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Israel bans reporting of use of "unique" weapons in Lebanon

by Israel IMC Tuesday, Jul. 25, 2006 at 2:12 PM

Unfortunately, they don't ban the use of the weapons themselves - even if international law has. If I were the one comitting War Crimes, I wouldn't want people talking about them either.

Israel bans reporting of use of "unique" weapons in Lebanon
By Redress Information & Analysis

25 July 2006

Israel has issued new censorship guidelines banning reporting of the "use of unique kinds of ammunition and weaponry" in Lebanon. This comes amid reports that Israel is using chemical weapons during its bombing of civilians in Lebanon. Below is the text of the guidelines, sent to international and local news organizations by the chief Israeli military censor, Colonel Sima Vaknin-Gil, on 23 July.


23 July 2006

Subject: Military Operations in the North -- Censorship Guidelines Regarding Ground Operations.
1. Following are the main censorship guidelines regarding the continuation of military operations in the north, with emphasis on ground warfare on the northern border.

2. The guidelines in this document are comprehensive and refer to the option of large-scale military activity. The relevant guidelines should also be applied to the current ground operations.

3. Please brief editors, producers, broadcasters, correspondents with emphasis on field correspondents and other network employees on these guidelines in order to avoid any misunderstanding.

4. Due to the frequent broadcasts and the many live updates considerable attention should be given to what is said by the correspondents in the field. Please make sure that any correspondent/analyst in the field knows the censorship guidelines. The potential error during a live update is very high and you are held responsible for everything broadcast during a live update.

5. This document has been sent to local news agencies as well.

6. This document is the follow-up to the former document "The Fighting In The Northern Arena".

Sincerely,

Col. Sima Vaknin-Gil
Chief Censor

The Censorship Guidelines Regarding Ground Operations In The North For Reports And Live Updates.
General
1. This document will detail the main guidelines regarding operations on the northern border by the Censor.

2. This document contains three main topics: general guidelines for news coverage, coverage of activity leading to the ground operation and the coverage of the combat itself.

3. Any news item that is not within these boundaries must be submitted to the Censorship before it is published.

General guidelines
4. Coverage of any kind, that states intent, specific/general abilities and/or any operational activity (in a live broadcast) is not authorized by the Censorship. In principle, analysis based on matters that were approved for publication is allowed.

5. In a case where a news item is not within the boundaries given by the Chief Censor, the issue should be dealt with by the two censorship bases either in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

6. There is a special emphasis on matters regarding the activity of special forces and the use of unique kinds of ammunition and weaponry.

7. In principle, news items on the intelligence abilities / lack of abilities during the operation will not be authorized.

Coverage of activity leading to ground operation
The censorship does not approve any verbal information or visual photography that attest to:

8. The military order-of-battle.

9. The type of force, the forces' special abilities and warfare equipment.

10. Movement routes.

11. Assembly areas and deployments.

12. Information on forces transferring from one area to another (thinning of forces).

13. Locations of command posts.

14. It is strictly forbidden to mention the time and location in which the army forces might enter the enemy's territory.

15. The codename of the operation will be approved for publication only from the moment it begins.

16. Pictures of the army forces will be approved as long as the location in which they were taken is not disclosed.

The live coverage of the combat itself
17. It is strictly forbidden to show a picture of the full battle coverage, with an emphasis of identifying the location (long shot pictures).

18. It is strictly forbidden to mention military targets while these targets are being pursued.

19. It is strictly forbidden, until the information is cleared by the censorship, to publish information concerning missing personnel and captives (from both sides).

20. Coverage of aerial accidents in Israeli territory can only be approved by the censor. In hostile territory, this information will not be approved until the evacuation of the staff and equipment from that area is completed.

21. It is strictly forbidden to conduct real time coverage on visits of officials. Interviews and photography will be approved later, after the end of the visit.

22. During an incident ­ authorization for coverage of the reasons for the incident will be given as long as there is no breach of Israeli security concerns (thus personal opinions and analyses for the reasons of the incident are allowed).

