Deliberate Destruction or Collateral Damage?

[breakaleg]

http://www.adcaustin.org/index.cfm/mod/news/id/17/subMod/NewsView/NewsID/294.cfm

Amnesty International delegates in south Lebanon reported that in village after village the pattern was similar: the streets, especially main streets, were scarred with artillery craters along their length. In some cases cluster bomb impacts were identified. Houses were singled out for precision-guided missile attack and were destroyed, totally or partially, as a result. Business premises such as supermarkets or food stores and auto service stations and petrol stations were targeted, often with precision-guided munitions and artillery that started fires and destroyed their contents. With the electricity cut off and food and other supplies not coming into the villages, the destruction of supermarkets and petrol stations played a crucial role in forcing local residents to leave. The lack of fuel also stopped residents from getting water, as water pumps require electricity or fuel-fed generators.

Israeli government spokespeople have insisted that they were targeting Hizbullah positions and support facilities, and that damage to civilian infrastructure was incidental or resulted from Hizbullah using the civilian population as a "human shield". However, the pattern and scope of the attacks, as well as the number of civilian casualties and the amount of damage sustained, makes the justification ring hollow. The evidence strongly suggests that the extensive destruction of public works, power systems, civilian homes and industry was deliberate and an integral part of the military strategy, rather than "collateral damage"  incidental damage to civilians or civilian property resulting from targeting military objectives.

Statements by Israeli military officials seem to confirm that the destruction of the infrastructure was indeed a goal of the military campaign. On 13 July, shortly after the air strikes began, the Israel Defence Force (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt-Gen Dan Halutz noted that all Beirut could be included among the targets if Hizbullah rockets continued to hit northern Israel: "Nothing is safe , as simple as that,"(8) he said. Three days later, according to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, a high ranking IDF officer threatened that Israel would destroy Lebanese power plants if Hizbullah fired long-range missiles at strategic installations in northern Israel.(9) On 24 July, at a briefing by a high-ranking Israeli Air Force officer, reporters were told that the IDF Chief of Staff had ordered the military to destroy 10 buildings in Beirut for every Katyusha rocket strike on Haifa.(10) His comments were later condemned by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.(11) According to the New York Times, the IDF Chief of Staff said the air strikes were aimed at keeping pressure on Lebanese officials, and delivering a message to the Lebanese government that they must take responsibility for Hizbullahs actions. He called Hizbullah "a cancer" that Lebanon must get rid of, "because if they dont their country will pay a very high price." (12)

The widespread destruction of apartments, houses, electricity and water services, roads, bridges, factories and ports, in addition to several statements by Israeli officials, suggests a policy of punishing both the Lebanese government and the civilian population in an effort to get them to turn against Hizbullah. Israeli attacks did not diminish, nor did their pattern appear to change, even when it became clear that the victims of the bombardment were predominantly civilians, which was the case from the first days of the conflict.
<snip>

[FloridaPat]

1. It's as much "Collateral Damage" as the US bombing of Iraqi cities

and the Israeli fight against the Palestinians the last 50 years. Pretty simuliar to what was done to the native US Americans - destroy their communities, way of life, and food chain and they quiety disappear into the history books.

[Double T]

2. Mountains of evidence indicate deliberate destruction of innocent........

civilians lives, homes and infrastructure; makes the Israeli Government's reason for going to war hollow.

[Solo_in_MD]

3. Your conclusion is unsupportable

without access to both the Hezbollah and IDF OB and targeting plans. There is clear evidence that Hezbollah did hide and shoot from civilian locations. Access to IDF tactical video and targeting orders will be needed to establish justification. If they were going after Hezbollah sites, it legitimate, even the use of cluster munitions.

Not saying that there were not some cases misuse, but AI's position is unsupported hyperbole. That is a real shame, they used to be better than this.
-

[Englander]

4. That's not correct.

Deliberate destruction of the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon is the reality of what ocurred,
& ai reflect that reality.

[breakaleg]

5. If you look at the damage in Lebanon...

with the number of buildings and homes destroyed. And compare that to the number of suspected Hezbollah militia members - in the range of a few thousand - then logic tells you that they could not possibly have been in all of the locations that Israel bombed. They simply don't have enough people to have spread themselves in all of those locations.

