What does Israel want us to do with their apologies? [View All]

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Their ambassador to the UN yesterday said how he 'regretted' the killings of Lebanese innocents by Israeli airstrikes, but he blamed Hizbollah for their deaths.

If they gave a damn they would have stopped the missile strikes in populated areas of Lebanon. If they truly cared about the casualties they would have kept the roads open and free from airstrikes like the claimed to be doing after they announced their phony cease-fire. If the gave a shit at all about the innocent Lebanese civilians, they never would have destroyed the lives and livelihoods of the innocents they mowed down.

Now the fashion for the Israelis and their apologists is to express regret for the lives they took and attempt to place the blame on Hizbollah. They don't give a damn about the lives they took so why bother with the half-assed apologies? They've evidently decided that their stated targets are more valuable than the innocent Lebanese civilian lives. They've already decided that the lives of the Israelis are more important than the innocents they've slaughtered. They show their indifference to the deaths by resisting calls for a cease-fire, by deciding to expand their ground assault, by refusing to accept any responsibility at all, by equating those who hadn't been able to flee the south with Hizbollah, subject to the full brunt of their bloody reprisals.

Lebanon hasn't declared any hostility toward Israel at all. It's just the opposite. The Lebanese government has signalled over and over their willingness to work with the international community to deal with Hizbollah and effectively disarm them. Yet, Israel has effectively declared war on Lebanon and their citizens, despite the charade that they are only prosecuting Hizbollah.

I think that the assault by Israel is nothing but cheap revenge. No one who has observed the history of this region believes that Israel's assault on Lebanon could ever result in the elimination of the threat from Hizbollah. Almost every observer and expert understands that the heavy-handed slaughter of these citizens will only serve to draw the residents closer to the very elements Israel says their campaign is isolating, and empower the group whose founding was a response to Israel's last invasion.

Israel knows all of this. I believe they just saw an opportunity to release all of their pent-up hatred for the Lebanese and an opportunity to expand their territory. Killing as many as 600 (some estimates believe) Lebanese in their reprisals will forever brand Israel as a brutal and ruthless aggressor. The Lebanese didn't attack them, but they have borne the brunt of Israel's revenge.

The evidence supports my belief , more than there is evidence that the Israeli government actually cares at all about the lives of innocent Lebanese civilians. Where was the restraint as Israel prosecuted this assault? Where was the care and concern that they claimed to have for the Lebanese civilians, after the fact of their airstrikes?

You can't get to all of that by just asserting over and over that they were attacked. The bulk of the Lebanese civilians didn't have a thing to do with Hizbollah's actions. You certainly won't be able to wipe clean the massacres of the Lebanese with insincere apologies or contrived nonsense about critics of Israel's actions being haters and anti-Semites as many have. The responsibility for those killings is soley on the heads of whoever ordered the strikes in the first place. Assigning blame to anyone who didn't pull the trigger or fire missiles into the innocents is a cowardly dodge.

Israel has killed hundreds of Lebanese who had nothing to do at all with the rocket attacks against them. When will they and their supporters quit hiding behind all of their defensive rhetoric and accept responsibility for their killings? With this bunch, I'm not holding my breath.