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July 20, 2006
The war
More than 300 Lebanese were killed. Many of them were members of Hezballah but most were not. Also a lot of civilian infrastrusture in Lebanon was destryed. What for?
The answer is not as some hate-mongers claim is that IDF attacks civilians indiscriminatory (if it was the case, there would be 100 times more victims) but that this is the nature of the modern warfare when the enemies are blended with the general population. Israel attacks headquarters, launching pads, weapon storages, training camps and other legitimate objects. But headquarters are in residential quarters, Katyusha launch pads inside of residential houses etc. So victims among civilians are inevitable. IDF does everything to avoid them, much more than any other army in the world did in the similar circumstances.
Lebanese army should not be considered as the neutral force: its radars provided information to Hezballah and attack on Hanit used them. Their are shooting on Israeli jets. Lebanese security forces arrested alleged Israeli spies (working against Hezballah) were acting against IAF and civilian population of Lebanon: with more precise targetting the civilian casualties would be less.
Finally, IDF is not attacking Lebanese infrastructure but shared infrastructure: roads and bridges, airport and sea ports which were used by Hezballah to bring weapons and reinforcements, fuel depots and power stations providing the need of Hezballah. Maintaining these installations Lebanese government was working in-facto as Hezballah proxy, as the junior partner in coalition.
On the other hand, Hezballah targets civilians. All these missile strikes inside of Israel killed no military personnel and damaged no military installation. All these H. missiles are the weapons of terror, especially loaded by ball bearings. But being too crude weapons to have any military value, the majority of these projectiles hit the fields rather than towns.
The death of the large number of Lebanese civilians is regrettable but it is not a result of any war crimes - unless using the civil population by Hezballah as human shields is considered as a war crime. But all Israeli civilian casualties are results of military crimes committed by Hezballah, because the civilians were specifically targetted.
Posted by Victor at July 20, 2006 08:22 PM