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?
