©Middle East Online
Victim of Israeli Cluster Bomb in Lebanon



In an article published this week in the New York Times on Israel's use of cluster bombs on a civilian population in their illegal war last summer on Lebanon (carried out under the guise of attacking Hezbollah) -- although the Times did not quite phrase it that way -- we read the following justification given by Sean McCormack of the US State Department:
"It is important to remember the kind of war Hezbollah waged," he said. "They used innocent civilians as a way to shield their fighters."
He is not the first, nor will he be the last, to make such a justification for spraying Lebanon with cluster bombs. So let's stop for a moment and consider what this statement is actually saying. Imagine the situation. Your country is under attack by the strongest air force in the region, using sophisticated bombs and missiles, able to target any position it wishes. Thousands of troops have crossed the border and are taking up positions. The invader is backed by the most powerful countries in the world. You have at your disposition rifles, machine guns and ancient rocket technology. You have no planes, no fancy missiles, no navy. Is your first response to order all your fighters to collect together in easily identifiable and targetable places, far from all civilians, in order to provide an easy target for your enemy?

Or do you engage in guerrilla warfare, moving silently in a terrain that you know well, knowledge that gives you an advantage over the massive military might you are facing, as occupied peoples have done throughout the ages?

What would you do if an invader threatened your homes under such conditions?

The Israeli complaint amounts to saying that they were not facing a regular army, one with companies of soldiers moving on clearly defined battlefields with tanks and equipment, such as those they had fought before in 1967 and 1973, and which conditions were the basis for the agreement on the use of cluster bombs:
The agreements said the munitions be used only against organized armies and clearly defined military targets under conditions similar to the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973....
Clearly they were not facing a regular army in Lebanon, an army fighting a conventional war. But then Lebanon is not unique in that. The British made what amounted to the same complaint against the American colonists fighting during the American revolution in which the British used classically trained Hessian soldiers, moving and fighting in columns, while the Americans often resorted to guerrilla tactics they learned from fighting the Native Americans. For using such tactics, the colonists were accused by their opponents of not fighting fairly. Doesn't that echo the undertones of Israel's justifications: "Those Hezbollah fighters aren't fighting fairly."

As usual, American and Israeli exceptionalism rules the day. You can also call it the double standard.

Guerrilla warfare did not originate with those fighting Israeli occupation. It grew out of the necessity of finding a strategy to wear down a more powerful opponent who was occupying your country, your land, and your homes. Look at its success when used by the Vietnamese against the French and the United States in Vietnam. Obviously those countries with large armies and the most advanced modern technology need to demonise such a strategy because it is an effective strategy. It is the best strategy found to date that will permit an occupied people to resist and defeat a stronger opponent.

To demonise guerrilla warfare, those carrying it out must be demonised. How is that done? First, call the fighters "terrorists" rather than guerrillas or freedom fighters or simply fighters or soldiers. Next, accuse them of using innocent civilians as shields. Third, argue that any civilian who supports the guerrillas is no longer "innocent" and is therefore a potential target. Fourth, repeat ad nauseum that the victim is the aggressor and that the invader is acting in self-defence. We'll come back to this below.

Going in with a massive army and fighting door-to-door, such as the Americans are having to do in Iraq, was not a viable strategy because Israel's war plan was to go in for three weeks, do as much damage as possible to the Lebanese infrastructure, inflict as many casualties as possible, and get out, as had been agreed upon with the Americans beforehand. So other measures had to be used. That those measures entailed the death of innocent civilians didn't matter to the Israeli's. It is well known that the life of a goy is worth nothing compared to the life of a Jew, and if that goy happens to be Arab to boot....

Moreover, the use of cluster bombs against civilians last summer was not the first time Israel had done exactly the same thing. As the article mentions, cluster bombs were used against civilians in Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, provoking such international outrage that US president Reagan was obliged to stop shipment of the bombs to Israel for a period. Where was the international outcry this time?

