyusha (but in my answer I am assuming that it is one).
For the second point I understand that you do not like it when I compare Israel with Nazi Germany, of course I could have said that it is like the censorship in any Arabic country (actually to tell you the truth it looks like the imaginary victories of Saddam’s minister Al Sahaf – remember him?) but in deed I did it on purpose in order to show the similarity between the violence Israel justifies itself with and the violence it inflicts on its victims. I am not promoting any aggression I am just pointing out to the fact that the victim of an aggression is often predisposed to act like its aggressor (it works for both Israel and the Nazis, and for the Palestinians and the Israelis). I will not say any specific similarity because it is the similarity with any kind of war time propaganda (hiding the losses and claiming victories – I will talk about what kind of censorship I am talking about when answering the 3rd point). In fact my only reason to say Nazi germany is to provoke you and stress on this victim/criminal complex.
For the third point I have to contest your question – I do not pretend to know details of the Israeli press but I have to remind you that I do not get my information about it (only) from lebanese press or Arabic and international media but from the main source which can be – as you should know – found on the internet in English. This is for what I know about the Israeli media question. As for what I meant when I talked about the Israeli media censorship I was not actually referring to the newspapers per se, I know very well that very diverse opinions are found in the newspapers (in the lebanese press you usually find the editorials of all the main Israeli newspapers). But I was mainly referring to the blackening on the reports about the military losses and the damage of the Hezbollah bombings in the northern cities and please correct me if I am wrong.
Otherwise I hope the week will be quiet (even though I very much doubt it) and I hope you keep as far south as you can (if you hear that Beirut is bombed take cover we are bombing Tel Aviv). Take care (seriously)
Let me throw in one more perspective, as I do not believe I can convince you that I'm more right than you or vice versa.
I suggest that one of the divides is that your culture is more sensitive to consequences on individuals, while mine values more the rights of a group. Now before you go on typing 933 words on how you are right and I am wrong, consider the following examples.
The main line of a Lebanese survivor of IDF attacks is "What have I done?" or "Am I a terrorist?!". The main line of an Israeli survivors of Hezbollah attacks are more along the lines of acceptence of the inevitable as they are Israeli. Furthermore, Israelis, apart from the Arab-Israelis (hence my statement that this is a cultural difference), are overwhelmingly willing to lose soldiers` lives in order to secure the right to live peacefuly in the north. I am also ready to admit that in a war (which is defined as a state of armed conflict), there is less regard for human life - especially on the other side - for the greater cause (whatever that may be).
(As for the Palestinian problem, one could argue that the Oslo Accords failed because of the targetting of Israelis for being Israelis. Again - you would probably disagree. )
As for your continous use of the term War Crimes (which I do not use, even though aproximately 100-200 of them are, by definition, committed every day in the form of rockets), consider this. War Crimes are a very new and problematic element in the international community. Not only are they extremely hard to prove, there aren't even agreed upon entities to investigate, enforce, or judge according to them (even though Human Rights Watch, The UN's Security Council, or The Hague court might like to think so). Also note that as opposed to 'usual' crimes, they are worded as what to do (and not what not to do), and are vague as to what those things are.
(In Israel, for example, there is the Law which is the vague intent, and TAKANOT which are the specific measurable details that are actually enforced by the police and judged in court.)
Also, as for the spirit of these laws, I'd recommend you (and I!) read up on the context of they're establishment as they are the result of World War II. This war saw the levelling of entire cities and the use of weapons of mass destruction, and not the lobbing of rockets or use (or misuse?) of percision-guided missiles.
I am very surprised to hear your perspective on the cultural differences which seemed to be very much mistaken or at least not what is ordinarily conceaved in sociological studies of the Arabic culture. Let me explain. I do not see how you can see an individualistic trend in the Arabic world and this orientalist perspective that appears in the ridiculous sentence “your culture is more sensitive to consequences on individuals, while mine values more the rights of a group” has no grounding whatsoever. I will not go into details but let me tell you one thing – do you know anything about the concept of martyrdom? I see that you don’t. So when these children and women are dying and you go and talk with their parents they will not feel individualistically victims but they will tell you that they will gladly give away their lives and their children’s lives for the sake of their cause. I will not pretend to know the cultural aspect of Israel because I do not want to go into this problematic ‘your culture and my culture’ debate, because simply I think it is ridiculous and that the conflict is not about a conflict of cultures as you very much like to look at it but a simple conflict of power as I always repeat.
By the way why is it that there is this common saying that Israel has issues giving its soldier’s lives (it does not come from Arabic media but from Haaretz) – which is actually very much visible in battles and army policy?
By the way I do not even want to convince you of anything, and one can argue on whatever one wants, after all arguing is a game. What I am trying to do – apart from writing my subjective thoughts – when I answer you or have a debate in this form is simply giving you another perspective, you can believe it, or you can deny it. It is basically your problem and your choice. You can call every rocket sent by the Hezbollah a war crime and I can argue that these rockets are retaliation to the 100- 200 1 or 2 ton missiles launched by Israel. You can call killing Israeli soldiers a crime I can tell you that for me these soldiers are doing their jobs when they die (what is a soldier supposed to do in a war? Or let me rephrase what is not a crime in a war if killing soldiers is one?) You can see the Hezbollah as aggressors and argue that they are the ones who started and so on, and I can tell you that this is simply unconceivable in historical terms since the Hezbollah are a resistance and therefore a priori on the defensive.
I know where the concept of war crimes comes from (and by the way it is not after the second world war but much before that these concepts started to appear). And I know they are not very much clear, but again why then is the Holocaust clearly a war crime, or isn’t it? The Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombing was a war crime wasn’t it? There are specific weapons that are banned aren’t there? If your justification is as banal as telling me that war crimes are not very obvious therefore one must not point out to them then you are denying what you are fighting for which is the concept of terrorism. Is terrorism a clearly stated crime? Can you convince me with literal undeniable terms that the Hezbollah is a terrorist group (it is not recognized as one in the EU for instance)?
If you want to live in the beautiful illusion that you are fighting terror and evildoers in the north who are attacking you, go ahead.
And one thing about the precision guided weapons and the levelling of whole cities: first launching a precision guided missile is not a priori a reason to consider it hitting a legitimate target – as you should know most of the 1000 civilians who are dead died with precision guided missiles – the first massacre with the truck carrying refugees who were ordered to go out of their village were then bombed by these precision guided missiles. The way I see it, it is not much different than the suicide bomber who detonates in a night club in tel aviv only without the suicide bomber and with a precision guided missile but also with civilians – both acts are terrorist acts. As for grounding whole cities I wish you could see the suburbs or have a small tour in some villages in the south, it was not grounded with one atomic bomb but with hundreds of 2-ton bombs. As for your contempt for the human right watch and other international justice organization, I don’t know if this is something that is reassuring in an era where international justice seems to be the main reason of violence. Maybe then Israel should be the one deciding whether or not it is committing crimes – like giving it the responsibility to do the Qana massacre investigation. It is like giving the killer the role of the judge. In other terms, good luck with making a better world.
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