Crimes Against Humanity: American-Backed Israeli Offensive

Warning: Graphic Images

Updated 07-26 below

Today, well informed Americans are ashamed of America. To see the kind of destruction, slaughter, a malicious violence that is carried out by, on behalf of, or with support from the U.S. government, well informed Americans who possess a conscience are left bewildered and heartbroken.

Sadly, most Americans are not well informed, regardless of whether or not they think they are. All of the American news agencies are willfully regurgitating only what the U.S. and Israeli governments want the American public to know, which is that (1)Hizballah/Lebanon and Palestine/Hamas are the aggressors, killing Israeli civilians and causing much hardship, however there is no apparent hardship for the Lebanese or Palestinians, (2) Israel is acting in self defence, (3) Israel is targeting only the Hizballah and Hamas fighters, and (4) there are only minimal, and often not sufficient to mention, Lebanese and Palestinian civilian casualties.

Most news stories in America describe the fighting as Hezbollah and Israel trading attacks, implying that Hizballah is attacking Israel and Israel is attacking (strictly) Hizballah. CNN's main story on the subject includes a video story of "How Life in an Israeli Bomb Shelter is So Hard For Children," a heartbreaking account of suffering on the Israeli side of the conflict. However, no mention is made of Lebanese or Palestinian children, being murdered by the hundreds by the IDF. Why, when the civilian death toll is nearly 400 to 40, would the non-Israeli casualties be ignored in favor of the 90% smaller number of Israeli casualties? For those who value human life, shouldn't there be 10 times more coverage of the non-Israeli casualties?

I believe in a simple philosophy: Murder is Murder. Murder by Israel is just as wrong as murder by Hizballah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, the U.S. Military, U.S. Defence Contractors, Russia, Somali Warlords, Chechen Rebels, the IRA, the Mafia, CIA assassins, serial killers... it's all the same, regardless of the justification given.

Hizballah has killed 37 Israeli civilians in rocket attacks into Israeli civilian areas. These acts are a crime against humanity due to the fact that those being intentionally targeted are civilians, and as such the perpetrators of this crime should be brought to Justice, using established methods of law enforcement rather than targeted assassinations.

Israel has killed 373 civilians in Lebanon alone, targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. The Australian Broadcasting Company reports that roughly 50 of those civilians killed had some affiliation with Hizballah, although there has been no evidence provided to support this claim. To avoid starting a discussion on the validity of assertions for which there is no substantiating evidence, we will instead focus on those 320+ and counting civilians and families that have fallen victim to Israeli attacks. I am not now, nor have I ever, condoned the murder of civilians by terror groups, including the IDF and Hizballah. However, I am going to put more of a heavy emphasis on the far larger number of Lebanese civilian casualties in the Lebanon front of Israel's offensive, rather than Israeli casualties, because the Israelis are receiving far more western media coverage even though their death toll is only a small percentage of that for Lebanon (and palestine).

The assertions made by Israel that they are targeting Hizballah are false, yet widely repeated in news reports that claim the fighting is between "Hezbollah and Israel." To give some examples, the Sydney Morning Herald reports on families fleeing southern Lebanon coming under fire from the IDF, even though they were visibly displaying white flags, the international meaning of which is surrender.

Inside the stricken car were Zein Zabad, 45, his wife, Alia Tame, 39, daughter, Abiye, 13, and sons Hussein, 10, Khalid, 8, and Hassan, 7. There were also three injured members of the Srour family, whom Zabad had stopped to rescue after a helicopter attacked their car a few kilometres down the road.

Medical staff dragged all the victims from the wreck, injured but alive, before the fire reached the petrol tank. Just as the flames flared up a Red Cross ambulance came careering past the burning car, from the road to the south.

The ambulance contained six members of the Shaayto family from Tyre. There were two women, two girls, two little boys, survivors from a minivan crammed with 19 people that had just been attacked as it tried to escape Israel's killing zone.

