Some further insights:
1. Source:
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/its_another_hezbollah_atrocity_opedcolumnists_john _podhoretz.htm
Re Kfar Qana: August 1, 2006 -- FORGIVE me if I find the general elite discussion of the horrible incident in Qana - in which an Israeli air strike apparently killed 57 civilians, the majority of them children - at the very least bizarrely ignorant and at the very worst simply despicable
Given the amount of coverage these past months of the Geneva Convention and its applicability to the War on Terror and the war in Iraq, you´d have expected the U.S. and European elites who profess their great love for the convention to rush to Israel´s defense: The Geneva Convention makes clear that the moral responsibility for the deaths at Qana belongs entirely to Hezbollah, and that Hezbollah has violated the most basic laws of war in its behavior.
Here´s the relevant language. It comes from Article 37 of Protocol 1, ratified in 1979: "It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy." It lists three types of perfidy; the third is "the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status." And, by hiding in and launching missiles from Qana, Hezbollah was feigning civilian status and therefore resorting to perfidy.
This is why Hezbollah bears the specific responsibility for the Qana attack. A substantial number of rocket attacks against Israel (10 percent or more) were fired from trucks hidden inside the populated village. Spy footage released by Israel over the weekend tells the tale: It shows unmarked trucks with rockets hidden on them being driven in and out and around the streets of Qana in a deliberate effort to prevent any Israeli strikes.
Like a particularly malignant kind of parasite, Hezbollah weaved itself thoroughly into the limited infrastructure of Qana so that every person there would serve as a deterrent to an Israeli attack. It had good reason to know Israel might hesitate before ordering a bombing raid. Ten years ago, under a similar set of circumstances, Israel hit Qana and killed 100 civilians - an act that led to the suspension of a potent military campaign against Hezbollah
Israel did hesitate. It waited 17 days into the conflict before risking the assault. But since Israel´s war goal is the complete degradation if not total destruction of Hezbollah´s military capability, it could have hesitated no longer.
Questions are even being raised about whether the Israeli attack actually caused the deaths in question, since the building collapse that caused most of them came seven hours after the bombs fell. Only a naive person would assume that Hezbollah wouldn´t be willing to stage an atrocity for political effect.
Was the "incidental loss of civilian life" at Qana "excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated"? I don´t see how any fair reading of the situation would find this to be the case.
Qana was, for all intents and purposes, a missile base for Hezbollah, with something like 10 projectiles being fired a day at Israeli civilians for months, from inside its precincts.
If a missile battery is not a legitimate military target, there is no such thing as a legitimate military target.
jpodhoretz@gmail.com (Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc. 08/01/06)
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http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/200...ilking-it.html
2. ABC News reports that Kfar Qana was hit just after 1 am, while Reuters reports that police said Qana was bombed at 1:30 am (2230 GMT on Saturday). The building containing civilians collapsed only some 7 hours later. Apparently the basement was a Hezbolla munitions store. Hezbolla, which uses humans as living shields, simply discounted the value of these shields in favor of their goal.
Additionally, it appears that many of the photoshots released from Qana have been staged in efforts to increase the atrocity-horror factor. EU Referendum documents how the same photographer team apparently duped the larger news services. This is highly reminiscent of a similar fiasco (in Arafat's time) known as the "Jenin massacre" of April 2002 -- which never was, (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenin_Massacre ) but it took the UN only hours to broadcast the effects of this nonexistent massacre, and months to apologize to Israel.
3. Things the world forgets: In seeking a <u>commencement point </u>of some kind for the current violence, and apropos <u>duplicity associated with Israel and directly involving the UN</u>, one would be hard pressed to answer the question of to whom, exactly, the peacekeepers on the Lebanese side of the border should advise of Hezbolla terrorist buildup when, as far back as mid 2000, Kofi Anan legitimized Hezbolla by meeting with Nasralla and thanking him –
rather than the official Lebanon gov't – for ensuring
law and order in south Lebanon! (see: handshake pic printed/broadcast in all major newspapers/media providers worldwide). The following link (short article) clearly shows that Israel has been drawn into this bout of violence as a long term eventuation of infighting among various Arab extremist groups trying to prove which of them really has control of Lebanon.
http://www.meib.org/articles/0007_l2.htm For those who argue that Israel maintained a presence in south Lebanon for some 20 years, this was because neither Lebanon's gov't, nor the UN, were prepared to guarantee Israel a safe border. At no time whatsoever did Israel perceive or relate to south Lebanon as being, or ever becoming, part of Israel.
Note: The Shiite Lebanese Diaspora provides Hezbollah with a base for lucrative criminal activities, such as diamond smuggling in West Africa, cigarette smuggling in the United States, and drug trafficking in the triple frontier along the junction of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. By the end of the 1990s, funding from the Lebanese Diaspora had outstripped Iranian financing, estimated by Lebanese press reports to be around $10 million monthly. http://www.meib.org/articles/0402_ld.htm