Official justification for Israel's invasion on thin ice

As Lebanon continues to be pounded by Israeli bombs and munitions, the justification for Israel’s invasion is treading on very thin ice. It has become general knowledge that it was Hezbollah guerillas that first kidnapped two IDF soldiers inside Israel on July 12, prompting an immediate and violent response from the Israeli government, which insists it is acting in the interest of national defense. Israeli forces have gone on to kill over 370 innocent Lebanese civilians (compared to 34 killed on Israel’s side) while displacing hundreds of thousands more. But numerous reports from international and independent media, as well as the Associated Press, raise questions about Israel’s official version of the events that sparked the conflict two weeks ago.

The original story, as most media tell it, goes something like this: Hezbollah attacked an Israeli border patrol station, killing six and taking two soldiers hostage. The incident happened on the Lebanese/Israel border in Israeli territory. The alternate version, as explained by several news outlets, tells a bit of a different tale: These sources contend that Israel sent a commando force into southern Lebanon and was subsequently attacked by Hezbollah near the village of Aitaa al-Chaab, well inside Lebanon’s southern territory. It was at this point that an Israel tank was struck by Hezbollah fighters, which resulted in the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the death of six.

As the AFP reported, “According to the Lebanese police force, the two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanese territory, in the area of Aitaa al-Chaab, near to the border with Israel, where an Israeli unit had penetrated in middle of morning.” And the French news site VoltaireNet.org reiterated the same account on June 18, “In a deliberated way, [Israel] sent a commando in the Lebanese back-country to Aitaa al-Chaab. It was attacked by Hezbollah, taking two prisoners.”

The Associated Press departed from the official version as well. “The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them,” reported Joseph Panossian for AP on July 12. “The forces were trying to keep the soldiers’ captors from moving them deeper into Lebanon, Israeli government officials said on condition of anonymity.”

And the Hindustan Times on July 12 conveyed a similar account:

“The Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah movement announced on Wednesday that its guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. ‘Implementing our promise to free Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, our strugglers have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon,’ a statement by Hezbollah said. ‘The two soldiers have already been moved to a safe place,’ it added. The Lebanese police said that the two soldiers were captured as they ‘infiltrated’ into the town of Aitaa al-Chaab inside the Lebanese border.”

Whether factual or not, these alternative accounts should at the very least raise serious questions as to Israel’s motives and rationale for bombarding Lebanon.

MSNBC online first reported that Hezbollah had captured Israeli soldiers “inside” Lebanon, only to change their story hours later after the Israeli government gave an official statement to the contrary.

A report from The National Council of Arab Americans, based in Lebanon, also raised suspicion that Israel’s official story did not hold water and noted that Israel had yet to recover the tank that was demolished during the initial attack in question.

“The Israelis so far have not been able to enter Aitaa al-Chaab to recover the tank that was exploded by Hezbollah and the bodies of the soldiers that were killed in the original operation (this is a main indication that the operation did take place on Lebanese soil, not that in my opinion it would ever be an illegitimate operation, but still the media has been saying that it was inside ‘Israel’ thus an aggression first started by Hezbollah).”

Before independent observers could organize an investigation of the incident, Israel had already mounted a grisly offensive against Lebanese infrastructure and civilians, bombing Beirut’s international airport, along with numerous highways and communication portals. Israel didn’t need the truth of the matter to play out before it invaded Lebanon. As with the United States’ illegitimate invasion of Iraq, Israel just needed the proper media cover to wage a war with no genuine moral impetus.

These debates will never end just like the wars in the mid east.

I just want to say that its ok to "pull the race card" only when talking about Jews, isreal, and all things involved in that whole scheme.

All this non-sense aint real. The same **** has been debated for centuries. Just like countless other topics. All this **** aint real. The one thing that is promised to all is death. All the people involved in this mess at the begining are all dead. Who cares?

when you die nothing from this world will come with you. Who cares about land or your political views. Its not about nationality, religious background, or political views.