Kathar Shaayto, a 10-year-old girl, had tears on her face but her voice was calm as she lay on a trolley and talked to the doctors studying the large piece of shrapnel embedded in her hand.

"My father is dead," she told them. "My mother has multiple injuries. I don't know about the others." Then she broke down.

While the American media asserts that those who were killed must be terrorists (aren't all Lebanese?), the United Nations, EU, Arab League, and other nations across the globe are condeming Israel for attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure. This is a blatant violation of international law, and separated from law and justice, man is at his worst.

Chapter 4, Article 57 of the First Protocol of the Geneva Conventions reads:

(ii) take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of attack with a view to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss or civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects; (iii) refrain from deciding to launch any attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated;

(b) an attack shall be cancelled or suspended if it becomes apparent that the objective is not a military one or is subject to special protection or that the attack may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated;

Article 85 of the First Protocol reads:

3. In addition to the grave breaches defined in Article 11, the following acts shall be regarded as grave breaches of this Protocol, when committed wilfully, in violation of the relevant provisions of this Protocol, and causing death or serious injury to body or health: (a) making the civilian population or individual civilians the object of attack; (b) launching an indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian objects in the knowledge that such attack will cause excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects, as defined in Article 57, paragraph 2 (a)(iii); (c) launching an attack against works or installations containing dangerous forces in the knowledge that such attack will cause excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects, as defined in Article 57, paragraph 2 (a)(iii); (d) making non-defended localities and demilitarized zones the object of attack; (e) making a person the object of attack in the knowledge that he is hors de combat;

The much-discussed Article 51 states specifically that civilian populations should not be object of attack.

In the news, however, we read of families bombed by the IDF while fleeing southern Lebanon, including this harrowing account by a 14 year old boy, one of 3 survivors from a truck of 24 civilians following the Israeli order to evacuate the south of Lebanon:

Wissam and his extended family were on a truck fleeing the southern village of Marwaheen on July 15.

'We were 24 people in the truck,' he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. 'The ones who survived are me, my father and my sister, who is now fighting for her life after she was severely wounded.'

His leg badly wounded and his body riddled with shrapnel, Wissam speaks in fragments, wide-eyed and frightened, tears rolling down his cheeks.

The memory of what happened, he says, will be imprinted on his mind and heart until his death.

'They (Israelis) first bombed the truck from a warship from the sea while we were still near our village.'

'The shell directly hit our truck and I suddenly saw that most of the people had flown outside the truck and turned into shredded pieces of flesh and bones.'

Wissam found his little sister outside the vehicle, screaming in pain and fear as her leg was heavily torn and bleeding, and begging for her life.

'As I tried to reach her, to at least give her comfort, an Israeli Apache helicopter came to finish off the rest of us, bombing us again.' His sister was 7 years old.

'My little sister was killed, so were most of the rest of those who survived the first bombing,' he shouted in anger, saying he still could not believe what happened was real.

Wissam paused as more tears poured down his face and asked: 'Isn't this a war crime? Isn't it?' He paused again as his eyes looked up at the ceiling, and remembered: 'They killed my whole family, and now I'm waiting for my 12-year-old sister to die as well.'

The young boy lost his mother, two sisters and brother in the attack. His family, like tens of thousands of others from southern Lebanese villages, were leaving their homes after Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets warning civilians to vacate the area.

