Israel flattens 15 villages, but fails to stop Hizollah rocket barrage.

[bigtree]

Lebanon Endures Heaviest Battering

"In the space of seven hours Saturday, Israel hit Lebanon with around 250 air raids and some 4,000 shells, killing two people and wounding at least 37, police said.

The single village of Aitaroun near the border endured a barrage of 2,000 rounds.

Israeli artillery was systematically leveling 15 villages within five km of the border after Israeli leaders vowed to create a security zone free of Hizbullah fighters in the area, the police added.

Israeli planes dropped leaflets over parts of southern Lebanon warning that Hezbollah positions in the city of Sidon and elsewhere would be bombarded, the army said.

The renewed attacks failed to halt rocket fire on Israeli towns. A mother and her two adult daughters were killed and 10 people were lightly wounded when rockets hit northern Israel."


http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/getstory?openform&95E3C3220AE56308C22571C1005C99A4


27 July 2006, -- "Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon “said that in order to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by the Israeli air force before ground troops moved in." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5219360.stm )

[Warren Stupidity]

1. The entire region is being depopulated.

This is a crime against humanity.

[SPKrazy]

25. "Two Were Killed" Doesn't Sound Like Depopulation

now I realize that around 1000 have been killed, and that is terrible

If Israel wanted to depopulate Lebanon, they'd have no trouble doing it

Instead, they have minimized civilian casualties, but they've destroyed the infrastructure in an attempt to break the back of Hezbollah.

It hasn't worked.

Instead, they have killed civilians, destroyed villages, destroyed infrastructure, and the rockets keep coming.

They have also created a whole new generation of Israel hatred in Lebanon (and elsewhere obviously)

Israel has a right to defend herself, but they have jumped the shark on this one as they haven't done well in defending themselves, and they've created a worse problem than they had before.

[Warren Stupidity]

51. Depopulated is not 'killed'.

Outright slaughter is one means of depopulation. Terrorizing the entire region through a massive air bombardment campaign is another. You don't have to kill people to get rid of them, you just have to scare them out of their homes. Lebanon now has around 1,000,000 refugees. Israel has no right to invade another country, bomb that country, and force 1/3 of that country to flee for their lives.

[leftchick]

2. MFing war criminals

this is just insanity! :cry:

[Name removed]

3. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[pyro858]

4. And the American media spin is this

Hizbulla fired 167 rockets today. We never hear how many bombs or shells Israel fires. of course we shouldn't be surprised- our media does what it is told to do.

[TahitiNut]

5. Nobody compares the firepower of the "167 rockets" to the

... hundreds of airstrikes and thousands of rounds of artillery fire, either. It'd be very hard to convey how enormously unbalanced this is.

[leftchick]

11. Photos and Video usually do the trick!

At the steep gorge in Halat, Lebanon, cut by the Fidar River, which runs down the mountains to the Mediterranean, dozens of Maronite Catholic residents gathered to stare in stunned silence at a 200-yard stretch of four-lane highway blasted into rubble by Israeli strikes.

[bigtree]

12. Tyre

Neighbors look at a bomb crater made by overnight attacks on a road in Tyre, southern Lebanon Saturday, Aug. 5, 2006. Israeli commandos attacked the southern port city of Tyre before dawn Saturday, and at least five people were killed in ensuing clashes, Lebanese military officials and rescue services said. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

[leftchick]

13. The Dead Fruit Pickers yesterday.... *graphic*

fucking sick! :cry:



In the Bekaa Valley, hard against the Syrian border, an airstrike killed at least 28 seasonal farm workers loading fruit and vegetables into a refrigerated truck.

[bigtree]

18. hope at greatest risk

"Children wearing bandanas reading 'Israel Out' and 'Free Lebanon' take part in the demonstration organised by Stop the War Coalition in London August 5, 2006. Thousands marched through London to demand a halt to the Lebanon war on Saturday as the British government tried to appease critics who have attacked it for failing to call for an immediate ceasefire."

[gratuitous]

6. Maybe if they killed more civilians?

The bombings of Lebanon will continue until their attitude toward Israel improves.

[breakaleg]

7. There aren't words to describe what Israel is doing...

no civilian deserves this.

[malaise]

8. There are lots of words

but three will do - fugging war criminals.

[mom cat]

22. These are war crimes. They are crimes against humanity!

[partylessinOhio]

9. The world continues to fiddle not seeming too concerned about the

destruction of an entire country. This is very unnerving and I'm only living it through the media. How hopeless it has to be for the Lebanese victims.

"Why is no one helping us?"

[bigtree]

10. the Lebanese people didn't seem to have a true representative

at the 'peace' talks.

