The "hiding among civilians" myth (updated)

Israel justifies its killing of Lebanese civilians by saying that Hezbollah fire their rockets deliberately in built up areas so to ensure Israel causes casualties amongst their own people. A Mitch Prothero article at Salon.com (ht) article gives the lie to that one. Why would they do that when there are so many spies and collaborators there?

Israel claims it's justified in bombing civilians because Hezbollah mingles with them. In fact, the militant group doesn't trust its civilians and stays as far away from them as possible.

Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around their targets, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths -- the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far -- on "terrorists" who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.

But this claim is almost always false. My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters -- as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers -- avoid civilians. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators -- as so many Palestinian militants have been.

UPDATE: via via

Hizbullah rockets cannot be fired from buildings

31/07/2006 | The Irish Times
Tom Clonan

Hizbullah has fired almost 2,000 missiles into Israel over the last fortnight, killing more than 50 Israelis and forcing almost one million into air raid shelters.

Despite this provocation, however, Israel's response has been sharply criticised as "disproportionate" in many quarters. In the aftermath of the deaths of dozens of innocent Lebanese women and children at Qana yesterday, even the US has urged the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to modify their responses to Hizbullah's attacks.

IDF spokespeople are maintaining that Hizbullah had been mounting missile attacks on Israeli territory from Qana in recent days. The IDF has claimed it targeted the three-storey house in Qana at 1.30am local time in the belief it contained a Hizbullah "asset".

Any investigation into the targeting of this house will have to consider precisely what kind of Hizbullah "asset" could possibly have been hidden in a modest, low-rise building among the narrow streets of a village such as Qana.

The type of missiles being fired by Hizbullah at Israeli cities cannot be fired from within houses, mosques, hospitals or even UN facilities as has been suggested by the IDF. Due to the massive "back-blast" caused by the rocket launchers of these missiles, they can only be fired from open ground. To fire them from within a building would result in the instant death of the missile crew and probable destruction of the missile before launch. Most of the missiles are truck-mounted and are fired - on open ground - from the backs of flat-bedded trucks or larger four-wheel-drive vehicles.

When fired, these missiles generate an enormous flare of light, heat and sound energy - a heat and light signature which is readily detected by IDF target-acquisition systems. Accurate retaliatory fire can be directed at Hizbullah launch sites by IDF aircraft and ground artillery in seconds. Such a reaction would be considered by international military norms to be proportionate and within the general "rules of engagement".

In these circumstances, having fired their missiles, Hizbullah tends to disperse as rapidly as possible. It is unlikely that a flat-bedded truck with a multilaunch rocket-system mounted on it could be easily and rapidly hidden in a village as small as Qana. Nor is it likely that such a truck-mounted weapon or four-wheel-drive vehicle could easily be hidden in a house such as the one targeted by the IDF yesterday.

The pattern and circumstances of the attack are sinister. With no telltale scorch marks from a Hizbullah missile launch visible near the destroyed house, and with no Hizbullah fighters among the dead and injured, the question remains as to what kind of "asset" the IDF could credibly allege to have been contained within the building.

The timing of the attack, taking place as it did during a period of relative calm and not in the immediate aftermath of a Hizbullah missile launch, speaks of a punitive strike designed simply to kill members of the Shia community from which Hizbullah is drawn and receives its moral support. The targeting of unarmed Shia women and children would represent a deliberate targeting of innocent civilians for retaliatory or punitive purposes, and may well constitute a war crime.

Tom Clonan is The Irish Times security analyst.

Comments

[InFact]

In fact, eyewitness Lebanese prove that Hezbollah uses civilian shields:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28refugees.html?ref=middleeast

Furthermore, if you read the first paragraph of Mr. Prothero's article, you may notice that he disproves his own argument from the outset:
Lebanon -- The bombs came just as night fell, around 7 p.m. The locals knew that the 10-story apartment building had been the office, and possibly the residence, of Sheik Tawouk, the Hezbollah commander for the south, so they had moved their families out at the start of the war. The landlord had refused to rent to Hezbollah when they requested the top floors of the building. No matter, the locals said, the Hezb guys just moved in anyway in the name of the "resistance."
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/07/28/hezbollah/

[Shavez]

SHOCK NEWS: Hezbollah members live in houses!

[Omri]

The Salon articule is [edited]. Check out this video.

http://vitalperspective.typepad.com/vital_perspective_clarity/2006/08/video_hezbollah.html

[Shavez]

Seems Israel aren't averse to using human shields
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/press/releases/palestine210706.htm

[Osama]

I'm sorry, Omri and In Fact, what you are maintaining is greatly preposterous. Take Qana. You are asking us to believe that rockets were fired from a building, hard enough to reach all the way to Israel, with all the resultant noise, fire and debris - and that scores of children just hung about the building during and afterwards.