Qana Attack, Israeli Setback?

[eyl]

This CNN video article is noteworthy because it includes footage of Hizbullah rockets firing from Lebenese villages (including Kfar Qana) and hiding within them - contrary to claims that Hizbullah avoids civilians made by Juan Cole and Mitch Prothero.

Video is accessible from this page; click on the "Israel says Hezbollah shares blame for Qana" link on the right

Cross-posted to GD

[ixion]

1. killing is killing, no matter who is doing the killing

and it should stop. Period.

[bemildred]

2. Nobody cares.

The fact that they don't position themselves out in some field somewhere before firing their rockets is careless of human life, but then they are firing rockets at Israeli population centers, eh? It certainly is an awkward situation for the IDF, but it's not too nice for the dead peasants either. Maybe these issues ought to have been considered at greater length before deciding to unleash the dogs of war, it's all very forseeable, and the negative reaction is very forseeable too. It is impossible to tell, but I have been puzzled from the beginning by the rather "modest" harm Hizbullah has done to Israel vis-a-vis the IAF tantrums littered all over Lebanon, and have speculated that it is no accident, but I can't convince myself. But accident or no, it keeps the image of the plucky Hizbullah fending off the Israeli bully firmly in the public eye. The other fellow may be evil, but if you are stupid, that won't buy you much.

[eyl]

5. Not sure what you mean by "modest"

Israel has much better shelters and public awareness than Lebanon, which is a large part of the reason why Israeli casualties are much lower.

[bemildred]

6. "Modest" relative to damage done to Lebanon, what else?

I know about the shelters, that is why I "can't convince myself". My point is that the "real" reasons, whatever one considers them to be, don't matter. In propaganda and PR looks are everything.

[pelsar]

3. so...theres a video....

we've seen them over and over...from kassams being fired from backyards to katushas next to apt buildings. Some have seen jihadnikm shooting from behind unarmed protestors or even within them....suicide bombers prefering the unarmed to kill

we've seen israeli cities under attack by rockets from gaza and now over 100 a day from lebanon.....ITS ACCEPTABLE

I dont understand why, but given an informal count of posts "aghast at israel attacking civilians and the lack of outrage for hizballa shooting at cities (trying to kill only jews), its pretty clear.

now why is it?...i guess for many people in the west, it seems that the believe that hizballa etc simply cant live up to western standards. The outrage for israeli jets hitting a red cross vehicle is all over the internet....nary a world about hizballa hitting an israeli hospital, an ambulance station...because we "understand them"....

so are the hizballa some kind of "lesser humans" is it their culture? or are shooting at cities and hospitals their only alternative?

and for those who doubt: either take a peek through the DU or google:
israeli hospital hit or red cross ambulance hit
(the israeli hospital is noted only in israeli sites)

[Violet_Crumble]

12. Jew-seeking missiles?

and the lack of outrage for hizballa shooting at cities (trying to kill only jews),

Didn't some of those Jew-seeking rockets hit Nazareth, a predominantly Arab city in Northern Israel? They've hit Arab villages and towns in Northern Israel as well. While their rockets haven't got great aim, it's pretty clear that the intent was to hit Nazareth...

I've seen very very few people who believe that it's acceptable in any way for Hezbollah to fire rockets into Israel. On the other hand, I have seen a torrential downpour of US 'supporters' of Israel who do think it's acceptable for Israel to target the UN, Lebanese homes, convoys of Lebanese civilians, not to mention supporting raids on Palestinian hospitals in the past...

[PATRICK]

4. The sounds of the people

From listening to Israeli comments whether fear or rage, or rage against the failings of the government or against the terrorists, you can hear the damage being done to the citizenry. Decades after not moving on after settling military dominance, things are coming to an end, end of nerves, end of hope, end of success. And what nation or what flag is worth the killing of one innocent child? In reality not one of them. Burn them all. There's a democratic sentiment.

The US has slaughtered many more children, more openly, more repetitively, more senselessly and none of that adds up to the deaths we have caused by filling their ruined infrastructure with chaos, depleted uranium and raw hatred. Of course, our media was not really facing those incidents as fully as Al Jazeera, averting its gaze politely for the sake of OUR children. When I see flags waving I feel a wave of nausea. Every one of us comes from a people who at one time or other was treated as sword fodder, slaves, chattel or worse by some other gloriously ascendant people now in decline or living next door to us minding their gardens.