I get angry when I read a lot of this stuff. This world is truly hell. Everyone is living and breathing nothing buy poison and have the nerve to teach it and pass it on to their children.

Its all a game. Just like basketball. People need to get off the poison and be free in this hellish society.

Wake up and be free.

The Rules of War
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/02/AR2006080201517.html

By Moshe Yaalon
Thursday, August 3, 2006; Page A27

The conflict in the Middle East is about much more than Israel and Hezbollah, or even Hezbollah's Syrian and Iranian sponsors. What is at stake are the very rules of war that underpin the entire international order.

Sadly, judging from how most of the world has responded to Israel's military action against Hezbollah, these rules have been completely abandoned.

The rules of war boil down to one central principle: the need to distinguish combatants from noncombatants. Those who condemned Israel for what happened at Qana, rather than placing the blame for this unfortunate tragedy squarely on Hezbollah and its state sponsors, have rewarded those for whom this moral principle is meaningless and have condemned a state in which this principle has always guided military and political decision making.

Faced with enemies who openly call for its destruction and victimized by unremitting wars and terrorism since well before it was born, Israel has risked the lives of its citizens and its soldiers to abide by this principle in a way that is unprecedented in the history of nations.

Here is but one of countless examples: In 2003, at the height of the Palestinian terror war against Israel, our intelligence services discovered the location of a meeting of the senior leadership of Hamas, an organization pledged to the annihilation of the Jewish state and responsible for some of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever carried out against Israel.

We knew that a one-ton bomb would destroy the three-story building and kill the Hamas leadership. But we also knew that such a bomb would endanger about 40 families who lived in the vicinity. We decided to use a smaller bomb that would destroy only the top floor of the building. As it turned out, the Hamas leaders were meeting on the ground floor. They lived to terrorize another day.

Imagine for a moment that the United States had advance knowledge of the meeting place of al-Qaeda's senior leadership. Does anyone believe that there would be a debate about what size bomb to use, much less that any leader would authorize insufficient force to do the job?

So while it is legitimate to question whether Israel should go to such extreme lengths to avoid civilian casualties, it is preposterous to argue that Israel uses excessive force. Even more absurd was the shameful statement last week that Israel appeared to have deliberately targeted U.N. officials -- a statement fit for a knave or a fool, not for the secretary general of the United Nations. Rather than lead the fight against those who target civilians and use them as human shields, Secretary General Kofi Annan has strengthened them.

It is clear to any objective observer that Hezbollah is using Lebanese civilians as human shields. It builds its headquarters in densely populated areas, embeds its fighters in towns and villages, and deliberately places missiles in private homes, even constructing additions to existing structures specifically to house missile launchers.

The reason terrorist groups such as Hezbollah use human shields is elementary. They try to exploit the respect for innocent human life that is the hallmark of any civilized society to place that society in a no-win situation. If it fails to respond to terror attacks, it endangers its own citizens. If it responds, it runs the risk of killing innocents, earning world opprobrium and inviting diplomatic pressure to stand down.

Hoping to retain its high moral standards in the face of such a cynical enemy, Israel has made every effort to avoid harming civilians. We have dropped fliers, sent telephone messages and broadcast radio announcements so that innocents can get out of harm's way. In doing so, we imperil our own citizens since, by losing the element of surprise, we invariably allow some of the enemy to escape with their missiles.

But at Qana, Hezbollah responded to Israel's compassion with more cynical brutality. After launching missiles at Israel, the terrorists rushed inside a building. When Israel fired a precision-guided missile to strike at the terrorists, scores of civilians, including children, were killed.

The difference between us and the terrorists is clear: We endanger ourselves to protect their civilians. They endanger their own civilians to protect themselves.

If tragedies such as Qana are not to be repeated, then, rather than condemning Israel, the world should be directing its anger at Hezbollah and at the Syrian and Iranian regimes that support it.

Terrorists are fanatics, but they are not idiots. If the terrorist tactic of using human shields helps them achieve their goals, they will utilize it. If it undermines their goals, they will abandon it.

