Sierra Song wrote:
HRW: Hizbullah committing war crimes
Hizbullah must immediately stop firing rockets into civilian areas in Israel, Human Rights Watch said Saturday.
"Lobbing rockets blindly into civilian areas is without doubt a war crime," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Nothing can justify this assault on the most fundamental standards for sparing civilians the hazards of war."
"Most of the attacks appear to have been directed at civilian areas and have hit pedestrians, hospitals, schools, homes and businesses," the humanitarian organization's website stated.
Since July 12, when Hizbullah captured two IDF soldiers and killed eight, Human Rights Watch researchers have been documenting the war's impact on civilians in Israel and Lebanon, interviewing the witnesses and survivors of attacks, as well as doctors, emergency workers, police, military and government officials.
"Hizbullah must stop using the excuse of Israeli misconduct to justify its own," said Roth.
The organization's Web site recognized that northern Israel had come to a virtual standstill because of Hizbullah's rockets, which were "exacting an enormous human and economic toll."
"Under international humanitarian law - also known as the laws of war - parties to an armed conflict must not make the civilian population the object of attack, or fire indiscriminately into civilian areas. Nor can they launch attacks that they know will cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects that exceeds the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. Such attacks constitute war crimes," the site explained.
"Several medical and educational institutes have sustained damage from Katyusha attacks." Human Rights Watch researchers visited hospitals in Nahariya and Safed after they were hit.
At Nahariya Hospital, rockets had been landing near the hospital since July 12, a hospital spokesperson said. "There are no military bases around here; nothing military at all," he said. "I believe they know perfectly well they are firing at a hospital."
"In the absence of troops or military assets inside, hospitals must never be attacked," Human Rights Watch said. "Deliberately attacking them is a war crime."
end of quote-
Note that Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights watch! was quoted.
Then Ms. Revel also quoted Kenneth Rothm executive director of Human Rights watch
The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military's disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians. Our research shows that Israel's claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel's indiscriminate warfare.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch
Checkmate-----
Quote:[...]
Voices in the region - including local Christians and the Middle East Council of Churches - are increasingly desperate for even short-term goals; a brief ceasefire; a lifting of the naval blockade to allow in humanitarian supplies; anything that might ease the pressure on overwhelmed civilian hospitals. Every hour that passes, they say, is making the post-conflict prospect more and more unbearable - to the point where even the briefest and most nominal interruption of the carnage becomes hugely significant.
Both sides in the Lebanese conflict are playing for high stakes: one for the decisive victory over what is seen as an engine of terror; the other for a decisive humiliation for Israel, with regional repercussions in the balance of power and a strengthening of certain elements in the Islamic world.
On both sides, the comprehensive ravaging of an infrastructure is seen as a price worth paying. Hizbollah deliberately targets Israeli civilians and apparently regards Lebanese civilians' lives as counters to be deployed in their strategy. Israel risks treating the Lebanese as if they were, de facto, Hizbollah collaborators.
Both act like this because the prize is so temptingly comprehensive. Yet the only clearly visible effects are the returning of Lebanon to a chaos from which it had begun to escape and the continuing exposure of Israeli civilians to indiscriminate attack. Those rightly anxious about Israel's security have to ask about the cost of so dangerously unstable a neighbour. The big prize of some really decisive solution is simply being made less attainable by the tactics used. It is a lesson that could be applied, in a different degree, to the whole rhetoric of the war on terror.
[...]
A law-governed situation is one in which interests and conflicts are argued, negotiated and balanced out, with no permanent, unassailable winners and losers. At the moment, what we see is dangerously close to lawlessness, a disregard for present chaos and pain in the name of a future that will justify everything. The Abrahamic faiths are all committed to law because none of them accepts that consequences alone justify actions. So we need to hear more from leaders of all these faiths in support of law as well as humanitarian action - in support of short-term improvements, pragmatic means of resolving injustices, civil procedures for discovering common goals, however limited, and acceptance of interests that are more than 'reasons of state'. We need to hear more from jurists of all backgrounds in the mapping out of what a ceasefire and an international presence will be seeking to make possible. And we could do worse than spend a moment listening to the most immediate pleas from those on the ground.[...]
Comment in today's Observer by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury:
The voices of the innocent must be heard above the din of war
BernardR wrote:Note that Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights watch! was quoted.
Then Ms. Revel also quoted Kenneth Rothm executive director of Human Rights watch
The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military's disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians. Our research shows that Israel's claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel's indiscriminate warfare.
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch
Checkmate-----
Checkmate? As in checkmate in reaching a lower level of depravity?
I am afraid that you did not read the posts, Infrablue.
The esteemed Kenneth Roth- executive director of Human Rights watch excoriated the Hezbollah on one hand and the Israelis on the other.
YOur comment on Depravity may be correct from some perspectives, but I am very much afraid that the Israelis wore out the word DEPRAVITY during the years that bombers blew themselves up on buses, in night clubs and in markets in Jewish Cities!!!
You do remember those incidents, do you not?
This week, world terrorism expert Robert Pape will share with the FBI the findings of his remarkable study of 462 suicide bombings. He concludes that such acts have little to do with religious extremism and that the West must engage politically to halt.
From today's The Observer:
What we still don't understand about Hizbollah
Quote:[...]
What these suicide attackers - and their heirs today - shared was not a religious or political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation. Nearly two decades of Israeli military presence did not root out Hizbollah. The only thing that has proven to end suicide attacks, in Lebanon and elsewhere, is withdrawal by the occupying force.
[...]
