Hizzbollah's war crimes

There is a saying (or cliche) that the first casualty of war is the truth. If that is so the second casualty must be decency.

Recent reports of Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) accuse both Hizzbollah and Israel of war crimes. HRW - apparently being able to read minds - sees a difference in intent on the part of the two sides and concluded that Hizzbollah deliberately hit the civilians while Israel's actions were simply a technical failure, a failure to take precautions, and not intentional.

It wouldn't surprise me if Hizzbollah fighters are indeed guilty of war crimes as well. But let's take a closer look at some of the targets and perhaps also wonder whether there was some US and Israeli pressure to make such statements.

The BBC reported:

Hezbollah had fired nearly 4,000 rockets into northern Israel, killing 43 civilians and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee. Amnesty International noted that although Hezbollah had said its policy was not to target civilians, its leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said the policy was changed in reprisal for Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilian areas.

Haaretz quoted Sheikh Nasrallah as saying:

"As long as the enemy undertakes its aggression without limits or red lines, we will also respond without limits or red lines." This is no excuse but let's have a look at the some of the "civilian" areas subjected to rocket attacks.

The Israeli Air Force launched more than 7,000 air attacks on about 7,000 targets in Lebanon between 12 July and 14 August, while the Navy conducted an additional 2,500 bombardments. The attacks, though widespread, particularly concentrated on certain areas. An estimated 1,183 people died, about one third of whom were children, 4,054 people were injured and 970,000 Lebanese people have been displaced.

Jonathan Cook wrote:

It is also not clear, as I tried to document during the war, from the geographical locations where Hizbullah's rockets struck. My ability to discuss those locations was limited because all journalists based in Israel are subject to the rules of the military censor. We cannot divulge information useful to the "enemy" about Israel's myriad military installations -- its army camps, military airfields, intelligence posts, arms stores and Rafael weapons factories.

What I did try to alert readers to was the fact that many, if not most, of those military sites are located next to or inside Israeli communities, including Arab towns and villages. [my emphasis]

At least it is now possible, because some army positions were temporary, to reveal that many communities in the north had artillery batteries stationed next to them firing into Lebanon and that from Haifa Bay warships continually launched warheads at Lebanon. That information is now publicly available in Israel, and other examples are regularly coming to light.

I reported, for example, the other day that the Haaretz newspaper referred to legal documents to be presented in a compensation suit which show that the Arab village of Fassouta, close to the border with Lebanon, had an artillery battery stationed next to it throughout much of the war. A press release this week from a Nazareth-based welfare organisation, the Laborers' Voice, reveals that another battery was positioned by an Arab town, Majd al-Krum, during the war. Arab member of Knesset Abbas Zakour has also gone publicly on the record: "During a short visit to offer condolences to the families of victims killed in Hizbullah's rocket attacks, I saw Israeli tanks shelling Lebanon from the two towns of Arab Al-Aramisha and Tarshiha."

In other Arab communities, including Jish, Shaghour, and Kfar Manda, the Israeli army requisitioned areas to train their troops for the ground invasion of south Lebanon. According to the Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA), based in Nazareth, army officials justified their decision on the following grounds: "The landscape of Arab towns [in Israel] is similar to Arab towns in Lebanon." ...

It might be possible to dismiss Bouckaert's comments as the private opinion of one researcher (even if one of HRW's most senior) were it not for the fact that the organisation has stood by his statements in correspondence with me. I have been told that Bouckaert's assertions are justified because "we generally conclude that the use of weapons that can't be targeted / are not precise, eg. are indiscriminate, when fired into civilian areas, are in and of themselves evidence of targeting civilians."

In fact, I know from conversations with Israeli journalists that Hizbullah's rockets were not as inaccurate as HRW would like to assume. Several important military sites were hit by Hizbullah rockets, though none of those incidents were reported and apparently cannot be as long as the military censorship rules apply.

I have also seen the deep scarring and charred brush on a hillside in northern Israel where an important army bunker used by military planners is located -- evidence that Hizbullah knew exactly what was there and successfully aimed many of its rockets at the site.

Is it still possible to presume that Hizbullah is "directly" targeting civilians, as Bouckaert claims? HRW again: "We can conclude that they [Hizbullah] are targeting civilians and not just failing to discriminate sufficiently because the weapons themselves are not capable of being targeted with any real degree of precision, according to our arms division, so they know full well that the likelihood is that the weapons will not hit their target / will kill civilians."

What are we supposed to make of this argument from the world's foremost human rights organisation? HRW is accusing Hizbullah of committing graver war crimes than Israel, even though it killed far fewer civilians both numerically and proportionally, because its rockets are "less accurate". HRW is saying, in effect, that whatever Hizbullah's and Israel's respective intentions and whatever the respective outcomes of their attacks, Hizbullah must be treated as the greater pariah because its technology is inferior. Whether or not Hizbullah was aiming for military targets is irrelevant, says HRW, because its primitive rockets were likely to hit civilians -- as opposed to Israel, which struck at Lebanese civilians with precision weapons.

And all of this, of course, entirely ignores Israel's use of as many as 100,000 cluster bombs, leaving an indiscriminate legacy of bomblets across south Lebanon that will kill and maim for months, and possibly years, to come. Is that not "clear" proof that Israel was "deliberately" targeting Lebanese civilians?

HRW's logic appears to be arguing that Hizbullah had no right -- given its inadequate rocket technology -- to defend its country from Israel's massive bombardment of Lebanon's civilian population. In other words, it had no right of self-defence because its military arsenal was inferior. It should have sat out the weeks of aerial attacks, refusing to engage Israel until the Israeli army decided it was time to mount a ground invasion. Only at that point, HRW implies, did Hizbullah have the right to strike back.

Such an argument effectively legitimises the use of military might by the stronger party, thereby making a nonsense of international law and the human rights standards HRW is supposed to uphold.

Now have a look at this video produced by AI and AI satellite images from Lebanon and speculate about the "accuracy" of Israel's bombs and artillery.


Of course, a war crime is a war crime regardless who commits it and should be prosecuted.

I just wish that there was a little more perspective and that the biggest war criminals in terms of definitions laid down in the Nuremberg war crime trials and UN conventions (G.W. Bush and Rumsfeld for the catastrophy they unleashed in Iraq) had their day in court first. Then after putting Sharon on trial for his responsibility (Kahan Commission) in the massacres of Sabra and Shatilla in the previous invasion of Lebanon by Israel they could see if Nasrallah is guilty of these crimes as well.