Israel: Hezbollah Responsible For Lebanon Qana Civilian Deaths

Jerusalem-----July 30.....The following communication was transmitted from the Israel Defense Forces to the Israel News Agency.

"This morning, the Israel Air Force attacked Hezbollah missile launch sites in the area of the village of Qana, Lebanon. An area from which hundreds of Katusha missiles were launched towards the Israel city of Nahariya and the Israel communities in the western Galilee."

The IDF will defend the citizens of Israel from terror attacks by the Hezbollah and the responsibility for any civilian casualties in Lebanon rests with the Hezbollah who have turned the suburbs of Lebanon to a war front by firing missiles from within civilian areas.

Residents in this region in Lebanon and specifically the residents of Qana were warned several days in advance by both Israel and Lebanon radio to leave the village.

Eighteen Israelicivilians have been murdered and over 400 have been wounded from these rocket attacks which have disrupted the lives of thousands in Israel.

A Canadian UN officer serving as a military observer in the United Nations base hit by an Israel strike last Tuesday emailed his former commander that Hizbullah was using his UN post as a human shield. Major Paeta Hess von Kruedener was also clear that the Israel Air Force was not targeting the observers.

The UN commander, Major General Louis Mackenzie said in an interview with a Canadia radio station that his former soldier had written to him six days before his death about the recent developments in Lebanon. According to a report in The Jerusalem Post, Kruedener wrote that the IAF strikes near the post were “necessary”. He also noted that the IDF fire was not aimed specifically at the UN post, but rather at the terrorists.

(Photo) A young Israeli girl is evacuated from Nahariya hospital after a Hezbollah rocket attack made a direct hit on the hospital. Photo: AFP

Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post described the killings of civilians in Qana and other villages in south Lebanon as such: "What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security? What other country sustains 2,000 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities--every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians--and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?"

Krauthammer continues: "Hearing the world pass judgment on the Israel Hezbollah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, and a very few others), the world--governments, the media, U.N. bureaucrats--has completely lost its moral bearings. The word that obviates all thinking and magically inverts victim into aggressor is "disproportionate" as in the universally decried "disproportionate Israeli response."

When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel "proportionate" attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki to a cinder, and turned the Japanese home islands to rubble and ruin. Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right--legal and moral--to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one's security again. That's what it took with Japan.

Britain was never invaded by Germany in World War II. Did it respond to the blitz and V-1 and V-2 rockets with "proportionate" aerial bombardment of Germany? Of course not. Churchill orchestrated the greatest land invasion in history that flattened and utterly destroyed Germany, killing untold innocent German women and children in the process.

The perversity of today's international outcry lies in the fact that there is indeed a disproportion in this war, a radical moral asymmetry between Hezbollah and Israel: Hezbollah is deliberately trying to create civilian casualties on both sides while Israel is deliberately trying to minimize civilian casualties, also on both sides. In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the London blitz, Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israeli cities and villages. These rockets are packed with ball bearings that can penetrate automobiles and shred human flesh. They are meant to kill and maim. And they do. But it is a dual campaign. Israel innocents must die in order for Israel to be terrorized. But Lebanese innocents must also die in order for Israel to be demonized, which is why Hezbollah hides its fighters, its rockets, its launchers, its entire infrastructure among civilians. Creating human shields is a war crime. It is also a Hezbollah specialty."

Krauthammer adds: "On Wednesday, CNN cameras showed destruction in Tyre. What does Israel have against Tyre and its inhabitants? Nothing. But the long-range Hezbollah rockets that have been raining terror on Haifa are based in Tyre. What is Israel to do? Leave untouched the launch sites that are deliberately placed in built-up areas? Had Israel wanted to destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, it would have turned out the lights in Beirut in the first hour of the war, destroying the billion-dollar power grid and setting back Lebanon 20 years. It did not do that. Instead, it attacked dual-use infrastructure- bridges, roads, airport runways--and blockaded Lebanon's ports to prevent the reinforcement and resupply of Hezbollah.

Ten-thousand Katyusha rockets are enough. Israel was not going to allow Hezbollah 10,000 more. Israel's response to Hezbollah has been to use the most precise weaponry and targeting it can. It has no interest, no desire to kill Lebanese civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have leveled south Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut?

Instead, in the bitter fight against Hezbollah in south Lebanon, it has repeatedly dropped leaflets, issued warnings, sent messages by radio and even phone text to Lebanese villagers to evacuate so that they would not be harmed. Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate ambushes.

