Collectively Punishing Lebanon
An acquaintance of mine in Lebanon just sent me this email:
/"A friend of mine just called and told me of a massacre: civilian
building destroyed in Tyre by Israeli aggression. There, Zouhair Edde's
mother has been killed. Rayaan Qudsi has been killed along with her two
daughters. This is a conservative number of martyrs thus far. This
building is where refugees typically hide."/
This is but an infinitesimal example of what is being carried out by the
Israeli military apparatus against the civilian population of Lebanon on
an hourly basis.
The official lines of the US and Israeli governments are that the
destruction in Lebanon and Gaza are due to two Israeli soldiers being
taken prisoner. This incredible display of willful amnesia omits the
fact that at least 9,000 Palestinians are currently being held in
Israeli prisons, 1,000 of which have had no charges brought against
them. It also conveniently omits the fact that over 14,000 Iraqis are
languishing in US prisons inside Iraq, most of whom have been charged
with approximately nothing.
While the slaughter of innocents continues unabated, we must be very
clear as to who is responsible for creating the conditions for it.
"Israel has been the largest recipient of US foreign aid every year
since 1976," Frida Berrigan, a senior research associate at the Arms
Trade Resource Center at the World Policy Institute in New York told
Inter Press Service recently.
On top of providing Israel with billions of dollars of sophisticated
weaponry, in 2005 alone the US provided the Israeli government $2.2
billion. This amount is expected to increase incrementally in the coming
years.
Israel has the largest fleet of F-16 fighter jets in the world, outside
of the US. Thanks to the US, these deadly warplanes are responsible for
most of the death and destruction we've seen thus far in Lebanese
cities, suburbs, and ports.
Most of the critical infrastructure of Lebanon has been reduced to
smoldering ruins, as countless Lebanese are now living by generators and
scavenging for food wherever possible. Bombings have included electrical
stations, fuel storage depots, gas stations, hospitals, ambulance
convoys, ports, factories, bridges and roads. As of this writing, the
death toll in Lebanon is now over 350, all but 14 of which were
civilians. There are over 1,000 wounded.
It's called collective punishment. It is a war crime. It is a grave
breach of the Geneva Conventions.
An entire country is being collectively punished while the world sits by
and watches.
The US military did it and continues to do it as you read this in Iraq,
and now the Israeli military, after practicing it for decades in the
occupied territories of Palestine, is carrying out this tactic /en
masse/ against the country and people of Lebanon.
Let me be clear about which international laws are being violated by the
Israelis.
Article 51 from the 1949 Geneva Conventions states, very clearly, that,
"The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall
not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary
purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are
prohibited."
Al-Jazeera, who has been doing a remarkable job of covering the
catastrophic situation in Lebanon, had one of their journalists shot in
the leg while reporting in Israel. Jazeera showed the footage-of his
colleague in front of the camera jumping out of the way so as not to be
run down by an Israeli military vehicle-then she raced over with others
to assist her shot colleague into an ambulance. The day before, Jazeera
reported on the convoy of ambulances, along with civilian cars, being
bombed by the Israelis.
Israeli warplanes are bombing ambulances and cars in Beirut.
The Geneva Conventions clearly specify that, "/Indiscriminate attacks
are prohibited/."
According to Protocol I, Article 85, Section 3 of the Geneva
Conventions, "An indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population
or civilian objects and resulting in excessive loss of life, injury to
civilians or damage to civilian objects is a grave breach of the Geneva
Conventions."
Hezbollah militants are also guilty of war crimes by targeting civilians
in Israel, where at least 12 have been killed by their indiscriminate
rocket attacks into Haifa and other locations. However, 12 Israeli
military personnel have been killed by Hezbollah attacks. Thus,
Hezbollah fighters have been approximately 50% accurate in their attacks
against the Israeli military, when in contrast the Israeli military,
according to latest figures, have killed 14 Lebanese soldiers, lending a
4% accuracy rate by comparison. Overall, for every one Israeli killed,
14 Lebanese die.
This disparity is due to the fact that people like the prime minister of
Israel, George W. Bush and "Democrats" like Hillary Clinton clearly do
not value the lives of the Lebanese people on par with those of Israelis.
