Tuesday, September 19, 2006
From the Wiesenthal Center:
During a 45 minute meeting with Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, delegation member Shlomo Bohbot, the Mayor of the Jewish and Arab twin City of Maalot-Tarshiha, which lies 6 miles from the Lebanese border spoke of the devastation wrought by the over 680 Katyusha rockets that struck his municipality. Bohbot emphasized that there are no military installations anywhere in his region.
Western Galilee Hospital representative, Dr. Norman Loberant presented graphic images of the impact of the constant targeting of Nahariya and the specific damage done to the hospital during the war. Included were X-rays that depicted the catastrophic injuries caused by multiple ball bearings from Katyusha warheads that maimed and murdered both Jewish and Arab citizens of the Northern Galilee.
Clearly shocked by the photographic evidence, High Commissioner Arbour declared that “the deliberate Hezbollah attacks on primarily civilians targets were deliberate” and thus “violated international humanitarian law”...
I know, tell you something you didn't know...but getting this out of a UN official is something a little different.
I agree...Hezbollah did target civilians.
But what was Israel doing when they requested a rush order of cluster bombs three days before the cease fire, and then dropped 90% of cluster munitions in the last 72 hours of the conflict, leaving tens of thousands of unexploded bomblets scattered across Lebanon? Leaving presents for the future generations of Lebanese?
This is also in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention...but you should already know that.
It goes both ways.
The rush shipment was not cluster bombs. The number "10's of thousands" of unexploded bomblets is dubious. Use of cluster munitions is not necessarily a contravention of the Geneva Conventions, it depends on their use, like anyting else, and maps as to the areas of use have been provided to the UN and Lebanese forces.
That said, I don't know what the thinking or specifics behind the use of the cluster munitions was (It's apparent you don't, either) and find it questionable, but even if so, that's one tactic/act while the entire Hizballah effort was intentionally targeted at civilians and nothing else. It's indeed true that every side does things they perhaps shouldn't, but that does not make the situation equivalent.
Anyway, that's beside the point. The UN and most NGO's are so pathetically biased against Israel to such an extent that a simple statement like the one in this press release should actually be newsworthy. You hardly need to say that the Israelis are sinners, that's heard every day ad nauseum. A criticism of Hizballah is far more interesting. That is the point.