[lit-ideas] Rules of War...(cont'd)
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 15:22:41 -0700 (PDT)
http://www.counterpunch.org/cook08092006.html
How ?Indiscriminate? is Hezbollah?s Shelling?
Hypocrisy and the Clamor Against Hizbullah
By JONATHAN COOK
Nazareth.
A reader recently emailed to ask if anyone else was
suggesting, as I have done, that Hizbullah?s rocket
fire may not be quite as indiscriminate or maliciously
targeted at Israeli civilians as is commonly assumed.
I had to admit that I have been ploughing a lonely
furrow on this one. Still, that is no reason in itself
to join everyone else, even if the consensus includes
every mainstream commentator as well as groups such as
Human Rights Watch.
First, let us get my argument straight. I have not
claimed that Hizbullah targets only military sites or
that it never aims at civilians. According to the
Israeli army, more than 3,300 rockets have hit Israel
over the past four weeks. How can I know, or even
claim to know, where all those rockets have landed, or
know what the Hizbullah operatives who fired each
rocket intended to hit? I have never made such claims.
What I have argued instead is twofold. First, we
cannot easily know what Hizbullah is trying to hit
because Israel has located most of its army camps,
weapons factories and military installations near or
inside civilian communities. If a Hizbullah rocket
slams into an Israeli town with a weapons factory,
should we count that as an attack on civilians or on a
military site?
The claim being made against Hizbullah in Lebanon --
that it is ?cowardly blending? with civilians,
according to the UN?s Jan Egeland -- can, in truth, be
made far more convincingly of the Israeli army. While
there has been little convincing evidence that
Hizbullah is firing its rocket from towns and villages
in south Lebanon, or that its fighters are hiding
there among civilians, it can be known beyond a shadow
of a doubt that Israeli army camps and military
installations are based in northern Israeli
communities.
An obvious point that no one seems to be making -- and
given a news blackout that lasted several hours,
Israel clearly hoped no one would make -- is that the
12 soldiers who were killed on Sunday in Kfar Giladi
by a Hizbullah rocket were, under Egeland?s
definition, ?cowardly blending? with the civilian
population of that community. We know there are still
civilians in Giladi because their response to the
rocket barrage was quoted in the Israeli media.
My second claim was that Israel?s military censor is
preventing foreign journalists based in Israel, myself
included, from discussing where Hizbullah rockets are
landing, and what they may be aimed at. Under the
censorship rules, It is impossible to mention any
issue that touches on Israeli security or defense
matters: the location of military installations, for
example, cannot be divulged. It is arguable whether it
would actually be possible to report a Hizbullah
strike that hit a military site inside Israel.
I therefore have to tread carefully in what I say
next, relying on information that is already publicly
available, but which at least challenges the
simplistic view that Hizbullah is firing rockets
either indiscriminately or willfully to kill
civilians. I draw on two pieces of coverage provided
by BBC World.
On Tuesday, the BBC?s Katya Adler reported from the
northern community of Kiryat Shmona, which has taken
the heaviest pounding from Hizbullah rockets and from
which many of the local residents have fled over the
past month. As she stood on a central street
describing the difficult conditions under which the
remaining families were living, she had to shout over
the rythmic bark of what sounded like an Israeli tank
close by firing into Lebanon. She made no mention of
what was doing the firing -- and given the censorship
laws, my assumption is she cannot. But it does raise
the question of how much of a civilian target Kiryat
Shmona really is.
Consider also this. Throughout the four weeks of
fighting, the BBC have had a presenter and film crew
at the top of an area of Haifa known as the Panorama,
above the beautiful Bahia Gardens. As the name
suggests, from there the film crew have had an
unrestricted view of the port and docks below and the
wide arc of heavily developed shoreline that stretches
up to Acre.
The spot where the BBC presenters have been standing,
telling us regularly that they can hear the wail of
sirens warning Haifa?s residents to head for the
shelters, is in the centre of this sprawling ridge-top
city, in one of the most heavily built up and
inhabited areas of Haifa. So why have the BBC?s
presenters been standing there calmly every day for
weeks under the barrage of rockets?
Because all the evidence suggests that Hizbullah has
not been trying to hit the centre of Haifa, where it
would be certain of inflicting high casualties,
whether its rockets were on target or slightly adrift.
