Israel-Lebanon violence: Qana Massacre relived
Just over ten years ago, on 8th April, 1996, Israeli forces shelled a UN base which was sheltering hundreds of Lebanese civilians. The base was UNIFIL’s Fijian Battalion headquarters in Qana, southern Lebanon.
105 Lebanese civilians were killed, and over 100 injured.
Robert Fisk witnessed and documented the aftermath of that shelling. Lara Marlowe, who was also in Lebanon at the time and who also witnessed the aftermath of the massacre, wrote in Thursday’s Irish Times [subs. req’d.], recalling:
I cas still see the blood flowing down the slope at the entry to Fiji Batt headquarters, the dazed blue helmets piling up charred bodies, wearing rubber gloves to collect limbs and pieces of flesh in rubbish bags. In the blown-out officer’s mess, a soldier held aloft a headless baby.
This morning, Qana was revisited with another massacre, when more than fifty civilians were killed in the town, south-east of Tyre. According to the BBC, Families had been sheltering in the basement of a house in Qana, which was crushed after a direct hit.
Listening to NewsTalk FM’s The Wide Angle this morning, I heard one of the guests - a former Irish Battalion member stationed in southern Lebanon - describing the particular characteristics of Katyusha rockets. According to him:
(a) Due to the recoil and back-blast of the rockets, it is not possible to place them in or on a house for use - they can only be used in open ground; and
(b) Due to the particular heat-signature given when such rockets are fired, it is possible to identify exactly where they are located, both from radar in the air and radar at artillery positions in northern Israel.
[I’ll amend this to include the exact quote, as soon as the podcast of the programme becomes available. Podcast of The Wide Angle available by copying www.newstalk106.ie/podcasts/wangle.xml into your podcasting software.]
Ordinarily, I don’t give a toss about knowing the minutiae of how weapons work (I think it’s vile). There is, however, plenty of flawed - and in some instances nonsensical, from the logic point-of-view - comment on disproportionality (including means justifying the ends-type remarks, among others, of course). Not only is the collective punishment and the targetting of civilians entirely illegal, but the soldier’s comments make it especially clear, from a military point of view, that Israel is entirely capable - and aware of that fact - of avoiding civilians.
I think Cian’s comments a week or two ago sum it up well:
I think the following from the Beirut Daily Star should be borne in mind by everyone who is watching in horror the unfolding attacks on the civilians in Lebanon.
Lebanese civilians, who have absolutely no control over the events that are unfolding, and who once again find themselves in the eye of the storm, are now bracing for the very worst. Their darkest fear is that as they helplessly repeat the act of watching history unfold on their land, this time the promise of Lebanon’s resurrection will itself become history.
The soldiers have been taken by Hamas and Hizbollah. Now it is the citizens of both countries that are paying the price. Collective punishment is illegal under Geneva Conventions. In refusing to accept the premise that by simply being lebanese or palestinian one is a terrorist, we must accept that the path to peace lies nowhere near the escalation of violence.
“Lebanese civilians, who have absolutely no control over the events that are unfolding”
How can you serious use this line with a straight face? Lebanon has an army which is ten times larger than the Hezbollah. Lebanon and its citizens had six years since the Israeli withdrawal to disarm the Hezbollah according to United Nations resolution 1559. They chose not to disarm those brutal militias and are now paying the price when these militias force their country into a war of aggression.
As long as Hezbollah uses civilian shields while shooting rockets at Israeli villages, this will happen again. Isn’t it about time the people of Lebanon rid themselves from these monsters ? You can blame and criticize Israel all you want, but as long as their cities get bombed and soldiers kidnapped they will not stop fighting.
See my blog at http://spheradic.blogspot.com/2006/07/who-bears-responsibility-to-qana.html
Comment by Koby — 30 July, 2006 @ 5:50 pm
Israeli Rhetoric of Genocide: A Case of Chronic Hornkrantz Syndrome
The second Israeli massacre of Lebanese civilians in Qana in 10 years claimed at least 61 people, more than 37 of them children.
As the Israeli occupation forces continue their wholesale massacre of the civilians in Lebanon, various government officials are desperately trying to pin the blame on the Lebanese victims. [As of 29th July 2006 at least 600 Lebanese civilians, more than 45% of them children, have been killed and nearly 2,000 wounded by the Israeli Occupation Forces, according to the Lebanese government. Among them are 31 fighters.]
Israeli UN envoy Dan Gillerman said his country mourned with Lebanon on this “horrible, sad and bloody Sunday.'’ Israel never targeted civilians, he said, and the deaths in Qana were the result of Hezbollah’s decision to hide among them.
“They are the victims of Hezbollah,'’ Gillerman told the Security Council. “If there were no Hezbollah, this would not have happened.'’
U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton said Hezbollah’s actions were the “fundamental cause'’ of the conflict, and accused the group of hiding behind civilians.
In the first Qana massacre, April 18, 1996, the Israeli military artillery shelled a United Nations compound near Qana that was overflowing with 800 Lebanese civilians “who had fled from their villages on IDF orders.” The barrage killed 102 refugees and wounded hundreds of others.
The then Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres declared that “the sole guilty party, still on the ground, is Hezbollah. . . . We are dealing here with a horrible, cynical and irresponsible organization. Hezbollah’s grand strategy all along has been to hide behind the backs of civilians.”
Last week, an Israeli government spokesman said Israeli Foreign Minister responded to charges of ‘disproportionate use of force’ and ‘collective punishment’ of the civilian populations both in Gaza and Lebanon: “Terrorists use the population and live among them,” she said. “[M]any civilians in southern Lebanon have Katyusha and other rockets under their beds.”
