Qana What Really Happened There? Merged with Invalid Children

[Annie]

It's a guilt complex, not an inferiority complex.

I disagree. There is nothing to be guilty of. On the other hand, we are not as 'accomplished' as the Euroweenies, according to the Euroweenies and our ambassadors.

 

[dilloduck]

I disagree. There is nothing to be guilty of. On the other hand, we are not as 'accomplished' as the Euroweenies, according to the Euroweenies and our ambassadors.

'Accomplished' at what?

 

[dilloduck]

More questions. In spite of the AP, Reuters, and AFP article, still raising questions. Picks and links at site:


http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/we-need-to-know-truth.html

Wednesday, August 02, 2006
According To Jewish Law...

A recent article from Ynet News reads:

Yesha Rabbinical Council: During time of war, enemy has no innocents

The Yesha Rabbinical Council announced in response to an IDF attack in Kfar Qanna that "according to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such term as 'innocents' of the enemy."

All of the discussions on Christian morality are weakening the spirit of the army and the nation and are costing us in the blood of our soldiers and civilians," the statement said. (Efrat Weiss)

http://wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/

 

[Bonnie]

WASHINGTON -- Watching the anguish in Lebanon following an Israeli airstrike that killed at least 37 children in Qana Sunday put me in mind of Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother who drowned her children several years ago.

The Smith parallel requires a small stretch of free association, so bear with me.


A storage house is set ablaze after an Israeli airstrike targeted it in Ouzaei, on the coast in south Beirut, Lebanon, Sunday, July 16, 2006, as the main airport runway is seen in the background. Israeli airstrikes reduced entire apartment buildings to rubble and knocked out electricity in swaths of the Lebanese capital Sunday, and Israel dramatically escalated the ferocity of its campaign after Hezbollah rockets hit the northern city of Haifa. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla) You'll recall that Smith killed her children, then tried to blame a fictional villain. After allowing her car to slip into a lake -- with the boys strapped to their car seats inside -- Smith claimed the children had been kidnapped. Her infertile imagination provided a racist cliche: a black man did it.

Fast forward a few years and I bumped into a woman who had just visited Smith in prison, where she is serving a life sentence for the double murder. When I asked how Smith was doing, the woman replied: ``Like any grieving mother, she's mourning the loss of her children.''

Then Rod Serling stepped into the frame and cued the ``Twilight Zone'' soundtrack. Let's see: You kill your children, and then you get sympathy for your loss?

That dissonant comment has haunted me ever since, and it came to me a few days ago as I watched reports of the Qana airstrike. As the Qana myth unfolds, the children's deaths are blamed on the Middle East's perpetual villain -- Israel -- while Hezbollah's minions gnash and wail for the cameras. We are expected to join in vilifying Israel while Hezbollah enjoys a bounce in popularity.

Obviously, the anguish of the Lebanese people is heartfelt and no one celebrates the loss of innocent life. Wait, correction. No one except Hezbollah, which pioneered that nihilistic addition to modern warfare, the suicide bomber. The suicide bomber's purpose, of course, is to kill as many civilians as possible. Hezbollah excels at that sort of thing. The ``Party of God'' is also a proud innovator in the use of human shields, especially women and children.

Indeed, Hezbollah relies on the civilized world's outrage as part of its strategy. By bringing the war to suburbia in violation of the Geneva Conventions and launching rockets from villages such as Qana, Hezbollah virtually ensures that civilians will die.

Pending an investigation, many facts are unknown, including whether the building in which the children died came down as a result of Israeli fire. The Associated Press and others now report that the Israeli strike on Qana came between midnight and 1 a.m., but the building didn't collapse until 7 or 8 a.m., possibly as a result of munitions inside the building.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KathleenParker/2006/08/02/hezbollahs_twilight_zone

 

[bobn]

I'm getting beyond tired of hearing the BS the MSM is spewing forth. You would think according to them, Israel had launched an unprovoked war against all Lebanese noncombatants.

That's your imagination then because anyone who has actually follows mainstream media knows it was hezbollah that started this.

The biggest absurdity is the mainstream willing to completely overlook the fact that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization, and purposefully imbed themselves among the civilian populace because they KNOW exactly how to play on the leftist mind. I should say that is the next-to-the biggest absurdity.