If we want to live in a world where civilians are never used as human shields, then we must create a world in which employing such measures results in the unequivocal condemnation of terrorists and in forceful action against them by the civilized world.

If the world were now blaming Hezbollah, Syria and Iran for the innocent Lebanese killed, hurt or displaced in this conflict, then it would be sending a powerful message to every terrorist group on the planet: We will not tolerate the use of human shields. Period.

Instead, those who condemn Israel have sent precisely the opposite message. They have told every terrorist group around the world that the use of human shields will pay huge dividends, thereby providing them with a powerful weapon that endangers innocents everywhere.

The writer, a retired lieutenant general, was chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces from 2002 to 2005. He is now a distinguished military fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

-------------------------------------
Tonight, as for this night each year, traditional Jews across the world for well over a millenia, (they) abstain from food and drink, laughter and song... and mourn over the destruction of Jeruselem; their homeland...
The Jewish people for well over a thousand years reflect on their exile from their beloved homeland, thier enslavement by the Roman legions, their unquenched thirst for peace and cry out:

"If I forget thee Jeruselem let my right hand lose all of it's use!!!"

Tonight we should be silent... out of respect... for the Jews who died before ever seeing peace or their lost homeland.
---------------------------------------

('');Killa couldn't keep silent for one night... "shame" died last night by the propaganist ambitions of a man with a distorted sense of justice...



MYTHS AND FACTS SURROUNDING THE CRISIS

Myth - "Israel's response is disproportionate."

Fact - The definition of a "disproportionate" response is a subjective one. The question that could be asked of any other country in the world is simply: "What would you do in the same situation?" When protecting its citizens, exercising the right to self-defense and responding to missile attacks over a recognized border, most countries would respond in a similar manner. After all, how many Israelis need to die before the world believes that Israeli responses are proportionate?

Any civilian casualties in a conflict are, of course, tragic and regrettable. Civilians on both sides are suffering. However, Israeli air strikes on Lebanon are not intended to kill civilians, unlike the hundreds of Hezbollah missiles that are targeted specifically at Israeli civilians who have been forced into bomb shelters for their own safety. Israel has even dropped leaflets on Beirut suburbs calling on civilians to stay away from Hezbollah strongholds to avoid being caught up in the fighting.

Israel has also been criticized for targeting Lebanese infrastructure such as the Beirut airport. However, it is also interesting to note what has not been targeted. For example, while the airport runway was bombed, other vital installations such as the control tower were left untouched and Lebanese civilian airliners were allowed to fly to safety. Transport hubs and bridges have been targeted in order to prevent Hezbollah moving the kidnapped Israeli soldiers deeper into Lebanon and possibly even as far as Iran, as well as to prevent the terrorist organization being re-supplied with arms from Iran and elsewhere.

Many of Hezbollah's facilities and missile launch sites are located near residential areas, such as the suburbs of southern Beirut. Terrorists hide within the civilian population and use this population as a shield. Israel's priority is to strike at the Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure that has been allowed to develop in Lebanon.

Israel has, so far, avoided initiating a major ground offensive into Lebanese territory and has barely used a fraction of the firepower available to the IDF.

Myth - "Lebanon bears no responsibility for the actions of Hezbollah."

Fact - UN Security Council Resolution 1559 of September 2004, which referred back to Resolution 425, called "upon all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon"; "for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias"; and supported "the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory".

Syria eventually complied with 1559 and removed its occupying forces. However, the Lebanese government has not disarmed Hezbollah nor has it sent its armed forces to secure southern Lebanon and the border with Israel.

In addition, Hezbollah is actually part of the Lebanese government, which contains two Hezbollah members in the Cabinet. The Lebanese government, therefore, cannot abstain from responsibility for the actions of a part of its own leadership.

Myth - "Hezbollah is an indigenous Lebanese 'resistance' organization."

