Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Blame Hezbollah for Qana
John Podhortez writes today:
The Geneva Convention makes clear that the moral responsibility for the deaths at Qana belongs entirely to Hezbollah, and that Hezbollah has violated the most basic laws of war in its behavior.
Here's the relevant language. It comes from Article 37 of Protocol 1, ratified in 1979: "It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy." It lists three types of perfidy; the third is "the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status." And, by hiding in and launching missiles from Qana, Hezbollah was feigning civilian status and therefore resorting to perfidy.
And Rich Lowry adds:
All the world lamented the Israeli airstrike in Qana that killed dozens of innocent children. All the world, that is, except Hezbollah. The terror group angrily denounced the attack, vowing revenge, but surely it celebrated over the horrifying collateral damage: Every dead child was of priceless propaganda value.
It is for Qanas that Hezbollah conducts its operations among civilians in the first place. It hopes that Israeli attacks will cause civilian casualties so that the Jewish state’s offensive will be delegitimized. It thus depends on a perverse logic whereby a civilized military force attempting to avoid civilian casualties at the cost of the effectiveness of its own operations is considered barbaric and is pressured to end its campaign — and the world perversely reasons right along with it.
I fail to understand why there are people that fail to comprehend these basic facts.
Hezbollah targets civilians in Northern Israel, just as much as Al-Qaeda targeted civilians on September 11, 2001.
The Israeli military goes out of its way to warn civilians that they are coming after Hezbollah targets hidden in civilian buildings.
When trajedy such as what happened in Qana occurs, the focus is on the Israeli's. Take this bit from the Boston Globe:
Human rights groups and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan yesterday accused Israel of violating international human-rights laws with Sunday's bombing raid on the village of Qana, Lebanon, which killed 56 civilians, including dozens of women and children.
Human Rights Watch called the Qana airstrike and other bombings of civilian areas a ``war crime," and Annan said Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah had ``committed grave breaches of international humanitarian law."
Hezbollah alone is to blame. Secretary Annan should be thankful that finally Israel is executing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 which calls for:
the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias...
This is precisely what the Israeli's are doing. Hezbollah, along with Syria and Iran must be held responsible for every civilian death that occurs as Israel completes the mission that the United Nations failed to accomplish.
|
The Geneva Convention makes clear that the moral responsibility for the deaths at Qana belongs entirely to Hezbollah, and that Hezbollah has violated the most basic laws of war in its behavior.
Here's the relevant language. It comes from Article 37 of Protocol 1, ratified in 1979: "It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy." It lists three types of perfidy; the third is "the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status." And, by hiding in and launching missiles from Qana, Hezbollah was feigning civilian status and therefore resorting to perfidy.
And Rich Lowry adds:
All the world lamented the Israeli airstrike in Qana that killed dozens of innocent children. All the world, that is, except Hezbollah. The terror group angrily denounced the attack, vowing revenge, but surely it celebrated over the horrifying collateral damage: Every dead child was of priceless propaganda value.
It is for Qanas that Hezbollah conducts its operations among civilians in the first place. It hopes that Israeli attacks will cause civilian casualties so that the Jewish state’s offensive will be delegitimized. It thus depends on a perverse logic whereby a civilized military force attempting to avoid civilian casualties at the cost of the effectiveness of its own operations is considered barbaric and is pressured to end its campaign — and the world perversely reasons right along with it.
I fail to understand why there are people that fail to comprehend these basic facts.
Hezbollah targets civilians in Northern Israel, just as much as Al-Qaeda targeted civilians on September 11, 2001.
The Israeli military goes out of its way to warn civilians that they are coming after Hezbollah targets hidden in civilian buildings.
When trajedy such as what happened in Qana occurs, the focus is on the Israeli's. Take this bit from the Boston Globe:
Human rights groups and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan yesterday accused Israel of violating international human-rights laws with Sunday's bombing raid on the village of Qana, Lebanon, which killed 56 civilians, including dozens of women and children.
Human Rights Watch called the Qana airstrike and other bombings of civilian areas a ``war crime," and Annan said Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah had ``committed grave breaches of international humanitarian law."
Hezbollah alone is to blame. Secretary Annan should be thankful that finally Israel is executing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 which calls for:
the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias...
This is precisely what the Israeli's are doing. Hezbollah, along with Syria and Iran must be held responsible for every civilian death that occurs as Israel completes the mission that the United Nations failed to accomplish.