“When you go to sleep with a missile,” she added, “you might find yourself waking up to another kind of missile.”
In an interview on the US-based official Israeli ‘news’ agency, CNN, another Israeli official retorted: “Yes, civilians are being killed […] not by Israeli design, but because Hezbollah have been allowed to live among them […] they live and store their weapons, explosives and rockets in Lebanese villages and hide behind the Lebanese civilians.”
How curious this chronic Hornkrantz Syndrome!
“On the dawn of 12 April 1893, the bokmakieries were singing as 200 German soldiers, newly arrived from Europe, took up their position around the small settlement of Hornkrantz. The village was the home of an African tribe, the Witbooi, and, although barely 100 kilometers from Windhoek, the fledgling capital of German South West Africa, Hornkrantz’s occupants had successfully resisted the encroaching Imperial power.”
“The German soldiers, part of one of the largest and most powerful land armies in the world, started firing from three directions, and within thirty minutes 16,000 rounds had been expended by 200 rifles. By the time this torrent of bullets had ceased it had wrought a dreadful carnage. Blood stained bodies and the remains of slaughtered animals were strewn around the settlement.”
“The German captain’s official report immediately following the massacre suggested that Witbooi were neutralised as a fighting force. One cable to Berlin more than a month after the raid suggested that fifty Witbooi soldiers had been killed.”
Gradually, however, it emerged that of the ninety people massacred by the brave soldiers only a few had been ‘able-bodied’ men. Seventy-eight of the victims were in fact women and children – not at all surprising when you attack a village, raid a residential area at the crack of dawn, or bombard a building filled with civilian refugees.
“German officialdom was forced to make what it termed ‘an undesirable revision’, it struck upon a brilliantly reply to the accusations. There had been heavy casualties among non-combatants conceded the Director of the German Colonial Department, but this was owing to the cowardice of the Witbooi men who took cover behind their womenfolk when fired upon.”
Another, somewhat less ‘brilliant’ variation of the ‘Hornkrantz Syndrome’ is the response you would get from the white folks in New Zealand. Ask any of them why they had to decimate the Maori population (the brave Brits massacred 5 out of every 6 Maoris – more than 208,000 of the 250,000 population round about the same time – by the 1890s) to steal their land (instead of just obtaining rest of the Maori land by deception, since the deception method had previously worked ‘well’), and the white ‘New Zealander’ sporting a sadistic smirk on their face would tell you they didn’t kill any Maoris, “didn’t have to… the cannibals just kept on bumping each other off at tea time!”
Source of quotes on Hornkrantz: Cocker, M., Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe’s Conquest of Indigenous Peoples, London, 1998.
Comment by termor — 31 July, 2006 @ 7:31 am
Hezbollah won an overwhelming share of the seats in the elections in South Lebanon, so it’s disingenuous to argue that the civilians there had no influence over what is happening. I haven’t seen a single reasoned idea from those who are anti-Israeli as to exactly what Israel were supposed to do with a terrorist organisation with 12,000 missiles aimed at them.
Comment by potato — 1 August, 2006 @ 12:40 am
“How can you serious use this line with a straight face?”
@ Koby - In fact, that line was written by the Daily Star newspaper, of Beirut; but I get your point.
Potato wrote - “I haven’t seen a single reasoned idea from those who are anti-Israeli as to exactly what Israel were supposed to do with a terrorist organisation with 12,000 missiles aimed at them.”
To both comments, I would say (or, indeed, reiterate) that if Israel is going after Hizbollah - a perfectly resonable thing to do - I don’t see how that aim is achieved by killing civilians. It is not, and - moreover - it is illegal to so target civilians.
I should also say that the use of the phrase “anti-Israeli” is somewhat problematic: If you are using it to describe those who object to the - illegal - killing of civilians, then it is a gross misuse of the English language. If you include me among those who you regard as “anti-Israeli” you had better withdraw the remark; if you do not, you should say so clearly.
@ termor - I don’t really get the point you’re trying to make (apologies! - in my defence, it is late, and that’s a long-ish post) - But thanks for the comment! I’ll have to re-read as soon as I get a free moment.
Comment by click here — 1 August, 2006 @ 1:42 am
The point being that…
The slaughter is an unfinished chapter in the history of European Imperium genocide perpetrated against the indigenous peoples throughout the world - currently Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine being the obvious examples.
Comment by termor — 2 August, 2006 @ 2:44 am
more exactly…
The Israeli rhetoric of genocide used to justify their on-going massacres of peoples of Palestine, Lebanon… is identical to the rhetoric used by the European Imperium to justify, even glorify, their genocide of the indigenous peoples throughout the world.
Comment by termor — 2 August, 2006 @ 5:16 am
How can you mention the 1996 Qana incident without saying that Hezbollah were using the UN base as a human shield?
They fired from beside it 15 minutes before it was hit.
Comment by Ciaran — 2 August, 2006 @ 8:55 am
@ termor - Thanks for the clarification. I’m not sure I’d agree with you entirely, though. (Must gather my thoughts on that when I’ve more time and add it in.)
@ Ciaran - Well, I have to say that I don’t think it’s all that relevant, actually: It goes back to my point that if Israel is (or was) going after Hizbollah, then it should have done that. Instead, it knowingly targeted a UN compound - which was (as with all UN posts) clearly marked and in this case sheltering civilians. The Israeli military are given the exact co-ordinates to all UN locations in southern Lebanon.
There is no justification or excuse for what took place at the hands of the Israeli forces in Qana in 1996.
Comment by click here — 2 August, 2006 @ 3:11 pm