Fact - According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the Hezbollah:

is a Lebanese umbrella organization of radical Islamic Shiite groups and organizations. It opposes the West, seeks to create a Muslim fundamentalist state modeled on Iran, and is a bitter foe of Israel. Hezbollah, whose name means "party of God," is a terrorist group believed responsible for nearly 200 attacks since 1982 that have killed more than 800 people.

Hezbollah and its affiliates have planned or been linked to a lengthy series of terrorist attacks against the United States, Israel, and other Western targets. These attacks include:

a series of kidnappings of Westerners in Lebanon, including several Americans, in the 1980s;
the suicide truck bombings that killed more than 200 U.S. Marines at their barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983;
the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, which featured the famous footage of the plane?s pilot leaning out of the ****pit with a gun to his head;
and two major 1990s attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina - the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy (killing twenty-nine) and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center (killing ninety-five).
In addition, Hezbollah is sponsored, funded and armed by Iran and Syria who use the organization as a proxy to fight Israel and to destabilize the region. Hezbollah is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US State Department.


Myth - "Outside actors such as Iran are not fuelling the crisis."

Fact - A number of analysts have suggested that the timing of the Hezbollah operation is no coincidence, occurring just prior to the G8 Summit in St. Petersburg. The G8 was expected to concentrate heavily on Iran's refusal to comply with demands to curtail its nuclear program. A wider Mideast crisis, provoked by Iran's Hezbollah proxies, has now moved to the top of the G8 agenda, thus relieving some of the pressure on Iran.

In addition, Iranian fingerprints are to be found in the current conflict. The Katyusha missiles that are currently raining down on the north of Israel are supplied by Iran. An Israeli Naval vessel was also struck by an Iranian-made C802 missile, killing four sailors.

Myth - "Israel continues to occupy Lebanese land, specifically the Shebaa Farms area."

Fact - On May 24, 2000, Israel completed the unilateral withdrawal of all IDF forces from southern Lebanon, in accordance with Israeli government decisions and UN Security Council Resolution 425, ending an 18-year presence there.

On June 18, 2000, the UN Security Council endorsed the Secretary-General's conclusion that, as of 16 June, Israel had withdrawn its forces from Lebanon in accordance with Resolution 425.

As explained by Israel's Foreign Ministry, the Shebaa Farms area is not, and should not be, considered disputed territory - its status was clarified by a number of United Nations statements following the withdrawal of Israel forces from Lebanon in May 2000.

The United Nations views the Shebaa Farms area as Syrian territory. Therefore, UN Security Council Resolution 425 - which concerns Lebanon - does not require Israel to withdraw from this area.

While Lebanon claims to be the owner of the Shebaa Farms area, the UN has encouraged the Lebanese and Syrians to negotiate between themselves as to who is the rightful owner. If Syria were to cede ownership of the area to Lebanon, then it is probable that Israel and the UN would then reconsider the status of the territory. In the meantime, the issue of the Shebaa Farms is used simply as an excuse for the Hezbollah to maintain itself as an armed force in the region.

Myth - "Arab prisoners held in Israeli jails were kidnapped from Lebanese soil and should be released."

Some Lebanese and other Arab spokespeople have defended Hezbollah's actions as a legitimate form of "resistance" aimed at securing the release of Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli jails from the period of Israel's presence in its southern Lebanon security zone.

Fact - The prisoner whom Hezbollah is demanding, above all others, be released, is Samir Kuntar, jailed in Israel since a 1979 attack in the northern Israeli town of Nahariyah, in which he entered an apartment and murdered three family members and an Israeli police officer.

Kuntar is quite simply a terrorist and a murderer who committed a terrible atrocity on Israeli soil. Those prisoners held in Israeli jails captured during Israel's stay in southern Lebanon are, likewise, held for terrorist offences and due to the inherent risk that they will return to their previous activities.


>>>>
The World Should Know What He Did to My Family
By Smadar Haran Kaiser

Sunday, May 18, 2003; Page B02


NAHARIYA, Israel

Abu Abbas, the former head of a Palestinian terrorist group who was captured in Iraq on April 15, is infamous for masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. But there are probably few who remember why Abbas's terrorists held the ship and its 400-plus passengers hostage for two days. It was to gain the release of a Lebanese terrorist named Samir Kuntar, who is locked up in an Israeli prison for life. Kuntar's name is all but unknown to the world. But I know it well. Because almost a quarter of a century ago, Kuntar murdered my family.

