Israeli air attack kills 54 civilians, including 19 children

If you don't like what Israel is doing that is one issue. If you make prejudiced remarks against a group, then that is an issue which can should be discussed regardless of what is happening in the middle east.

There is no excuse for that. It is disgusting.

 

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Back on topic: Surely the folks here have previously supported Israel by whatever rationale can now condemn them for failing to live up to the pledged 48 hr. cease-fire.

Rather than live up to their word the planes started bombing the next day. I think we can all find agreement in speaking out against those kinds of actions.

 

Kudos to Jonathan Cook, who is on a mission to confront the lies, deceits, propagandas, distortions, callousness of Israel and its apologists. This time is on the Qana massacre.

Why Do They Hate Us? Listen to Qana (Again)

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=9450

August 1, 2006
by Jonathan Cook

The crowds in Beirut last year demanding a Cedar Revolution, "the first shoots of democracy" supposedly planted by the United States, are a distant memory. Yesterday we saw in their place the fury of Lebanon directed against the capital's United Nations building – an early "birth pang" in Condoleezza Rice's new Middle East.

If Israel wanted to widen its war, it could not have chosen a better way to achieve it than by sending its war planes back to the mixed Muslim and Christian village of Qana in south Lebanon to massacre civilians there, as if marking a morbid anniversary. A decade ago, Israeli shelling on the village killed more than 100 Lebanese civilians sheltering in a local UN post.

To the Lebanese, and most in the Arab world, the United Nations now symbolizes everything that is corrupt about the international community and its "conscience." The world body, it has become clearer by the day, is a mere plaything of the United States and, by default, of Israel too. It is nothing more than a talking shop, one so enfeebled that it lacks the moral backbone even to denounce unequivocally the murder of four of its unarmed observers by the Israeli army last week. How can Lebanon expect protection for its civilians from an international body as emasculated as this?

The rage we saw directed against the United Nations building in Beirut, as if we needed reminding, will be converted in time into more violence against the West, to more 9/11s and to more London and Madrid bombings. Will these attacks wake up the slumbering Western publics to stop their leaders engineering a global war, or will more of us simply be persuaded that the Arab world is fundamentally irrational and savage?

Why do they hate us? Qana provides the answers, but it appears few in the West are really listening.

All morning when Arab channels were showing the crushed building in Qana, and the Red Crescent workers extracting from under it more than 60 bodies, mostly children, embalmed in blood and dust, Israel was showing family movies on its main television networks.

Foreign channels were hardly better. It is in the first responses of the Western broadcasters – before they have had time to hone and polish their scripts and cover all the bases – that their partisan agenda is at its most transparent. So all morning their attention was directed less at the new Qana massacre than at the destruction of the UN building in Beirut, as though it was our last rampart against the rampaging hordes of Islam. In this framing of the world, our provocative acts appear so much less significant than the mystifying response, the Other's delusional anger.

Noticeably, our news anchors were careful to avoid referring to the massacre of Lebanese children at Qana as "an escalation" by Israel. That word, intoned so solemnly when eight Israeli railway workers were killed by a Hezbollah rocket in Haifa a fortnight ago, was not uttered on this occasion. According to our media, when we suffer, it is an escalation demanding retaliation; when they suffer, maybe it is time to begin talks about talks about a cease-fire.

BBC World's presenter in Beirut, Lyse Doucet, personifies this moral blindness. She chided Lebanese speaker after speaker for the crowds attacking the UN building. "Why are they doing this when the UN is trying to broker a cease-fire?" she demanded in bafflement of each. The headlines at 11 a.m. GMT even began with her quoting an expression of regret she had extracted from a Hezbollah MP for the attack on the Beirut building, as though amid all that morning's carnage the destruction of UN property was the real issue.

This presumably is what our media mean when they talk about "balance."

Jim Muir, the BBC's fine reporter in Tyre, observed in the same broadcast that it was noncombatants who were paying the price in this war, and that the majority of the dead on both sides were civilian. Where did he get that idea? In Israel, the great majority of dead are soldiers, but you would hardly know it listening to our media. In the same spirit, Jonathan Charles in Haifa observed that it had been "a difficult day" for both countries, adding – in case we could not fathom what he meant – that Israel had faced a hard day on the diplomatic front. What lengths our broadcasters must go to to remain evenhanded when we massacre innocents.

Israel, as usual, can be relied on to defend the indefensible. A government spokeswoman told the BBC in another easy-ride interview that the army would never target an area if it knew Lebanese civilians were there. Then she performed a somersault of logic several times by arguing in her country's defense that the army knows Hezbollah hides behind civilians. If she is right, then even as the pilot fired on the Hezbollah fighters he assumed were inside the building he knew civilians would pay the price too. But, of course, Hezbollah fighters were not in the building.

