or anecdotal, if you like) evidence, which I came across yesterday, from a US reporter on the ground, published by Salon and also ("fair use") here:
The "hiding among civilians" mythBy Mitch Prothero, Jul. 28, 2006, Salon.com
<snip>
Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around their targets, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths -- the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far -- on "terrorists" who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.
But this claim is almost always false. My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters -- as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers -- avoid civilians. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators -- as so many Palestinian militants have been.
For their part, the Israelis seem to think that if they keep pounding civilians, they'll get some fighters, too. The almost nightly airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut could be seen as making some sense, as the Israelis appear convinced there are command and control bunkers underneath the continually smoldering rubble. There were some civilian casualties the first few nights in places like Haret Hreik, but people quickly left the area to the Hezbollah fighters with their radios and motorbikes.
But other attacks seem gratuitous, fishing expeditions, or simply intended to punish anything and anyone even vaguely connected to Hezbollah. Lighthouses, grain elevators, milk factories, bridges in the north used by refugees, apartment buildings partially occupied by members of Hezbollah's political wing -- all have been reduced to rubble.
In the south, where Shiites dominate, just about everyone supports Hezbollah. Does mere support for Hezbollah, or even participation in Hezbollah activities, mean your house and family are fair game? Do you need to fire rockets from your front yard? Or is it enough to be a political activist?
The Israelis are consistent: They bomb everyone and everything remotely associated with Hezbollah, including noncombatants. In effect, that means punishing Lebanon. The nation is 40 percent Shiite, and of that 40 percent, tens of thousands are employed by Hezbollah's social services, political operations, schools, and other nonmilitary functions. The "terrorist" organization Hezbollah is Lebanon's second-biggest employer.
/more...
ed: mods, I hope you'll permit the extra paragraph for clarity from what is a much, much longer article.This would appear to be backed up by the following comment/analysis:
Five myths that sanction Israel's war crimesJonathan Cook, Electronic Lebanon, 25 July 2006
<snip>
In 2002 Israel made the same charge: that Palestinians resisting its army's rampage through the refugee camps of the West Bank were hiding among civilians. The claim grew louder as more Palestinian civilians showed the irritating habit of gettting in the way of Israeli strikes against population centres. The complaints reached a crescendo when at least two dozen civilians were killed in Jenin as Israel razed the camp with Apache helicopters and Caterpillar bulldozers.
The implication of Egeland's cowardly statement seems to be that any Lebanese fighter, or Palestinian one, resisting Israel and its powerful military should stand in an open field, his rifle raised to the sky, waiting to see who fares worse in a shoot-out with an Apache helicopter or F-16 fighter jet. Hizbullah's reluctance to conduct the war in this manner, we are supposed to infer, is proof that they are terrorists.
Egeland and Howells need reminding that Hizbullah's fighters are not aliens recently arrived from training camps in Iran, whatever Horowitz claims. They belong to and are strongly supported by the Shiite community, nearly half the country's population, and many other Lebanese. They have families, friends and neighbours living alongside them in the country's south and the neighbourhoods of Beirut who believe Hizbullah is the best hope of defending their country from Israel's regular onslaughts.
Given the indigenous nature of Hizbullah's resistance, we should not be surprised at the lengths the Shiite militia is going to ensure their loved ones, and the Lebanese people more generally, are not put directly in danger by their combat.
If only the same could be said of the Israeli army and airforce. One need only look at the images of the victims of its strikes against residential neighbourhoods, car, ambulances and factories to see why most of the dead being extracted from the rubble are civilians.
/more...
--> Me, I don't really know, I'm not at all familiar with the Lebanon on the ground. I'm just trying to cut through all the spin, and I believe I've recently read Robert Fisk (no ally of Hizbollah) saying similar things to the above in an article that I don't seem to be able to access right now (reporting on his journey with an International Red Cross convoy which was attacked - I will post if in time I find, or, anyone?)...
ed again: here's the Robert Fisk article I refer to
(and again I ask indulgence for the extra paragraph from a long article, for clarity):
On A Red Cross Mission Of Mercy When Israeli Air Force Came CallingBy Robert Fisk
28 July, 2006
The Independent
That's when five vast, brown, dead fingers of smoke shot into the sky in front of us, an Israeli air-dropped bomb that exploded on the road scarcely 80 metres away with the kind of "c-crack" that comic books express so accurately, followed by the scream of a jet. If we had driven just 25 seconds faster down that road, we would all be dead.
So we retreated once more to Jarjooaa and parked under the balcony of a house where two women and three children were watching us, waving and smiling.
Sylvie was silent but I could see the rage on her face. The Israelis, it seemed, had made an "error". They had misread the route - or the number - of our little convoy. "How can we work like this? How on earth can we do our work?" Sylvie asked with a mixture of anger and frustration. On all the roads yesterday, I saw only three men whom I suspect were Hizbollah - no respecters of the Geneva Conventions they - driving at high speed in a battered Volvo. They can cross the rivers of Lebanon at will - just as we did - by circling the bomb craters and crossing the rivers. So what was the point in blowing up 46 of Lebanon's road bridges?
An old man approached us carrying a silver tray of glasses and a pot of scalding tea. Generous to the end, under constant air attack, these fearful Lebanese were offering us their traditional hospitality even now, as the jets wheeled in the sky above us. They asked us in to the house they had refused to leave and I realised then that these kind Lebanese people - unarmed, unconnected to Hizbollah - were the real resistance here. The men and women who will ultimately save Lebanon.
But before we abandoned our journey and before Sylvie and her team and I set off back to their base in the far and dangerous south of Lebanon, a man carrying a bag of vegetables walked up to Beshara Hanna. "Please move your cars away from my home," he said. "You make it dangerous for us all."
And the shame of this shook me at once. The Israeli attack on the Qana ambulances - their missiles plunging through the red crosses on the roofs - had contaminated even our own vehicles. He was just one man. But for him, the Israelis had turned the Red Cross - the symbol of hope on our roofs and the sides of our vehicles - into a symbol of danger and fear.
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