Fisk: Untold story of the massacre of Marjayoun leaves blame on both sides

[IndianaGreen]

Robert Fisk: Untold story of the massacre of Marjayoun leaves blame on both sides of the border

Published: 23 August 2006

There are few marks on the road where the missiles hit the innocents of Marjayoun. But there are the memories of what happened immediately after the Israeli airstrike on the convoy of 3,000 people after dark on 11 August: a 16-year old Christian girl screaming "I want my Daddy" as her father's mutilated body lay a few metres away from her; the town mukhtar discovering that his wife, Collette, had been decapitated by one of the Israeli missiles; the Lebanese Red Cross volunteer who went into the darkness of wartime Lebanon to give water and sandwiches to the refugees and was cut down by another missile, and whose friends could not reach him to save his life.

There are those who break down when they recall the massacre at Joub Jannine - and there are the Israelis who gave permission to the refugees to leave Marjayoun, who specified what roads they should use, and who then attacked them with pilotless, missile-firing drone aircraft. Five days after being asked to account for the tragedy, they had last night still not bothered to explain how they killed at least seven refugees and wounded 36 others just three days before a UN ceasefire came into effect.

It is one of the untold stories of the Israeli-Hizbollah war; there are others - infinitely more bloody - but the ultimate tragedy of these largely Christian refugees involved a raft of Lebanese officers and ministers, the Prime Minister of Lebanon, the US ambassador and the Israeli Defence Ministry.

It all began on 10 August when the Israelis staged a small ground offensive into Lebanon after a month of massive bombing of Lebanese villages in the south. Brig-Gen Adnan Daoud, commanding a mixed force of 350 Lebanese paramilitary police and soldiers at the barracks in the pretty Christian town of Marjayoun, found a man at the gate at 9am, an Israeli officer calling himself Col Ashaya. Brig-Gen Daoud, whose men were not fighting the Israelis, called the Lebanese Interior Minister, Ahmad Fatfat, who "endorsed" - Fatfat's word - Daoud's decision to let him in. "Ashaya" spent four hours looking round the barracks to assure himself that there were no Hizbollah members there. Then he left. Daoud put a white flag on the guardhouse.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1221078.ece

[countmyvote4real]

1. * Jr is just as disgusting.

You'd think that * Jr would have known better, but instead these occupiers of office have only learned the lessons of the dark side. And they've more than become them.

This is not a rant at the nation of Israel. It's a rant against their current leaders and the "co-dependent" conspirator leaders of the USA. Still not much of a surprise considering the history of the BFEE and their willingness to sell out the Jews.

[Briar]

2. Don't expect anything to come of this

or indeed justice to be done concerning any of the Israeli war crimes. The West (and Israel is seen by us as a western power) invaded and occupied the moral highground long ago and has declared itself above all such laws, which are drafted to prosecute only those it declares its enemies.

[regnaD kciN]

3. Saying that blame lies "on both sides" is a little like saying...

...that the blame for 9/11 falls on both al-Qaeda and the officeworkers in the WTC (the latter for not evacuating more quickly after the first attack). :grr:

But it's O.K., because they were only nigg...I mean Ay-rabs, right?

[acmavm]

4. Where are the usual cast of Israeli apologists on these threads that

show exactly how criminal and inhumane and revolting the actions of the Israeli government and its troops were to the innocents in Lebanon?

I'll keep watching this during the day. One of the things that keeps my disgustometer running at full tilt is the way people can excuse war crimes like this. It's a lot like the bush** administration when they take any horrific event in Iraq and tell you that they're bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq, and that they Iraqi people want us to do it.


<snip>
"There was panic," the Marjayoun mayor, Fouad Hamra, said. "Many people drove away. They had a clearance; everything should have been OK. If Hizbollah was supposed to be carrying weapons at night, they would have been travelling in the opposite direction!"

Who flew the drones? An Israeli soldier of the invasion force? A nameless officer in the Israel Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv? The Israelis knew a civilian convoy was on the road. Yet they sent their pilotless machines to attack it. Why? Last night, the Israeli Defence Ministry had not responded to inquiries from reporters who asked for the answer last Friday.
<snip>

Supporting Israel is the same as supporting the bush** administration's actions in Iraq.

[Sherman A1]

5. Well Said

Yes, I too wonder Where are the usual cast of Israeli apologists? I guess we wiil see if they have an "opportunity" to express their opinion.

[Marrak]

6. Murderous drones...

"Who flew the drones? An Israeli soldier of the invasion force? A nameless officer in the Israel Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv? The Israelis knew a civilian convoy was on the road. Yet they sent their pilotless machines to attack it. Why? Last night, the Israeli Defence Ministry had not responded to inquiries from reporters who asked for the answer last Friday."

Killers. War Criminals. Programmed for death.