12 entries filed this month:
There’s practically a holy consensus right now that the war in the North is a just war and that morality is on our side. The bitter truth must be said: this holy consensus is based on short-range selective memory, an introverted worldview, and double standards. (185 words) More …
The wife of missing UN peacekeeper Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener in a live media scrum today begged the Canadian government to step up efforts to identify the three recovered bodies from the Israeli-bombed UN outpost, and called for a mission to search the remaining rubble and area surrounding the outpost in the hopes of finding her husband. Here’s hoping.
She also said that her husband had confided with her that he felt his outpost had been directly targetted by Israeli forces many times in the past.
Israel uses the approbations of countries and leaders like Stephen Harper and George Bush as explicit permission to keep on bombing, no matter what the long term cost. Yesterday BBC News reported: (376 words) More …
This is all the information of a non-tactical nature that I can provide you. I cannot give you any info on Hezbollah position, proximity or the amount of or types of sorties the IAF is currently flying. Suffice to say that the activity levels and operational tempo of both parties is currently very high and continuous, with short breaks or pauses. Please understand the nature of my job here is to be impartial and to report violations from both sides without bias. As an Unarmed Military Observer, this is my raison d’etre. (378 words) More …
The circumstances do not support Israel’s claim that the killings were accidental. First, the geography is small and well-known to Israeli military planners as their tanks, troops and aircraft have maneuvered in, mined, and occupied southern Lebanon many times. (389 words) More …
“I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defence Forces of a UN Observer post in southern Lebanon,” said UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. (129 words) More …
As bombs fell a few hundred metres away, several hundred refugees including the Canadians climbed into life rafts and were ferried to the Princesa Marissa anchored off shore. The ship did not even attempt to dock to stay clear of the blasts. (184 words) More …
The local Beirut papers are filled with photographs that would never be seen in the pages of a British paper: of decapitated babies and women with no legs or arms or of old men in bits. Israel’s air raids are promiscuous and – when you see the results as we now do with our own eyes – obscene. No doubt Hizbollah’s equally innocent civilian victims in Israel look like this but the slaughter in Lebanon is on an infinitely more terrible scale. The Lebanese look at these pictures and see them on television – as does the rest of the Arab world – and I wonder how many of them are provoked to think of another 9/11 or 7/7 or whatever the next date will be. [The Independent – original article | full text] (183 words) More …
“I do believe that on the basis of evidence that is available in the public domain there are very serious concerns that the level of civilian casualties, the indiscriminate shelling of cities and so on, on their face raise sufficient questions that I think one must issue a sobering signal to those who are behind these initiatives to examine very closely their personal exposure,” she told the BBC. [BBC – UN warning on Mid-East war crimes] (427 words) More …
Suddenly, last night, they were told the Prime Minister would be visiting and that Canadians – any Canadians – would have to be brought to the port of Larnaca, Cyprus. They made an urgent request to the British government, which had been taking Britons on large naval vessels with military escorts to the western city of Limassol, to allow 120 Canadians to board one of the ships so that there would be some available to greet the Prime Minister and ride home on his Airbus jet. (468 words) More …
Twenty-eight Israelis have been killed – including 16 civilians killed by rocket attacks – since the Israeli offensive against Hezbollah militants began last Wednesday. (275 words) More …
(Salon, July 7 2006) The actions of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seem intended to create a failed state in Gaza and the West Bank, thus rendering the Israeli claim that “we have no one to talk to” a self-fulfilling prophecy and allowing Israel to continue with its unilateral, annexationist policies, free of the need to even pretend to negotiate. (464 words) More …