It was a murder of unimaginable cruelty, crueler even than the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, the American tourist who was shot on the Achille Lauro and dumped overboard in his wheelchair. Kuntar's mission against my family, which never made world headlines, was also masterminded by Abu Abbas. And my wish now is that this terrorist leader should be prosecuted in the United States, so that the world may know of all his terrorist acts, not the least of which is what he did to my family on April 22, 1979.

It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband, Danny, and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach not far from our home in Nahariya, a city on the northern coast of Israel, about six miles south of the Lebanese border. Around midnight, we were asleep in our apartment when four terrorists, sent by Abu Abbas from Lebanon, landed in a rubber boat on the beach two blocks away. Gunfire and exploding grenades awakened us as the terrorists burst into our building. They had already killed a police officer. As they charged up to the floor above ours, I opened the door to our apartment. In the moment before the hall light went off, they turned and saw me. As they moved on, our neighbor from the upper floor came running down the stairs. I grabbed her and pushed her inside our apartment and slammed the door.

Outside, we could hear the men storming about. Desperately, we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door to take refuge in an underground shelter when the terrorists came crashing into our flat. They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael, knowing there were more people in the apartment. I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space and we would be killed. So I kept my hand over her mouth, hoping she could breathe. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. "This is just like what happened to my mother," I thought.

As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.

By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.

The next day, Abu Abbas announced from Beirut that the terrorist attack in Nahariya had been carried out "to protest the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty" at Camp David the previous year. Abbas seems to have a gift for charming journalists, but imagine the character of a man who protests an act of peace by committing an act of slaughter.

Two of Abbas's terrorists had been killed by police on the beach. The other two were captured, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Despite my protests, one was released in a prisoner exchange for Israeli POWs several months before the Achille Lauro hijacking. Abu Abbas was determined to find a way to free Kuntar as well. So he engineered the hijacking of the Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt and demanded the release of 50 Arab terrorists from Israeli jails. The only one of those prisoners actually named was Samir Kuntar. The plight of hundreds held hostage on a cruise ship for two days at sea lent itself to massive international media coverage. The attack on Nahariya, by contrast, had taken less than an hour in the middle of the night. So what happened then was hardly noticed outside of Israel.

One hears the terrorists and their excusers say that they are driven to kill out of desperation. But there is always a choice. Even when you have suffered, you can choose whether to kill and ruin another's life, or whether to go on and rebuild. Even after my family was murdered, I never dreamed of taking revenge on any Arab. But I am determined that Samir Kuntar should never be released from prison. In 1984, I had to fight my own government not to release him as part of an exchange for several Israeli soldiers who were POWs in Lebanon. I understood, of course, that the families of those POWs would gladly have agreed to the release of an Arab terrorist to get their sons back. But I told Yitzhak Rabin, then defense minister, that the blood of my family was as red as that of the POWs. Israel had always taken a position of refusing to negotiate with terrorists. If they were going to make an exception, let it be for a terrorist who was not as cruel as Kuntar. "Your job is not to be emotional," I told Rabin, "but to act rationally." And he did.

So Kuntar remains in prison. I have been shocked to learn that he has married an Israeli Arab woman who is an activist on behalf of terrorist prisoners. As the wife of a prisoner, she gets a monthly stipend from the government. I'm not too happy about that.

In recent years, Abu Abbas started telling journalists that he had renounced terrorism and that killing Leon Klinghoffer had been a mistake. But he has never said that killing my family was a mistake. He was a terrorist once, and a terrorist, I believe, he remains. Why else did he spend these last years, as the Israeli press has reported, free as a bird in Baghdad, passing rewards of $25,000 from Saddam Hussein to families of Palestinian suicide bombers? More than words, that kind of cash prize, which is a fortune to poor families, was a way of urging more suicide bombers. The fortunate thing about Abbas's attaching himself to Hussein is that it set him up for capture.

