Robert Fisk asks: When did we stop caring about civilian deaths during wartime? He writes: I wonder if we are “normalising” war. It’s not just that Israel has yet again got away with the killing of hundreds of children in Gaza. And after its own foreign minister said that Israel’s army had been allowed to…
Showing all posts tagged Lebanon
Mis-calculation on all sides
The Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram quoted Hamas’ political leader Khaled Meshal on Tuesday as saying his Islamist group was surprised by the force Israel recently used against it in the Gaza Strip. Meshal, who was speaking at an Arab conference on Gaza in the Qatari capital Doha, reportedly told a closed forum that Hamas had believed…
Failure on every count
The conflict between Israel and Hamas should give us cause to pause and wonder what the Jewish state has become. War crimes are taking place: “There is no doubt that Israel is using phosphorous bombs over Gaza. Israel is flagrantly violating the Fourth Geneva Convention,” says Raji Sourani, head of the Palestinian Center for Human…
Another foe at the gate
While Israel fervently attempts to terrorize the Palestinians into submission in Gaza, many observers have started to wonder why Hizballah has refrained from stepping in militarily to assist its brothers-in-arms, Hamas. Such musings fail to take account of the constraints on Hizballah’s room for action, as well as the circumstances under which Hizballah would ignore…
Nobody said Israel was run by smart people
Anthony H. Cordesman, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, January 9: What is the strategic purpose behind the present fighting? After two weeks of combat Olmert, Livni, and Barak have still not said a word that indicates that Israel will gain strategic or grand strategic benefits, or tactical benefits much larger than the gains it…
Israeli war crimes go way back
From the current chaos in Gaza to recent history, Israel’s futile attack on Lebanon in 2006: “What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on ”¦ “We will apply disproportionate force on it [the village] and cause great damage and destruction there. From…
Who says they’re a decent fighting force?
Robert Fisk, The Independent, December 31: Israel, however – always swift to announce its imminent destruction of “terrorism” – has never won a war in a built-up city, be it Beirut or Gaza, since its capture of Jerusalem in 1967. And it’s important to remember that the Israeli army, famous in song and legend for…
History more than repeats itself
All of the below words are taken from Israeli author Jacobo Timerman‘s book The Longest War, written during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon (Operation Peace for Galilee) and first published in Britain in December 1982. Timerman returned to Argentina, where he had grown up, in 1984 and died in 1999.… On 4 October 1982,…
Defending the rights of “terrorists”
Al-Manar is the satellite television channel of Hezbollah (which much of the West regards as a terrorist organisation, a view I do not share.) The channel is currently available in many Australian homes. The Lebanese community is massive here and many people regard the group as a liberation movement. Others see it as an aggressive…