- Hizbullah has fired almost 2,000 missiles into Israel
over the last fortnight, killing more than 50 Israelis and forcing almost
one million into air raid shelters. Despite this provocation, however,
Israel's response has been sharply criticised as "disproportionate"
in many quarters. In the aftermath of the deaths of dozens of innocent
Lebanese women and children at Qana yesterday, even the US has urged the
Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to modify their responses to Hizbullah's attacks.
IDF spokespeople are maintaining that Hizbullah had been mounting missile
attacks on Israeli territory from Qana in recent days. The IDF has claimed
it targeted the three-storey house in Qana at 1.30am local time in the
belief it contained a Hizbullah "asset". Any investigation into
the targeting of this house will have to consider precisely what kind of
Hizbullah "asset" could possibly have been hidden in a modest,
low-rise building among the narrow streets of a village such as Qana.
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- The type of missiles being fired by Hizbullah at Israeli
cities cannot be fired from within houses, mosques, hospitals or even UN
facilities as has been suggested by the IDF. Due to the massive "back-blast"
caused by the rocket launchers of these missiles, they can only be fired
from open ground. To fire them from within a building would result in the
instant death of the missile crew and probable destruction of the missile
before launch. Most of the missiles are truck-mounted and are fired - on
open ground - from the backs of flat-bedded trucks or larger four-wheel-drive
vehicles. When fired, these missiles generate an enormous flare of light,
heat and sound energy - a heat and light signature which is readily detected
by IDF target-acquisition systems. Accurate retaliatory fire can be directed
at Hizbullah launch sites by IDF aircraft and ground artillery in seconds.
Such a reaction would be considered by international military norms to
be proportionate and within the general "rules of engagement".
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- In these circumstances, having fired their missiles,
Hizbullah tends to disperse as rapidly as possible. It is unlikely that
a flat-bedded truck with a multilaunch rocket-system mounted on it could
be easily and rapidly hidden in a village as small as Qana. Nor is it likely
that such a truck-mounted weapon or four-wheel-drive vehicle could easily
be hidden in a house such as the one targeted by the IDF yesterday.
-
- The pattern and circumstances of the attack are sinister.
With no telltale scorch marks from a Hizbullah missile launch visible near
the destroyed house, and with no Hizbullah fighters among the dead and
injured, the question remains as to what kind of "asset" the
IDF could credibly allege to have been contained within the building. The
timing of the attack, taking place as it did during a period of relative
calm and not in the immediate aftermath of a Hizbullah missile launch,
speaks of a punitive strike designed simply to kill members of the Shia
community from which Hizbullah is drawn and receives its moral support.
The targeting of unarmed Shia women and children would represent a deliberate
targeting of innocent civilians for retaliatory or punitive purposes, and
may well constitute a war crime.
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- Tom Clonan is The Irish Times security analyst.
- (c) The Irish Times
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- Comment
D.W. Rankins
- 8-8-6
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- Don't believe everything you read, folks. Anyone with
satellite television has been able to watch this conflict blow by blow,
24-7 and there is plenty of footage of rockets being fired out of homes,
small apartment buildings, larger building complexes and buildings with
central courtyards. Rockets CAN and ARE being fired from homes and buildings,
though the more powerful ones are being fired from mobile truck units.
Israel is not deliberately targeting civilians in some insane slaughter-fest.
Total hooey.
-
- I do not support Israel or their actions (in my opinion,
when the enemy is hunkered down among civilian populations as Hezbullah
is, you take the higher moral path and do not bomb the living hell out
of neighborhoods, killing the innocent to get to the "bad guys."
Such is immoral, irrational and in my view a war-crime, without it being
"intentional"). It may well be true that the Qana incident did
not involve rockets fired from homes or buildings, but the writer is suggesting
NO rockets are or can be fired from such, and one need only flip on CNN
or FOX or MSNBC or any network with coverage of the fighting and one can
see with ones own eyes rockets being launched from homes and apartment
complexes by Hezbullah. This is just more disinfo and propaganda by those
who don't realize that the actual actions of Israel are sufficient to indict
them for a "disproportionate" reaction, without making up total
crap (an unfortunate addiction of the left-wing press) to make them look
worse.
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