There is no clear defender of Lebanese lives against the devastation of the Israeli military provided for in the agreement. Israel can void the agreement and start the strikes whenever they decide Hizbollah has violated the agreement, but it's the unarmed Lebanese civilians who've borne most of the brunt of Israel's 'defenses' against Hizbollah. Why isn't there some sanction in the agreement aimed at ending Israel's practice of firing missiles into populated areas?

[Joanne98]

14. Depopulating by leveling housing.... This is evil.

[Warren Stupidity]

15. Megaphone hasn't found this thread yet?

I'm surprised.

[jonnyblitz]

16. LMFAO!!

:rofl: :thumbsup:

[sasha031]

19. isn't it ironic that you can get free Israel ring tones

on the bottom of the page.

I haven't posted very much since this began, it hurt so much. I have been fortunate to have wonderful Lebanon's friends in my lifetime, all I do is think of what's going on and cry inside.

There was a time my philosophy was never to allow myself to hate and avoid angry. I called it renting space in your head.

Well now I learned to hate...the evil in this world. My whole outlook on life and certain countries including our own has done a 360.

[jonnyblitz]

20. he is talking about something else. there is software that alerts

tells you when somebody on a discussion board is discussing Israel or there is a tv poll to be voted on in regards to Israel so they can participate. THere have been several threads on it here at DU

here is a link to an article describing it, it's called GIYUS:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3281619,00.html

[JackNewtown]

47. So much hasbara, so little time!

Perhaps their pals the neocon fans will join the Megaphone project and reinforce the Israeli deployment on the internet.

[Nikki Stone 1]

17. It's like demolishing a house to get rid of cockroaches

Terrorists are hard to fight with traditional military strategies which are about destroying and annexing territory. Stepped up international law enforcement mechanisms may be better for pinpointing ringleaders than lobbing missiles.

[Disturbed]

21. Israel is creating more enemies.

[Nikki Stone 1]

23. True. But the US and UK are letting them do it.

I am beginning to think that Israel is just being badly used by the English speaking powers. The British would not have established the area (and later, the state) unless they got some strategic advantage from it. It seems like allowing the formation a colony of European Jewry in the Arab ME was a way of guaranteeing that British and American oil interests would always have a reason to be involved in the area, destablizing it.

Maybe that's a little tin foil hat, but I wonder if the US gives a damn about Israel's image at all. We seem to be encouraging their worst inclinations.

[breakaleg]

24. the US has more than enough enemies to share.

I don't think Israel is being used though. They are getting away with conducting themselves above the law - torture, intimidation, blatant murder - why wouldn't they accept the support that the US gives. They are like the class bullies run wild.

The thing that bugs me is, they've become so self-serving and pious in their actions that they actually believe their own PR.

[Nikki Stone 1]

26. Like the RWers in this country

Worst thing you can do is start believing your own publicity, at least according to Hollywood agents.

Seriously, it bothers me that so much evil can be rationalized by so many. After watching our current administration lie itself into this insane war, and lie that somehow we are defending ourselves by torturing and raping innocents, I just despair that we will ever be able to come back.

[Disturbed]

28. "formation a colony of European Jewry in the Arab ME"

Israel started off fairly Socialistic and still has those tendencies in spite of the Likudites. In view of the Cold War that theory may not be so far fetched. Imagine if Israel would have allied with the USSR as Egypt did for a period of time. Would the Brits & the US have backed Israel then?

[Nikki Stone 1]

32. I don't think the form of government mattered

despite the rhetoric of the Cold War. I think empires only think in terms of chess pieces, and how each country or entity supports or enhances its own power, regardless of internal philosophy. Even as it was waning, the British empire, looking toward its own future power, insured that ME boundaries would produce instability: putting the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in what was partially Mesopotamia and part Persia was a way of insuring that internal political consensus would be terribly difficult at best. I can't imagine the British supporting a Jewish state (with Europeans, many British, in it) without there being some long term advantage to their own interests.

What I guess I am beginning to believe is that the US/UK axis is happy to let Israel take the heat and allow it a lot of leeway and special consideration as long as Israel's presence serves their interests. I could be very wrong here, and certainly the Israelis have their own agenda. And certainly Israel has a large lobbying voice here in the States. But the truth is that if the US/UK axis ever abandoned Israel, the state would be destroyed by surrounding powers and peoples within a short time. And the US would not have Israeli military and intelligence advisors to do their dirty work in places like Central America, where Israeli advisors trained American formed death squads. (There are books on this, and I have one from the 80s that has some documentation.)

There's a sick sort of symbiosis going on between the US, UK and Israel, and I am not so sure it is to Israel's advantage ultimately. I am not excusing Israel here, anymore than I would excuse Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. I am just saying there seems to be an entanglement that may in fact be strangling certain aspects of all our foreign policies.

