I thought I could no longer be surprised in IP. I was wrong.
The New York Times wrote this morning about Hezbollah and Lebanese civilians.
Owing to fair use limits, I note that the earlier parts of the article include materials wherein IDF supporter voices assert that various communities visible from the Israeli site of the Lebanese border can be seen to contain various Hezbollah installations of one sort or another in or near their communities, and that the same IDF or supporter voices assert that they have mapped hundreds of them in South Lebanon, which are intermixed with civilian communities, houses and general locations.
The ugly short of it is that Israeli military authorities have now taken the public and official position that any injury which is caused to Lebanese civilians by IDF while attacking Hezbollah hereafter if Hezbollah has not separated itself from civilians and so made a simple target is not the fault of IDF and is the sole fault of Hezbollah.
Maps and aerial photography provided to The New York Times by Israeli military officials this week illustrate, they say, that Hezbollah has moved most of its military infrastructure into the Shiite villages of southern Lebanon and around their perimeters. Israel says this amounts to using the civilians as a human shield.
Without knowing when the next war will break out, or what might precipitate it, the Israelis are blunt about the implications: They will not hesitate to strike at those targets, so southern Lebanon will most likely be the scene of widespread destruction.
Effectively, the Israelis are warning that in the event of another conflict with Hezbollah, many Lebanese civilians will probably be killed, and that it should not be considered Israel’s fault.
The article discusses in some detail how Hezbollah is acting like Hamas did in Gaza before the summer shooting started, and should, essentially expect the same result. It also mentions one recent exchange of ordnance wherein an Israeli weapon killed someone in Lebanon, and someone fired back. As if this were a sufficient justification for possible action as described in the balance of the statement.
As those reading the reporting know, the attacks on Gaza included many residences and civilian families and many businesses which had no connection with the fighting, but were destroyed anyway, gutting the Gazan economy. NYT had coverage this week of a Gaza business which manufactured tissue which was destroyed, and the market taken instead by Israeli tissue providers. The general explanation provided by IDF was that each building destroyed along with whoever died or was injured there was because it was a place from which Hamas was doing something toward shooting missiles at Israel, or where a Hamas figure might be found, without that being documented for most destroyed sites and destroyed businesses. The procedure of 'roof knocking' was part of this attack, where entire residential buildings would be destroyed with the only warning being a test shot to the roof. The campaign was commonly referred to in Israeli presses quoting this one or that as 'mowing the lawn.'
Presumably, the purpose of today' statements are to take the position that the same thing will happen to the Shi'ite community in South Lebanon unless the Hezbollah either make themselves sitting ducks or leave their community entirely. Israel will be doing it but is in advance denying any responsibility for what they do and the damage they do, because they will do it because Hezbollah in Lebanon did not do what IDF told it to do to avoid the civilian damage AS IF the Israeli IDF were not a political force and more nearly a natural one where no human intellect interrupted the connection between alleged cause and alleged effect.
The article includes a series of arguments by various Israeli figures, including one who asserted that in properly conducted wars, military forces separate themselves from civilians so as to prevent civilians being affected by the conduct of military. I am personally not aware that this is a standard IDF has heretofore used on a consistent, or any basis in its conflicts with its various opposing forces.
There is also a suggestion in the article either that this statement is being put out now because the UN report on the summer Gaza IDF action is due out soon, or that IDF means what is conveyed by this to be understood as a warning to Hezbollah that IDF is prepared for war, nothing more.
The premise of this position seems to be that if in the area which includes the Shi'ites of Lebanon also includes Hezbollah sites, the whole community is at risk, and the only options which might preserve civilians are either separating military sites clearly enough that no one even an IDF shooter could confuse a civilian site for any of them, or leaving the area before IDF starts shooting.
This ignores several serious issues. The first is that South Lebanon, and Lebanon in general is a tightly populated country with many mutually exclusive and mutually hostile communities in it, and that the home ground of Shi'ites in Lebanon is the ground in question; in other words, Hezbollah is at home, where it presumably has a right to be. And there is no 'other' place in Lebanon available for it to go to. Under circumstances in which IDF is telling it that IDF will attack what it chooses, and if it kills off the community from which Hezbollah comes, Hezbollah has no ground for objection.
Second issue being ignored is that the partisan battles raging in Syria, where Damascus is not that far from the area in question, is one between among others, Sunni including Al Quaeda and ISIS, and Shi'a forces, a number of whose idea of winning is emptying the ground of other religious communities. The conflict there has produced a huge number of refugees including to Lebanon, and including Shi'ites whose refuge would be this area.
And the IDF attacks on various weapons shipments involving Hezbollah in Syria, where Hezbollah is involved in some manner in the conflict, presumably but not demostrably with equally Shi'ite Iran there, should be disregarded according to IDF.
This is bloody nonsense, but also much worse. One of the whole points of creating laws of war and how a conflict may or may not be conducted is to eliminate one side in a war saying that anything that side does is the responsibility of the other side because they could have complied with the very reasonable demands of the doer and thereby avoided whatever the doer chose to do when it was not obeyed, and did. Israel is and must be held responsible for what it chooses to do, all of what it chooses to do, just as the US is.
In this case, what the supposed doer is trying to say is that it is free of the task of separating specifically civilians from militants in whatever it does in South Lebanon, and to do unlimited harm to said civilians if they choose to do what they are thinking of doing. And they do not care what the UN thinks about it either.
The IDF position ignores certain realities, such as , because the place is so packed with people, there is not room for separate military bases with borders and fences, in the way Israel has them and clears out Palestinians to build them, and because Hezbollah is involved in a Sunni Shi'a dispute in support of its coreligionists in Syria which is a shooting war. even if Israel is thusfar not in it save for the attacks on what are said to be Hezbollah arms shipments.
What is not is the flat-out assertion to the international community that they have no obligation to protect or avoid attacking civilians, the UN refugee camps in south Lebanon, churches and mosques, and hospitals, and such, and are disclaiming it in advance as to anything in Shi'a Lebanon. And that it is the responsibility of those whom they claim to be after that they do whatever they do to the civilians, not they who did whatever happened to the civilians.
That this assertion is being made in the face of the UN report on the Gaza killings and destruction is a suggestion that they reject in advance any responsibility for that either, without wasting time this time thinking up a justification for each building they destroyed until they stopped answering those tedious questions and the rest of the world stopped asking.
But what upsets me most is that Israel as a governmental entity believes correctly that the US will defend them from their enemies. I do not think that the US signed up for defending them against a charge of wiping out an entire people in Lebanon or most of them, specifically and intentionally including civilians and non combatants, or against what happens against them after the IDF does that. I do not believe we signed on to protect them against the consequences of their committing war crimes or crimes against humanity, and this is a very flagrant indicator that such is what they have in mind to do here.
But given the mania of Congress and others, we may find ourselves having to do precisely that, because the current Israeli government pushes all concerns to the extremes, and then says "You promised." This one is as much Boney's War if it happens s it is Bibi's, because this is what the consequence is of the signal Boney and the Rs sent .
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