Some say that Italy should have first crack at Abbas. It had already convicted him of the Achille Lauro hijacking in absentia in 1986. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi now wants Abbas handed over so that he can begin serving his life sentence. But it's also true that in 1985, the Italians had Abbas in their hands after U.S. fighter jets forced his plane to land in Sicily. And yet they let him go. So while I trust Berlusconi, who knows if a future Italian government might not again wash its hands of Abbas?

In 1995, Rabin, then our prime minister, asked me to join him on his trip to the White House, where he was to sign a peace agreement with Yasser Arafat, which I supported. I believe that he wanted me to represent all Israeli victims of terrorism. Rabin dreaded shaking hands with Arafat, knowing that those hands were bloody. At first, I agreed to make the trip, but at the last minute, I declined. As prime minister, Rabin had to shake hands with Arafat for political reasons. As a private person, I did not. So I stayed here.

Now I am ready and willing to come to the United States to testify against Abu Abbas if he is tried for terrorism. The daughters of Leon Klinghoffer have said they are ready to do the same. Unlike Klinghoffer, Danny, Einat and Yael were not American citizens. But Klinghoffer was killed on an Italian ship in Abbas's attempt to free the killer of my family in Israel. We are all connected by the international web of terrorism woven by Abbas. Let the truth come out in a new and public trial. And let it be in the United States, the leader in the struggle against terrorism.

Smadar Haran Kaiser is a social worker. She is remarried and has two daughters.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060803/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_israel


---->Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday the solution to the Middle East crisis is to destroy Israel


For the contrarian view

This is what Israel deals with every day. Israel wants to co-exsist with neighbors who have a high priority of eliminating them--who are attempting to advance their nuclear capabilities. They are not interested in a *UN peace-keeping force* because they are NOT interested in peace. A lot of these belligerent societies are based on roots that go back to the Middle Ages. The only way to change these radical ideologies is with massive military force. If I'm Israel, am I going to sit back and wait until one of these countries lobs a nuclear bomb over in 5 years? Thats what it is going to come down to.

If you don't like the United States, you are free to leave.

Monday, July 31, 2006




Who is this man?





If
he had been a genuine rescue worker, he would deserve a medal. Mr "Green
Helmet" is everywhere at Qana, rushing around pulling children out of
the rubble, carting them to ambulances and even, on the front page of
the Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1833884,00.html>
, escorting "White Tee-shirt", who also performs his own cameo role,
carting round the body of another unfortunate girl, emoting freely while
he does so.

That photograph is credited to Nicolas Asfouri of AFP/Getty Images and
the caption reads, "A man screams for help as he carries the body of a
young girl after Israeli air strikes on the southern Lebanese village of
Qana".


"White Tee-shirt" is still "screaming" on the front page of The
Telegraph
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=WFWMBR3RU4I3VQFIQ
MFSFFOAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2006/07/31/wmid131.xml> , but in an altogether
different location, this photograph attributed to Reuters. He also makes
the front page of The Times
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2293160,00.html> and The
Independent, in yet another location, with "Green Helmet" just out of
shot.

The New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/31/world/middleeast/31scene.html?hp&ex=1
154318400&en=8ff67d99b9d3fb3c&ei=5094&partner=homepage> , however, has
"Green Helmet" dragging the body of yet another unfortunate child from
the ruins, this photograph attributed to Tyler Hicks of The New York
Times. The caption reads, "Rescue workers recovered bodies at the scene
of an Israeli air raid on the southern Lebanese town of Qana on Sunday".

We
also get one more shot of the baby dragged from the rubble - yet another
pose to add to the many already published. This time, "Blue Tee-shirt"
is standing behind the baby's body, holding its head up to make a more
dramatic picture.

The picture itself is in Arab News with the caption, "A dead child, a
victim of Jewish terror, is taken out of a destroyed building in Qana on
Sunday. The pacifier of the child is seen hanging from the vest, a mute
testimony to the innocent victim's tragic end." The photograph is
attributed to EPA.