[blurp]

49. I'd say Lebonese parents are doing their part, too.

[bigtree]

50. The image I provided was meant to show that there are children who hope

for peace, despite the encouragement by some for more violence.

[SPKrazy]

27. "Stepped Up International Law Enforcement"

mechanisms, like the UN being in Southern Lebanon to dismantle Hezbollah along with the Lebanese government?

hasn't worked well.

As for destroying the house to kill the cockroaches.

If you can't get rid of the cockroaches and the house is condemned, sometimes it makes sense to knock it down and put up a new one.

I'm not saying that I think Israel has done this well, or that they are completely in the right.

Obviously they have greatly miscalculated their ability to destroy terrorists from the air.

You'd think they'd learned something from watching how well the US has destroyed terrorism from the air.

The strategy is flawed, no doubt. They have however, managed to not kill thousands upon thousands of Lebanese.

Hezbollah, on the other hand, if given the okay by Iran, would use whatever they have at their disposal to kill Israelites without regard to trying to minimize losses, as their goal is to get rid of Israel, whereas Israel's goal is not to get rid of Lebanon, but to get rid of Hezbollah.

[bvar22]

29. Anytime you attack mosquitos with a sledge hammer.....

its a bad idea. Unless, of course, all you want to do is wreck the house.

[Name removed]

30. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[breakaleg]

31. I just read an article in which it said back in the day...

both Israel and the US secretly supported Hamas, financially. The thinking from the US perspective being that they would be someone to battle the PLO. And from Israel's side, they figured that as long as Hamas fought Israel, they would continue to have a pretext to occupy Palestine.

Does that mean that Hamas was fighting for Israel or the US?

Just because Hezbollah is financed by Iran and Syria, it doesn't necessarily mean they have the same objectives, or even that they have any control over Hezbollah.

[Nikki Stone 1]

36. It's all very twisted.

Strategic actions to preserve power often are. That's why it is so hard to sit in a computer chair and decipher the actions we hear about.

The one thing I do know: Innocent people who have done nothing are being killed. And if we cease to care about that and at least try to reign in our government, we've lost our humanity.

[leftchick]

33. flawed strategy? how quaint! Try dead people!

Lots and Lots of Dead people who didn't do a thing to Israel!




In the Bekaa Valley, hard against the Syrian border, an airstrike killed at least 28 seasonal farm workers loading fruit and vegetables into a refrigerated truck.

[SPKrazy]

35. The Bekaa Valley Is A Known Haven For Terrorists

of all kinds

Terrible about the fruit pickers

exactly why were they there picking fruit after being warned to leave?

Not saying that justifies it, just wondering if they are really "fruit pickers"

[Nikki Stone 1]

38. Or if they too were being used as pawns

It is hard to tell.

But innocents are dying in massive numbers. That is the outrage here.

[SPKrazy]

41. Pawns Of Iran And Syria

yes

pawns of Israel and the US?

give me a break

[leftchick]

39. perhaps they needed the money?

:eyes:

To support their families? What a concept!



The sons and daughters of Syrian worker, Ahmad Jamil Rashid, mourn their father and one of their elder brothers in Jendires cemetery, some 450 kilometers (281 miles) northwest of Damascus, Saturday, Aug. 5, 2006. Grief and shock swept through this small, impoverished village in northwestern Syria Saturday as it buried 23 of its people who were killed when Israeli missiles slammed into a refrigerated warehouse just across the border in Lebanon. (AP Photo Bassem Tellawi)

[SPKrazy]

42. Perhaps They Needed The Money?

of course

disregard the fact that you are working in an area filled with terrorists

and that leaflets have been dropped

and you know for sure that they are fruit pickers

is that what you are saying ?????


:smoke: ?????

[leftchick]

43. and you know for sure there were "terrorists" there?

because the IDF says so. Yeah keep smoking that shit. You seem to see terrorists everywhere.




Elderly Syrians hold prayers for 23 Syrian workers at Jendires cemetery, some 450 kilometers (281 miles) northwest of Damascus, Saturday Aug. 5, 2006. Grief and shock swept through this small, impoverished village in northwestern Syria Saturday as it buried 23 of its people who were killed when Israeli missiles slammed into a refrigerated warehouse just across the border in Lebanon. (AP Photo Bassem Tellawi).

[SPKrazy]

44. The IDF, Every Intelligence Agency In The World Thinks So

The valley is well-known or cultivating hashish and for serving as a training ground for anti-Israeli and anti-American militia fighters and terrorists. The Bekaa valley is in Lebanese territory but controlled by drug barons and the Syrian army, which took over parts of it in 1976.