The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral scrupulousness paid in blood. Israel soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians will not, and who does the international community condemn for disregarding civilian life?"

(Photo) Nahariya hospital, among many Israeli civilian targets hit by Hezbollah and Hamas terror rockets. Photo: AP

Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said today that Israel had told the residents of the Lebanese village of Qana to leave before the raid. "All the residents were warned and told to leave. No one was ordered to fire on civilians and we have no policy of killing innocent people. The village and its surrounding areas were a source for launching hundreds of rockets."

Interesting how so few people seemed to care about deliberate attacks against children like these (from Wikipedia):

"War of the Cities"

Toward the end of the war, the land conflict regressed into stalemate largely because neither side had enough self-propelled artillery or airpower to support ground advances.

The relatively professional Iraqi armed forces could not make headway against the far more numerous Iranian infantry. The Iranians were outmatched in towed and self-propelled artillery, which left their tanks and troops vulnerable. What followed was a blood bath with the Iranians substituting infantry for artillery. Both sides turned to more brutal weapons and tactics.

Iraq's air force soon began strategic bombing against Iranian cities, chiefly Tehran, starting in 1985. In response to these attacks, Iran began launching SS-1 "Scud" missiles against Baghdad. Iraq did not respond in kind against Tehran until early 1988, able to deploy only air raids against the Iranian capital up until that point. In October 1986, Iraqi aircraft attacked civilian passenger trains and aircraft, including an Iran Air Boeing 737 airliner unloading passengers at Shiraz International Airport. 34 elementary and high schools were attacked by Iraqi warplanes in 1986 alone, killing hundreds of children. [12]

In retaliation for the successful Iranian Karbala-5 operation in the fronts, during the course of 42 days, Iraq attacked 65 cities in 226 sorties, bombing civilian neighborhoods. Eight Iranian cities came under the attack from Iraqi missiles. Sixty-five children were killed during bombings in an elementary school in Borujerd alone. These events became known as "the war of the cities". [13]

The war saw the use of chemical weapons, especially mustard gas and sarin, by Iraq. International antipathy to the Tehran regime meant Iraq suffered few repercussions in spite of these attacks. After the war, the UN eventually condemned Iraq for using chemical weapons against Iran. Chemical weapons had not previously been widely used in any major war since the Second Italo-Abyssinian War.

With foreign assistance, Iraq financed the purchase of more technologically advanced weapons, and built a more-modern, well-trained armed forces. After setbacks on the battlefield, it offered to return to the 1975 border. Iran was internationally isolated and facing rising public discontent. Finally, a cease-fire was agreed on August 20, 1988.

Mainstream media once again shows how a slanted story, using posed pictures, distorts events. Shouting "fire" in a crowded movie theater effect?

Note: we are AT WAR but have become sissies and vulnerable to media attempts to impose their liberal views. America lost more people in the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers than we have lost soldiers in yeas of war in Iraq. Yet the liberals, including the Media and people like Ex-Marine John Murtha, are squealing like stuck pigs and demanding we withdraw our forces to prevent more casualties.

For focus, one bombing raid, on one night, on a German town in World War II killed 40,000 civilians - including women and children. Wars were fought to be won. Something the bleeding hearts prevent and the death of some 60 civilians - among whom the Hezbollah hide and operate and thus they the Hezbollah put in harm's way - create an anti-Israeli passion which is undeserved. Place the blame where it belongs - on who started this - yes, the Hezbollah. And who puts the civilians up front and center to be killed, yes, the Hezbollah.

Alan

Monday, July 31, 2006

Milking it?

Certainly, the photographs are distressing, and indeed they are meant to be. As this piece tells us:

Until recent years, images of civilian casualties in wars often took days to appear in newspapers, but now they can be captured and transmitted around the world to newspaper Web sites, where they are posted immediately, adding to the shock value that sketchy words by reporters often cannot capture. This happened again Sunday morning in the case of the Israeli air strike on the Lebanese village of Qana that left dozens dead, reportedly at least half of them children sleeping in their beds overnight.

The photos, taken by The Associated Press, Reuters, and others, showed bodies in the rubble, or being taken away; survivors digging or wailing…

But the photographers, it seems, are not too fussy about how they go about "adding to the shock value". These two sequences illustrate the extent to which photographers on the scene are prepared to ensure that the "shock value" is maximised.

