And the Israelis continue to cry that they are the victims

Israeli Assault on Lebanon: Map of Locations Bombed (July 12 - August 6, 2006)
Map of locations in Lebanon bombed, between July 12 and August 6, 2006.

Dancing to the tune of the screams of Lebanese children

What cute, sweet candid snapshots these are!

Reuters caught these Orthodox Jewish men partying with soldiers firing artillery into civilian areas of Lebanon.

Anytime people who are obviously Arab or South Asian in origin do anything like this, pictures of it get run, flashed, scrolled, and re-run during the exits to commercial breaks on every single news station for an entire day. Did you see these pictures? Israel and the United States continue to claim they hold a higher moral position because they aren't like the... what is that stupid O'Reilly term?... oh yes, "islamofascists". Neither country has any moral high ground whatsoever from which to crow, moralize, and lecture the rest of the world. Their semblance of it is an image created through deliberate, careful manufacturing.


Photo caption: Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men dance with Israeli soldiers in front of a mobile artillery unit positioned in the northern village of Fassuta, near the Lebanese border, July 24, 2006. REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen.













Yea! More dead Arabs! Mazel tov!

Israel continues to express audacity that anyone would question its continued killing of Lebanese civilians

Lebanon/Israel: IDF Fails to Explain Qana Bombing
Independent International Inquiry Required

(Beirut, August 3, 2006) – The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) inquiry into
the July 30 killing of at least 28 civilians in Qana is incomplete and
legally
misguided, and contradicts eyewitness testimony, Human Rights Watch
said today. The findings underline the need for an independent
international inquiry into what took place.

"The Israeli military's explanation of what happened raises more
questions than it answers," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of
Human Rights Watch. "Crucial information is missing to determine what
led the IDF to attack these civilians. Only an independent
international
investigation can get at that."  

The IDF announced today that it targeted the building "in accordance
with
the military's guidelines regarding the use of fire against suspicious
structures." Since July 12, Hezbollah fighters had launched more than
150
rockets from Qana and the surrounding area, the IDF said. The military
said it attacked based on information that "the building was not
inhabited
by civilians and was being used as a hiding place for terrorists."  

But the IDF failed to provide important details about the attack, Human
Rights Watch said. First, it did not say whether it believed that
Hezbollah
fighters were in or around the building at the time of or directly
prior to
the attack, which would potentially make the building a legitimate
target.
Its failure even to make this claim suggests that fighters were not
present.  

That conclusion was supported by two eyewitnesses interviewed by
Human Rights Watch, who said that Hezbollah was not in the area when
the attack took place. Human Rights Watch researchers who visited Qana
the day after the attack found no destroyed military equipment in or
near
the home. None of the international journalists, rescue workers and
international observers who visited the scene has yet reported seeing
evidence of Hezbollah military presence in the area, and rescue workers
have not yet recovered any bodies identifiable as Hezbollah fighters.  

Second, the IDF did not clarify why it believed that Hezbollah fighters
were in the building, rather than civilians. According to Muhammad
Mahmud Shalhub, who was in the basement during the attack, 63
members of the extended Shalhub and Hashim families sought shelter in
the building when the first Israeli bombs hit Qana in the early evening
of
July 29. It remains unclear why the IDF, with superior aerial
surveillance,
did not know the families were there.  

"Why did the Israeli military consider the building ‘suspicious'?" Roth
asked. "What information did it have to reach that conclusion?"  

The IDF also repeated previous statements that it had warned Qana
residents to evacuate, thereby suggesting that it was the victims'
fault
because they chose to remain. But in Qana and other villages in
southern
Lebanon, thousands of residents have been unable to leave the area
because they are sick, wounded, do not have the means to leave or they
fear Israeli attacks on vehicles.  

"The Israeli military cannot warn people to leave and then attack at
will,"
Roth said. "The warnings are not an excuse to shoot blindly at anyone
who
remains."  

In a report issued today, "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate
Attacks
Against Civilians in Lebanon," Human Rights Watch documented a
systematic failure by the IDF to distinguish between combatants and
civilians. In some cases, the timing and intensity of the attack, the
absence
of a military target, as well as subsequent strikes on rescuers,
suggest that
Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians.  

Of all the cases of civilian casualties included in the report, Human
Rights
Watch found, none involved Hezbollah deliberately using civilians as
shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack. Hezbollah has
occasionally stored weapons in or near civilian homes and placed rocket
launchers within populated areas or near United Nations observers. Such
acts are serious violations of the laws of war because they violate the
duty
to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties. However,
those
violations did not account for the many deaths recorded in the Human
Rights Watch report. Nor do those cases justify the IDF's extensive use
of
indiscriminate force, which has cost so many civilian lives.

For more of Human Rights Watch's work on the Israel-Lebanon conflict,
please visit: http://hrw.org/campaigns/israel_lebanon/