- Crassness in action:
Siniora almost wept as he described Lebanon's plight to Arab foreign ministers meeting in Beirut on Monday, but his emotion won little sympathy from Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
In a speech to Israel's parliament, she told him to "wipe his tears and to begin acting in order to produce a better future ... first of all for the civilians for whom he cries".
Meanwhile, Israel's government is blocking aid agencies from helping those civilians in dire need, so Livni can take her sanctinomious righteousness and shove it.
- Via The Independent:
It is 28 days since Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, prompting a ground and air assault on Lebanon by the Israeli army. In that time, 932 people have been killed in Lebanon, with 75 missing, presumed dead.
29 Lebanese Army soldiers have been killed. 3,293 Lebanese have been wounded. 45 per cent of the casualties have been children. 913,000 Lebanese have been displaced (300,000 of whom are children). 94 Israelis have been killed and 1,867 wounded.
10,000 Israeli soldiers are currently fighting Hizbollah in southern Lebanon. 3,000 rockets have been fired at Israel by Hizbollah. The average number of rockets fired daily by Hizbollah in the first week of the conflict was 90. Over the past five days, it has been 169.
Israel has flown 8,700 bombing sorties, destroying 146 bridges and 72 roads. Damage caused to Lebanon's infrastructure is estimated at $2bn. Up to 30,000 tons of oil have spilled into the Mediterranean since an Israeli air strike on Jieh power station.
- It seems Israel learned absolutely nothing from Bush's misadventures in Iraq. Both governments seem to have been shocked and awed by the fact that their traditionally trained armies couldn't defeat an insurgency by first bombing the hell out of the country involved. Expert after expert, since the Iraq war began, has bemoaned the fact that the military has been unable to think outside of the box when it comes to dealing with urban guerilla warfare. So here we have two of the world's supposed best-trained armies losing to a rag tag bunch of guys with guns and missiles while looking like absolute fools on the world stage as hundreds of innocent civilians die each day. Go figure.
- This is beyond the pale:
Israel also threatened to attack UN peacekeepers if they attempted to repair bomb-damaged bridges in southern Lebanon. UN officials contacted the Israeli army to inform them that a team of Chinese military engineers attached to the UN force in Lebanon intended to repair the bridge on the Beirut to Tyre road to enable the transport of humanitarian supplies.
According to the UN, Israeli officials said the engineers would become a target if they attempted to repair the bridge.
Senior UN officials reacted angrily to the destruction of a temporary causeway over the Litani river overnight. "We must be able to have movement throughout the country to deliver supplies. At this point we can't do that," said David Shearer, the humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon. "The deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure is a violation of international law."
International aid groups have blamed Israel for not providing security guarantees, thereby paralysing the delivery of aid to the south. Even when aid reaches Tyre, convoys have to apply on a case by case basis for permission to take it out to the villages. Most applications are refused.
Now, for those of you who keep attacking me for posting the fact that Israel is committing war crimes, I'd suggest you hang out on Israel-friendly blogs because if you condone what Israel is doing you certainly won't like what you're seeing on this blog.
Where's the UN resolution demanding that Israel comply with international laws? Oh yes, Israel has ignored so many of those types of resolutions in the past that they just aren't even worth the paper they're written on anymore. So the next time you hear Israeli and American officials shouting 'Resolution 1559, Resolution 1559', think about the outright disdain Israel has had for UN resolutions demanding that it stop its occupation and killing all of these years. Hypocrites.
more to come...
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