In this first of the two sequences, we see a shot by Reuters and taken by Adnan Hajj, timed at 2:21 pm. It has the caption:

Rescuers pull the body of a toddler victim of an Israeli air raid on Qana that killed more than 60 people, the majority of them women and children, in south Lebanon, July 30, 2006.

Note the "rescue worker" in the foreground, complete with olive green military-style helmet and fluorescent jacket, with what appears to be a flack jacket underneath. His glasses, "designer stubble", blue tee-shirt and jeans make him quite a distinctive figure. Note also, he has a radio in his jacker pocket and he has bare hands, things which becomes relevant later.

The next shot in this sequence is credited to AP's Kevin Frayer. Timed at 4.09 pm, it shows the same "rescue" worker, and has this caption:

Lebanese Red Cross and Civil Defense workers carry the body of a small child covered in dust from the rubble of his home that was hit in an Israeli missile strike in the village of Qana, east of the port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Sunday. Lebanese Red Cross officials said 56 people died in the Israeli assault on the village, including 34 children. Rescuers dug through the debris to remove dozens of bodies.

This is horrific, but a scrutiny of the framing does suggest that the subject is offering the victim to the photographer.

Just in case you missed it, however, we get another view, courtesy of Reuter's Adnan Hajj, with a time given of 4:30 pm - some 20 minutes after the first shot. The caption reads:

A rescuer carries the body of a toddler victim of an Israeli air raid on Qana that killed more than 60 people, the majority of them women and children, in south Lebanon, July 30, 2006.

Interestingly, in this sequence, the pocket radio is missing. And, although the positioning of the child looks the same, the angle of the shot looks to be about ninety degrees from the first, but in each case, the "worker" is facing towards the camera. The shots are clearly posed.

But now, timed at 12:45 pm, an hour and twenty minutes before the child's body is pictured being pulled from the ruins, we get a picture from AP's Kevin Frayer of the same child's body being paraded by our ubiquitous helmeted rescue worker.

Lebanese Red Cross and Civil Defense workers carry the body of a small child covered in dust from the rubble of his home that was hit in an Israeli missile strike in the village of Qana, east of the port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Sunday, July 30, 2006. Lebanese Red Cross officials said 56 people died in the Israeli assault on the village, including 34 children. Rescuers dug through the debris to remove dozens of bodies.

At 12.53 pm, after an interval of eight minutes, Frayer photographs the child's body again, from a different angle. The caption is the same. This time, though, our helmeted worker is showing some distress, which was absent in the previous photograph.

The photographs show the characters moving down the hill, with little distance between the scenes, which suggest that they have been taken sequentially and spontaneously. But they have not. The eight minute interval has allowed a crowd to gather around "green helmet". Furthermore, "orange jacket" has switched from left to right. Note also the tee-shirted man in the centre of the picture.

Then, timed at 1:01 pm, eight minutes on, we get another picture from Frayer. Once again, the caption is the same but this time the child's body is being paraded aloft by our ubiquitous helmeted rescue worker, but the tee-shirted character had moved from centre to right and is taking his turn to displaying his emotion to the camera. The UN soldier in the background has turned away, confirming a time lapse. The scene is clearly staged, as have been those preceding it.

Next, we have the second of the two sequences, the first shot of which, timed at 7.21 am shows a dead girl in an ambulance. Taken by AP, the caption reads:

Among others, the body of a child recovered under the rubble of a demolished building that was struck by Israeli war plane missiles at the village of Qana near the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, is placed in an ambulance Sunday July 30.

In the next frame, we have the same girl, this time apparently being placed in the ambulance. Also taken by AP,this time by Mohammed Zaatari the caption here reads:

A Lebanese rescuer carries the body of a young girl recovered from under the rubble of a demolished building that was struck by Israeli warplane missiles at the village of Qana, near the southern city of Tyre, Lebanon, Sunday, July 30, 2006. Dozens of civilians, including many children, were killed Sunday in an Israeli airstrike that flattened houses in this southern Lebanon village - the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting.

Intriguingly, though, the dateline given is 10.25 am, three hours after she has already been photographed in the ambulance.

Also from AP's Nasser Nasser, we see the same worker, showing obvious distress, carrying the same girl. But now he is wearing his fluorescent jacket and helmet and has acquired latex gloves. He has also got his radio back. The photograph is timed at 10.44 pm and the caption reads:

A civil defense worker carries the body of Lebanese child recovered from the rubble of a demolished building that was struck by an Israeli airstrike at the village of Qana near the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, Sunday, July 30, 2006. Israeli missiles struck this southern Lebanese village early Sunday, flattening houses on top of sleeping residents. The Lebanese Red Cross said the airstrike, in which at least 34 children were killed, pushed the overall Lebanese death toll to more than 500.