For the past 20 years the Bekaa valley has been the military base for Hizbullah, the 'Party of God' and leading Islamist organisation in Lebanon. Hizbullah built training camps there, using the valley to prepare for attacks on the occupying Israeli force in south Lebanon. It eventually forced the Israelis to withdraw in 2000.

http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/fr/fr011121_1_n.shtml

Oh, I know, now Janes is suspect????

[Name removed]

40. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[SPKrazy]

37. self delete dupe

[Nikki Stone 1]

34. Learning from the US experience is exactly the point

Overpowering force in civilian areas tends to kill mostly civilians (90% of the death toll is civilians according to a DU thread from last night. Give me a minute to find the link.) This certainly increases the number of the justifiably outraged and increases the ranks of the terrorists. No question.

Unlike a house of cockroaches, you can't get all the innocent people and pets out and fumigate or destroy it. What this means is that conventional military force will inevitably be seen as innappropriate, excessive and immoral when you're trying to root out a terrorist organization.

When I say policing action, it actually needs to be more creative. I'd be all for increasing the number of intelligence types to infiltrate these groups. The problem is that, at least in this country, the on-the-ground spooks were the least respected and their work was considered not good enough for the important promotions. (An article from the Atlantic Monthly in the 90s outlined this pretty well.) Yet, this is exactly the kind of approach you need to uproot these types. If they infiltrate, you have to infiltrate, and destroy cell by cell. It's slow, it's tedious, and it requires lots of people on the ground. On the other hand, you kill far fewer innocents and your nation's public image, necessary for all kinds of other international activity, doesn't take a nose dive.

I understand the frustration. The Israeli's aren't building a wall to enrich a few contractors: they have legitimate fears. But killing massive numbers of innocents will always have too many repercussions. We will pay for this for years.

[bigtree]

45. so, you're back to using what Hizbollah does as a standard

from which to measure Israel.

Whatever Israel's 'goal', they aren't entitled to pursue it at any cost to the Lebanese by merely stating that they're 'minimizing losses'.

It's moot at this point whether Israel is minimizing damages. They are most certainly not. Their strategy has been a travesty. Over 600 Lebanese dead, many chidren, many elderly, many infirm; all of the ones least able to leave the areas bombed. No matter how much of Hizbollah's capacity to attack Israel they say they have eliminated, the attacks on Israel have continued and increased.

I think the supporters of this scorched earth, 'village flattening' policy of firing missiles wherever and whenever the Israelis want into Lebanon's neighborhoods, towns, and cities are setting Israel up for more threats, not less. Israel may feel satisfied in pursuing Hizbollah, trampling on the unarmed Lebanese citizens as they go, but as the tragic events of 9-11, and our own country's destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated, the ability of individuals to inflict great damage and harm through sudden acts of terror are not diminished by shock and awe. Nor are they diminished by the application of overwhelming force against the government and infrastructure of the nation the group happens to be operating out of.

The Israeli decision to continue their assaults on Lebanon threaten the very agreement they hailed this afternoon. Hizbollah may have put forward the position today that Israel had to be out of Lebanon before they quit fighting, but the proposal from them before that was an offer to stop the rocket barrage into Israel in exchange for an Israeli halt to their assaults.

If we are to judge the combatants according to their intentions, both sides have put foward elements of compromise toward a cease-fire. If we are to judge them by their actions, both Hizbollah and Israel have vowed to continue fighting no matter what France and America have agreed to.

No matter what excuse you can conjure, Israel has placed themselves in the position of having killed more helpless, innocent civilians than the foe they so regularly demonize. All of the correct distinctions which are rightly drawn are obscured by Israel's disregard for the innocents caught in their line of fire; and they were aiming.

No dusting up of Hizbollah, or, of the Lebanese government, can erase the sad fact of those hapless Lebanese civilians whose innocent lives were decided by Israel to be less important than those innocents Israel sought to defend in their own country. No justifiable attachment of blame for the conflict to Hizbollah will lessen Israel's guilt in illegally targeting areas they should have known were inhabited. Just setting the threshhold of outrage over civilian deaths to 'thousands' instead of the horrifying 600 plus who actually lost their lives, doesn't make their killings any less heinous, especially given the short period in which the killings occurred.

Now Israel is to be given permission in the 'peace' agreement to fire on Lebanon at will, whenever they decide they are threatened. That's outrageous and wrong, considering the sad fact that the innocent Lebanese civilians have borne most of the brunt of Israel's bloody reprisals, and stand to lose still more of their lives and livelihoods with each flailing of Israel's military against Lebanon.

[bigtree]

48. kick

[Jacobin]

46. Gee. Shock N Awe still doesn't work

Who woulda thunk it?

:eyes: