Israeli war crimes aimed at “cleansing” south Lebanon

[Karmadillo]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/leba-a09.shtml

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There was no indication that the town was used to launch rockets against Israel or had any intrinsic strategic significance. The objective was merely to further terrorize people who have already suffered the loss of their homes and seen members of their families massacred in the relentless Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon. The aim is to force them to flee further north, or kill them.

Israeli planes have dropped leaflets on southern Lebanon announcing an open-ended curfew, violation of which is punishable by death from the air. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has warned that any vehicles on the roads will be struck. Anyone disobeying these orders will be considered a terrorist and a target for Israeli bombs, missiles and shells.

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The Israeli practice is akin to a serial murderer telephoning death threats to people before killing them and then blaming the victims for their own deaths, because, after all, “they were warned.”

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In the Israeli offensive against south Lebanon, the media invariably refers to air strikes and ground assaults against “Hezbollah strongholds,” a formulation meant to conceal the fact that the real target is the Shiite population as a whole. Missiles, cluster bombs and artillery shells are employed to massacre men, women and children in order to terrorize the entire population and send them fleeing north.

Unlike the wave of moral outrage generated by the US media over the alleged ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, which was critical in conditioning public opinion and providing a pretext for Washington’s war against Serbia, there is no similar condemnation of Israel for the mass expulsion of a population.

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