I've yet to see any evidence that Hezbollah hid and shot from civilian locations the way you describe. My understanding was they shot from a mobile unit and then got out. There is lots of evidence from various international groups that say they found no evidence of guns, rocket launchers, discharged shells or weapons from Hezbollah in many of the civilian areas targeted by Israel.

If we want to be honest, we will see that Israel's goal in taking out those cities, towns and community, was to make the people suffer for what they view as supporting Hezbollah. This more like collective punishment than anything else.

On the other side, there was a report from one reporter in Haifa that basically said that while it appears that Hezbollah is targeting civilians in that area, they were in fact targeting a military site which was located immediately next to a civilian area. There are lots of reports coming out of Israel that claim they routinely place military installations right next to civilian areas as well, so it's not entirely clear who Hezbollah was targeting. Or why Israel would place military locations where they do.

[pelsar]

6. soooo pathetic....

There are lots of reports coming out of Israel that claim they routinely place military installations right next to civilian areas as well, so it's not entirely clear who Hezbollah was targeting. Or why Israel would place military locations where they do.

kiryat shmona, nazerth, Haifa and countless other cities and villages have no military bases within....and they are large cities....whats part is confusing you, that they are large cities? that katushays repeatly hit some of them or that civilians live within those cities?

in israel military bases are clearly defined, some are near cities and villages as israel is a small country.....but that hardly explains the missles on the villages, the kibbutzim, the moshavim etc.

somebodies been duped by propaganda.....

[scarletwoman]

7. Duped by propaganda? I wonder who really is...

From Jonathan Cook, a British journalist living in Nazareth:

War of Media Deception

Israel, Not Hizbullah, is Putting Civilians in Danger on Both Sides of the Border

By JONATHAN COOK
Nazareth

<snip>

Although we should not romanticise Hizbullah, equally we should not be quick to demonise it either: unless there is convincing evidence suggesting it has been firing on civilian targets. The problem is that Israel has been abusing very successfully its military censorship rules governing both its domestic media and visiting foreign journalists to prevent meaningful discussion of what Hizbullah has been trying to hit inside Israel.

<snip>

But to anyone living in Nazareth, it was clear the rocket attack on the city was not indiscriminate either. It was a mistake -- something Nasrallah quickly confirmed in one of his televised speeches. The real target of the strike was known to Nazarenes: close by the city are a military weapons factory and a large military camp. Hizbullah knows the locations of these military targets because this year, as was widely reported in the Israeli media at the time, it managed to fly an unmanned drone over the Galilee photographing the area in detail -- employing the same spying techniques used for many years by Israel against Lebanon.

One of Hizbullah's first rocket attacks after the outbreak of hostilities -- after Israel went on the bombing offensive by blitzing targets across Lebanon -- was on a kibbutz overlooking the border with Lebanon. Some foreign correspondents noted at the time (though given Israel's press censorship laws I cannot confirm) that the rocket strike targeted a top-secret military traffic control centre built into the Galilee's hills.

There are hundreds of similar military installations next to or inside Israel's northern communities. Some distance from Nazareth, for example, Israel has built a large weapons factory virtually on top of an Arab town -- so close to it, in fact, that the factory's perimeter fence is only a few metres from the main building of the local junior school. There have been reports of rockets landing close to that Arab community.

How these kind of attacks are being unfairly presented in the Israeli and foreign media was highlighted recently when it was widely reported that a Hizbullah rocket had landed "near a hospital" in a named Israeli city, not the first time that such a claim has been made over the past few weeks. I cannot name the city, again because of Israel's press censorship laws and because I also want to point out that very "near" that hospital is an army camp. The media suggested that Hizbullah was trying to hit the hospital, but it is also more than possible it was trying to strike -- and may have struck -- the army camp.

Israel's military censorship laws are therefore allowing officials to misrepresent, unchallenged, any attack by Hizbullah as an indiscriminate strike against civilian targets.

And here is more from a followup article by Cook:

How “Indiscriminate” is Hezbollah’s Shelling?

