State of injustice

Imagine this: there’s a war outside. You’re having dinner when your phone rings. You say, ‘Hello’? A man replies. He says, ‘Hi, my name is Danny. I’m an officer in Israeli intelligence. In one hour we will blow up your house.’ What do you do?

This is no joke. The call was received two weeks ago by Mohammed Deep, a resident of Gaza city, where Israel had upped the level of its offensive. And within an hour an Israeli gunship destroyed Deep’s four-storey home.
It’s not Lebanon, it’s Gaza – but for Danny and his ilk it’s all the same. It’s a place occupied by people of a lesser race, by people who are in the way, by people who don’t matter and whose lives are cheap. That’s if they are of any value at all, which, if you were to ask Danny, they wouldn’t be.
So, when someone like Danny comes with a loud hailer and tells you and your village to fuck off away with yourselves so they can go to war with your neighbours, what then? And if you don’t have a car, well, seriously, what then?
Well, then Danny’s pals in the so called Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) – now there’s a euphemism – will probably kill you. They certainly regard you as fair game.
Two weeks ago Israeli jets bombed vehicles full of people trying to escape from the village of Marwaheen, after Israeli loudspeaker warnings to leave their homes. Seven of the dead were from a single family. Since the world was outraged, the Israelis said they’d investigate. Yeah, sure.
Then, four UN observers were killed in another Israeli attack, this time when a bomb directly hit the UN post in Khiam. The Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern described it as "at least reckless and at worst deliberate" and the Israeli ambassador was summoned for an earful.
This outrage was described in the Irish Times by security analyst Dr Tom Clonan as "a very sinister development" which "raises serious questions about the integrity and intent of the Israeli military commanders in the area."
Clonan pointed out that the UN post’s signage would have been "clear to the naked eye for many miles around the Khiam compound." It was also, certainly, marked on IDF maps. He says that the IDF "are fully aware, to the nearest metre, of the exact location of each UN post in south Lebanon." In addition, during the previous 48 hours, the IDF had been warned about close calls and direct hits on the UN position.
In Clonan’s view, "to claim that this attack was accidental stretches credibility to breaking point." He suggests that the Israeli agenda is to drive the UN out of the area and therefore to blind the international community to Israel’s activities in south Lebanon.
Israel said it "regretted" the "tragic" deaths of the UN personnel and would thoroughly investigate the air strike that killed them. Yeah sure, again.
In their defence, the Israelis argue that Hizbullah use the population as human shields and also that, since they warn them, those who don’t go have only themselves to blame – if they get killed it’s their own fault.
It’s the old IRA logic – never mind that we launched the attack, we warned you: if you didn’t hear the warning, we can’t be blamed.
But suppose you’re not in a place to hear the warning? Suppose, when the first shells start to fall you go to a building where your people think you’ll be okay, there to hide out until the storm dies down? And every now and then one of you goes for whatever food and water can be found?
That’s what 63 people, including 34 children, did in an unfinished house in Qana. Then a bomb dropped by Danny’s pals in the IDF killed almost 30 of them. The planes continued to bomb the area even as the rescue operation continued. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said that Israel was "in no hurry to reach a ceasefire..."
Once again, Israel expressed "deep sorrow" over the deaths and, needless to say, they are to open yet another investigation into how this one came about.
These ‘investigations’ will yield nothing but whitewash of course. The Israelis blame Hizbullah, saying they had launched rockets from the area around Qana and that they had warned residents to leave their homes so they wouldn’t get caught in a war zone. They targeted the building in the belief that it contained a Hizbullah 'asset’.
But again, Tom Clonan says in the Irish Times that the rockets being fired by Hizbullah can’t be fired from within a house, mosque, hospital or UN facility as the IDF had suggested in justification for the killings. Due to the massive ‘back-blast’, they can only be fired from open ground. To fire them from within a building would result in the instant death of the missile crew and probable destruction of the missile before launch... they have to be fired from a truck in open ground.
He also says that the heat from a launch would be immediately registered by the IDF and that accurate retaliatory fire would be directed at the launch sites. Once again he finds that "the pattern and circumstances of the attack are sinister." He doubts the official story and argues that the attack was in fact "a punitive strike designed simply to kill members of the Shia community." Such deliberate targeting of innocent civilians would be a war crime.
Of course Hizbullah has also been guilty of war crimes. I don’t for a second condone showering northern Israel with rockets. But you can’t present yourself as part of the world’s democratic and civilised mainstream and behave like a fringe terror organisation, or worse.
So when are the supposed leaders of the democratic world going to stand up to Israel?.