The fact that hezbollah are a terrorist organisation is well known and not hidden by the media at all. There is no debate that hezbollah beliefs in wanting to kill israeli civilians are morally wrong. So there is no issue there for the media to probe. However modern militaries like israel take the moral high road. Therein lies the debate.

People question what the moral limits are for a modern military power. Is it moral to carpet bomb cities? Is destroying civilian infrastructure like power plants okay? Is bombing an apartment building containing a couple of terrorists justified if it might contain a lot of civilians? Is it still justified if you know for sure there are dozens of civilians in there? Does ends justify the means? These are the issue the media are focusing on as they are questions that many people are asking. The reason civilian casualties are reported so prominently is because the amount and manner of civilian casualties are hugely relevant to this debate.

Also this idea that "alternative media" is more superior to mainstream media is ill founded. The alternative media have this tendancy to jump to conclusions which mirror what they want to be true and don't consider other possibilities even if they are better. For example Hezbollah being imbedded among civilian population is interpretted by the alternative media as being due to them wanting to maximize civilian causualties. Perhaps this is true, and perhaps it is not. Either way the alternative media do not even discuss two much better reasons for hezbollah embedding themselves in towns and cities:

1) Towns and cities are the places most likely to come under isreali ground attack if that happens.
2) it is easier to fight a guerilla war in towns and cities and that is the only option hezbollah have.

 

[CSM]

1) Towns and cities are the places most likely to come under isreali ground attack if that happens. True enough but carry this thought a little further. Towns and cities are most likely to come under attack because that is where the enemy is and where they get their logistical support.
2) it is easier to fight a guerilla war in towns and cities and that is the only option hezbollah have. Why is it the only option that Hezbollah has? Of course, it is obvious why it is easier to fight a guerilla war in the towns and cities...because the guerillas can hide amongst the indigenous population!

There is no doubt that Hezbollah wants civilian casualties. They have even gone so far as to stage "atrocities" in the past and current conflict.

 

[red states rule]

That's your imagination then because anyone who has actually follows mainstream media knows it was hezbollah that started this.



The fact that hezbollah are a terrorist organisation is well known and not hidden by the media at all. There is no debate that hezbollah beliefs in wanting to kill israeli civilians are morally wrong. So there is no issue there for the media to probe. However modern militaries like israel take the moral high road. Therein lies the debate.

People question what the moral limits are for a modern military power. Is it moral to carpet bomb cities? Is destroying civilian infrastructure like power plants okay? Is bombing an apartment building containing a couple of terrorists justified if it might contain a lot of civilians? Is it still justified if you know for sure there are dozens of civilians in there? Does ends justify the means? These are the issue the media are focusing on as they are questions that many people are asking. The reason civilian casualties are reported so prominently is because the amount and manner of civilian casualties are hugely relevant to this debate.

Also this idea that "alternative media" is more superior to mainstream media is ill founded. The alternative media have this tendancy to jump to conclusions which mirror what they want to be true and don't consider other possibilities even if they are better. For example Hezbollah being imbedded among civilian population is interpretted by the alternative media as being due to them wanting to maximize civilian causualties. Perhaps this is true, and perhaps it is not. Either way the alternative media do not even discuss two much better reasons for hezbollah embedding themselves in towns and cities:

1) Towns and cities are the places most likely to come under isreali ground attack if that happens.
2) it is easier to fight a guerilla war in towns and cities and that is the only option hezbollah have.

CNN Promotes Hamas-linked Charity
Posted by Matthew Sheffield on August 2, 2006 - 10:17.
From the Counterterrorism Blog:

In CNN's coverage of the current battles between Israel and the terrorist group Hezbollah, CNN has provided a list of "aid groups" to assist civilians in the "Mideast crisis". One of these groups is the Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) group - which has been reported to have disturbing links to Jihadism and recently documented fund-raising links to US State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) Hamas.

Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) is an international Islamic aid organization that was founded in United Kingdom, in 1984, by Dr Hany El Banna. It was reported in 1999 that IRW's main UK office received $50,000 from a Canadian group that "the U.S. Treasury Department called 'a(n Osama) bin Laden front.' Moscow's Obshchaya Gazeta has reported that IRW has collected and funneled millions of dollars to the Chechen terrorist rebels in Russia, who have ties to al Qaeda.

In 2004, IRW had a fundraiser at Britain's Birmingham Central Mosque, which has historically been a source of jihad recruitment, including meetings of Al-Muhajiroun and reported recruitment of UK suicide bombers who attacked Tel Aviv in 2003.

and.........