Hypocrisy and the Clamor Against Hizbullah

<snip>

What I have argued instead is twofold. First, we cannot easily know what Hizbullah is trying to hit because Israel has located most of its army camps, weapons factories and military installations near or inside civilian communities. If a Hizbullah rocket slams into an Israeli town with a weapons factory, should we count that as an attack on civilians or on a military site?

The claim being made against Hizbullah in Lebanon -- that it is “cowardly blending” with civilians, according to the UN’s Jan Egeland -- can, in truth, be made far more convincingly of the Israeli army. While there has been little convincing evidence that Hizbullah is firing its rocket from towns and villages in south Lebanon, or that its fighters are hiding there among civilians, it can be known beyond a shadow of a doubt that Israeli army camps and military installations are based in northern Israeli communities.

<snip>

My second claim was that Israel’s military censor is preventing foreign journalists based in Israel, myself included, from discussing where Hizbullah rockets are landing, and what they may be aimed at. Under the censorship rules, It is impossible to mention any issue that touches on Israeli security or defense matters: the location of military installations, for example, cannot be divulged. It is arguable whether it would actually be possible to report a Hizbullah strike that hit a military site inside Israel.

I therefore have to tread carefully in what I say next, relying on information that is already publicly available, but which at least challenges the simplistic view that Hizbullah is firing rockets either indiscriminately or willfully to kill civilians. I draw on two pieces of coverage provided by BBC World.

<snip>

If Hizbullah’s primary goal is to kill as many civilians as possible in Haifa, it seems to be going about it in a very strange manner indeed -- unless we are to believe that none of its rockets could be fired the extra 1km needed to hit central Haifa. Instead, as is clear from the view shown by BBC cameras, the port includes many sites far more “strategic” than the roads, bridges, milk factories and power stations Israel is destroying in Lebanon: it has the oil refinery, the naval docks and other installations that, yes, I cannot mention because of the censorship laws.

At the very least, we should concede to Hizbullah that it is not always targeting civilians, and very possibly is not mainly targeting civilians, which might in part explain the comparatively low Israeli civilian casualty figures.

sw

[breakaleg]

8. These were the articles I was thinking of when I wrote my reply..

but frankly I couldn't be bothered to look at them, since I knew it wouldn't make a difference to this poster.

thanks for posting them.

[scarletwoman]

9. You're welcome. I was actually trying to find a map I had seen around

that time, that showed where most of the Hizbullah rockets were landing in the Haifa area -- they were clearly striking NE across the bay from the most populous part of the city, presumeably aiming for military targets of some sort, rather than the civilian population.

While I know that those who are most heavily invested in believing the mainstream propaganda are not likely to be moved by empirical data, I still figure it's worth the effort to present a counterpoint for the sake of other readers who might be willing to question the conventional wisdom.

sw

[Englander]

12. Two egs of ai 'being better than this' -

Of course, 'being better than this' translates as meaning 'doing the same thing they've always
done'....


10 years ago;

14 August 1996

Under constant medical supervision

Torture, ill-treatment and the health professions
in Israel and the Occupied Territories

SUMMARY

Health professionals working with the Israeli General Security Service the security branch most involved in the interrogation of Palestinian detainees form part of a system in which detainees are tortured, ill-treated and humiliated in ways which place current prison medical practice in conflict with medical ethics. It is a system which, Amnesty International believes, could not function without the acquiescence of health professionals responsible for the care of detainees.
Interrogation methods described in this report, such as prolonged sleep deprivation usually while hooded for long periods in painful, contorted positions, violent shaking, and threats are not denied by the Israeli authorities. But the authorities deny wrongly in AIs view that such treatment constitutes torture.
Amnesty International has received no evidence suggesting that any Israeli doctor or other health professional assists actively in torture or ill-treatment. But Israeli doctors and paramedics are silent witnesses, participating in a system which denies the physical and mental integrity of the human being which health professionals are bound to uphold. Amnesty International believes that health professionals have a vital role in documenting and exposing human rights violations and is calling on the Israeli government and the Israeli Medical Association to ensure that torture and ill-treatment are stopped and that health professionals are not drawn into colluding in a system of torture and ill-treatment.