There is not the close connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism that many people think. Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist campaigns have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.
Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organisations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective. Most often, it is a response to foreign occupation.
[...]
BernardR wrote:I am afraid that you did not read the posts, Infrablue.
The esteemed Kenneth Roth- executive director of Human Rights watch excoriated the Hezbollah on one hand and the Israelis on the other.
YOur comment on Depravity may be correct from some perspectives, but I am very much afraid that the Israelis wore out the word DEPRAVITY during the years that bombers blew themselves up on buses, in night clubs and in markets in Jewish Cities!!!
You do remember those incidents, do you not?
So then, maybe you meant to say "check," as in close to, but not quite reaching a lower level of depravity?
Or perhaps you meant to say "stalemate," as in reaching an equal level of depravity, stale, festered, and unresolved.
Or perhaps your metaphor was simply obtuse and inept.
The definition of checkmate is--
Any complete or total defeat
And that is what happened to Mr. Roth when he equated the Hezbollah fanatic murderers with the Israelis.
Walter Hinteler wrote:This week, world terrorism expert Robert Pape will share with the FBI the findings of his remarkable study of 462 suicide bombings. He concludes that such acts have little to do with religious extremism....
Isn't that a bit like saying that wild bears do not go to the bathroom in the woods?
I mean, would you not expect to read about somebody OTHER than slammites doing a suicide bombing once in a while if that were the case???
gungasnake wrote:Walter Hinteler wrote:This week, world terrorism expert Robert Pape will share with the FBI the findings of his remarkable study of 462 suicide bombings. He concludes that such acts have little to do with religious extremism....
Isn't that a bit like saying that wild bears do not go to the bathroom in the woods?
I mean, would you not expect to read about somebody OTHER than slammites doing a suicide bombing once in a while if that were the case???
The Vietcong regularly perpetrated suicide bombings against US forces. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have also perpetrated suicide bombings in Sri Lanka. They're secular. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey have also perpetrated suicide bombings. They're Marxists.
InfraBlue wrote:gungasnake wrote:Walter Hinteler wrote:This week, world terrorism expert Robert Pape will share with the FBI the findings of his remarkable study of 462 suicide bombings. He concludes that such acts have little to do with religious extremism....
Isn't that a bit like saying that wild bears do not go to the bathroom in the woods?
I mean, would you not expect to read about somebody OTHER than slammites doing a suicide bombing once in a while if that were the case???
The Vietcong regularly perpetrated suicide bombings against US forces. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam have also perpetrated suicide bombings in Sri Lanka. They're secular. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey have also perpetrated suicide bombings. They're Marxists.
You know what will happen here already?
Quote:This week, world terrorism expert Robert Pape will share with the FBI the findings of his remarkable study of 462 suicide bombings ....
Reuters...or someone 'photoshops' smoke over this city, so obvious. Is Dan Rather working for them now?
Bogus reporting
Brand X wrote:Reuters...or someone 'photoshops' smoke over this city, so obvious. Is Dan Rather working for them now?
They must have done a really good job: bribed several tv teams as well to photoshop various tv videos and reportages.
Walter Hinteler wrote:Brand X wrote:Reuters...or someone 'photoshops' smoke over this city, so obvious. Is Dan Rather working for them now?
They must have done a really good job: bribed several tv teams as well to photoshop various tv videos and reportages.
Erm...I'm not saynig no smoke was present, I'm pointing to the obviously fabricated pattern in the smoke.
Looked indeed a bit different on tv .... because of the angle .... but denser, darker.
Reuters admits altering Beirut photo
Reuters withdraws photograph of Beirut after Air Force attack after US blogs, photographers point out 'blatant evidence of manipulation'
Yaakov Lappin
A Reuters photograph of smoke rising from buildings in Beirut has been withdrawn after coming under attack by American web logs. The blogs accused Reuters of distorting the photograph to include more smoke and damage.
MORE HERE
A Lebanese man runs away from the burning
ruins of a building destroyed during an overnight
Israeli air raid on Beirut's suburbs August 5,2006.
Many buildings were flattened during the attack.
REUTERS
Foxfyre wrote:Reuters admits altering Beirut photo
Reuters withdraws photograph of Beirut after Air Force attack after US blogs, photographers point out 'blatant evidence of manipulation'
Yaakov Lappin
A Reuters photograph of smoke rising from buildings in Beirut has been withdrawn after coming under attack by American web logs. The blogs accused Reuters of distorting the photograph to include more smoke and damage.
MORE HERE
Fake ..................... but accurate.
Where have we seen this before?????????
I keep hearing this morning that Lebanon, who is brokering negotiations for Hezbollah--just in case you think the Lebanese government is innocent in all this--reports that they reject the US/French cease fire proposal. They report that Hezbollah demands that its terms for cease fire be met before it will cease fire including demands that Israel ceases fire first and pulls out of all Lebanese territory and releases all Hezbollah prisoners. So in fact, Hezbollah says unless it gets what it wanted all along it won't play. (Somewhere in the deep recesses of my aging memory, I seem to recall that the aggressor/loser generally doesn't get to dictate the terms, but what do I know?)
That's fine with Israel, however, who wanted two more weeks to take out Hezbollah's capability to make war and create a buffer zone to make it more difficult for them to atttack Israel. The media is definitely downplaying the deaths and damage done on the Israel side while continuing to try make the damage Israel is doing look barbaric and ruthless. Hezbollah has stepped up the rocket attacks to up to 200 a day which suggests Israel hasn't managed to cut all the supply lines from Iran and Syria yet.
