Qana - War Crimes Take 2

Qana - War Crimes Category: News and Politics
I have to admit that usually, when I write, I am triggered by something, but I am not angry, just get the facts and write. I pride myself on not just being part of the discourse of misinformation and propaganda, but I choose to fight my battles with the facts. Well today is different, I am fucking pissed. I have continued to write day after day about the ongoing abuses of the Israeli military with American support, and I just wrote 3 days ago about the Israeli targeted killings of civilians at different times in history. It was painful to me to go back and review all the facts surrounding the initial massacre at Qana in 1996. Dead, burnt, mutiliated bodies of children, the same size children as the ones who run up and down the street in front of my house everyday. Do you know how hard it is to have a conscience and look at those dead children and know that they are someone's child, someone struggled through labor to deliver these children, somebody put their heart and soul into raising these children, someone loved these children with all their being, and Israel killed them without remorse. Squashed their life as if they had no more value than an ant on the ground of a fly in the air. And then, 10 years later, the Israeli's did the same thing again at the same place. Israel deliberately targeted an area that they knew contained civilians. And let us not act as though this is a suprise. Israel continues to fire artillery shells into crowded, residential areas in Gaza. They continue to target and assassinate individuals with no concern for collateral damage. They continue to prosecute an attack on the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon. All of these items have been declared as crimes against humanity. Israel and the United States will suffer through many years of ongoing terror attacks as a result of their actions. What else can you do with two powers like the US and Israel? They have the ability through their military to do whatever they want, but they can not protect every civilian, all the time. And the retribution for the war crimes committed by these countries will take a very large toll, a very large toll indeed. So if anyone believes that Israel and the United States are making their countries safer by these types of actions, they could not be farther from the truth. They say that the pen is mightier than the sword, but at this time, I would gladly put down my pen.

The Tears of an American

The Tears of an American
...houdini '06...

If someone is killing in my name, is there not blood on my hands
Am I not just as guilty, if I do not take a stand
When just one child dies, does it not stain my soul
Tearing at my being, rending a hole

When an American bomb tears another child apart
As an American, isnt that another piece of my heart
When my God looks down on me
Isnt it a murderer that he will see

When a childs tear falls in another place
Shouldnt it also be staining my face
When a drop of childs blood is shed in pain
Shouldnt it feel as though that blood come from my vein

As an American I truly am shamed
There is no one else, I should be blamed
To fight and die would be the easy way
To live with what weve done, will never go away

Israel and the UN at War

Israel and the UN at war.

It seems that after the continued bombing of UN positions, Israel has taken the position that the UN can NOT be part of any peacekeeping effort in Lebanon and that they will not allow the UN to be part of any probe into the bombings. Israel is once again, trying to dictate world decisions from their little sliver of land on the Mediterranean. As I have said in previous blogs, when you have a violent, militaristic, uncontrolled power in one part of the world, with all the weapons the US can provide, they develop the mentality that they don’t have to abide by the rules of the civilized world. The real problem is that there is no counter-weight to Israel in the region. The UN is the governing body, decided by the world, to settle these types of disputes, and Israel has unilaterally dismissed them as a non-player, just as they have dismissed all the UN resolutions regarding land theft, genocide, deportation, theft of resources, etc... As a result, and as I have said in previous blogs, Israel is going to drag the region and the world into a wider conflict. They are pursuing their own crusade against Islam and by engaging the world, knowing that the US will back them, they are precipitating a crisis. Fighters from Islamic countries all over the world are now flocking to Lebanon. Is it because the Muslims hate the Jews? NO. It is because Israel has taken this opportunity to apply excessive, outrageous force in a situation that easily could have been handled diplomatically. How did America react when exactly this thing happened to Britain in World War II? Initially, American volunteers went to fight for Britain, we rallied around our ally, and refused to allow a foreign power to over run it. That is exactly what Arab countries (or those Arab countries that actually have testicles) are doing now. Radical Muslims are now planning attacks on western interests and Al-Qaeda is now calling for a global war. Once again, our policies regarding Israel will lead to the death of American civilians, it is inevitable. In addition, it was bad enough that we have allowed the Israeli’s to commit genocide on the Palestinian peoples, then it was terrible that we invaded Afghanistan, captured all those people, moved them to Cuba, only for our Supreme Court to say, hey guys, you can’t do that. Then we invaded Iraq, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in two separate wars. Then we failed to provide security, raped, tortured and humiliated the Iraqi people. And now we are allowing Israel the freedom to attack UN positions and kill hundreds if not thousands of innocent women and children. If Israel would have been on the receiving side instead of the giving side, the US would already have been there dropping bombs in Israel’s defense. Why are Jewish lives more valuable than Muslim or Christian lives, because in Beirut, Israel doesn’t care who they kill? Where are all our right wing Christian advocates now? They are in Washington with their heads up George Bush’s ass and ignoring their brothers in Jesus and abandoning them to Israeli aggression.