23. Coverage of an incident with casualties ­ as always, must be submitted to the censorship.


www.redress.btinternet.co.uk/israel_censor.htm
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This is a routine

by checklist Tuesday, Jul. 25, 2006 at 4:04 PM

Well known to anyone who has been in the military. Standard operating procedure.
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We know now how Israel does it--they are a rogue terror state

by Matityahu Tuesday, Jul. 25, 2006 at 6:17 PM

They will do anything that they can get away with. With the permission of the U.S., that's just about anything, as long as it's done with a good propaganda spin.
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Do you know what kind of weapons causes this damage?

by As-Safir Newspaper Wednesday, Jul. 26, 2006 at 3:24 AM

Do you know what kin...
pic.php.jpeg, image/jpeg, 273x400

Beirut

July 21st, 2006

This is what we were able to find out today locally : The main points from our reports today are :
1- what Zeinab was able to find out about electromagnetic arms: please check http://uk.oneworld.net/article/view/136518/1/5795

2- the director of Nabatiyeh National Hospital in the south , dr Hassan Wazni , talks about "vacuum bombs, it vacuums the air out of the body and stops the breathing and thus the heart stops operating. He also speaks about one death case , that of Sadek Hamed (12) whose caused is still unknown (medically) .

3- A spokesman for the army , said on record that the Israelis are using "bombs with special fillings" that could include internationally forbidden material.

4- The director of Marjeyoun national hospital (south) dr Mo'ness Kalakesh speaks about abnormal cases they treated: weird burns that make the skin glued and almost impossible to treat. These are people whose either arms or legs were hurt.

5- The doctors in the hospitals in the south all say the same thing : doing test on the remains is a luxury they can not afford at this time. They lack of doctors and equipment and time .. casualties arrive the around the clock and the priority is to try and save the injured and not to test the dead. However, an American University hospital expert , the head of Environment and Public Health and Danger management departement Azmi Imad , told us that not only the remains of the corps should be tested , but also the scene where the bombings happened too. This is of course impossible for more than one reason : all the "scenes" are unreachable due to the bombings ( some of the victims of the rmayleh bridge bombings are still under the remains of their cars) + no one can afford to leave the ER to go test scenes on the ground.

6- Today they had to burn corpses due to lack of space in the morgues , so maybe we're loosing proves.

7- Several hospitals in the south speak about similar cases : burnt not burnt corpses , swallowed, no bleeding , the unbearable semll.

8- None of the doctors would go to the extend of confirming naything : they admit they don't know. Only one doctor in Tyre , director of Najm hospital , says he saw similar cases in previous Israeli aggressions.

9- This is it . Tomorrow , a WHO representative is supposed to be handed remains of corpses and tests results, but I'm not very optimistic about any of this;on one hand , the local heath authorities seem more concerned about their political agendas and pay offs and are not giving the issue the time and effort it deserves. On the other hand, I have an innate mistrust and skepticism towards anything that involves the UN.

Hanady

Beirut
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They think that they are above the law as the y murder children

by SY Friday, Jul. 28, 2006 at 6:33 PM

EIRUT — Killing hundreds of Lebanese civilians in its bloody offensive, Israel has even showed no mercy for innocent children who have taken the full brunt of the relentless onslaught.

"I put my arms around my head and covered my eyes. I could feel sand and dirt falling around me,"10 -year-old Ali told Reuters recalling the Israeli attack on his village in south Lebanon.

As he was being taken by a Beirut hospital staff to treat the wounds he had sustained in the Israeli attack, Ali was unable to remember when his Blida village was hit.

"The wounds were the only thing I could think about. The shell landed between my father and sister. They had the worst injuries," said the child.

One of his two baby sisters laughed and played in her cot nearby, a bandage covering the wound where the blast had sliced off her thumb.

A hospital worker read a story to another of his sisters whose head was wrapped in bandages.

Children account for more than a third of hundreds of people killed and half of the800 , 000displaced since Israel launched a wide-scale onslaught on Lebanon on the pretext of seeking the release of two soldiers taken prisoner by Hizbullah.

Lebanon's hard-won infrastructure has also been left in ruins, with Israel knocking out Beirut international airport, bombing ports, destroying bridges and setting power stations ablaze.

"Hitting Us"

Jaafar Harb,10 , narrowly survived an Israeli attack in the southern village of Bint Jbeil.

"A shell flew over our house, but didn't fall on it," he said, imitating the noise he heard as it flew past his home.

"They kept hitting us."

Jaafar escaped from Bint Jbeil to Beirut, where he, his family and hundreds of other displaced people are taking shelter in a college building.

Bint Jbail, a major town, is about 2 kilometers north of the hilltop village of Maroun al-Ras, which is less than500 meters from the border.

