This week, the US based Human Rights Watch issued a 50 page report, I which they claim that Israel failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in Lebanon, and that some of the attacks constituted war crimes. They also claim that “
Israel is firing cluster munitions at Lebanese residential neighborhoods in possible violation of international law,” and that there are “
strong indications that Israel knowingly hit civilian targets.”
Human Rights Watch:
Israeli forces have systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Human Rights Watch said in report released today.
The pattern of attacks in more than 20 cases investigated by Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon indicates that the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accidents and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hezbollah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes.
The 50-page report, “Fatal Strikes: Israel’s Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon,” analyzes almost two dozen cases of Israeli air and artillery attacks on civilian homes and vehicles. Of the 153 dead civilians named in the report, 63 are children. More than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli fire since fighting began on July 12, most of them civilians.
“The pattern of attacks shows the Israeli military’s disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Our research shows that Israel’s claim that Hezbollah fighters are hiding among civilians does not explain, let alone justify, Israel’s indiscriminate warfare.”
Today, The Observer reports that:
At least two Israeli fighter pilots have deliberately missed civilian targets in Lebanon as disquiet grows in the military about flawed intelligence.”
The pilots had reason to believe that what were identified as Hizballah positions, were in fact civilian targets. As Hizballah’s capacity has not yet been adequately reduced (by noon CET, at least 10 Israelis had been killed by Hizballah rockets on Sunday), experts are also questioning the IDF information: “If we don't know the location of their weapons, why should we know which house is a Hizbollah house?'”
The Observer now reports that “one senior commander who has been involved in the air attacks in Lebanon has already raised concerns that some of the air force's actions might be considered 'war crimes'.”
According to [Yonatan] Shapiro, some pilots justified aborting missions out of 'common sense' and in the context of the Israeli Defence Force's moral code of conduct, which says every effort should be made to avoiding harming civilians.
Shapiro said: 'Some pilots told me they have shot at the side of targets because they're afraid people will be there, and they don't trust any more those who give them the coordinates and targets.'
He added: 'One pilot told me he was asked to hit a house on a hill, which was supposed to be a place from where Hizbollah was launching Katyusha missiles. But he was afraid civilians were in the house, so he shot next to the house ...
'Pilots are always being told they will be judged on results, but if the results are hundreds of dead civilians while Hizbollah is still able to fire all these rockets, then something is very wrong.'
So far none of the pilots has publicly refused to fly missions but some are wobbling, according to Shapiro. He said: 'Their target could be a house firing a cannon at Israel and it could be a house full of children, so it's a real dilemma; it's not black and white. But ... I'm calling on them to refuse, in order save our country from self-destruction.'
It seems that Israel has been following the strategy and the doctrine which were explained by Justice Minister Haim Ramon this week.
"We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world... to continue the operation," Justice Minister Haim Ramon said
…
Speaking on Israeli army radio, Mr Ramon - a close confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert - said "everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror".
He said that in order to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by the Israeli air force before ground troops moved in.
He added that Israel had given the civilians of southern Lebanon ample time to quit the area and therefore anyone still remaining there could be considered a Hezbollah supporter.
"All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah," Mr Ramon said.
Even though some additional warnings have been issued before some of the hundreds of air strikes that have occurred on a daily basis since then, the Observer reports that:
Meron Rappoport, a former editor at the Israeli daily Haaretz and military analyst, criticised the air force's methods for selecting targets: 'The impression is that information is sometimes lacking. One squadron leader admitted the evidence used to determine attacks on cars is sometimes circumstantial - meaning that if people are in an area after Israeli forces warned them to leave, the assumption is that those left behind must be linked to Hizbollah ... This is problematic, as aid agencies have said many people did not leave ... because they could not, or it was unsafe to travel on the roads thanks to Israel's aerial bombardment.'
A fundamental flaw in Israeli and US strategy and in their rationale for air war against "terror" is summed up by Tom Engelhardt in the opinion section of the L.A. Times today, as he recaps the history of “Barbarians With Wings” :
But what about us? We, like most people, don't consider ourselves barbarians. Nevertheless, we have only managed to remain so sanguine by removing the most essential aspect of the American way of war from the category of the barbaric. I'm talking about air power and about the belief — so long-lasting, so deep-seated — that bombing others, including civilian populations, is a "strategic" (rather than a barbaric) thing to do; that air power can, in relatively swift measure, break the "will" of the enemy and thereby end war faster.
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Now, with the fervent backing of the Bush administration, another country is being "remade" from the air — Lebanon. With the help of American precision-guided and bunker-busting bombs, the Israelis have been launching airstrike after airstrike. They have hit an international airport, Lebanon's largest milk factories, aid convoys, Red Cross ambulances, a U.N. observer post, bridges, a lighthouse, even families fleeing at the urging of the attackers.
And yet, of course, the "will" of the enemy is not broken. The Israelis are rediscovering — though by now, you'd think that military planners with half a brain wouldn't have to destroy a country to do so — that it is impossible to "surgically" separate a movement and its supporters from the air. When you try, you invariably do the opposite, fusing them ever more closely.
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Every air war has its own vocabulary meant to take the sting out of its essential barbarism. In the case of the Israeli war in Lebanon, the term — old in the military world but never before so widely adopted — is "degrading," not as at Abu Ghraib, but as in "to impair in physical structure or function." It sounds like erosion, almost a natural process, and is being used to cover a range of sins.
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Does the air war in Lebanon seem to be heavily targeted against civilians? That's not surprising; war from the air has always been essentially directed against civilians.