``` you didn't say anything```
see post 71 for my earlier reply
Note how it says "research" which means that there may be some basis for the accusation. By contrast in that same article it says Israeli violations were "documented". In legal parlance there is a huge distinction.
Note that the accusations against Hezbollah made in 1996 were found to be baseless. Three months since the initial accusations have gone by and still no definitive documentation has been proferred to warrant any convictions. It would seem to me that 3 months is sufficient time to gather evidence and to make a holding that guilt has been established.
...In 1996, in an attempt to crush the Lebanese resistance, Israel launched a similar 16-day blitz on Lebanon. This ended with the shelling of the UN compound in Kana and the death there of 106 civilians. An informal agreement – called the April Agreement – was drawn up in which both Israel and Hezbollah agreed not to attack civilian targets. This is important as it has been pointed out that Hezbollah’s attack on Israeli outpost, whatever its merits or demerits may be, does not violate this April agreement. Israel’s so-called response in which it has attacked the infrastructure and civilian population of Lebanon does. As a matter of record, the UN monitoring body in Southern Lebanon has found Israel to be 10 times more guilty of violations across the border (or Blue Line in the current War terminology) than Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has fired a few Katyushas in the last six years and has had a few border skirmishes. Before the current war, the total casualty count from this has been one death. The large-scale rocket barrage on Northern Israel started only after Israel’s aerial bombardment of Lebanon. Before this, it had largely respected the April agreement and played within these rules of the game. Israel has also fired and shelled across the border on numerous occasions. Therefore, to argue that Israel needs a special security zone free from Hezbollah while it has been the one that has attacked Lebanon thrice only shows the skewed nature of the current media discourse...
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/3997/1/205/
Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us. - Golda Meir
I agree with your summation of the facts CDNBear. Hezbollah is guilty of war crimes. So is Israel.
But the original Hezbollah raid which captured 2 IDF soldiers was not a war crime. Technically Israel and Lebanon are still at war. The Hezbollah raid on the IDF only involved military personnel. An important distinction is the Hezbollah raid did not target civilians and respected the April Agreement.
I'm not surprised most people don't know about the April Agreement or Israel's deliberate violation of this agreement when it escalated a minor border skirmish to lay waste to all of Lebanon, kill more than 1000 innocent civlians and displace about one million people.
I believe all is fair in love and war. But lets be straight about who did what to whom and when. Israel, not Hezbollah crossed the line first to include civilian targets first. During the first two days of this dispute, Hezbollah did not target Israeli civilians as per the April Agreement. Only after it became clear that Israel had no intention of respecting the terms of the April Agreement did Hezbollah declare "war without limits".
Israel didn't have to target Lebanese civilians. They could have respected its agreement with Lebanon not to target civilians, but they made a deliberate choice to commit war crimes.
Those of you who believe that Hezbollah was wrong to target Israeli civilians in response to Israel's attacks on Lebanese civilians should post what they think would have been an appropriate response to Israel's violation of the April Agreement and subsequent war crimes.
Consider also, why did Israel finally agree to a ceasefire? If Hezbollah did not launch rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, would Israel have just kept killing Lebanese civilians?
So yes Hezbollah committed war crimes. But they were in response to Israel's far greater war crimes.
Goper
I've marvelled at the number of times "discussions" on this site have been reduced to "ass-head" "Liberal" (I suppose for many here being called a Liberal would be tantamount to calling their parentage into question) but it seems a little childish to me....
Bear asked me to stop poking my nose in from the "dark" or some such crap and asked me to be direct...which I interpreted as use the language Bear seems most comfortable with....which as it turns out is concomitant with the level of discourse one finds on schoolyards and sleezy bars....
And I do see your point, but for one minute, I would like you to take a walk in my shoes.
I'm an IDF soldier, I'm at my post as ordered, I'm fufilling my obligation to my country, by serving my manditory term, or I'm a carreer soldier(I'm not sure of the soldiers cridentials).
My post is attacked, I'm over run and captured. I'm being held by a group, that neither believes in or accepts my right to exist, not the Geneva Convention.
I'm scared, I'm in deep sh*t. My only consolation is, knowing my brothers and my Nations policy of getting me back at all costs.