This will be a real test for the UN. Will it continue to sit idly by and allow Israel the ability to dictate what happens in the Middle East, in the United States and in the United Nations? If the United Nations does not stand up to Israel at this point, demand the withdraw of their troops from Lebanon, demand to be part of the probe into the bombings and force a solution in the case of the Palestinians, then the United Nations is as impotent as the League of Nations and is a defunct organization that is simply the mouthpiece of western governments and should therefore be boycotted by the remainder of the countries in the world. When the Security Council sits down to talk, and the United States and Britain are the only two at the table, then I think the message will come through loud and clear. And when the UN is defunct, then all of its resolutions, nuclear monitoring, sanctions, etc… go out the window. At which time, we will be able to thank Israel for plunging the world back into the dark ages.

History of Israeli Strikes on Neutral Targets

Israel has had a history of military strikes on neutral targets, especially when those neutral targets continue to provide hindrances to Israel to prevent them from attacking civilians. Lets look historically at Israel’s record in just such instances. And keep in mind, one time is an accident, two times is suspicious but 3 and 4 times are blatant attempts to silence their critics.

(1)As we all know, Israel once again, bombed a UN position, this time killing 4 soldiers from four different nationalities, China, Austria, Finland and Canada. (According to Israeli logic, if one soldier dies or is kidnapped, it is cause for an all out war. So China, Austria, Finland and Canada need to pay a visit to Tel Aviv with some bombers.) When Israeli troops were firing around the position, the UN observers contacted them 6 times saying that the bombing was just getting closer, not farther away. What they didn’t realize was that Israel was using their calls as targeting information. Basically, when the UN called in that the strikes were hitting 200 yards south of their position, the Israeli jets aimed 200 yards north of the last strike. The were acting as their own FAC (Forward Air Controllers) and Israel was using this information to target the position. After dropping 14 bombs on the position and killing the 4 observers, the rescue operation had to continue under constant Israeli bombing. Does this sound like an accident to you? (2)Also, just a little over a week ago, Israel hit another UN position on Monday with artillery fire wounding 5 Ghanaian soldiers, but did not kill any and so it got little press. (3)Last week another UN outpost was hit with Israeli tank fire injuring 1 Indian soldier.

We have to remember that the UN and Kofi Annan has been very outspoken critics of Israel’s ongoing, show of force, against civilian targets. And historically, Israel has shut up its critics, or at least those who were trying to stop their murderous killings by bombing a strategic interest, or killing their civilians.

(4)We certainly can not forget the Grapes of Wrath incident in 1996 in Qana in which, once again, a UN observer post came under fire from Israeli troops. The UN was at that time also, applying serious pressure to Israel to cease its operations in Lebanon. However, the UN observer post was considered a place of refuge for Palestinians looking for a safe location to get out of the bombing. With over a thousand civilians in unprotected areas, the Israeli government decided to bomb the observer post in a massacre that killed 106 Palestinian women and children. And of course we know that Israelis believe it is their right to kill Palestinians on a whim. So when the opportunity arose, the commanders of the military chose to bomb this area and so to speak, kill two birds with one stone.

(5)As an American, we can not forget the attack of the American warship the USS Liberty by Israeli torpedo and Jet bombers in 1967. Even though the intent of Israel is disputed to this day, I have no clue how they could have mistaken an American warship for any Egyptian vessel when they had no ships of that class and size. However, at that particular time, the US was brokering peace in the region. It had granted Israel the latitude to pursue the Egyptian forces across the Sinai, but not across the Red Sea. Word was sent to Tel Aviv that the US would intervene if Israel crossed the Red Sea. Israel sent word back that their troops were fighting and that it would be at least a week before they reached the Red Sea. US intelligence over flights showed that the Israelis had already reached the Red Sea and were preparing to cross. The US confronted Israel with the photos, thus halting the crossing and ongoing slaughter of civilians. Shortly afterwards, Israeli commanders made the decision to strike the USS Liberty which was acquiring intelligence data in the Mediterranean. In an article by David Walsh, he interviewed over 500 senior leaders from America and Israel, commanders from both sides and individuals on board the ship and concluded that, Most senior US government officials of the era and nearly every senior intelligence official agrees -- often based upon study of intercepted communications -- that Israeli forces deliberately attacked a ship they knew to be American. Then Secretary of State Dean Rusk is quoted as saying, “I was never satisfied with the Israeli explanation… Through diplomatic channels we refused to accept the explanations. I didn’t believe them then, and I don’t believe them to this day. The attack was outrageous.” I think it is repetitive to state the obvious but these guys are our friends?

With the previous considerations and with the news of Iranian volunteers making their way through Syria to fight against Israel, Israel will take this as a green light to try to strike these individuals while still in Syria. It will once again be Israels wish to drag the entire region and the US into a broader war. Mark Har Megiddo (the hill of Megiddo) or Armageddon on your map, it is in the Jezreel Valley, where rockets and bombs are falling right now.