All the determinism, all the wishful thinking and extremely likely failure, why go ahead and butcher people vainly for a cause. dead children have no causes. They have graves and the people who could be putting flowers on them to ease their own pain are often, mercifully, lying beside them.

The difference between us and the Israelis is to some extent all about distance. The trap is visceral when your enemies are lobbing bombs at you from miles away. The testing of character, the lunacy, the failures, the blindness and emotions are heightened unbearably and sympathy for anyone else just as harshly withheld. In Vietnam we lived for years knowing thousands of children and villagers died needlessly all the time. In America we know about the uninsured, the lousy child death rate, the loony gun culture and many other scandals- all enforced as a way of death by our illegitimate government and the monsters who squat there.

Setback? Buried. What survives is pretense digging a deeper hole than a mere grave and the need either to change or stagger on like Sisyphus to tunes that have no soul. The left is weak or has joined the chorus of fallen souls. Sound familiar?

America proudly knocks about in the greatest glass house on the planet and can be no friend to Israel until we both change and bring our souls to account.

[newyorican]

7. So...

this is the third story from the GOI on this incident?

[eyl]

8. third? n/t

[newyorican]

9. This is possibly not the actual 3rd scenario...

but a regurgitated version of one of the 3.

1 - "A statement issued today by the IDF said that responsibility for the Qana attack "rests with the Hezbollah" because it has used the area to launch "hundreds of missiles" into Israel."

Source

2 - "QANA, Lebanon, July 30 (UPI) -- An Israeli official said the bomb (that's the Israeli bomb they are talking about) that killed 54 refugees in Qana, Lebanon, including 19 children, early Sunday hit the wrong building"

Source

3 - (IsraelNN.com) The United States is expected to block a United Nations Security Council resolution denouncing Israel for the killing of about 60 civilians in the Lebanese village of Kana Sunday morning. Israel has said that the explosion in the building that caused the deaths may have been caused by stockpiles of Hizbullah weapons and not by the Israeli attack.

Source

It's like some morbid menu from Hasbara.

[newyorican]

10. ah...missed one...

Here comes the inevitable, "They bombed themselves to make Israel look bad" line of "reasoning".

IDF: Qana building fell hours after strike

VIDEO - An IDF investigation has found that the building in Qana struck by the Air Force fell around eight hours after being hit by the IDF.

"The attack on the structure in the Qana village took place between midnight and one in the morning. The gap between the timing of the collapse of the building and the time of the strike on it is unclear," Brigadier General Amir Eshel, Head of the Air Force Headquarters told journalists at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, following the incidents at Qana.

Eshel and the head of the IDF's Operational Branch, Major General Gadi Eisnkot said the structure was not being attacked when it collapsed, at around 8:00 in the morning.

The IDF believes that Hizbullah explosives in the building were behind the explosion that caused the collapse.

This line of "reasoning" has actually gain some traction here. Desperate times for desperate people.

lindisfarne (1000+ posts) Mon Jul-31-06 12:36 AM
Response to Reply #2
10. Do you have evidence that there were no Hezbollah explosives
involved? Israel's indiscriminate bombing isn't right, but I also don't see Hezbollah as so morally superior as to not bomb Lebanese civilians if it could gain them world support.

dmesg (942 posts) Mon Jul-31-06 10:29 AM
Response to Reply #29
42. You really can't imagine...
...that Hezbollah would MIHOP a buidling collapse? You don't see that Hezbollah is the shrubco of the Shi'ite resistance? The sad fact is that WarChimp has remade the middle east in his image.

Best response to above "reasoning":

Kailassa (1000+ posts) Mon Jul-31-06 06:46 AM
Response to Reply #21
26. Can you prove the Loch Ness moster does not exist?
To be consistent, if you cannot, you must believe it does.

That ends this episode of: Logic takes a Holiday

Thank you for your patronage.

[bemildred]

11. Say three and a half then.

I do find the "we bombed the crap out of them but didn't mean to do much damage" argument questionable.

[eyl]

13. those aren't

mutually exclusive.

[newyorican]

14. Like I said, a menu...

but there is a new item on the menu:

Last night the Israeli Ambassador to the UN stated on CNN, that Hezbollah held those women and children hostage at that location so that Israeli military strike would kill them for PR effect.

If the site was used as a launch site, where are the dead fighters and destroyed launchers? If the women and children were held hostage, where are the dead Hezbollah militants that were holding them hostage?