It has been a scene of fierce fighting between Hizbullah resistance fighters and the invading Israeli troops.

At least 13 Israeli soldiers were killed on Wednesday, July26 , in fierce battles with Hizbullah fighters in the area.

Unfazed

In the yard of the college building, volunteers were organizing story telling, drawing and games for the traumatized children.

More
http://islamonline.net/English/News/2006-07/27/01.shtml
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Hizzbolah

by complicit in civilian deaths Friday, Jul. 28, 2006 at 6:47 PM

Israel has been dropping leaflets in populated areas warning civilians of impending military strikes. This puts Israeli soldiers at added risk- they lose the crucial element of surprise when engaging in manuevers. But this is done to spare the Lebanese civilians.

Hizzbolah is complicit in the deaths of these civilians by storing their arsenal of 12,000 missiles in homes, mosques and schools.
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Civillian deaths by the hundreds

by Jebadiah Friday, Jul. 28, 2006 at 7:25 PM

sraeli Cluster Munitions Hit Civilians in Lebanon
Israel Must Not Use Indiscriminate Weapons

(Beirut, July 24, 2006) – Israel has used artillery-fired cluster munitions in populated areas of Lebanon, Human Rights Watch said today. Researchers on the ground in Lebanon confirmed that a cluster munitions attack on the village of Blida on July 19 killed one and wounded at least 12 civilians, including seven children. Human Rights Watch researchers also photographed cluster munitions in the arsenal of Israeli artillery teams on the Israel-Lebanon border.
“Cluster munitions are unacceptably inaccurate and unreliable weapons when used around civilians,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “They should never be used in populated areas.”

According to eyewitnesses and survivors of the attack interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Israel fired several artillery-fired cluster munitions at Blida around 3 p.m. on July 19. The witnesses described how the artillery shells dropped hundreds of cluster submunitions on the village. They clearly described the submunitions as smaller projectiles that emerged from their larger shells.

The cluster attack killed 60-year-old Maryam Ibrahim inside her home. At least two submunitions from the attack entered the basement that the Ali family was using as a shelter, wounding 12 persons, including seven children. Ahmed Ali, a 45-year-old taxi driver and head of the family, lost both legs from injuries caused by the cluster munitions. Five of his children were wounded: Mira, 16; Fatima, 12; ‘Ali, 10; Aya, 3; and `Ola, 1. His wife Akram Ibrahim, 35, and his mother-in-law `Ola Musa, 80, were also wounded. Four relatives, all German-Lebanese dual nationals sheltering with the family, were wounded as well: Mohammed Ibrahim, 45; his wife Fatima, 40; and their children ‘Ali, 16, and Rula, 13.

Human Rights Watch researchers photographed artillery-delivered cluster munitions among the arsenal of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) artillery teams stationed on the Israeli-Lebanese border during a research visit on July 23. The photographs show M483A1 Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions, which are U.S.-produced and -supplied, artillery-delivered cluster munitions. The photographs contain the distinctive marks of such cluster munitions, including a diamond-shaped stamp, and a shape that is longer than ordinary artillery, according to a retired IDF commander who asked not to be identified.


Pallets of 155mm artillery projectiles including DPICM cluster munitions (center and right with yellow diamonds) in the arsenal of an IDF artillery unit on July 23 in northern Israel. Each DPICM shell contains 88 sub-munitions, which have a dud rate of up to 14 percent. © Human Rights Watch 2006



Close-up of a M483A1 DPICM artillery-delivered cluster munition present in the arsenal of an IDF unit in northern Israel. © Human Rights Watch 2006


The M483A1 artillery shells deliver 88 cluster submunitions per shell, and have an unacceptably high failure rate (dud rate) of 14 percent, leaving behind a serious unexploded ordnance problem that will further endanger civilians. The commander said that the IDF’s operations manual warns soldiers that the use of such cluster munitions creates dangerous minefields due to the high dud rate.


Lebanese security forces, who to date have not engaged in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, also accused Israel of using cluster munitions in its attacks on Blida and other Lebanese border villages. These sources also indicated they have evidence that Israel used cluster munitions earlier this year during fighting with Hezbollah around the contested Shebaa Farms area. Human Rights Watch is continuing to investigate these additional allegations.