A
picture remarkably similar to that in The New York Times is also offered
by Reuters, attributed to Zohra Bensemra. Its caption reads, "A Lebanese
volunteer rescuer carries a child killed in the Israeli air raid in
Qana." It looks like the same child, but "Green Helmet", seems to have
swapped positions for the camera with "Grey Tee-shirt".


Gulf News <http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Lebanon/10056322.html> , on
the other hand, has "Green Helmet" carrying the body of the girl shown
in the previous post, but in yet another, slightly more picturesque
location. This shot carries no attribution and the caption is not
related to the picture. It refers to the cessation of air strikes by the
Israelis.

But
the great tragedy for Qana, of which we are constantly reminded by the
media, is that this is history apparently repeating itself. On 18 April
1996, the village was also visited by death and destruction. re-visiting
the photographs of the time, however, who do we see at the centre of the
action? Why, "Green Helmet" of course. This is a younger man, without
his glasses, but recognisably the same man, in his now classic pose of
handling a victim of an Israeli "atrocity".

His presence at Qana on Sunday, and his central, unchallenged role,
cannot have been a coincidence. Is he a senior ranking Hezbollah
official? If not, who is he?

* * * *

And here he is again!

This
time, according to Reuter's Zohra Bensemra, "Green Helmet" is a Lebanese
rescue worker, watching "while a bulldozers clears away the rubble of a
building demolished by an Israeli air strike in Sreefa, 18 miles (30km)
south east of the port-city of Tyre(Soure)". The dateline is 31 July,
2006, at 10:37 am.

Doesn't Hezbollah have anyone else the media can photograph?

Posted by Rich:

You have to wonder about the motives of anyone that can't see through Hezbollah's mendaciousness.

Let suppose he is A Hezbolla member. Or maybe he works for the UN or some humanitarian aid team. But lets suppose that he is a Hezbollah member, correct me if I am wrong but those are still real dead bodies he's holding, no?

What does it matter, the real point is that innocent children are being killed by bombs and missles that my tax dollars helped to create, and I have a problem with that. Should I not?

Has Israel dimished Hezbollas weapons as they boasted a few days ago?
Are Israeli's any safer?
Is Hezbollah any weaker as a result?

Posted by firefly:

Monday, July 31, 2006




Who is this man?

...Doesn't Hezbollah have anyone else the media can photograph?

The Theater of Jihad

By Michelle Malkin


Welcome to the marquee performance of "Qana: The Fraud and the Furious," brought to you by the Acting Guild of the Religion of Perpetual Outrage.


The drama unfolded over the weekend with mob scenes across the Muslim world, ostensibly— ostensibly— in response to civilian deaths in Qana, Lebanon. Angry Muslims from Beirut to Gaza to Lahore set fire to American and Israeli flags. They burned effigies of Western leaders. They raised their voices in chants of "Death to America" and "Death to Israel."


The nervous nellies sitting in the world's balcony seats exclaimed that the tragedy in Qana will make the Muslims hate us more. But if the uproar over the accident in Qana-an Israeli exception to the Hezbollah rule— sounds like a tired old re-run to you, well, it is.


This ongoing production utilizes the same talented field of Jew-haters and West-haters and flag-burners and machete-wielders who brought you worldwide months of manufactured rage over the Mohammed Cartoons, crazed riots in Nigeria over the Miss World pageant, sharia-approved murders in Somalia of World Cup soccer fans, the fictional Jenin "massacre," the fable of Mohammed al-Dura, and ululating protests over the corrupting influences of the "Satanic Verses," Theo Van Gogh, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's, the sacrilegious Burger King ice cream swirl, Valentine's Day, and Piglet from "Winnie the Pooh."


The truth about Muslim outrage over Qana is that it's not really about the tragic deaths at Qana— just like the Mohammed cartoon jihad was not really about the cartoons. It's a pretext for much grander goals to defeat the infidels— be they Israeli, Danish, Dutch, or American.


