Posted on 07/30/2006 11:25:31 AM PDT by West Coast Conservative
Senior IDF officers told reporters a short time ago that there is a contradiction in the timing of the bombing of the village of Kana and reports of the explosion that killed more than 50 civilians and set off world-wide condemnation of Israel. Air Force Commander Amir Eshel left open the possibility that Hizbullah terrorists blew up the building or that an unknown cause set off explosives which were stored in the structure.
He explained that recorded information shows that Israeli Air Force planes bombed the building between midnight and 1 a.m. and that the next attack at 7:30 a.m. was up to 500 yards away. He said reports of the killing of civilians came around 8 a.m. "It is not clear what happened" between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m., he said.
Brigadier General Ido Nehushtan pointed out that Hizbullah terrorists have fired more than 150 rockets from the village of Kana since the beginning of the war.
From Wikipedia on the bombing of Dresden:
Development of a German political response to the raid took several turns. Initially some of the leadership, especially Robert Ley and Joseph Goebbels, wanted to use it as a pretext for abandonment of the Geneva Conventions on the Western Front. In the end, the only political action the German government took was to EXPLOIT IT FOR PROPOGANDA PURPOSES. [34]
Goebbels INFLATED THE NUMBERS OF THE DEAD by a factor of ten, and German diplomats circulated the figures, along with photographs of the destruction, the dead, and badly burned children, in neutral countries. By coincidence, the day before the Dresden raid, a German foreign affairs paper had been circulated to neutral countries describing Arthur Harris as "the arch enemy of Europe" and a leading proponent of "Terror Bombing"[35].
On February 16 the Propaganda Ministry issued a press release which outlined the Nazi line: Dresden had no war industries, it was a place of culture and clinics[36]. On February 25 a new leaflet with photographs of two burned children was released under the title "Dresden Massacre of Refugees" and stating that not 100,000 but 200,000 had died. Since no official estimate had yet been developed, the numbers were speculative, but foreign journals such as the Stockholm Svenska Morgonbladet used phrases like "privately from Berlin" [37]. Frederick Taylor states that "there is good reason to believe that later in March copies of or extracts from [an official police report] were leaked to the neutral press by Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry
doctored with an extra zero to make [the total dead from the raid] 202,040"[38]. On March 4, Das Reich, a weekly general newspaper founded by Goebbels, published a lengthy article emphasising the suffering and the destruction of a cultural icon without mentioning any damage the attacks had caused to the German war effort[39].
Taylor observes that this propaganda was quite effective, as it not only INFLUENCED ATTITUDES IN NEUTRAL COUNTRIES at the time but even reached the British House of Commons when Richard Stokes quoted information from the German Press Agency (controlled by the Propaganda Ministry). Taylor suggests that, although the destruction of Dresden would have affected people's perception of the Allies' claim to absolute moral superiority in any event, part of the outrage involves Goebbels's master stroke of propaganda [40].
Some things never change I guess...
The terrorists attack Israel from positions of cover among civilians, knowing that ths will expose the civilians to Israeli retaliation. Is it such a stretch, then, to suppose that the terrorists might have dynamited the building themselves to generate casualties and pressure against the Israelis?
Are you getting paid for being NYT's b*tch?
I challenge you to find where I'm condemning it. I said it was an accident, they apologized for it, it's inevitable in a war... But trying to re-create history is what I'm raiing against.
Were you born an idiot, or is that just how you were nurtured?
I don't trust a single word coming out of the PR firm Jihad & Associates. Lying is an act of religious piety for them.
You are right....I understand that accidents happen. I just don't think that Israel, with decades of this happening and having so much of the world against them, would go out of their way to bomb a target knowing they would kill so many children. It's why i believe the target was stocked with kids as human shield.
But let me give you a hypothetical....would you feel differently if the arabs had 7-8 year old kids manning guns and Israeli troops shot them?
Correction to my post:
"the Israeli bombing of the structure at about midnight of the 29th did NOT fulfil Hizbollah expectations. The bombing did not drop the structure."
You leave the IDF no choice but to avoid targeting missle sites in villages. The bomb made not have been even errant, It hit its target but the concussion took down the building.
But it does bring into question the IDF decision not to use ground forces. The only way to take these places out without such incidcents is to send in ground troops. Even that will produce collateral damage when, as in Fallujah, they hide behind women and children.
I guess I don't understand the significance of leafletting. If Hezbollah sent leaflet rockets to Haifa before striking would this make a difference.
The Lebanese are asked to leave the area over bombed out bridges and being subjected to bombing on the road. Israel is making it really hard for rational folks to support what they are doing.
All of Lebanon is a legitimate target. There are no "innocents" there. If you harbor and enable terrorists you deserve their fate.
The reporters had no trouble getting into Cana immediately after the bombing and in fact Dana Lewis matter-of-factly said "the road to Tyre is clear and there is no case to be made that they couldn't get out."
War is hell. The civilian deaths in Kana are sad, but in war such things can not be avoided.
Israel attempts to minimize civilian casualties. Hizbullah attempts to maximize them. That is all one needs to know.
Personally, I think Israel would be better off intensifying the military campaign against Hizbullah and make less of an effort to avoid civilian casualities. The Shiite civilians in South Lebanon vote for and support Hizbullah, therefore they are responsible for every civilian casualty in this war. Civilian populations are responsible for organizations and governments they support. Quite frankly, I have very little sympathy for them.
Are you denying that Israel bombed the bridges? Some of this information is not disputed. Film crews have a very different motivation and unlimited amounts of money. Slightly different than your average Lebanese person trying to get along with their lives.
I guess unless you totally, blindly, boldly bootlick every pro-Israeli action, you're going to get attacked here. How disgraceful...
All cause I said it was an accident,Israel accepted such, we should move on cause accidents happen, but don't try to re-write history
No one needs to "appologize" for Israels actions. If you think telling the truth is appoligizing then perhaps you should study history and this particular situation a little more carefully. Israel is plainly in the right here and if they kill every terrorist slime in lebanon it would be just fine with me. On top of that they have videos that show rocket launchers in the area of the house that blew up, so if they did hit it, it was justified. All their killings are justified under the aupices of self defense. Appoligize for Israel my a** they need to kill more of these pukes and maybe the muslims would get the idea terrorists are not beneficial to them!
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