Israel, the IDF and State Terrorism

I've been having a chat with my new mate taltalk in the comments of the post on the atrocities at Qana

Whilst searching through the myriad of articles that link Israel and the IDF with state terrorsim and murder, I came across this excellent article written by John Pilger in 2004. Here's a snippet:

Only by recognizing the terrorism of states is it possible to understand, and deal with, acts of terrorism by groups and individuals which, however horrific, are tiny by comparison. Moreover, their source is inevitably the official terrorism for which there is no media language. Thus, the State of Israel has been able to convince many outsiders that it is merely a victim of terrorism when, in fact, its own unrelenting, planned terrorism is the cause of the infamous retaliation by Palestinian suicide bombers. ...

On September 7, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 16 Israelis in the town of Beersheba. Every television news report allowed the Israeli government spokesman to use this tragedy to justify the building of an apartheid wall ­ when the wall is pivotal to the causes of Palestinian violence. Almost every news report marked the end of a five-month period of "relative peace and calm" and "a lull in the violence." During those five months of relative peace and calm, almost 400 Palestinians were killed, 71 of them in assassinations. During the lull in the violence, more than 73 Palestinian children were killed. A 13-year-old was murdered with a bullet through the heart, a 5-year-old was shot in her face as she walked arm in arm with her 2-year-old sister. The body of Mazen Majid, aged 14, was riddled with 18 Israeli bullets as he and his family fled their bulldozed home.

None of this was reported in Britain as terrorism. Most of it was not reported at all. After all, this was a period of peace and calm, a lull in the violence. On May 19, Israeli tanks and helicopters fired on peaceful demonstrators, killing eight of them. This atrocity had a certain significance; the demonstration was part of a growing nonviolent Palestinian movement, which has seen peaceful protest gatherings, often with prayers, along the apartheid wall. The rise of this Gandhian movement is barely noted in the outside world.

and

"Few of us", wrote the playwright Arthur Miller, "can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied."

Since 2004, there have been many more atrcities conducted by the IDF, the last of course being the disgusting attack on Lebanon. It is beyond my comprehension how someone can say that Israel is not a rogue state.

Israel Used White Phosporus bombs on Lebanon

Just when you think the crazy cluster bombing bastards can't get any worse, now we find that they dropped white phoshorus bombs on Lebanon, like the U.S. did on Fallujah.

White phosphorus bombs are not supposed to be used against human targets.

WP (Wiley Pete is another nick-name) is used by armies for producing smoke screens and as an incendiary. The phosphorus ignites on contact with air and gives off a thick smoke. If the chemical touches skin it will continue to burn until it reaches the bone unless deprived of oxygen.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1919396.ece

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1929007,00.html

Anna Politkovskaya buried - Putin jeered

Last week Russia's most vocal journalist on human rights in Chechnya was assassinated.

The Russian government did not acknowledge it, and there is suspicion of Kremlin involvement.

Putin flew in to Germany yesterday and got jeered by over 2,000 demonstrators.

From The Telegraph:

Angry protesters greeted Vladimir Putin as he flew into Germany yesterday for a two-day official visit that has been overshadowed by the weekend murder of his most prominent critic in the Russian media.   Mourners gather around the coffin of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya before her burial in Moscow Arriving in Dresden, the city where he served as a KGB spy in the 1980s, the Russian president was heckled by 2,000 demonstrators furious over the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, shot dead by a gunman outside her home on Saturday afternoon. As Mr Putin got out of his limousine, one man shouted: "You're a murderer, you're not welcome here." The killing of Mrs Politkovskaya, who was internationally admired for her exposes of Russian military atrocities in Chechnya, forced the Russian leader onto the defensive during a trip that was meant to focus on energy and growing economic ties with Germany. Two hours after the reporter was buried at an emotional funeral in Moscow, Mr Putin publicly acknowledged her death for the first time at a joint press conference with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. Though he described the murder as "a dreadful and unacceptable crime", Mr Putin sought to reject allegations of possible Kremlin involvement in it by downplaying the significance of Mrs Politkovskaya's career. "She was a journalist who was critical of the current authorities in Russia," he said. "But although she was well-known among human rights groups and abroad, she had minimal influence on political life in Russia." .... "Russia is becoming an authoritarian and corrupt country," said Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the opposition Yabloko party. "This killing opens a new phase when the physical elimination of political opponents becomes possible." Fear was as much an emotion as grief for many; a belief that with the death of one of so very few prepared to criticise the Kremlin the last vestiges of freedom in Russia had also passed. "I did not know Anna personally but when I heard of the murder I got very scared," said Alexander Glushenko, a nuclear physicist who recently wrote a book about his experiences of containing the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. "I may be wrong, but I have a feeling that now anyone who writes the truth can be killed." Full story here