I have a jaded view of the Hezbollah, to say the least. The Lebonese are not my allies, and quite frankly my chances of survival are slim.
But I'm holding on to that hope, that they're coming for me.
They're coming for me.
As a soldier, not only can I sympathise with that, I'm terrified by it. I also feel his pride and his belief in his Nation, to do what is best for him. That is my point.
You may not all understand what it is like to face those facts, but I can assure you, they are real and they are terrifying. To face someone on the field of battle and know in your heart, your foe has your death on his mind, is something that not all can handle. But live lightly and freely in the fact that we are willing to do it for you. Whether you agree with it or not, that is what drives most of us.
The Killing of Iman al-Hams
Executing Another Child in Rafah
By OMAR BARGHOUTI
October 25, 2004
CounterPunch
[SIZE=-1]Iman al-Hams was a 13-year old refugee schoolgirl who was executed -- after being wounded -- by an Israeli platoon commander on the sad sands of Rafah.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]According to testimonies given by soldiers in the same company to the mass Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, a soldier in the watchtower identified Iman and cautioned his commander shouting, "Don't shoot. It's a little girl". The company commander, the soldiers testified, "approached her, shot two bullets into her [head], walked back towards the force, turned back to her, switched his weapon to automatic and emptied his entire magazine into her." (1) Eyewitnessescorroborated the soldiers, account, saying that Iman was shot almost 70 meters away from the Israeli military position. After a bullet hit her leg, Iman, who was wearing her school uniform, fell. Then, they said, the officer went over to her, saw that she was bleeding from her wounds, but still shot her twice in the head to "confirm the killing", an Israeli euphemism for the practice of executing a wounded Palestinian. A cursory army investigation later cleared him of any "unethical conduct", as is customary, and suspended him only because of "poor relations with subordinates".(2)[/SIZE]
The rest here:
http://www.pcdc.edu.ps/Killing_Iman_al-Hams.htm
27 September, 2004, 14:53 GMT 15:53 UK
Gaza's tragic classroom casualties
By Alan Johnston
BBC, Gaza
Some of Raghda's classmates were too distraught to attend classes
Nine-year-old Raghda al-Assar died last week after being hit by Israeli fire while sitting at her school desk in the Gaza Strip - the fourth child hit in similar circumstances in 18 months. The BBC's Alan Johnston visits the scene of the incident:
...The UN says that the soldiers shot indiscriminately into the crowded refugee camp for more than half an hour...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3693860.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3693860.stm
Indiscriminate Bombardment
By Kenneth Roth, Executive Director Human Rights Watch
Published in Jerusalem Post
Why did so many Lebanese civilians lose their lives to Israeli bombing? The government line is that the IDF was doing the best it could, but these deaths were the result of Hizbullah hiding its rockets and fighters among civilians. But that assertion doesn't stand up to the facts.
Of course Hizbullah did sometimes hide among civilians, breaching its duty to do everything feasible to protect civilians and possibly committing the war crime of deliberate shielding, but that's not the full story.
Human Rights Watch investigated some two dozen bombing incidents in Lebanon involving a third of the civilians who by then had been killed. In none of those cases was Hizbullah anywhere around at the time of the attack.
How do we know? Through the same techniques we use in war zones around the world to cut through people's incentive to lie. We probed and cross-checked multiple eyewitnesses, many of whom talked openly of Hizbullah's presence elsewhere but were adamant that Hizbullah was not at the scene of the attack. We examined bombing sites for evidence of military activity such as trenches, destroyed rocket launchers and military equipment, or dead or wounded fighters....
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/08/22/lebano14061.htm
'''dismiss facts'''
The truth of those "facts", or, more correctly, accusations, are to be ascertained in a court of law or other institution charged with investigating and providing remedies for violations of the law.
We are all entitled to our opinions but must defer to those institutions to ascertain those truths.
Sorry, I missed your post to me previously.
Bear has also said both on this thread and on another that I insulted him. Then, when I asked for specifics he said he was only joking. However, he has again said that I insulted him and others. But he still has not presented any specific quotes that show I used pejoratives on anyone.