That same invasion in 1982 also saw Israeli war criminal Ariel Sharon permit the massacres at Sabra and Chatila, another incident that reveals the true intentions of the Israelis vis-à-vis Arab civilians. And if you need more examples, you have but to look at the on-going slaughter of Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Territories. The war on Arab civilians by the Zionists has been on-going since the Zionist project was announced in the late 19th century. Israel was founded on a war against civilians -- including massacres and forced deportation.

Of course the Israelis always give themselves a lot of wiggle room so that the Western press can present them in the best light. It is also known as lying. They claim that Israel dropped leaflets warning the civilians to get out. The villages were empty, they say. People with better memories will remember the Lebanese men, women, and children who were gunned down by the IDF after being warned to get out of their villages during the war last summer. As the Lebanese moved along the roads out of town, they were attacked and murdered. So no matter what Israel says or does, their actions get whitewashed in the press and their opponents die.

©Unknown
A cluster bomb dropped by Israel in Lebanon during the war in the summer of 2006.

Another point on the Israeli use of cluster bombs against civilians is that 1,200 of the bombs were dropped in the final three days of the war. These bombs contained over 1 million of the bomblets. When these bombs were dropped, Israel knew that a ceasefire was imminent. What was the strategic military goal, then, of dropping those bombs? There wasn't one. The bombs were dropped so that Lebanese would continue to die, after the ceasefire began. And die, they have.
Since the end of last summer's war, de-mining team have located 800 cluster-bomb strike areas, and they destroyed 95,000 bomblets, said Christopher Clark, program manager for the United Nations Mine Action Service in Lebanon....

The casualty rate has come down sharply, he said. Right after the war, there were more than 40 casualties a week; now it is about 3 or 4 a week.
But let's look at the numbers of casualties in the war:

Lebanon-Israel
43 Israeli civilians killed (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
51 foreign civilians killed (Various sources, links on Wikipedia)
Somewhere over 1,000 Lebanese civilians killed (Arutz Sheva)

Hizbollah says 250 of its fighters died.

So, during the war, 43 Israeli civilians were killed. After the ceasefire, that many Lebanese were being killed each week by the cluster bombs! How many Israeli's have been killed by Hezbollah since the cease-fire? And yet we have to read statements like the following:
David Siegel, an Israeli spokesman, said: "Israel suffered heavy casualties in these attacks and acted as any government would in exercise of its right to self-defense."
When has the illegal invasion of another country had anything to do with self-defence? Self-defence is used by the deviants in power to manipulate the civilian population at home into supporting wars outside of its borders.

What rights did the people of Lebanon have to "act as any government would in exercise of its right to self-defense"? The Lebanese suffered over twenty times the number of civilian casualties as the Israelis during the war. Did they have "20 times" the right? No, they had no right at all.

Remarks like the above made by David Siegel go unquestioned in The New York Times. The majority of Lebanese casualties were civilians; the majority of Israeli casualties were soldiers. Clearly, the target of Hezbollah was the opposing army; the target of the Israeli's was civilians. It doesn't take a degree in astrophysics to be able to see that. But, of course, the ubiquitous Israeli propaganda squads are always on hand to tell us how to think and to instruct us on pathological morals.

We discussed above how a powerful invader and occupier must fight against the very idea of guerrilla warfare as a legitimate form of self-defence because it is the strategy adopted by weaker opponents that allows them to wear down and defeat a more powerful opponent.

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz is one of the most virulent propagandists in this war of ideas. Dershowitz, the man who was quick out of the gate following the Mossad-led attack on the US on September 11, 2001 to support the use of torture against "terrorists" -- the Arab kind, of course, not the Israeli kind -- now offers his parallel "moral" argument in defence of the killing of Lebanese civilians. Here it is as summarized by one of his supporters:
Dershowitz questions two assumptions that underlie the dilemma Walzer presents. The first is whether civilians who abet terrorists can be absolved simply because they are 'exploited.' If they are held responsible, they may not be properly called civilians. In addition, he questions whether responsibility for the death of civilians lies primarily with the Israeli army and not with the embedded terrorists.
The very nature of guerrilla warfare necessitates a close cooperation between an occupied people and those fighting for its liberation. This cooperation permits the fighters to melt into the landscape, to become invisible. But please keep in mind the context for such a strategy: your country has been invaded and occupied by a foreign power armed with overwhelming firepower and technology. Guerrilla warfare is not the strategy of the invader. It can never work because there is not the close connection between the invader and the people. There can't be. Imagine yourself in their position. Imagine that your own country was under occupation or was being bombed by an opponent that had vastly superior arms in both number and technology.