Venezuela president plus Noam Chomsky book - sales jump on Amazon

Care of The Guardian: Chávez boosts Chomsky sales

Hugo Chávez holds a copy of Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival at the UN. Photograph: Julie Jacobson/AP

If he ever tires of running Venezuela, Hugo Chávez would make an outstanding book club president, judging by his impact on Noam Chomsky's book sales.Since waving a copy during an address to the UN last week, the Venezuelan president has made Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance a publishing sensation.

What was one of Professor Chomsky's lesser known works has surged to No 1 on Amazon's bestseller list, with bookshops making bulk orders from the thousands of extra copies being printed.

.............

Mr Chávez, who blames the US for backing a coup which briefly ousted him in 2002, used his UN address to brand George Bush a "devil" who had left a whiff of sulphur lingering in the chamber. Later he told an audience, to laughter, that his favourite tome was tainted by being placed on the podium where the US leader had stood. "I had to sprinkle it with holy water."

( See Guardian story link above for full story and related links)

More on the Israeli atatck on the civilian convoy

This story from the The New York Times expands on the post yesterday: "Israelis slaughter Lebanese security forces"

Before Attack, Confusion Over Clearance for Convoy
By SABRINA TAVERNISE

Karamallah Daher/Reuters
A convoy of refugees from several south Lebanese villages was attacked Friday night. The villagers believed they had been given clearance to pass.
HASBAYA, Lebanon, Aug. 12 — The cars set off down the narrow mountain road a few hours before sunset. They were trying to leave villages the Israeli Army occupied two days before, moving with what they thought was permission to pass.

But then the missiles came. Shortly after nightfall, Israeli aircraft fired into the convoy, containing more than a thousand Lebanese villagers. The military said in a statement that it had received a request for the convoy to move, but had denied it. It said it had suspected that cars in the area contained Hezbollah guerrillas carrying weapons, and only later discovered that the cars were part of the refugee convoy.

Six people were killed and more than 30 were wounded, according to witnesses and Red Cross officials. Among the dead were a Lebanese soldier, a baker, a Red Cross worker and the wife of a mayor of one of the villages.

What followed was a scene of panic under a large yellow moon. Drivers switched off their headlights, afraid of being shot, and frantically began turning around on the narrow road, which runs between two mountains near the winemaking village of Kefraya. An ambulance worker driving with the convoy was killed trying to get to the wounded, and it was an hour before nearby emergency workers could get in to pick up the bodies.

“We saw the light and the sound of the bomb,” said Ronitte Daher, a newspaper reporter from the village of Qlayah, who was traveling in the convoy with her sister. “I got out of the car and heard voices of people crying and shouting.”

She did not know what to do, and switched off her lights. Someone shouted to get out of the car and run for cover. Other cars were driving in reverse. She turned her car around.

“When I was turning, I saw a dead body,” she said. “I know that man. I saw his children crying and shouting, ‘Please help us! Please help us!’ ”

Israeli planes have been striking Lebanese civilians since the beginning of the war, hitting a truckload of fleeing farmers, a Lebanese photographer and a village during a funeral. Even so, Friday’s strike still came as a shock: the convoy was more than 500 cars long and included a town mayor, an entire Lebanese Army unit and its own ambulance.