Here we are now, same "worker" and same girl, but this time it is done for the benefit of EPA, the photographer, Mohamed Messara, the worker rushing towards a uniformed Red Cross worker. This caption (without a time) reads:

A rescue worker carries the body of a Lebanese girl after an Israeli air strike on the village of Qana, east of the southern port city of Tyre, on Sunday 30 July 2006. At least 51 people were killed, many of them children, and several others wounded in the raid Sunday, witnesses and rescue workers said.

But now, for the benefit of AFP, the photgraph taken by Nicolas Asfouri, we have the same unfortunate child being handled by another worker, the original worker showing in the background, having passed the casualty on. The timing of the photograph is 7.16 pm and the caption reads:

A rescue worker puts the body of a dead girl on a gurney after Israeli air strikes on the southern Lebanese village of Qana. Israel agreed to temporarily halt air strikes in south Lebanon a day after 52 people were killed, many of them sleeping children, when Israeli warplanes bombarded the Lebanese village of Qana, triggering global outrage and warnings of retribution for alleged "war crimes".

Remember, however, earlier in the sequence, the girl is being carried to the ambulance, by the other worker, sans jacket, helmet and gloves.

Fiunally, in this sequence, we get another shot from AP's Nasser Nasser, again without a timing but with this caption:

A civil defence worker carries a body of a young Lebanese child recovered from the rubble of a demolished building that was struck by Israeli war plane missiles at the village of Qana near the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, Sunday, July 30, 2006.

Whatever else, the event in Qana was a human tragedy. But the photographs do not show it honestly. Rather, they have been staged for effect, exploiting the victims in an unwholesome manner. In so doing, they are no longer news photographs - they are propaganda. And, whoever said the camera cannot lie forgot that photographers can and do. Those lies have spread throughout the world by now and will be in this morning's newspapers, accepted as real by the millions who view them.

The profession of photo-journalism thereby is sadly diminished by them, and the trust in those who took them and in those who carried them is misplaced. Truly, we are dealing with loathesome creatures.

COMMENT THREAD

permalink posted by Richard @ 12:46 AM | Comments forum |

Don't forget the 500,000 toy plastic keys to the gates of Heaven.

After Iraq invaded in September 1980, The Ayatollah Khomeini imported 500,000 small plastic keys from Taiwan. It was clear that Iran's forces were no match for Saddam's professional, well-armed military. To compensate Khomeini sent Iranian children as young as twelve years old to the front lines. There, they marched and rolled in formation across minefields toward the enemy, clearing a path with their bodies. Before every mission a Taiwanese key would be hung around each child's neck -- a toy key to open the gates to paradise.
These children were the Basiji, a mass movement created by Khomeini in 1979 and militarized after the war started. The Basij Mostazafan -- "mobilization of the oppressed" -- was a volunteer militia, most of whose members were not yet 18. They went enthusiastically, and by the thousands, to their own destruction.
The sacrifice of the Basiji was ghastly. And yet, today, it is not a national shame, but a source of growing pride. Since the end of hostilities against Iraq in 1988, the Basiji have grown in numbers and influence. Their elite "special units" have been used as shock troops against anti-government forces. In both 1999 and 2003, the Basiji suppressed student unrest. And, last year, they formed the potent core of the political base that propelled Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- who reportedly served as a Basij instructor during the Iran-Iraq War -- to the presidency.
Ahmadinejad revels in his alliance with the Basiji. He regularly appears in public wearing a black-and-white Basij scarf, and, in his speeches, he routinely praises "Basij culture" and "Basij power," with which he says "Iran today makes its presence felt on the international and diplomatic stage." Ahmadinejad's ascendance on the shoulders of the Basiji means that the Iranian Revolution, launched almost three decades ago, has entered a new and disturbing phase. A younger generation of Iranians, whose worldviews were forged in the atrocities of the Iran-Iraq War, have come to power, wielding a more fervently ideological approach to politics than their predecessors. The children of the Revolution are now its leaders.

Excerpted and edited from source: A CHILD OF THE REVOLUTION TAKES OVER. Ahmadinejad's Demons by Matthias Küntzel 04.14.06, New Republic Online

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.