Human Rights Watch believes that the use of cluster munitions in populated areas may violate the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks contained in international humanitarian law. The wide dispersal pattern of their submunitions makes it very difficult to avoid civilian casualties if civilians are in the area. Moreover, because of their high failure rate, cluster munitions leave large numbers of hazardous, explosive duds that injure and kill civilians even after the attack is over. Human Rights Watch believes that cluster munitions should never be used, even away from civilians, unless their dud rate is less than 1 percent.

Human Rights Watch conducted detailed analyses of the U.S. military’s use of cluster bombs in the 1999 Yugoslavia war, the 2001-2002 Afghanistan war, and the 2003 Iraq war. Human Rights Watch research established that the use of cluster munitions in populated areas in Iraq caused more civilian casualties than any other factor in the U.S.-led coalition’s conduct of major military operations in March and April 2003, killing and wounding more than 1,000 Iraqi civilians. Roughly a quarter of the 500 civilian deaths caused by NATO bombing in the 1999 Yugoslavia war were also due to cluster munitions.

“Our research in Iraq and Kosovo shows that cluster munitions cannot be used in populated areas without huge loss of civilian life,” Roth said. “Israel must stop using cluster bombs in Lebanon at once.”

Human Rights Watch called upon the Israel Defense Forces to immediately cease the use of indiscriminate weapons like cluster munitions in Lebanon.

Background

Israel used cluster munitions in Lebanon in 1978 and in the 1980s. At that time, the United States placed restrictions on their use and then a moratorium on the transfer of cluster munitions to Israel out of concern for civilian casualties. Those weapons used more than two decades ago continue to affect Lebanon.

Israel has in its arsenal cluster munitions delivered by aircraft, artillery and rockets. Israel is a major producer and exporter of cluster munitions, primarily artillery projectiles and rockets containing M85 DPICM (Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munition) submunitions. Israeli Military Industries, an Israeli government-owned weapons manufacturer, has reportedly produced more than 60 million M85 DPICM submunitions. Israel also produces at least six different types of air-dropped cluster bombs, and has imported from the United States M26 rockets for its Multiple Launch Rocket Systems.

There is growing international momentum to stop the use of cluster munitions. Belgium became the first country to ban cluster munitions in February 2006, and Norway announced a moratorium on the weapon in June 2006. Cluster munitions are increasingly the focus of discussion at the meetings of the Convention on Conventional Weapons, with ever more states calling for a new international instrument dealing with cluster munitions.

Human Rights Watch is a founding member, and a steering committee member, of the Cluster Munition Coalition: www.stopclustermunitions.org.


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"Israel has been dropping leaflets in populated areas warning civilians"

by more Zionist terrorism Friday, Jul. 28, 2006 at 7:40 PM

This is nothing but terrorism, just like in Gaza:

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/07/171121.php

(snip)

Raji Serrani, the director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), which has collected several examples of the tactic, described it as "psychological warfare", adding: "Since when did Israel feel the need to warn people that they were about to bomb their homes? They are simply playing with people's minds and inflicting a new panic in Gaza."

(snip)
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"This is nothing but terrorism, just like in Gaza"

by American taxpayer Saturday, Jul. 29, 2006 at 6:07 AM

When rabid anti-Zionists quote a terrorist by the euphemism of "the director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights", you know they can't be trusted to be telling the truth.

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Lies and the lying lzioliars that tell them

by Adult Supervisor Saturday, Jul. 29, 2006 at 10:49 AM

The lies Israel tells itself (and we tell on its behalf)
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Lebanon, 28 July 2006

What you won't see on Israeli TV anytime soon: A Lebanese civilian getting treatment after being were wounded in Israeli air strike in Beirut, 25 July 2006 (MaanImages/Raoul Karmer)

When journalists use the word "apparently", or another favourite, "reportedly", they are usually distancing themselves from an event or an interpretation in the supposed interests of balance. But I think we should read the "apparently" contained in a statement from the head of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, relating to the killing this week of four unarmed UN monitors by the Israeli army in its other sense.

When Annan says that those four deaths were "apparently deliberate", I take him to mean that the evidence shows that the killings were deliberate. And who can disagree with him? At least 10 phone calls were made to Israeli commanders over a period of six hours warning that artillery and aerial bombardments were either dangerously close to or hitting the monitors' building.

The UN post, in Khaim just inside south Lebanon, was clearly marked and well-known to the army, but nonetheless it was hit directly four times in the last hour before an Israeli helicopter fired a precision-guided missile that tore through the roof of an underground shelter, killing the monitors inside. A UN convoy that arrived too late to rescue the peacekeepers was also fired on. From the evidence, it does not get much more deliberate than that.