Underscoring this stance are the recent remarks of the UN "Ambassador"
for the US, John Bolton-who the Jewish lobby group JINSA nominated for
the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
Bolton told reporters that there was no moral equivalence between
Lebanese civilian casualties generated by Israeli air raids and Israelis
killed by "malicious terrorist acts," as if there is a difference in
these two "terrorist acts."
"I think it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians
who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts," he said.
Recently at the northern border of Lebanon and Syria, a 25 year-old
American social studies teacher who was staying with his family in
downtown Beirut before fleeing for the border, told me, "Everything is
being bombed. It's a terror! We've literally been terrorized!"
The teacher, Abdul Rahman, added, "We have not slept for three days
because we were living in terror and never new when the Israelis would
bomb us since they were hitting everything. If they want to hit
Hezbollah, let them hit Hezbollah, but not the civilians-but civilians
are all that they are hitting!"
Article 48 from the 1949 Geneva Conventions states that the "basic rule"
of the Geneva Conventions is to protect the civilian population:
"In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian
population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at
all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and
between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall
direct their operations only against military objectives."
Bolton also said, in defense of the Israeli military, "It's simply not
the same thing to say that it's the same act to deliberately target
innocent civilians, to desire their deaths, to fire rockets and use
explosive devices or kidnapping versus the sad and highly unfortunate
consequences of self-defense."
Cannot the same be said of Hezbollah?
Bolton went on to show his true colors-that the lives of westerners are
of value, whereas the lives of the Lebanese are not. He was asked to
comment on the deaths of eight Canadian citizens as the result of an
Israeli air strike. "…it is a matter of great concern to us ...that
/these/ [emphasis mine] civilian deaths are occurring. It's a tragedy."
The Canadians had three of their Lebanese relatives die as well, but
Bolton wasn't speaking about /those/ deaths.
Let me clear about this-Bolton is a war criminal. Cheney/Bush, with
their shameless aiding and abetting of the Israeli military and Prime
Minister Olmerts' policy in Gaza and Lebanon, are war criminals and
should be treated as such. Several other past US presidents, including
Bill Clinton and his golfing buddy Bush Senior, are war criminals for
this same aiding and abetting.
Others who aid and abet and cheerlead, like the corporate media in the
US, are Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Condoleeza Rice and Donald
Rumsfeld, to name but a select few.
The slaughter continues day and night. Today, in one air strike alone,
Israeli warplanes killed 13 civilians, all from two families in southern
Lebanon. Nine of the dead were children.
It's going to continue for at probably "a few weeks," according to
Israels' deputy army chief, Major General Moshe Kaplinsky. "We need more
time to complete our very clear goals. When we fight terror it is a war
that needs to be very accurate, very schematic and it takes time," he
said hypocritically in his radio address, before adding that a ground
invasion of Lebanon was not being ruled out.
"Very accurate," he says.
On Tuesday, Israeli air raids struck the Christian coastal town of
Byblos north of Beirut and the eastern city of Baalbek.
At the northern border I also interviewed a man named Abud Aziz, a 31
year-old Lebanese pastry chef from Beirut who carried his suitcase under
a sweltering sun as he crossed the border into Syria for refuge. Having
just fled Beirut, Aziz told me, "Lebanon is in a terrible state. I left
everything but some cash and the clothes on my back. I ran for my life
because of the hellish bombing!"
Aziz said there was no water or electricity since yesterday, anyone who
could was leaving Beirut for the borders or mountains, and the bombing
from Israeli war planes was rampant. "Yesterday I saw two hospitals
bombed with my own eyes," he told me, "Nobody who remains in Beirut can
be safe. No way."
A 25 year-old construction worker named Hamed also told me he witnessed
war planes bomb a hospital in Beirut. "I left just hours ago, and I saw
them bomb a hospital yesterday. They are bombing everything-houses,
casinos, fuel stations and so many bridges."
"Very accurate," said Kaplinsky.
In 1946, in Nuremberg, an American Judge wrote: “To initiate a war of
aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the
supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that
it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
And this is exactly what Israel is doing in Lebanon. And this war of
aggression which "contains within itself the accumulated evil of the
whole" is being aided and abetted by the leaders of the US government
and all those who support them.
_______________________________________________
(c)2006 Dahr Jamail. |