This endless sophistry is designed to lull us into acquiescence. Only vigilance keeps us asking the right questions. How, for example, after its reconnaissance planes and spy drones have been hovering over south Lebanon for the best part of three weeks, was Israel not aware that hundreds of civilians were still in Qana? But no one raised that question.

Cut through the apology, both from Israel and our media, and the aerial strike on Qana looks, at the very best interpretation, recklessly ambivalent about the likely civilian death toll. A cynic might go further. Was the attack meant as a warning to other civilians still in south Lebanon to get out – and fast? After its clear failure to win a conventional war, does the Israeli army want a freer hand to begin the job of incinerating Hezbollah, using its cluster and incendiary bombs, the Middle East's napalm? Was the answer to be found in the statement of Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, yesterday that, generously, he was giving civilians 24 hours safe passage to get out of the south.

Or was the massacre crafted as punishment for Qana's villagers, for those living among Hezbollah, for those who are related to Hezbollah, for those who believe that Hezbollah is their best hope of preventing another Israeli occupation? Did Israel's Justice Minister Haim Ramon not make precisely this point last week when he announced in a cabinet meeting: "Everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist and is connected to Hezbollah"?

Moshe Marzouk, a former senior Israeli army officer who has turned his hand to being a "counter-terrorism expert" in one of the country's leading academic institutions, told the American Jewish weekly The Forward that one of Israel's goals in this war is to teach Lebanon's Shi'ite community that it will pay a tremendous price for Hezbollah's actions. Maybe Qana was part of the price he was talking about.

Israel offers a second excuse for the massacre: it says it dropped leaflets on Qana warning civilians to leave the area. Again, our cynic could point out that those leaflets were dropped 10 days ago, as they were across most of south Lebanon. Qana had no reason to expect worse than anywhere else – and possibly it expected better, assuming that Israel would not dare to stage a war crime here for a second time after it troops massacred more than 100 civilians in 1996.

Our cynic could also note that Israel has bombed the escape roads from the south and is shooting at anything that moves on what is left of them. And he could point out that many of Qana's families have no cars to leave in, that they can find no petrol to fill the cars that remain after Israel bombed all the petrol stations, and that in any case they have nowhere else to go.

Though these things are all true, they distract us from the real issue: that Israel has no right to empty south Lebanon of its population, to make a million people homeless, just because its leaflets say they must leave. Jim Muir let us and himself down when he observed that south Lebanon is "not an area which can become depopulated overnight." No it isn't, but the deeper question is why should it be depopulated? At what point did the international broadcasters fall unnoticed behind an agenda that demands south Lebanon be ethnically cleansed to satisfy Israel?

Our media are oblivious to the double standards. Did Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah not publicly warn that he would attack Haifa days before he did so, if Israel continued its aggression and refused to negotiate over a prisoner swap? Were Israelis not warned to leave too? And would we allow Hezbollah to use that as a justification for its rocket fire on Israel?

On Friday Hezbollah fired its first Khaibar missile, packed with 100kg of explosives, close by Nazareth – we could feel the earth tremble from the impact. The Shi'ite militia waited more than two weeks before launching a warhead of that size, after it made repeated threats to do so if Israel continued its onslaught. Who will point out that had Hezbollah wanted to, if Israel's destruction was the real aim, it could have fired those Khaibar rockets from day one?

And on Saturday, Nasrallah promised to strike "beyond Haifa" with even more lethal rockets if Israel refused to countenance a ceasefire. Who on the BBC, or CNN, or any of our other channels will quote that warning as justification if Hezbollah extends its fire to Hadera, Netanya, or Tel Aviv in the coming days?

This is not a war of two narratives, nor even of two worldviews. It is a war in which we, the West, speak for both sides. Where we define the meaning of suffering and death, and of victory and peace. Where our humanity alone counts because we feel only our own pain as the birth pangs take hold.

 

Disgusting??

Yeah I brought up a (still) touchy topic such as the Holocaust and described the event rather harshly but was that disgusting?? (in regards to me calling Jews the World's Most Favorite Victims)

it is kinda true, no?.

But Victims no more, the roles have switched, now they are the aggressor picking on someone else(much weaker). Whether you like it or not, people all over the world are having a change of heart(of the previously could-do-no-wrong Israel). If you don't believe me try reading the news that's being printed all over the world. Frankly, I'm not sure which is better. Seems like some people have a problem with the Jews previous reputation and now they don't like their new one either.

 

Here is where your problem is. The Jews are the aggressor? What are you talking about? Israel may be the aggressor, but that doesn't mean that the Jews are the aggressors.

What I have a problem with is you pinning Israels illegal occupation, possible warcrimes etc. on the Jews.