The problem, however, is that Western leaders, diplomats and the media take the "apparently" in its first sense -- as a way to avoid holding Israel to account for its actions. For "apparently deliberate", read "almost certainly accidental". That was why the best the UN Security Council could manage after a day and a half of deliberation was a weasly statement of "shock and distress" at the killings, as though they were an act of God.

Our media are no less responsible for this evasiveness. They make sure "we" -- the publics of the West -- never countenance the thought that a society like our own, one we are always being reminded is a democracy, could sink to the depths of inhumanity required to murder unarmed peacekeepers. Who can be taken seriously challenging the Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni's assertion that "There will never be an [Israeli] army commander that will intentionally aim at civilians or UN soldiers [sic]"?

Even the minority in the West who have started to fear that Israel is "apparently" slaughtering civilians across Lebanon or that it is "apparently" intending to make refugees of a million Lebanese must presumably shrink from the idea that Israel is also capable of killing unarmed UN monitors.

Even the minority in the West who have started to fear that Israel is "apparently" slaughtering civilians across Lebanon or that it is "apparently" intending to make refugees of a million Lebanese must presumably shrink from the idea that Israel is also capable of killing unarmed UN monitors.

After all, our media insinuate, the two cases are not comparable.

There may be good reasons why Lebanese civilians need to suffer. Let's not forget that they belong to a people (or is it a race or, maybe, a religion?) that gave birth to Hizbullah. "We" can cast aside our concerns for the moment and take it on trust that Israel has cause to kill the Lebanese or make them homeless. Doubtless the justifications will emerge later, when we have lost interest in the "Lebanon crisis". We may never hear what those reasons were, but who can doubt that they exist?

The "apparent" murder of four UN monitors, however, is a deeper challenge to our faith in our moral superiority, which is why that "apparently" is held on to as desperately as a talisman. No civilised country could kill peacekeepers, especially ones drawn from our own societies, from Canada, Finland and Austria. That is the moral separation line that divides us from the terrorists. Were that line to be erased, we would be no different from those whom we must fight.

An iconic image of this war that our media have managed to expunge from the official record but which keeps popping up in email inboxes like a guilty secret is of young Israeli girls, lipsticked and nailpolished as if on their way to a party, drawing messages of death and hatred on the sides of the missiles about to be loaded on to army trucks and tanks. In one, an out-of-focus soldier stands on a tank paternally watching over the girls as they address another death threat to Hizbullah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Is this the truer face of Israeli society, even if it is the one we are never shown and refuse to believe in. And are "we" in the West hurtling down the same path?

Driving through the Jewish city of Upper Nazareth this week, I realised how inured I am becoming to this triumphal militarism -- and the racism that feeds it. Nothing surprising about the posters of "We will win" on every hoarding. But it takes me more than a few seconds to notice that the Magen David ambulance in front of me is flying a little national flag, the blue Star of David, from its window. I have heard that American fire engines flew US flags after 9/11, but this somehow seems worse. How is it possible for an ambulance, the embodiment of our neutral, civilised, universal, "Western", humanitarian values, to fly a national flag, I think to myself? And does it make a difference that only a few months ago Magen David joined the International Committee of the Red Cross?

Only slowly do my thoughts grow more disturbed: how many hospital adminstrators, doctors and nurses have seen that ambulance arrive at their emergency departments and thought nothing of it? And is that the only Israeli ambulance flying the flag, or are many others doing the same? Later, the BBC TV news answers my question. I see two ambulances with the same flags going to the front line to collect casualties. Will others soon cross over the border into southern Lebanon, after it is "secured", and will no one mention those little flags fluttering from the window?

A psychologist tells me how upset she is about a meeting she attended a few days ago of the northern coordinating committee of her profession. They were discussing how best to treat the shock and trauma suffered by Israeli children under the bombardment from Hizbullah. The meeting concluded with an agreement that the psychologists would reassure the children with the statement: "The army is there to protect us."

And so, the seeds of fascism are unthinkingly sown for another generation of children, children like our own.

No one agreed with my friend when she dissented, arguing that this was not the message to be telling impressionable minds, and that violence against the Other is not a panacea for our problems. Parents, not soldiers, are responsible for protecting their children, she pointed out. Tanks, planes and guns bring only fear and more hatred, hatred that will one day return to haunt us.