Israel, and Hizballah, are both guilty of "Grave Breaches," which are by definition War Crimes, and for the sake of maintaining peace and stability, those on both sides should be brought to trial before the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

The Jurist law publication discusses reports that civilian food storage facilities are being targeted by Israel, in violation of Section 2 of Article 54 which states: "It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as food-stuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works."
The article, which is incidentally supportive of Israel's right to "self defence," aknowledges what the EU and Kofi Annan have stated recently about the disproportionate nature of Israel's "response" in targeting civilian areas:

Although statements and reports out of Lebanon are notoriously unreliable, there appears to be a sufficient confluence of internet posts that Israeli planes are now dropping their bombs and firing their missiles indiscriminately against civilian targets. Grain silos, food production, and storage plants have been destroyed. Bombs have reportedly been dropped on hospitals and on convoys of villagers fleeing from the Israeli shelling. It is getting close to the kind of carpet bombing that occurred during the Vietnam war against Hanoi. At that time, pilots were repeatedly sent out on bombing missions, told to return without any bombs, and not to disclose their targets. The result, after the first visible military targets were bombed, was the bombing of civilian targets such as schools, hospitals, and the Hanoi dam. These, too, were war crimes, and although the perpetrators were never prosecuted, at least the United States has never condoned them.

Israel appears to be continuing its bombing campaign out of a sense of frustration, bitterness at the failure of the bombs to slow down Hezbollah’s rocket launchings, and perhaps a homegrown political need to demonstrate to the Israeli public that “something is being done” about the rocket attacks. The militarily inexperienced Olmert-Peretz government may think that its political future is at stake if the public is not reassured by daily bombardment of Lebanon. But if these are the reasons for the continuation of the aerial campaign, they are among the feeblest of excuses for the commission of war crimes.

News reports discuss "Bodies stacked 3 or 4 feet high at morgues in Lebanon, and international aid workers state that the damage inflicted upon civilian casualties is consistant with use of what Israel describes as "bombs with special fillings" and are commonly referred to as shells made of depleted uranium, which is also against international law.

Meanwhile, the U.S.'s Condeleeza Rice has headed to the region for the purpose of assuring Israel that their assault on Lebanon must continue, yet telling the international media that the American desire to see the violence continue for at least another week or two is "calling for and urgent ceasefire," while rejecting an offer by Syria at a diplomatic solution.

As I have discussed on many previous occasions, such egregious violations of international law going unpunished, along with the infliction of such pain and suffering on civilian populations, will only lead to an increase in recruitment for "extremist" groups as people look for an avenue for vengence in the absence of justice. The Asia Times has an intuitive series on the subject entitled "How To Lose The War On Terror.