Because Israel does something you don't like, doesn't mean that Jews are the aggressor. IT means that Israel is. When you start carrying over your feelings on Israel against everyone who is Jewish then it is disgusting.

You may be using the wrong words or whatever, I don't know. But it is wrong.

 

Yeah I see your point. The Jews who suffered during the Holocaust are not the SAME as this Israel who's doing the bombing. Also "Jews" would also include Jews here in the US and it would be unfair for them to be blamed along with Israel. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the world see Jews and Israel synonymously and thus the Jews will be blamed, whether it is right or wrong.

 

Finally, someone says it...

As far as being the "World's Most Famous Victims", tell that to 90% of my family that died in the Holocaust.

 

Whether or not the rest of the world makes that mistake, you don't have to make it.

 

Sad to see people having to defend themselves for getting irrationally angry about children dying. Sad to see this thread getting sidetracked into discussions about racism when the real issue is children dying...

I say BRAVO to everyone who stood up and shouted for the violence to stop. BRAVO to people who rightly warn all defenders of Israel (err.. that would be us America) on the consequences of Israeli actions. If you stepped across some political correctness line, I'd say "who the f*ck cares!" I applaud your anger nonetheless.

If there is anything people ought to HATE in the world... it is precisely this. Innocent children being burned and buried alive. Frankly I don't care if the hate gets carried away a little... This hate is human... If Israel is to be responsible to their own people, and to be responsible for the welfare of Jews all around the world, they just need to stop... RIGHT NOW... Or else this hate, or what they call racism, will consume them again.

The same thing happened with 9/11. If those terrorists were responsible, they would have considered the welfare of Arabs all over the world... They didn't... so Arabs today have to get strip searched and suspicious looks at airports everywhere.

If Israel continues in its actions... tomorrow, Jews all around the world will get looks of suspicion and disdain, appropriate for child-killers. Called it racism if you want... I just call it cause and effect.

 

Once again, playing the Victim role.

Sucks for your family but once again, you should know best how serious the matter is over there in the Middle East. This only solidifies my point that you are picking stupid arguments over (relatively)meaningless crap, when people are dying over there. When I say relatively, it means you're arguing over a stupid technicality or word aka political correctness and missing THE WHOLE POINT. You big baby cry me a river.

 

You are misrepresenting the choices. One can speak out against Israeli injustices and the killing of innocent civilians by Israelis, and speak out against someone who makes statements against all Jews.

It is very important. Things that seem little and are let go grow into big things. That is how the holocaust occurred. It wasn't because one day the Nazis decided to get the jews. It was because anti-semitism existed and was allowed to exist throughout the world, and so when the Nazis started their propoganda against the Jews people believed it, and as that grew, they allowed the holocaust to happen.

That kind of prejudiced talk needs to be outed for the vile behavior that it is. Both can be done. A person speak out against the vile behavior Israel is carrying out against civilians. A person can also speak out against prejudiced speech. Both can and should be done. Don't try and minimize one offense because there is also another offense going on.

 

I'm not playing victim a-hole. You're the most ignorant prick ive seen on this site. You make UTKaliman, who said he would rejoice when Israel is destroyed, look like Mother Theresa.

All I have said regarding this matter is that it kills me to see women, children, and civilians die. However, it is either the Israeli civilians or the Lebanese civilians. You argue based on emotions and not reason. IT IS A COLD, HARD FACT THAT JEWS HAVE BEEN DISCRIMINATED AGAINST MORE THAN ANY OTHER RELIGION. Prove me wrong dipsh*t and you can kiss my family's a$$.

 

Firstly, I Dun Give a Damm for UTKaliman or Mother Theresa you moron. I misread your SN for FranchiseBlade who seemed more concerned about the usage of the terms Jews/Israel than the topic on hand. It ticked me off that he'd then bring up "90% of his family" when that was completely irrelevant. Anyways Dipsh*t my bad.

 

You're right and you're wrong.

You're right in that people should distinguish between the two.

You're wrong in that most people can't, and won't.

So your moralizing about it clouds the issue and actually doesn't help much with the situation.

Jews around the world should be afraid... VERY AFRAID... I have nothing against individual Jews... but I'm just pointing out all this child killing is generating hatred towards their entire race. Much the same way 9/11 generated hate and distrust for Arabs. Only when Israel firmly understands this, will they start to feel pressure from their supporters around the world to rein in this brutal campaign against a helpless neighbor. Yes racism is intrinsically bad. But if it brings about a positive long-term result (in this case... LESS racism if Israel stops), I think it is for the better.

Much of that hatred is understandable. Much of that hatred is unavoidable. Don't try to moralize about why hatred shouldn't exist.... Remove the evil that is generating the hatred, which in this case... is Israeli aggression, occupation, and general child-killing.