The slow, gentle indoctrination continues day in, day out, reinforcing the idea among Israel's Jewish population that the army can do no wrong and that it needs no oversight, not even from politicians (most of whom are former generals anyway, or, like the prime minister Ehud Olmert, too frightened to stand up to the chiefs of staff if they wanted to). "We will win". How do we know we will win? Because "the army is there to protect us." Add into the mix that faceless "Arab" enemy, those sub-beings, and you have a recipe for fascism -- even if it is of the democratically elected variety.

The Israeli media, of course, are the key to providing the second half of that equation -- or rather not providing it. You can sit watching the main Israeli channels all day, flicking between channels 1, 2 and 10, and not see a Lebanese face, apart from that of Hassan Nasrallah, the new Hitler. I don't mean the charred faces of corpses, or the bandaged babies, or the amputees lying in hospital beds. I mean any Lebanese faces. Just as you almost never see a Palestinian face on Israeli TV unless they are the mob, disfigured with hatred as they hold aloft another martyr on his way to burial.

Lebanon only swings in to view on Israeli television through the black and white footage of an aerial gun sight, or through the long shot of a distant urban landscape seconds before it is "pulverised" by a dropped bomb. The buildings crumble, flames shoot up, clouds of dust billow into the air. Another shot of arcade-game adrenalin.

Lebanon only swings into view on Israeli television through the black and white footage of an aerial gun sight, or through the long shot of a distant urban landscape seconds before it is "pulverised" by a dropped bomb. The buildings crumble, flames shoot up, clouds of dust billow into the air. Another shot of arcade-game adrenalin.

The humanitarian stories exist but they do not concern Lebanon. Animal welfare societies plead on behalf of the dogs and cats left alone to face the rocket fire on deserted Kiryat Shemona, just as they did before for foxes and deer when Israel began building its mammoth walls of concrete and steel across their migration routes in the West Bank, walls that are also imprisoning, unseen, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

The rest of the coverage is dedicated to Israeli army spokespeople, including the national heartthrob Miri Regev, and media "commentators" and "analysts". Who are these people? They are from the same pool of former military intelligence and security service officers who once did this job in the closed rooms of army HQ but now wallow in the limelight. One favoured pundit is even subtitled "Expert on psychological warfare against Hassan Nasrallah".

And who are the presenters and anchors who interview them? The other day an ageing expert on Apache helicopters interrupted his interviewer irritatedly to tell him his question was stupid. "We were in the army together and both know the answer. Don't play dumb?" It was a rare reminder that these anchors too are just soldiers in suits. One of the most popular, Ehud Yaari of Channel 2, barely conceals his military credentials as he condones yet more violence against the Lebanese or, if he can be deflected for a moment, the people of Gaza.

That is what comes of having a "citizen army", where teenagers learn to use a gun before they can drive and men do reserve duty until their late 40s. It means every male teacher, professor, psychologist and journalist thinks as a soldier because that is what he has been for most of his life.

Israel is not unique, far from it, though it is in a darker place, and has been for some time, than "we" in the West can fully appreciate. It is a mirror of what our own societies are capable of, despite our democratic values. It shows how a cult of victimhood makes one heartless and cruel, and how racism can be repackaged as civilised values.

Maybe those UN monitors, with their lookout post above the battlefield where Israel wants to use any means it can to destroy Hizbullah and Lebanese civilians who get in the way, had to be removed simply because they are a nuisance, a restraint when Israel needs to get on with the job of asserting "our" values. Maybe Israel does not want the scrutiny of peacekeepers as it fights our war on terror for us. Maybe it feared that the monitors' reports might help to give back to the Lebanese, even to Hizbullah, their faces, their history, their suffering.

And, if we are honest, Israel is not alone. How many of us want the Arabs to remain faceless so we can keep believing we are the victims of a new ideology that wants only our evisceration, just as the "Red Indians" once supposedly wanted our scalps? How many many of us believe that our values demand that we fall in behind a new world order in which Arab deaths are not real deaths because "they" are not fully human?

And how many of us believe that deliberate barbarity, at least when we do it, is only "apparently" a crime against humanity?