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE150371996?open&of=ENG-2MD

____________________


5 years ago;

21 February 2001

ISRAEL AND THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
State Assassinations and Other Unlawful Killings

INTRODUCTION

''We will continue our policy of liquidating those who plan or carry out attacks, and no one can give us lessons in morality because we have unfortunately 100 years of fighting terrorism''. Deputy Defence Minister, Ephraim Sneh, after nine people were killed when a Palestinian driver drove a bus into a queue of people on 14 February 2001.

Since 9 November 2000 the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has actively pursued a policy of deliberately targeting those alleged to have carried out, or to have planned to carry out, violent attacks against Israelis(1).

Since the beginning of the current intifada (uprising) in Israel and the Occupied Territories on 29 September, more than 350 Palestinians, including nearly 100 children, have been killed by Israeli security forces. The majority of the Palestinians were killed during riots or demonstrations where stones or Molotov cocktails were thrown. Many have been killed outside demonstrations, in streets, checkpoints, or even in houses. The great majority of these killings were unlawful: a result of the excessive use of lethal force when no lives were in danger. Some Palestinians have died in fire-fights with the IDF.

During the same period over 60 Israelis have been killed by Palestinian members of armed groups, members of Palestinian security forces or individuals; more than 30 of them have been civilians. Israeli civilians have been killed in drive-by shootings, bombs placed to target buses or public places, individual murders or in other ways. Some of these killings have been carried out by groups close to the Palestinian Authority, such as the tanzim, others have been claimed by armed groups such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad, opposed to the Palestinian Authority. Some killings are claimed by new groups, such as the ''Brigades of the Martyrs of al-Aqsa'', whose political direction and organization remain vague. Some of the victims may have been killed, in a growing cycle of violence and revenge, by individuals unconnected with armed groups.

Human rights abuses by opposition groups or individuals can never justify abandonment of human rights principles by a government.

An extrajudicial execution is an unlawful and deliberate killing carried out by order of a government or with its acquiescence. Extrajudicial killings are killings which can reasonably be assumed to be the result of a policy at any level of government to eliminate specific individuals as an alternative to arresting them and bringing them to justice. These killings take place outside any judicial framework.

Most governments who have carried out extrajudicial executions deny it; the Israeli Government, however, states that the liquidation of those alleged to be a threat to Israelis is government policy and is legal. The IDF describes the situation as one of armed conflict thus allowing it to attack those who are alleged to have targeted Israelis and to kill without investigating each death.

The acceptance and even instigation of unlawful killings by the Israeli Government and its failure to investigate each death caused by its security services is leading to a culture of impunity in the IDF. Since the beginning of the intifada scores of other Palestinians have been killed unlawfully: the result of excessive, disproportionate or negligent use of force.

In the latest of a series of visits to Israel and the Occupied Territories, including areas under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, Amnesty International delegates, including an independent military adviser, investigated several cases of these targeted killings. They found that not only could some of those killed have been arrested, but in a reckless use of disproportionate force, uninvolved Palestinians were killed alongside some of those targeted.

In addition, Amnesty International delegates visited residential areas targeted by Israeli fire and Israeli settlements targeted by Palestinian fire. During their visit they collected disturbing evidence of the use by Israel of high explosive weaponry using air burst rounds against Palestinian residential areas. Such attacks have resulted in numerous civilian deaths, including children.

Details of unlawful killings of Palestinians as a result of targeted, random or negligent shooting by Israeli soldiers in other circumstances, particularly at checkpoints, were also gathered during this visit and are examined in this report.

It is a basic rule of customary international law that civilians and civilian objects must never be made the target of an attack. This rule applies in all circumstances including in the midst of full-scale armed conflict. Due to its customary nature it is binding on all parties. Israel is prohibited from attacking civilians and civilian objects. Palestinians are also prohibited from targeting Israeli civilians, including settlers who are not bearing arms, and civilian objects.

In this report Amnesty International is calling on the Israeli Government to repeal its policy of targeting for liquidation and not to use lethal force except against those posing an imminent danger to life. In order to ensure respect for human life, each individual killing should be fully investigated. Amnesty International also calls on Palestinian armed groups to halt deliberate and arbitrary targeting of civilians which is an abuse of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE150052001?open&of=ENG-2MD

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