Remember: Muslim riots over the Mohammed cartoons printed by the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper last fall were stoke and manufactured amid attempts to bully Denmark over the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision to report Iran to the UN Security Council for continuing with its nuclear research program. Iran blamed Israel for the cartoons in a speech marking the 27th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.


Now, the Qana jihad, gleefully stoked by Iran, is unfolding amid mounting U.N. Security Council pressure on Tehran to suspend its nuclear program. What better way to distract from Hezbollah's atrocities and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's annihilatie-the-Jews plans than to start screaming about Israel's "war crimes" and Western crimes against humanity.


As we watch Hezbollah's horrible parade of dead children in Qana replay endlessly on television, here is a suggestion for all the intrepid American journalists gallivanting with Hezbollah's handlers in the region: Perhaps you could put down the figurative hookah pipes, take off your sympathy hajibs, and find out the identity of the green-helmeted guy holding up baby corpses in Qana up as props for your sensational, page-one pictures.


Is he just an ordinary bystander? A rescuer who just happened to be in the same place 10 years ago traipsing around with dead children's bodies to exploit an accidental Israeli bombing prompted by terrorists hiding behind civilians?


A civilian volunteer or a propaganda producer?


To his credit, MSNBC reporter Richard Engel picked up on a question the blogosphere has been asking since the toddler corpse-paraders in Qana took center stage: Where were all the men? His reporting underscores Hezbollah's evil m.o.-embedding themselves in civilian populations to force exactly the kind of tragic error from Israel that appears to have occurred at Qana. "[W]*e went house to house in trying to figure out where all the young men were. It seems that some of them were fighters, some of them were Hezbollah members that were out — this according to Hezbollah people who didn't want to be interviewed but we convinced them to talk to us."


To the photographer-stenographers who were herded to the scene 8 hours after the strike, why is it that the bodies of the children were already in a state of rigor mortis? How to explain the sparkling clean pacifier clipped onto a dust-covered toddler carried around by the friendly corpse-parader? And why were the women and children kept in the building for so long? Questions abound. Answers are as scarce as men in that Qana building.


"All the world's a stage," Shakespeare wrote. The journalists of our age have chosen their costumes: court jesters in the Theater of Jihad.

You know I read a statement from the Islamic Nations Federation or whatever they call themselvs today, and guess what, its all Israel's fault. They condemn Israeli kllings of civilians, yet they do not even mention the Hizbollah killinf of civilians. There in lies the problem, or rather the truth. When push comes to shove, everybody just sticks up for their own.

Ironically they speak of a double standard. I wonder what doulbe standard they are talkinb about. The one where muslims in Africa get to slaughter Christains and Animist tribes and the UN does not even bother to notice? The double standard according to which it was ok to bomb the crap out of Serbia who dares to defend its people in Kosovo, another muslim country, which perpetuated a genocide against the Serbs on its territory. Or is it the double standard according to which its ok to displace a million people in the north of Israel, and not mention it once as a porblem with rocket fire, but not ok to do the same in the south of Lebanon?

Or mabye they talk about the double standard of the generic Arab genocide against Africans in general, the one that has gone on for more than a thousand years now, making the population of countires such as Egypt, predominantly Arab, and doing the same to the northen coast of Afica.

Pehreaphs they are talking about the double standard of the Europan treachey of first coming in and colonizing and destroying established socities in their coloines, and then going away after sucking out a bunch of resources, and drawing up borders that guaranteed war in the future?

Yet, incredibly they were just talkin about the double standard of letting Israel wage a war on its enemies. Because apparently no other country is allowed to do that. As ofcousre Russia did not solve its Checnyia prolbem w/out outside interferece. As ofcousre Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria do not solve their Kurd problem w/out any interference. As ofcousre China does did not solve the Tibet resistance. And the list goes on. But how can we let the Jews defend themselves after all, what if they beat us? That is simply a double standard that cannot be tolerated by even the "moderate" muslim nations.