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# BY TOPIC: Israel attacks Lebanon (12 July 2006-)


Jonathan Cook, based in Nazareth, is the author of Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State, published by Pluto Press and available in the US from University of Michigan Press. His website is www.jkcook.net.
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"Nobody is asking Hizbollah for a cease-fire"

by TW Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 6:39 AM

Of course they are, zio-liar. Hezbollah would be required to sign off on any such thing and would be held culpable before the world if they unilaterally violated it. Furthermore Hezbollah is AMONG the parties petitioning for a cease-fire, which moots your bullshit right there. Only you assholes and your American co-Satans are firmly opposed to a cease-fire
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driving into the sea--pure propaganda

by Brad Sellars Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 6:40 AM

Why do Palestinians want to destroy Israel and drive Israeli Jews into the sea?

This is the question asked most frequently by Israelis and Zionists. We will answer the question indirectly by asking the question below:

Are you aware that Israeli Zionists, during the 1948 war, pushed over 150,000 Palestinian refugees into the sea?

For a long time, Zionists have been propagating fear based propaganda to their followers, probably this picture can tell you a bit of the real story, . It's misleading and unfair to focus on what Palestinians might allegedly do in the future, while the past and present of Palestinians are filled with Israeli war crimes. These types of accusations are meant to deflect and confuse the core issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The core issues of the conflict are the collective DISPOSSESSION and ETHNIC CLEANSING (compulsory population transfer) of the Palestinian people for the past five decades. It should be emphasized that the conflict would have been at the same level of intensity, even if both warring parties had been Muslims, Christians, or even Jewish.

Since the inception of Zionism, its leaders have been keen on creating a "Jewish State" based on a "Jewish majority" by mass immigration of Jews to Palestine, primarily European Jews fleeing from anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany. When a "Jewish majority" was impossible to achieve, based on Jewish immigration and natural growth, Zionist leaders (such as Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann) concluded that "population transfer" was the only solution to what they referred to as the "Arab Problem." Year after year, the plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous people became known as the "transfer solution". David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, eloquently articulated the "transfer solution" as the following:

* In a joint meeting between the Jewish Agency Executive and Zionist Action Committee on June 12th, 1938:

"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." (Righteous Victims p. 144).
* In a speech addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut on December 30, 1947:
"In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176 & Benny Morris p. 28)
* And on February 8th, 1948 Ben-Gurion also stated to the Mapai Council:.

"From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romema [East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood]. . . there are no [Palestinian] Arabs. One hundred percent Jews. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, it has not been Jewish as it is now. In many [Palestinian] Arab neighborhoods in the west one sees not a single [Palestinian] Arab. I do not assume that this will change. . . . What had happened in Jerusalem. . . . is likely to happen in many parts of the country. . . in the six, eight, or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 180-181)
* In a speech addressing the Zionist Action Committee on April 6th, 1948:.

"We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area ..... I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of Arab population." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 181)


For Israelis and Zionists to excuse themselves from any war crimes, such as compulsory population transfer (Ethnic Cleansing) and dispossessing the Palestinian people, they've resorted to a myth that Palestinians left their homes, farms, businesses, banks, boats, cars, etc. based on their free will, click here to read our rebuttal of this concocted myth.


Jaffa May 1948, Palestinians were being pushed into the see by the attacking Israeli Army

There is no denying the fact that some Palestinians think as many Zionists do (a Palestinian version of Zionism), and very possibly they do so because they were the victims of such treatment themselves. Regardless of whether it's right or wrong, you have to agree that it is human nature to respond to terror with terror, and to racism with racism, these are facts that all decent people must accept and deplore simultaneously. No matter what the circumstances are (such as the urge to seek vengeance, revenge, reprisals, etc.), targeting civilians to achieve political or military objectives, in either war or non-war situations, is terrorism. It should be noted that the Palestinian people have been on the receiving end of Israeli terrorism (the chief aspect of which are the collective DISPOSSESSION and ETHNIC CLEANSING of 8.5 million Palestinians) for the past five decades.