Hezbollah is not going to go away, and will never be destroyed so long as this hatred persists. And they will not compromise while fighting on their own homeland. It's up to Israel to stop. Release whatever Hezbollah prisoners that are being demanded. Withdraw their troops. Pay indemnity for damage caused. And stay the hell out of Lebanon forever. That's the long-term solution the US should be pressing for, from a moral standpoint.

From a strategic standpoint, I'll be flat out honest with you guys. Until Iran gets a nuke, and is able to impose a threat of mutual annihiliation, on behalf of all Arab nations, on Israel, the Middle East is ALWAYS going to be a source of conflict. Hatred for Israel, and the Israeli willingness to resort to arms to retaliate against it, is the root of the Middle East problem.

All that being said... FranchiseBlade, I really dig your posts, and I think you're an intelligent and articulate and conscientious poster, with a lot of insight and certainly a lot more sense of moderation and reason than me. This slight divergence of opinion on the grey zone which lies between right and wrong, is what separates us.

 

No you were only partially mistaken. I didn't bring up my family at all not 90% or any other percentage.

I didn't bring up the discriminatory remarks until they were made. Whenever those kinds of remarks are made, they should be brought up. If we wanted to keep the issue focused on Israeli aggression and war crimes then nobody should have made prejudiced remarks that would surely derail the topic.

I think both topics are important, and a person can speak out against both of them.

 

Prejudiced remarks?? Stereotypes? Insensitive/Mean maybe.

A stereotype would have been if I said "All _____ are _______." ie. "All Jews are Victims." or "All Jews love playing the Victim role" or "All Jews enjoy being the Victim". A statement like that would be a stereotype. I never said any of that and neither do believe that to begin with. I never made a claim of a certain Jewish behavior or trait.

I did say "The World's Most Favorite Victims" as in, commonly around the World, the general consensus is the victims of the Holocaust, the Jews, were the victims of the single most notorious genocide in human history. And because of which, over the years they have received some favorable treatments from the rest of the international community. In the eyes of many, Jews had the image of "can-do-no-wrong" and were often shun by the media in a positive light. I consider it more of a reputation than a stereotype. Whatever you may call it, reputation or stereotype, it definitely is changing and that was the point.,

 

Indians/Pakistani's were slaves to the british for hundreds of years. African Americans were slaves in the US for hundreds of years and till 50 years ago, couldn't even vote. Millions of native americans were exterminated in north america and even western Europeans were enslaved by the Romans. Every body has been discriminated against if they look back in their roots.

Every group in the world has seen slavery, discrimination and suffering. But how have you ever been discriminated against?? I doubt you've recieved much discrimination being Jewish in America. If fact statistically as a Jew you have a higher salary, better standard of living and higher % representation in the senate government. So technically, if African Americans are being discriminated against because of the poverty, then you along with Asians are at an advantage and recieve a benefit based on your ethnicity.

You seem to have a victim's complex that the world owe's you something, which it doesn't.

If anything, Israel should pledge their allegance and ask for permission from the US before they do anything, since its our Apache helicopters and F-16's as well as our funds that subsidize over 25% of their military.

All their actions do is further alienate the US from future consumers, countries with oil that we desparately need and hurt our effectiveness in Iraq.

 

Ah... good ole' F.D. Khan. You've been the same broken record for years and years. At least you are consistant in your reasoning for being anti-Israel (I pay taxes.. boohoo). Those tax dollars are mainly going into American companies from Israel. The money that we give to Israel is such a small % of our foreign aid and GDP that its laughable.

I posted in another thread (maybe it was this one) of a few random guys confronting me in a parking lot of a bar calling me a "kike" and wanting to fight me. I won't retype the entire scenerio, but it was an eye-opener. My best friends growing up, and today, have been of multiple ethnicities and I never really even got along that well with the majority of my Jewish friends.

Jews(Israelites) were slaves in Egypt for around 400 years. Then you have the Spanish/Portuguese Inquisition, Holocaust, and multiple attempts of genocide. Africans have had it bad, but their troubles have mainly been internal. Jews, regardless where they are have experienced more discrimination than any other religion and culture. We wouldn't still exist if we couldn't handle it.

And what the hell is this "victim complex"? The Jewish culture is one of the hardest working, most educated cultures in the world. In Europe, we weren't allowed to have professions so we became lenders (ever wonder why Jews are associated with being lenders?). The only thing the world "owes" the Jews is the right to have a country and live in peace. They owe the same thing to the Palestinians. Israel wouldn't need aid if it wasn't under constant threat since its inception.

 

I remembered where the post was... People don't understand racism and hate until they experience it. Its going to take me a long time to get over what happened.

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