The Osterley Times: All the dead have died in vain.

Friday, August 04, 2006

All the dead have died in vain.

What do you say as war trundles on past the point where either side is achieving any goal?

What do you say as war trundles on and 900 Lebanese people have been killed and over one million Lebanese civilians- a quarter of the Lebanese population - has been displaced?

What do you say as war trundles on and Israel suffers her worst ever day in the conflict and loses eight civilians and four soldiers?

This pointless and immoral war could have, and should have, been stopped weeks ago; but we are led by immoral men who, dreaming of God knows what, demand that it must be allowed to continue.

As the inexorable death toll continues to rise we should remember that all this carnage was wrought to free three captured Israeli soldiers. It has, so far, freed not a single one of them.

The original aim of the Israelis was said to be to inflict such damage on the Lebanese population that they would rise against Hizbullah and turn against them. The opposite has happened. It is now said that 87% of the Lebanese people support Hizbullah.

Indeed, the most damage that has been done during this conflict has been done to the international reputation of Israel as people begin to question the care she takes to avoid civilian casualties and find her severely wanting.

The Israelis have recently conducted an investigation into the deaths of civilians in Qana and found itself innocent, claiming that the military were not aware that civilians were in the area.

International human rights groups have mocked their claims.

Human rights groups have criticised Israeli targeting in the air campaign. Amnesty International described the investigation as "clearly inadequate" and a "whitewash". In a report into Israeli air strikes on Lebanon, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said the Israelis had "systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians".

Israel have claimed that the high amount of civilian deaths comes as a direct result of Hizbullah's tendency to hide amongst the civilian population.

The US-based watchdog Human Rights Watch accused Israel of war crimes. "In some instances, Israeli forces appear to have deliberately targeted civilians ... the failures cannot be dismissed as mere accident and cannot be blamed on wrongful Hizbullah practices. In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes," it stated when releasing a study of attacks in Lebanon.

"Israeli forces have fired with war planes and artillery on dozens of civilian vehicles, many flying white flags," it said. Israel has sought to justify the deaths by saying Hizbullah fighters hide among civilians to fire rockets. Human Rights Watch says it believes Hizbullah does violate the laws of war by hiding among civilians during military operations, but "the image promoted of such shielding as the cause of so high a civilian death toll is wrong".

Israel's international reputation is in shreds. The price it has demanded from the people of Lebanon has been extracted in civilian blood and the advantage to the security of the people of Israel gained has been nil. It has been, all in all, a totally pointless operation. But the devastation it leaves in it's wake will be remembered for generations to come.

Jonathan Steele describes the scene as witnessed from an Israeli drone:

Forget, for a moment, the columns of cars with refugees streaming north. Ignore, if you will, the corpses rotting in the open. Just concentrate on the physical inventory - roads disfigured by bomb craters, towns made uninhabitable, shopping parades gutted, houses collapsed like souffles gone horribly wrong.

Olmert continues to insist that the war has not been in vain:

On Wednesday, Mr Olmert declared that the infrastructure of Hizbullah had been "entirely destroyed". He said a ceasefire would be agreed within days, and that once an international force was on the ground, Hizbullah would be significantly weaker and Israel's deterrence would be reaffirmed. "I personally presume that it will take a very long time, if at all, before anyone, Hizbullah or Syria or anyone, will think of shooting missiles on the Israeli population," he said.

As he uttered those words, surely the most vapid ever uttered by any politician whilst in office, 130 rockets rained in on Israel.

As this pointless, immoral, George-Bush-inspired war draws to it's inevitable conclusion we can expect to hear many more lies about the reasons for the war and for what it has achieved.

We should forget their rhetoric and weigh the war against their own claims when they waged it.

Olmert said he would destroy Hizbullah and free the captured soldiers. He has achieved neither.

All the dead have died in vain and Israel's reputation has been destroyed for naught.