Israel was accused today of firing indiscriminately during last year's war in Lebanon in a report by Human Rights Watch that challenged the country's claim that the high number of civilian casualties resulted from the militant group Hizbullah deliberately shielding itself among the Lebanese population.
In a 249-page investigation, its most detailed inquiry into the war, the New York-based rights group said its research showed that even though Hizbullah was also guilty of serious violations of the laws of war, there was no evidence that the militant group systematically fought from among civilians.
''My people decide the truth in sixty countries every morning. And in every one it's different.''
Since March 29th 2006
4 comments:
That still begs the question whether this was incompetence or malice. I have a few old friends in the military and they consistently categorize the IDF as an utterly incompetent force however the statistics paint a more depressing picture. In war truth is always a little subjective and rather fuzzy so I would tend to lean towards the middle of the two positions. My observations of interviews with the Israeli military and government is that they view the civilian population in the region with contempt and therefore were simply not prepared to take the personal risks required to ensure that they only targeted Hezbollah fighters. Cowards with big guns = bloodbath. I'm sure the Iranian military are take notes.
Looking at those figures so heavily underline the utter pointlessness of the whole campaign, all that death and destruction for nothing. Tragic.
Wolfie,
I think HUman nature does not change much across time, history and countries. Bombing civilian populations has as a main goal to break the will and the solidarity of the people. British know this, Germans know it also...
If Israel hoped to break the civilian will then their plan was completely miscalculated as it did the complete opposite and strengthened the political position of Hezbollah as well you know. How they could not see that was a mystery to me.
As far as WW2 goes. It was the British who started bombing civilian targets out of a position of desperation as they were loosing the war at that point, Hitler had resisted bombing civilians un to this point as he hoped that the British would join him in his quest for world domination, his campaign against Britain was retaliatory. Had we capitulated I'm quite sure that the Nazi racial cleansing programme would not have ended with the Jews…
Wolfie,
I totally agree with you here: "The Nazi racial cleansing programme would not have ended with the Jews". Actually it did not start with the Jews in Germany, it started with people with mental and physical disabilities. And many other groups suffered from Nazi racial policies...
As for who started the civilian bombings, you are right. Recently a controversy emerged in Canada about a poster in the new War museum in Ottawa showing how the allies bombed Germany in an effort to break the will of its civilians. Canadian veterans protested at the poster as diffamatory. The poster has now been removed and is being rephrased...
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