IraqiGeek's Blog

Qana Massacre

NOTE: I wrote this post on July 30, a few days after the second Qana Massacre in Lebanon, but didn't publish it on the site. In the past, I have made it a point not to post about political issues on the main page of my blog. This was the main reason why I created the forums section. Well, its my blog, so I might as well change and/or break the rules whenever I feel ike it. So, I have been trying to keep my mouth shut for the past 19 days in regards to the Israeli-Lebanon/Hizbullah, but things have reached a point where I cant just keep quiet anymore. Yesterday, the Israeli "self defence" forces "mistakenly" bombed the village of Qana in southern lebanon killing 54 civilians, including 37 children and there are still dozens of bodies still burried under the rubble. This morning, we had Israeli officials appearing all over the place calling this "an unfortunate accident" which really makes you wonder, how many "unfortunate accidents" have to happen before anyone with a semifunctional brain starts to call them by their real names, "war crimes"??? How many times during the past 19 days the so called "defense forces" have bomabrded facilities that had no relation what so ever to Hizbullah? We had a Red Cross humanitarian convoy, carrying Red Cross markings, that carried medical supplies hit by an air strike on its way to Beirut. We had dozens of civilan cars and mini-busses full of innocent people fleeing the south of Lebanon hit by Israeli missiles fired from Israeli jet fighters, all while the IDF was calling on civilians to flee the south of Lebanon. We had the two Red Cross ambulance cars, again carrying Red Cross markings, hit by a missile from an Israeli fighter. Just a few days ago, we had the UN watch post in southern lebanon that was there in the same location for two decades, if not more, and had clear UN markings, which recieved 10 hours of artillery shells before being grounded and its UN peace keepers killed, all while the "defense forces" were assuring the UN secretary general that the shells would stop falling instantly, and that those shells already fired were fired at the post by mistake. And yesterday, we had another massacre in Qana, the same village where Israel killed over 100 civilians who were taking refuge in a UN shelter back in 1996. It was amusing, in a very sad way, to watch the Israeli spokeswoman on CNN this morning talking about how the IDF was "surgically pinpointing hizbullah's positions" in southern Lebanon using high precision guided bombs and then calling the Qana massacre an "unfortunate incident". The spokeswoman went as far as saying that Hizbullah was responsible for this "incident" because it used the Qana region to lunch missiles on Israel. This really makes me wonder whether it was just another "unfortunate incident" or whether its a deliberate policy to flattern the entire area where IDF suspects Hizbullah activity? Just last week, the Israeli government was bragging about how accurate their attaacks where, and how they had 3D models of the entire southern Lebanon including virtually every building that existed there. The IDF was bragging in the media on a daily basis by distributing videos taken by Israeli spy drones and fighters showing the accuracy of those attacks, and how they only targetted Hizbullah's bases and missile launchers. Almost 24 hours after the Qana attack, the entire world is still waiting for a video that shows any rocket launchers near the residential building in Qana that was bombed yesterday, despite the insistance by the Israeli ambassador to the UN today that hizbullah was firing rocekts into Israel from an area nearby that building. Another statement that the Israeli UN ambassador kept repeating today was that hizbullah was hiding rockets in the homes of civilian Lebanese people despite the fact that no one was able to find any evidence that would support such a claim, not the hundereds Red Cross members in Lebanon, nor the hundereds of members of the press and media who are currently in Lebanon and touring each and every site bombed by the Israeli military. Its also very iteresting for me to watch how the US is blindly standing behind Israel in this conflict and turning a blind eye to the hundereds of civilians that are dying in Lebanon. I was just watching the CBS evening news, and there was one comment about the current conflict between Israel and hizbullah that really caught my eye. The CBS commentator (I didn't pay attention to who was reading the news broadcast as I was checking my email) said that the number of people killed today in the Qana shelter bombing exceeds the number of both Israeli civilians and military killed since the starting of the current conflict. I wonder how many people in the US who were watching tis broadcast took any note of this comment? And how many people will have to die until this nonsense stops??? EDIT: The conflict has stopped since I wrote this post. While the Israeli government was bragging in the first days after the cease fire about their triumph in this conflict, the few following days revealed the total opposite on the ground. On the last day of this latest conflict, over 300 rockets were fired by hizbullah on Israel, the largest number of rockets ever fired by Hizbullah in a single day. And if this isn't enough to convince you that hizbullah gained a hell lot on the ground after this latest conflict, just take a look at what are they doing now in Lebanon, while the entire "international community" is sitting doing almost nothing, or drawning whatever is that they want to do in tons of bureaucratic work. Its true that the US has pledged $250M to aid in reconstruucting Lebanon, but it will be weeks, if not months until this money reaches the average Lebanese whose house was brought to the ground by an American made, fired by an Israeli F16 which was again made in the US-of-A, Laser guided precision bomb. All this while hizbullah is literally giving away tens of thousands of US dollars to those same victims so they could repair their homes (if there was any repairable thing left) or buying the rubbles of their homes for whatever is they were worth back when those homes were new. Yeah, this was a huge success for Israel, because now everyone in Lebanon hates hizbullah for paying them back for whatever they lost due to the "precision strikes" carried the Israeli "Defense Forces". Am-freakin-azing....