By wiping such important context from the discussion, by refusing to address it, the propagandists are erecting a false picture, a straw man. But, then, that is their job.
Dershowitz begins by presenting the general consensus: the military must do everything in its power to limit civilian casualties and that in a case where there will inevitably be civilian casualties, those casualties must be "proportionate" to the casualties that would be prevented by military action.


Yet, after acknowledging this principle, he quickly finds a way of disposing of it.
Though Dershowitz acknowledges this principle, he questions whether these rules of war should apply to rogue military entities that have no moral rules of engagement.
Here we see the demonisation of the guerrilla soldier. They are "rogue military entities"! The entire strategy of guerrilla warfare is denounced as being without "moral rules of engagement", which is exactly what the British were complaining about when the American colonists used such means over 200 years ago! What, then, are moral rules of engagement? Two armies fighting on the battlefield and bombing each other's cities from the air, maybe? Can you see the deviant perspective here? The legitimising of the strategy of the powerful against the weak, of the invader against the occupied?

The deviant justification continues:
Hezbollah and other terrorist groups exploit civilians to their own advantage. In effect, Hezbollah benefits militarily from Israeli casualties and politically from Palestinian casualties.
Hezbollah, he claims, benefits from casualties on both sides! See how "inhuman" they are! The logic implies that if they benefit from the two, they want the two, they choose strategies to increase the two. In short, they are violent, war-mongering, and bloodthirsty.

The argument finishes with this:
Thus, Dershowitz argues, we must recognize that "misuse of civilians as shields and swords requires a reassessment of the laws of war."
Indeed, a "reassessment of the laws of war", one that would make guerrilla warfare illegal, preventing any occupied people from fighting against a powerful oppressor that has occupied their country! Just what the Ziocon Axis of Evil wants!

Obviously, the pathocrats have learned an important lesson from their defeat in Vietnam. They have understood that they need to fight the very idea of the right of a people to resist foreign occupation by demonising a strategy that has proved successful in such a struggle. Following the Vietnamese victory and the liberation of their country, the ideological campaign against "terrorism" began in earnest. In order to blur the issue, false flag operations were undertaken by various intelligence agencies, in particular Mossad, to create the modern "terrorist" threat and implant fear and hatred of Arabs into the populations of Western Europe and North America. The fight for "democracy" and the need to "defend ourselves from those who hate our freedoms" was given as the ideological justification for future wars of occupation. The demonisation of the strategy of guerilla warfare was undertaken to remove the most effective means for a people of resisting foreign invasion and occupation.

Very neat.

There is one final aspect to this ideological battle: it will now permit the Zionist Axis of Evil to rewrite the "moral rules of war" to permit them to openly, and "morally", target civilian populations. This fight against civilians has already begun on the ground. More than 650,000 Iraqi civilians have died since the beginning of the US invasion of Iraq. Over one million Iraqis, mostly children, died in the period between the first Gulf War and the invasion of March 2003. Every day, more Palestinian civilians are killed by the IDF in their ethnic cleansing of Palestine on their jack-booted march towards the creation of "Greater Israel".

But do not think that this war on civilians, this war on you and me taking place somewhere "over there", will stop there. It is the mask behind which is being prepared a war on all normal people by the deviant leaders of our world. We are the ones who are always sacrificed, be it on the battlefields, in their camps, due to their embargoes or disease or famine. In the Western European countries and in North America, the "war on terrorism" is used as the excuse to take away hard won rights and to lay the groundwork for "bring the war on terror home".

It is only going to get worse.

To answer the question asked in the title of this article, they think we are very stupid. All of the evidence we need to understand their plan is out in the open. It can be pieced together and brought to light. However, the pathocrats think we are too stupid to do it, and if we do, we are too stupid to do anything about it.

Let's prove them wrong.