She says Human Rights Watch "predictably" denounced the bombing in Qana. Yeah, imagine that. A group dedicated to human rights denouncing a missile strike that resulted in the death of 56 civilians and at least 19 children. Of course, Michelle doesn't believe that Israel killed the civilians - she believes that Hezbollah killed them. Even so, were sufficient evidence to establish that, Human Rights Watch would surely condemn such an act harshly.
She continues on to say that Hezbollah's missiles are more indiscriminate than Israel's, noting that they load their rockets with ball bearings to maximise the harm to civilians. Then she asks rhetorically, "where is the human rights crowd on that?" Actually, Michelle, the "human rights crowd" is busy denouncing it.
Hezbollah's attacks in Israel on Sunday and Monday were at best indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas, at worst the deliberate targeting of civilians. Either way, they were serious violations of international humanitarian law and probable war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today.This sort of intellectual dishonesty is despicable, especially so from someone who professes to be a journalist.
In addition, the warheads used suggest a desire to maximize harm to civilians. Some of the rockets launched against Haifa over the past two days contained hundreds of metal ball bearings that are of limited use against military targets but cause great harm to civilians and civilian property. The ball bearings lodge in the body and cause serious harm.
Hezbollah has reportedly fired more than 800 rockets into Israel from southern Lebanon over the past five days, killing 12 civilians and wounding many more. The vast majority of these rockets, as in past conflicts, have been Katyushas, which are small, have a range limited to the border area, and cannot be aimed with precision. Hezbollah has also fired some rockets in the current fighting that have landed up to 40 kilometers inside Israel.
Michelle also states that Hezbollah hides among civilians. Michelle was unable to notice that Human Rights Watch also denounced that.
So since Michelle despises moral equivalency so much, perhaps she could tell us how many civilian dead resulted from Hezbollah's firing rockets from Qana and then compare that to how many civilian dead resulted from Israel air striking Qana, and then perhaps some details about what Israel expected to accomplish with the attack, how many civilians it anticipated being in the area, etc. and maybe we can see in perspective if this strike met the spirit, if not the letter, of international law.
Can Israel attack neighborhoods that house Hezbollah leaders or offices? And what are Hezbollah's obligations regarding the use of civilian areas for military activities?
Where the targeting of a combatant takes place in an urban area, all parties must be aware of their obligations to protect the civilian population, as the bombing of urban areas significantly increases the risks to the civilian population. International humanitarian law obliges all belligerents to avoid harm to civilians or civilian objects.
The defending party in the case of Beirut, Hezbollah must take all necessary precautions to protect civilians against the dangers resulting from armed hostilities, and must never use the presence of civilians to shield themselves from attack. That requires positioning its military assets, troops and commanders as much as possible outside of populated areas. The use of human shields is a war crime.
In calculating the legality of an attack on premises where a Hezbollah combatant is present, Israel must take into account the risk to civilians. It is not relieved from this obligation on the grounds that it considers Hezbollah responsible for having located legitimate military targets within or near populated areas, or that Hezbollah may be using the civilian population as a shield. Even in situations of Hezbollah's illegal location of military targets, or shielding, Israel must refrain from launching any attack that may be expected to cause excessive civilian loss in comparison to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. That is, a violation by Hezbollah in this regard does not justify Israeli forces ignoring the civilian consequences of a planned attack. The intentional launch of an attack in an area without regard to the civilian consequences or in the knowledge that the harm to civilians would be disproportionately high compared to any definite military benefit to be achieved would be a serious violation of international humanitarian law, and a war crime.
Since she is apparently too busy to check into such matters, I'll save her some time and provide a link to Alonzo at the Atheist Ethicist, since he's already done the leg work for her.
Or hell, maybe she could listen to Pat Buchanan. He seems to be making a lot of sense.
No sooner had Hezbollah taken the two Israeli soldiers hostage [Blogger's Note - and killed 8 other soldiers] than Israel unleashed an air war -- on Lebanon. The Beirut airport was bombed, its fuel storage tanks set ablaze. The coast was blockaded. Power plants, gas stations, lighthouses, bridges, roads, trucks and buses were all hit with air strikes.
Within 48 hours, it was apparent Israel was exploiting Hezbollah's attack to execute a preconceived military plan to destroy Lebanon -- i.e, the collective punishment of a people and nation for the crimes of a renegade militia they could not control. It was the moral equivalent of a municipal police going berserk, shooting, killing and ravaging an African-American community, because Black Panthers had ambushed and killed cops.
If Israel is not in violation of the principle of proportionality, by which Christians are to judge the conduct of a just war, what can that term mean? There are 600 civilian dead in Lebanon, 19 in Israel, a ratio of 30-1, though Hezbollah is firing unguided rockets, while Israel is using precision-guided munitions.
Thousands of Lebanese civilians are injured. Perhaps 800,000 are homeless.
Yet, whatever one thinks of the morality of what Israel is doing, the stupidity is paralyzing. Instead of maintaining the moral and political high ground it had -- when even Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan were condemning Hezbollah, and privately hoping Israel would inflict a humiliating defeat on Nasrallah -- Israel launched an air war on an innocent people. Now, 87 percent of Lebanese back Hezbollah, and the entire Arab and Islamic world, Shia and Sunni alike, is rallying behind Nasrallah.
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This is not the first time Michelle has ignored/confused the facts around human rights groups and their response to events in the Middle East.
Go here: http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005419.htm
She links to a press release from the US branch of Amnesty, but then claims their web site doesn't have the press release posted. However, her link takes you to the International site for the organization, not the site for the US Chapter (who authored the press release).
If you go to the AmnestyUSA site, the press release was posted the same day (contrary to Michelle's claims).
Readers of Shakespeare and of Florence King will appreciate the irony of Malkin's name.
I didn't say she was a journalist. I said she professes to be a journalist.
She is a republitard. Her audience are republitards. It's not that she is lying, it's that she wouldn't know the truth if it bit her in the ass.
This is far from unique to contemporary American conservatism. It's typically fascist. Nazis blamed the Holocaust on the Jews. When Latvian anti-Soviet protestors were crushed under the wheels of Soviet tanks in January 1991, the Soviet press claimed they had thrown themselves under the tanks. What we're seeing here is simply fascist instincts.
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