What proceeds is what is being hidden from the majority of the western world by governments and a complicit media that wish to maintain the overwhelming level of support for Israel's terrorist policies. The following are pictures from the Israeli offensive c/o As-Safir Newspaper and Uruknet.info
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Beirut A body killed by a burning object lies in a Beirut suburb July 17- Reuters A Lebanese firefighter extinguishes the charred body of a Lebanese truck driver who was killed when Israeli planes attacked the port in Beirut July 17 - AP A member of the Lebanese Red Cross walks past a badly burnt body in Beirut's port, which was targeted by Israeli warplanes, July 17 - Reuters A member of the Lebanese Red Cross walks past a badly burnt body in Beirut's port, which was targeted by Israeli warplanes A member of the Lebanese Red Cross walks past a badly burnt body in Beirut's port, which was targeted by Israeli warplanes-2. Lebanese firefighters try to extinguish the fire while the dismembered and burnt corpses of two Lebanese civilians killed in an Israeli air raid lie on the ground at the port in Beirut Lebanese men remove a recovered body of a man from the back of a vehicle in Beirut July 17- Reuters.jpg Lebanese Red Cross members remove the dismembered and burnt corpses of two Lebanese civilians killed in an Israeli air raid at the port in Beirut 17 July Lebanese Red Cross members remove the dismembered and burnt corpses of two Lebanese civilians killed in an Israeli air raid at the port in Beirut. look at his right eye - Lebanese citizens gather around a man who was killed by shrapnel from an explosion in Kfarshima, near Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, July 17 -AP look at the foot - beirut prot july 17 - Reuters Sidon A Lebanese medic carries the body of a young girl, in a refrigerated truck used as a makeshift morgue, in the port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Monday, July 17 - AP A Medic inspects burned bodies of Lebanese civilians who were attacked as they passed by a bridge that was targeted in north Saida, southern Lebanon, July 17 - Reuters Tyr A badly injured Lebanese civilian is seen at a hospital following Israeli air strikes on a house in the southern city of Tyre, 17 July - AFP A Lebanese rescue worker gathers the remains of a woman from the rubble of residential buildings hit by the Israeli bombardement in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, 18 July - AFP An 18-month-old Lebanese child lies dead 17 July on a hospital bed in Saida eight hours after being injured yesterday in an Israeli air attack in Tyre - AFP Lebanese man that was injured and burned by Israeli attacks on Tyre, lies in a hospital in south Lebanon July 15 - Reuters The corpse of a dead man lies admist the rubble from devastating Israeli air strikes in Tyre, south Lebanon, 16 July - AFP The corpse of a Lebanese civilian lies amidst the rubble following a devastating Israeli air strike in Tyre, south Lebanon, 16 July a Rmayleh A civil defense member transports the corpse of a Lebanese civilian killed in an Israeli air raid that targeted the Rmeyleh bridge near Saida 17 July afp. A Lebanese medic carries the body of a young girl, in a refrigerated truck used as a makeshift morgue, as another body lies covered, in the port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Monday, July 17 Civil defence rescuers carry the body of a woman away from a civilian car that was struck by an Israeli warplane missile- rmayleih juy 17 - AP Drivers carry away Lebanese Ali Wahid after he was seriously wounded in his car, while he was driving past a bridge when was struck by an Israeli warplane missile- rmayleh july 17 ap. Lebanese Red Cross members cover the burnt corpse of a Lebanese civilian killed in an Israeli air raid that targeted the Rmeyleh bridge in Saida 17 July AFP. look at his face - A 7-year-old Lebanese boy fights for his life on a hospital bed in Saida 17 July 2006 after being injured in an Israeli air raid - AFP Marwahin A badly charred and mutilated body lies on the ground after an Israeli missile hit a van carrying passengers on a road in southern Lebanon, July 15, - Reuters A body of a man from the southern village of Marwahin, who was killed along with 17 others near the village of Shamaa A United Nations medic holds a body that was badly charred and destroyed after an Israeli missile hit a van carrying passengers on a road in southern Lebanon, July 15 - Reuters. KILLED ON THE SAME ROAD IN THE SOUTH JULY 15 - REUTERS Lebanese civil defence member carries the corpse of a young girl from the southern village of Marwahin MARWA Marwa Abdallah, who survived Saturday's attack on a van in Tyre where twenty people where killed IN HOSPITAL JULY 16 - REUTERS. MARWAHIN (SOUTH ) JULY 15 - AFP MARWAHIN (SOUTH ) JULY 15 - REUTERS Zebdine A Lebanese Red Cross staff collects human remains following an Israeli air raid on Zebdine village (south )JULY 16 AFP Teir Harfa TEIR HAFRA 1 (SOUTH) JULY 15 - AP TEIR HAFRA 2 SOUTH) JULY 15 - AP TEIR HAFRA 3(SOUTH) JULY 15 - AP TEIR HAFRA 4 (SOUTH) JULY 15 - AP TEIR HAFRA 5 (SOUTH ) JULY 15 - AP TEIR HAFRA 6 (SOUTH ) JULY 15 AP Bekaa look at the eye- Issam Mostafa, a 3-year-old Lebanese boy, rests at a hospital in Shtora in the Bekaa valley 17 July afp.

Images come from As-Safir Newspaper, c/o Uruknet.info
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Update

The Guardian newspaper reports that, regarding Israel's bombing of a UN post in Lebanon, the attack was deliberate and lasted for hours.

"the shelling started in the morning and went on until after 7pm. You cannot imagine the anguish of the unarmed men and women peacekeepers who were there."
-Kofi Annan

Is the UN part of Hizballah now?
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This was the front page of The Independent (U.K.) this past Sunday