Using pejoratives is not my style as anyone who has read my posts over the period of time I have been on this board can readily attest to. As anyone can see, I backup my views with links and with reasoned arguments. Remarkably, my answers to the questions I have gotten are ignored and the links are totally disregarded as well. Then I am the one accused of ignoring their questions!
I agree with you that at times the discourse on this forum can be childish. That is most unfortunate. Why these unwarranted accusations persist is beyond all reason. And it's time for the accusers to consider their own shortcomings before criticizing others.
Ok, if so what court of law has determined your conclusions that the IDF is guilty?
Israeli court bans human shields
By Harvey Morris in Jerusalem
October 6 2005
The Israeli Supreme Court on Thursday outlawed the army's use of Palestinian civilians as human shields during round-ups of suspects in the occupied territories, ruling the practice contrary to international law.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/044e49e8-3682-11da-bedc-00000e2511c8.html
20 July 2006: Israeli Soldiers use civilians as Human Shields in Beit Hanun
B'Tselem's initial investigation indicates that, during an incursion by Israeli forces into Beit Hanun, in the northern Gaza Strip, on 17 July 2006, soldiers seized control of two buildings in the town and used residents as human shield.
After seizing control of the buildings, the soldiers held six residents, two of them minors, on the staircases of the two buildings, at the entrance to rooms in which the soldiers positioned themselves, for some twelve hours. During this time, there were intense exchanges of gunfire between the soldiers and armed Palestinians. The soldiers also demanded that one of the occupants walk in front of them during a search of all the apartments in one of the buildings, after which they released her...
http://www.btselem.org/english/Human_Shields/20060720_Human_Shields_in_Beit_Hanun.asp
You say you never accused me of attacking anyone? What's this:
October 18th, 2006, 10:32 PM
http://forums.canadiancontent.net/avatars/cdnbear.gif?dateline=1161297734CDNBear vbmenu_register("postmenu_738593", true);
Look at me!
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 378
Ok, Gopher I re read your posts.
You fight the good fight, but you have attacked or rebuttled, anyone that fails to fall in line with you.
You points are valid, but your absolute-ist frame of mind, will not allow any deviation ..."
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While I am mindful that you now assert to not having accused me of attacking anyone, just read your own previous words. Be also mindful that you say I "attack our intelligence" but offer no substantive proof of it.
Not so strangely, another poster used profane language and it went without any form of criticism here. That's proof of a double standard being demonstrated by certain people here, not an assault on anyone's intelligence when I point that out.
I missed the line about someone calling you a communist. While I cannot be held accountable for that, you may want to re-post it here and ask for a retraction. And note that I waited for a retraction for the insults that were directed at me but which did not come.
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re the IDF in Qana in 1996 see,
http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/robert_fisk_qana.html
it contains supplemental links with further data
Another attack on the poster as apposed to the post, so what colour is the pot today?OH and before you make another senseless remark, "democracy" arises from within a society, it isn't some objective plum waiting for a society to pick it like or "earn it" like some holy grail. You think you know or understand the term democracy but you don't really. Your idea of democracy is keeping everything the way it is with the few in control while the majority can't even be bothered to get out and lend their vote to the sham of democracy in which you live!
I understand though. You're a "company man", a man who believes what he's told and if he's told that the opportunity to choose between a Chevrolet and a Ford is "freedom" that's just fine with you. If your choice were between putting on a uniform and killing whomever the wealthy pointed their finger at as the bad guy, I'm sure you'd have your helmet and marching boots at the ready. Even if those whom you'd be sent to kill weren't involved but lived in a caudron of Soviet/British/American/Canadian militarism with its purpose to furher the interests of those same wealthy who let you believe you live in a democracy and are "free" so they can call on you to die when there's killing needed to secure their resources....
The US earned it, which is probaly the reason behind their feverish patriotism. Nothing can be truly valued until its value is learned.
My point was,
having democracy forced on a nation does not do it any service.
Kind of like in Canada. People like you prove this point oh so well. You value nothing, but the space in which accupy, and nothing more.
hey mikey all of 19,
that is just too stupid to do anything but laugh...
please Mikey do tell us, what, if anything is your point...
too funny...
Now here is a telling statement, from a what, a Jihad Muslim who is not allowed into our country, oh, boo-hoo, go change your diaper...