As spiderleaf notes in another entry, Israel is indignant that Kofi Annan points out the apparent deliberateness of the attack on a UNIFIL compound, killing four and barely missing the rescuers. But only ten years ago, the IDF carried out a far more deadly onslaught on another UNIFIL camp, slaughtering 102 Lebanese civilians taking shelter there. This attack almost certainly was intentional.
The most damning evidence is the IDF drone (unmanned aircraft) hovering nearby during the attack, caught on tape by Norwegian UNIFIL personnel. I have seen this footage as part of the 2004 documentary Tin Soldiers. Robert Fisk described it thus in an Independent article:
Indeed, when the camera first records the Israeli shells tearing into the UN base at Qana, the other soldiers who appear in the film, most of them Norwegians in the UN’s Force Mobile Reserve opposite Qana, seem unaware of its implications. One of them makes a joke, another looks gawkily into the camera even as it tapes the clouds of smoke obscuring Qana. The camera pans through barbed wire as more brown puffs of smoke emerge from the white-painted buildings of the UN’s Fijian battalion headquarters.
The UN officers can be seen at an observation post staring at Qana as the Israeli shells rain onto their colleagues and the helpless refugees across the valley. A group of Norwegian soldiers talk excitedly and the camera, its owner obviously growing aware of the gravity of the situation, moves in close-up towards Qana with a zoom lens until the videotape is filled with drifting smoke. Shortly afterwards, the sound-track picks up the familiar buzzing sound of the Israeli “drone”, final and irrefutable evidence that later Israeli denials were false — until the Israelis changed their story last night.
Refugees and UN officers had all talked of hearing the Israeli artillery “spotter” aircraft before and during the Israeli attack on the UN base. But here at last, in living colour, was the proof: distinct pictures of the small Israeli aircraft over Qana, the plane that the Israelis — for two weeks — claimed was never there.
One of the UN soldiers who saw the video being made says that neither he nor his colleagues understood in the first few seconds what was happening at Qana. “We know the Israelis are perfect in their accuracy. The previous day, when Katyushas had been fired a couple of miles away, we saw the Israeli return fire come back on the launch site with complete accuracy. We felt so safe about the Israeli artillery that we never went indoors when shells flew over.
“They knew we were here and so they never hit us. So we didn’t even wear flak jackets when there were shell warnings. The Israelis knew what they were doing. And then we saw Qana and by the end, none of us believed it was an accident. Yes, the Israelis knew what they were doing. What do you think the drone was for?”
What indeed? How could the IDF not know the position of the camp and the fact that it was filled with refugees?
Like surviving US navymen of the USS Liberty, these UNIFIL veterans have been struggling to make their story heard despite a wall of denial, disbelief, and hushing-down. They are haunted by images like these of the horrific aftermath, when they scrambled to separate the living from the dead amidst limbs and blood. Most of the victims were women and children.
Remember this, if you will, as the cover-up sets in, led by Ambassador John Bolton.
There is “another Israel” so far displaced from the official version that sheer incredulity obscures its existence. This terrorist Israel is not the only one there is, but it’s as real as the civilized, democratic Israel we often hear about. If you are a US citizen, it is to a large extent financed by your taxes. Can you live with that?
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Yesterday’s post with mention of Qana Massacre ::
Just a brief overview of the internal politics of Israeli democracy, where a peace settlement is the joker in a stacked deck of cards, the right-wing extremists holding all aces.
(Al Ahram) Nov. 2002 — Sharon offered his rival the Foreign Ministry, while offering the position of minister of defence to former army chief-of-staff Shaul Mofaz, who retired last July and has now completed the three-month interim required by law before a retired official can be readmitted into political life.
Mofaz immediately accepted the offer, while Netanyahu asked for an opportunity to think it over. Netanyahu accepted the post, but only on condition that Sharon agree to early elections, force President Arafat out of Palestinian land and reject the American roadmap.
Lieberman is unlikely to have entered Sharon’s coalition without first sounding out the advice of Netanyahu. It was, after all, the former prime minister who first suggested to Lieberman that he leave Israel B’Aliya to form his own, Yisrael Beitenu Party. Which suggests that Netanyahu’s plan is to contribute to the failure of Sharon’s policy from within and springboard to the leadership of Likud.
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The Labour Party, meanwhile, is in the middle of its own crisis, a result of the on- going erosion of its earlier mid-left orientation. The crisis first came to a head following the assassination of Rabin by a Jewish extremist on 5 November 1995. Since then the Labour Party has lacked any genuine political leadership, operating without any clear vision as to how to secure peace.
Following Rabin’s assassination Shimon Peres temporarily assumed leadership of the party, making a series of disastrous mistakes, including the Qana massacre. These resulted in the loss of Israeli Arab support and in the May 1996 elections he lost to Netanyahu.
Barak, the next Labour prime minister, was elected on a Rabinist platform. Yet he moved the party ever closer to Likud and the Zionist right, a tendency embodied in the Camp David II negotiations, which amounted, according to some American participants, to “a trap set up for Arafat”. It was only logical that Barak should then lose the elections to General Sharon: when candidates try to outdo one another in the extremism of their views the most extreme will win.
Lebanese images of Qana massacre – 18 April 1996
Did Israel Wittingly Shell A U.N. Base In Qana? A Disturbing Investigation Is Hotly Disputed
By James Walsh – Time International – 20 May 1996
● Israeli SpecOps plant booby-trap bombs inside the U.N. zone – led to Qana bloodbath
By Robert Fisk – The Independent – 1 June 1996
● U.N. Report on Qana Shelling – by Dutch Major General van Kappen
Van Kappen’s report dismisses Israel’s outrageous claim about not being aware of civilians, reminding that a UN compound was not a legitimate target, whether or not civilians were in it. Moreover, the report stated clearly that “The distribution of point impact detonations and air bursts makes it improbable that impact fuses and proximity fuses were employed in random order, as stated by the Israeli forces” and that “Contrary to repeated denials, two Israeli helicopters and a remotely piloted vehicle were present in the Qana area at the time of the shelling.”
● Palestine Calender – April
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
and who will be in the dock for this slam dunk trial that even I could prosecute successfully.
Unfortunately, the answers are ‘never’ and ‘noone’. Israel rejects the International Criminal Court, and the US president is authorized to invade the Netherlands to free any detained Israelis. See my newest diary entry.
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U.N. observation post that was demolished after it was hit by Israeli air strikes, killing four U.N. observers, in the town of Khiam, on the Lebanese Israeli border. AP Photo/UNIFIL
≈ Cross-posted from my diary — Notorius Torture Prison of Khiam Destroyed ¶ UN Bunker on Hilltop near Khiam ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
courtesy of American taxpayers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5228224.stm