Instead, as BBC presenters have repeatedly shown us,
the overwhelming majority of rockets land either in
the mostly-abandoned port area or fall short into the
bay -- and on the odd occasion travel a little too
far, as one did on Sunday landing on an Arab
neighbourhood near the port and killing two
inhabitants.
If Hizbullah?s primary goal is to kill as many
civilians as possible in Haifa, it seems to be going
about it in a very strange manner indeed -- unless we
are to believe that none of its rockets could be fired
the extra 1km needed to hit central Haifa. Instead, as
is clear from the view shown by BBC cameras, the port
includes many sites far more ?strategic? than the
roads, bridges, milk factories and power stations
Israel is destroying in Lebanon: it has the oil
refinery, the naval docks and other installations
that, yes, I cannot mention because of the censorship
laws.
At the very least, we should concede to Hizbullah
that it is not always targeting civilians, and very
possibly is not mainly targeting civilians, which
might in part explain the comparatively low Israeli
civilian casualty figures.
That said, there are two valid criticisms, both made
by Human Rights Watch, of Hizbullah?s rocket fire --
though exactly the same or worse criticisms can be
made of the Israeli army. Those, unlike HRW, who
single out Hizbullah are being either disingenuous or
hypocritical. One is that Hizbullah has filled many of
its rockets with ballbearings. Most critics of
Hizbullah take this as conclusive proof that the
group?s only intent is to kill and injure civilians.
Anyone who has seen the damage done by a katyusha
rocket will realise that it is not a very powerful
weapon: it essentially punches a hole in whatever it
hits. The biggest danger is from the shrapnel and from
anything added -- like ballbearings -- that spray out
on impact. The shrapnel can kill civilians nearby, of
course, but it can also kill soldiers -- as we saw at
Kfar Giladi -- and can puncture tanks containing
flammable liquids like petrol, causing explosions.
The damage inflicted by the ballbearings is not in
itself proof that Hizbullah is trying to kill Israeli
civilians, any more than Israel?s use of far more
lethal cluster bombs is proof that it wants to kill
Lebanese civilians. Both are acting according to the
gruesome realities of war: they want to inflict as
much damage as possible with each rocket strike. That
is deplorable, but so is war.
The second criticism made by HRW is that because
Hizbullah?s rockets are rudimentary and lack
sophisticated guidance systems they are as good as
indiscriminate. That conclusion is wrong both
logically and semantically. As I have tried to show,
the rockets are mostly not indiscriminate (though
presumably some misfire, as do Israeli missiles);
rather, they are not precise.
This, according to Human Rights Watch, still makes
Hizbullah?s rocket attacks war cimes. That may be
true, but it of course also means Israel?s missile
strikes and bombardment of Lebanon are war crimes on
the same or a greater scale. Hizbullah?s strikes
against civilians may be intentional or they may be
the result of inaccurate guidance systems trying to
hit military targets. Israel?s strikes against
civilians are either intentional or the result of
accurate guidance systems and very faulty, to the
point of reckless, military intelligence.
Finally, what about the defense offered by Israel?s
supporters that its air force tries to avoid harming
Lebanese civilians by leafletting them before an
attack to warn them that they must leave? The
argument?s thrust is that only those who belong to
Hizbullah or give it succor remain behind in south
Lebanon and they are therefore legitimate targets. (It
ignores, of course, hundreds of civilians killed in
areas that have not been leafletted or who were trying
to flee, as ordered, when hit by an Israeli missile. )
Hizbullah, of course, has done precisely the same. In
speeches, its leader Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly
warned Israeli residents of areas like Haifa, Afula,
Hadera and Tel Aviv that Hizbullah will hit these
cities with rockets days before it has actually done
so. Hizbullah can claim just as fairly that it has
given Israelis fair warning of its attacks on civilian
communities, and that any who remain have only
themselves to blame.
This debate is important because it will determine in
the coming months and years who will be blamed by the
international community -- and future historians --
for committing war crimes. Hizbullah deserves as fair
a hearing as Israel, though at the moment it most
certainly is not getting it.
Like every army in a war, Hizbullah may not acting in
a humane manner. But it is demonstrably acting
according to the same standards as the Israeli army --
and possibly, given Israel?s siting of military
targets in civilian areas, higher ones. The fact that
the contrary view is almost universally held betrays
our prejudices rather than anything about Hizbullah?s
acts.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel. His book, Blood and Religion: the
Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State, is
published by Pluto Press. His website is
www.jkcook.net
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