Pallywood: How Terrorists Create ‘News’ For Western Journalists and Cameramen
Posted by Noel Sheppard on August 1, 2006 - 10:25.
In light of recent revelations of possible media manipulation in Qana, Lebanon, as reported by NewsBusters Monday, a 2005 video has been circulating throughout the Internet (hat tip to Ms. Underestimated with extraordinary video link to follow). In reality, this is an almost unbelievable look at how film footage from Israel that made national news after the Second Intifada began in September 2000 (including CBS’s “60 Minutes”) appears to have been staged, choreographed, and produced rather than real events that transpired in front of video cameras.

The film's producer, Dr. Richard Landes, teaches history at Boston University, and is the co-founder and Director of the Center for Millennial Studies. He also is the proprietor of The Second Draft, a website “devoted to exploring some of the problems and issues that plague modern journalism”:

The term "Pallywood" refers to the staging of scenes by Palestinian journalists in order to present the Palestinians as hapless victims of Israeli aggression. They are able to succeed in this endeavor in large part due to the credulity and eagerness of the Western press to present these images, which reinforce the image of the Palestinian David struggling valiantly against the overpowering Israeli Goliath. Pallywood has led to astonishing lapses in Western journalistic standards in which badly staged scenes regularly appear on the news as "real events."


http://newsbusters.org/node/6685

 

[Hobbit]

I find the disproportional response to be a politically correct-driven, STUPID idea. You do not lob missiles at the enemy tit-for-tat to keep things "fair and square." You defeat the enemy with overwhelming force and take away his ability to wage war.

PC world opinion as parrotted in the MSM is trying to hold Israel, and the US as well, to a set of rules the enemy has no intention of adhering to.

Read the last line of my sig.

 

[bobn]

True enough but carry this thought a little further. Towns and cities are most likely to come under attack because that is where the enemy is and where they get their logistical support.

Yes and that is the source of the issue about how to fight a war like this. On one extreme you give up fighting because you might accidently kill civilians. On the other extreme you nuke the city and guarantee you kill all hostiles in it. The question is where is the line between necessary war and moral war lies because clearly both extremes are not satisfactory.

Why is it the only option that Hezbollah has? Of course, it is obvious why it is easier to fight a guerilla war in the towns and cities...because the guerillas can hide amongst the indigenous population!

That's precisely it. Any guerilla force will have to do this by necessity. In itself there is nothing morally wrong about it imo.

There is no doubt that Hezbollah wants civilian casualties. They have even gone so far as to stage "atrocities" in the past and current conflict.

Hundreds of lebonese civilians have likely been killed by the bombings regardless of what hezbollah say or don't say. These aren't attrocities as they were not done deliberately. Bombings in urban areas inevitably kill civilians. That again is part of the issue about where the line ends with regard to necessary war.

 

[bobn]

CNN Promotes Hamas-linked Charity
Posted by Matthew Sheffield on August 2, 2006 - 10:17.
From the Counterterrorism Blog:

This may have been a mistake by CNN, or perhaps the allegations are not as simple as they are made out. It's interesting but I don't see what that particular issue has to do with anything I said.

Pallywood: How Terrorists Create ‘News’ For Western Journalists and Cameramen

I don't deny the media can allow themselves to be conned easily when it sounds like a good story. Very similar to the crowds tearing down the Saddam statue which also turned out to be staged. But the media lapped it up at the time. It works both ways. Some media is biased, and even the more objective media can make mistakes when they rush to publish anything that seems credible that makes a good story. The alternative media/blogosphere are just as suceptible to this problem, if not more.

 

[CSM]

Yes and that is the source of the issue about how to fight a war like this. On one extreme you give up fighting because you might accidently kill civilians. On the other extreme you nuke the city and guarantee you kill all hostiles in it. The question is where is the line between necessary war and moral war lies because clearly both extremes are not satisfactory.



That's precisely it. Any guerilla force will have to do this by necessity. In itself there is nothing morally wrong about it imo.



Hundreds of lebonese civilians have likely been killed by the bombings regardless of what hezbollah say or don't say. These aren't attrocities as they were not done deliberately. Bombings in urban areas inevitably kill civilians. That again is part of the issue about where the line ends with regard to necessary war.

It seems to me that you have gotten to the crux of the matter. That line you mention is very subjective and probably always will be.