Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute

Monday, July 31, 2006

Israeli-Hizbullah Battles in Deep South
Israelis Bombed Qana while Relief and Rescue troops worked


Update: Israeli war planes conducted further air raids Monday morning, despite Israeli officials' earlier pledge to cease for 48 hours. The Israelis bombed a car with a Lebanese Army officer and soldiers, killing him. They have repeatedly bombed Lebanese army bases and facilities and have killed over a dozen Lebanese troops and officers, but this is the first time I remember them apologizing for it. What does this change of attitude mean?

The Israeli government announced a 48-eight-hour cessation of its air raids on Lebanon while it investigated itself for the killing of large numbers of innocent civilians, especially children, at Qana. During this time, it is also allowing a 24-hour window for Lebanese in the south to leave the area safely without fear of being bombed by the Israeli air force and they flee (a fate that befell some Lebanese refugees in the past few days). Since emptying south Lebanon of people is part of the Israeli war plan, it wasn't actually altruistic of them to allow people to leave.

Nicholas Blanford reports on the horror at Qana.


Courtesy al-Hayat.

Blanford reveals that Israeli warplanes actually continued to bomb the town while the rescue workers were pulling ragdoll-dead children out of the building. That's cold, man. Cold:


' An earth-mover ground down the lane and began clawing chunks of concrete away from the building. Even as the rescue team toiled to recover the dead, Israeli jets continued to roar overhead and the thump of air strikes and exploding artillery shells reverberated around the steep valley. '


Israeli forces and Hizbullah fighters continued to fight on land in the border regions on Sunday. Hizbullah also fired numerous rockets into Israel, though they appear mostly to have been ineffectual, they did cause some damages and injuries.


Max Blumenthal on "The Israeli Checklist"

5 Comments:

At 2:52 PM, Blogger James-Speaks said...

"Update: Israeli war planes conducted further air raids Monday morning, despite Israeli officials' earlier pledge to cease for 48 hours. The Israelis bombed a car with a Lebanese Army officer and soldiers, killing him. They have repeatedly bombed Lebanese army bases and facilities and have killed over a dozen Lebanese troops and officers, but this is the first time I remember them apologizing for it. What does this change of attitude mean?"

It means there has been a rupture in the space-time continuum.

To further explore the current official Israeli position, we conduct this interview with Israeli Air Force Major General Ira Dunnit.

General Dunnit, your cabinet members have announced a 48 hour cessation of the arial bombardment of Lebanon. Yet, we see IAF fighters in the air and there is the sound of explosions, presumedly bombs. Would you care to comment?

Yes. We have announced and we intend to cease the bombing of militant women, children and the elderly for a period of 48 hours.

But General, there are fighter/bomber jets in the air. How do you explain that?

Summer camp. Our pilots are fathers, too. Some of them want to take their sons to summer camp in style like no other. There goes one now. (Motions to F16 flying low over Lebanese dairy.)

General, that jet just released several of what look to be missles.

Children, they love to play with buttons.

General, it looks as though the missles are aimed at the dairy farm. There are dozens of workers in that building.

Regrettable. But to know that an Israeli child could aim so well, makes a father proud. (Explosions)

General, it looks as though that facility and all the people inside were just killed by missles from your jet.

Regrettable if there were any civilians, but our intelligence tells us those were milking machines of mass destruction.

General, you said there would be a 48 hour cessation of violence, but just now your air force attacked unarmed civilians for no apparent reason.

Perhaps the pilot was an animal rights activist.

General, your ceasefire lasted only two hours and this is the third time your jets have been used to destroy the Lebanese people. When will you carry through on your word?

Our ceasefire started two hours ago. There have been brief interludes, a minute each at the most, when, regrettable, ordnance left the aircraft and found its way to the ground. So, in effect, the ceasefire has been in place for one hour, fifty seven minutes.

General, that's ridiculous.

Did we say it would be continuous? No, only that it would last for 48 hours. Now excuse me, I have some regrettable accidents to prepare for.

 
At 6:07 PM, Blogger Daniel said...

Footage during the 48 hour lull in bombing has revealed the horrific extent of the war-crimes committed in the South of Lebanon. Whole villages have been completely flattened and a flood of rotting corpses are being pulled from the ruins of simple homes.

Yet America continues to support and arm Israel and deliberately delays the implementation of a cease-fire so that the carnage can continue.

Where are the people of conscience in America? Why aren't they rising up to protest this brutal, calculated genocide?

 
At 7:11 PM, Blogger Riggsveda said...

I remeber when I was 13...listening to the radio tell tales of Israeli bravery as they fought off the Arabs in the battle of 1967. I was trying to write a novel, and I remember feeling such pity, such rage, on behalf of the Israelis, as I sat at my desk, punching an old Underwood, and I wanted so badly for them to prevail. I wanted them to turn the tide after the horrors of the Holocaust. I thought they were the bright shining knights of the new world order, an order that would usher in a world of justice and humanity.

Now my eyes are open to the Palestinian plight, and it's like an onion, forever peeling, forever revealing new and more horrible atrocities. Now the oppressed use the license of victimhood to become oppressors themselves, and they seem to remember no humanity at all, no time when they themselves cried for mercy.

The world spirals into the maelstrom of the mideast now, and we are all being drawn into choosing sides, in a conflict that may very well destroy us. Why can't we figure this out? What is the problem?

The problem is that we are so terrified at the thought of putting ourselves into another's shoes, that we shut down our hearts and allow anything--anything--to be done in our name.

Forgive us.

 
At 7:33 PM, Blogger Dr. Rudy Kastner said...

Israel’s military incursion into Lebanon will be characterized as a “failure” as it serves Neocon and Israeli strategists two purposes: 1) it provides a reason to expand the campaign into Syria and beyond, and 2) to provide the impetus to get the United States military to attack Syria and beyond as Israel’s proxy army. Despite the ‘official reasons’ we are given for Israel’s actions, the objective is not to fight terrorism, but rather to establish hegemony over the region…this is the unspoken objective. Hezballah, Hamas, and/or the terrorist group de jour should only be viewed as a means to Israel’s unspoken strategic objective for the region.


To claim success in Lebanon would prematurely put the breaks on this enterprise.

 
At 10:46 PM, Blogger Brian Donohue said...

Here in America, our mass media thinks their job ends once the statistics are reported. It's all numbers and geopolitics to these people, while Condi plays Brahms with a little extra legato for the times.

I thought it would be instructive for people to understand what bombs really do, in human and medical terms. I have the story here.

 

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