The Israeli military said it had banned the movement of cars south of the Litani River, though the convoy was hit well north of it.

Crowding may have been part of the problem. The villagers had been waiting in Merj ’Uyun, a few miles south of here, since early Friday. Many had not been out of their houses since the Israelis came late last week, and they were desperate to leave.

Finally, around 4 p.m., they piled behind each other in a long bumper-to-bumper line and began moving out. The road was a mess, torn with large craters, and it took more than two hours to move several miles, according to the mayor of Merj ’Uyun , Fuad Hamra, who was in the convoy.

As soon as the cars were hit, all within about three minutes of one another, drivers farther back began hearing about it on their cellphones and many simply stopped in the dark. Some cars parked in areas that looked safe. Others, like Ms. Daher, drove to Jib Janine, a nearby town. Shortly after the attack, clumps of cars were idling in two parking lots south of Jib Jenine. People stood outside in the bright moonlight.

Ms. Daher stayed in the home of a family she had never met. They gave her water.

“I saw some people,” she said. “I asked it’s safe here? They said, yes, come.”

Ms. Daher, a reporter for Nahar Newspaper, one of Lebanon’s main newspapers, said that she tried to take photographs of the soldiers from the window of her house on Thursday, but that soldiers shot at the house when they saw her.

“They asked people not to look out the windows,” she said, speaking by telephone from Beirut, where she finally arrived Saturday afternoon.

She described a frozen town, in which Israeli soldiers and Lebanese civilians were terrified of one another.

“They are afraid of any movement in the houses, so we tried to keep calm,” she said. Israelis, according to Mr. Hamra and other residents, had destroyed some houses in the villages they occupied late last week, and residents did not feel safe inside their homes.

“They bombed some houses,” she said. “We don’t know why.”

Residents were similarly baffled about the convoy. The Israelis have warned several days ago that they would strike anyone driving south of the Litani River, and reiterated that warning the statement they released Saturday about the mistaken strike. But the convoy was hit far north of the river, after the convoy had passed out of active fighting.

“Something went wrong,” Mr. Hamra said by telephone from Beirut. “We were promised that we would have the clearance from Israelis and the road would be cleared. Neither happened.”

“Probably the clearance wasn’t cleared enough.”

What do you say to a man whose family is buried under the rubble?

Israelis slaughter Lebanese security forces and civilians who had earlier been under UN escort

The SMH reports that

the UN Security Council today unanimously called for an immediate end to a month of bloody fighting between Israel and Hezbollah even as the violence claimed more lives.

HOWEVER

Shortly before the long-awaited resolution was passed, at least seven people were killed when Israeli drones attacked a convoy of Lebanese security forces and civilians who had earlier been under UN escort.

The incident saw three Lebanese army vehicles hit and set ablaze, police said. The victims were mostly civilians. The convoy contained hundreds of Lebanese soldiers and civilians fleeing the Israeli bombardments.

More than four weeks of conflict in the region have left more than 1100 dead, mainly in Lebanon.

UN calls for immediate ceasefire - World - smh.com.au: "UN calls for immediate ceasefire"

Leunig Cartoon: Israels balanced Collective Punishment

Cartoons - theage.com.au
http://www.theage.com.au/ftimages/2006/08/09/1154802959949.html

Atrocities at Qana

Images care of the Sydney Morning Herald

Bodies recovered from under the rubble of a demolished building in the southern village of Qana near the port city of Tyre in Lebanon. The area was struck by Israeli war plane missiles on Sunday July 30, killing over 50 civilians including children. Photo: AP


A civil defense worker carries the body of a child recovered from the rubble. Photo: AP/Nasser Nasser


Children, one as young as 9 months, were removed from under a collapsed building on the outskirts of Qana. People had fled there for protection but the building was hit twice in the missile attack. Photo: Jeroen Kramer


A dead child...one of the many victims of the air strike. Photo: Jeroen Kramer

Pictures from: Atrocities at Qana - smh.com.au

Australia at the U.N

Cartoons - Cartoon - Opinion - theage.com.au: