An Amnesty International report describes the scale and nature of Israel‘s war crimes during its recent campaign in Lebanon. In part, it reads:
“First-hand information gathered by recent Amnesty International research missions to Lebanon and Israel points to an Israeli policy of deliberate destruction of Lebanese civilian infrastructure during the recent conflict.
The long-term impact of the destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure on the lives of the country’s men, women and children is incalculable. Many have lost their homes while having to cope with the deaths of loved ones or struggling to overcome severe injuries. Many more have lost their livelihoods. Records showing home and property ownership have been destroyed, adding to the difficulties of rebuilding lives.
The head of the country’s Council for Development and Reconstruction, Fadl Shalak, said on 16 August that the damage incurred amounted to US $3.5 billion: US $2 billion for buildings and US $1.5 billion for infrastructure such as bridges, roads and power plants.”
Leon Wieseltier, a supporter of Israel’s side in the Lebanon war of 2006 writing in the New Republic, still considers the cowardice of the claims of Israel’s leaders to moral superiority after committing atrocities themselves:
“But a right war in which such outrages occur–surely it is not enough to refresh one’s sense of the admirable nature of one’s principles and be done. The fact that you are not a monster is beside the point when you have just done something monstrous. One should not be consoled for one’s misdeeds, one should regret them; and regret is genuine only when it is beyond the reach of consolation. If your guilt reminds you of how otherwise guiltless you are, then you have not been improved by the discovery of your sin, you have been corrupted by it. It is important also to be wary of the pride of self-criticism. At least we worry about such things: this proves only that the standard is low. To congratulate oneself upon the severity of one’s self-reckoning is to vitiate it–to nullify conscience by reference to its very exercise.”
An AP article reports Israel‘s defensive reaction, much in line with what Leon Wieseltier warns against in the previous passage:
“Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel‘s Foreign Ministry, said his country acted legally.
“Israel’s actions in Lebanon were in accordance with recognized norms of behavior during conflicts and with relevant international law,” he said. “Unlike Hezbollah, we did not deliberately target the Lebanese civilian population. On the contrary, under very difficult circumstances, we tried to be as surgical as is humanly possible in targeting the Hezbollah terrorist organization.”
Regev said that Lebanese infrastructure was “targeted only when that infrastructure was being exploited by the Hezbollah machine, and this is in accordance with the rules of war.”
Israel suffered international condemnation when it attacked targets in southern Lebanon hours after Hezbollah guerrillas operating there killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two in a cross-border raid July 12.
The Israeli Defense Force has said that between that raid and the Aug. 14 U.N.-brokered cease-fire, it launched more than 7,000 air attacks on Lebanese targets and the navy conducted about 2,500 bombardments.
The United Nations children’s fund,
UNICEF, estimates that some 1,183 people died, mostly civilians and about a third of them children, while the Lebanese Higher Relief Council says 4,054 people were injured and 970,000 displaced. U.N. officials reported that around 15,000 civilian homes were destroyed.”
[photos: Ehud Olmert by Reuters; IAF General Dan Halutz by AFP; south Beirut by Reuters]