Finally, the Palestinian mainstream does not and will not condone massive ethnic cleansing such as that which Israelis and Zionists have perpetrated against to the Palestinian people. Palestinians, as Muslim and Arabs, have a long history and track record which proves exactly the opposite. Omar Ibn al-Khatab's and Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem are solid proof of how Arabs and Muslims treated their defeated subjects fairly during the Byzantines and the Crusades respectively. Ironically, many of today's Christian Palestinians trace their roots to the Crusades, such as the famous Rock family of Jaffa. In other words, if freeing Palestine would imply perpetrating war crimes similar to the ones perpetrated against the Palestinian people, Palestinians will wait for another Omar or Saladin to right the wrongs of the past. The Muslim Arabs have their history to prove their tolerance towards their subjects, however, the Israelis and Zionists have their track record to speak for them. Palestine Remembered has been explicitly built to expose and uncover Israeli war crimes and to AMPLIFY the voices of the Palestinian refugees.
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re: "Try this TW"

by TW Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 9:01 AM

Naw, I got no questions at all, grease-rat. YOUR fake-ass manipulative "rebuttal" I already blew away IN ADVANCE:

"Hezbollah is AMONG the parties petitioning for a cease-fire, which moots your bullshit right there"

Odd how you bullshits always miss these things. It's like you only notice that which fits into your Orwellian talking-point system. I actually pity you. You gotta be the most profound mental slaves to a deeply sick ideology that the world has ever seen.
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re: 'Futile' by thuh Hebron baby-slab-o-matic

by TW Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 9:03 AM

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!! What a fukkin idiot! It's like a centipede pointing at a spider and saying "too many legs"
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"ETHNIC CLEANSING (compulsory population transfer)"

by Zionist doubletalk Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 9:33 AM

When Zionists talk about "establishing a buffer zone in Lebanon," what they really mean is "occupation."
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"the IDF left Bint Jbail"

by charismatic critical gehrig Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 9:45 AM

That's 'cuz they got their butts kicked.

Again.

Hahahahahahahaha
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"more than 200 dead"

by history buff Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 10:16 AM

For every Brit the Mau-Mau killed, the Brits kill ten Mau-Mau. The Brits lost.
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Does the name Custer ring a bell?

by whistling past the graveyard Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 10:41 AM

Ever hear of a place called Dien Bien Phu? How about Stalingrad?
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Futile says the blind man

by shetizdayen israel Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 10:44 AM

Gunny, this "shetizdayen indeebay" is a certifiable headcase. Nothing ever rubs onto him.
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"Does the name Custer ring a bell?" blah blah blah

by debate coach Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 11:00 AM

Why are they trying to distract you from the folly of their arguments?
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What about original post/topic?

by debate coach Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 11:05 AM

I guess zionists wouldn't want to touch that.
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Mau Maus

by johnk Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 11:49 AM

From Wikipedia:
From the entry Mau Mau Uprising:

The official number of rebels killed is 11,503, but David Anderson places the actual number at higher than 20,000, and Caroline Elkins claims it is probably at least as high as 50,000, perhaps much higher. 63 British soldiers and police, 26 Asians and 2,000 Pro-British Africans were killed. Despite the predominant image of primitive rebels savaging defenceless white settlers during the Uprising, a total of 68 settlers were killed.

Of particular note is the number of executions authorized by the courts. In the first eight months of the Emergency only 35 rebels were hanged, but by November 1954 756 had been hanged, 508 for offenses less than murder. By the end of 1954 over 900 rebels and rebel sympathizers had been hanged, and by the end of the Emergency the total was over 1,000.

-------------------

In short, the British fear of the Mau Maus was mostly racist fear of "savages", not the reality of the situation. It's the Brits and their African allies who were the primary killers, and it's the Africans (on both sides) who died.
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More Mau Math

by johnk Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 11:49 AM

I have to re-do the math.

>>>For every Brit the Mau-Mau killed, the Brits kill ten Mau-Mau. The Brits lost.

For every Brit the Mau-Mau killed, the Brits killed over 200 Mau-Mau. The Brits lost.
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If somebody called you on the phone and said

by just wondering Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 12:32 PM

they were going to blow up your house and all your possessions, and you and your family with it if you didn't get out, wouldn't *you* be terrorized?
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A simple yes or no would suffice.

by typical Zionist dodge Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 1:29 PM

But they don't want to admit that Israel is a terrorist state.
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Another logical fallacy

by typical Zionist ploy Sunday, Jul. 30, 2006 at 4:53 PM

http://onegoodmove.org/fallacy/fd.htm

False Dilemma

Definition:

A limited number of options (usually two) is given, while in reality there are more options. A false dilemma is an illegitimate use of the "or" operator.

Putting issues or opinions into "black or white" terms is a common instance of this fallacy.

Examples:

1. Either you're for me or against me.
2. America: love it or leave it.
3. Either support Meech Lake or Quebec will separate.
4. Every person is either wholly good or wholly evil.
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