{"id":147,"date":"2006-08-02T07:54:39","date_gmt":"2006-08-02T05:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/?p=147"},"modified":"2009-12-29T13:56:48","modified_gmt":"2009-12-29T11:56:48","slug":"blogging-the-war-double-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/2006\/08\/blogging-the-war-double-standards\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogging the War: Double Standards"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Tuesday, August 1, 2006. The link is here<\/a>.<\/a>Will Qana tragedy be the turning point for the war?<\/span>
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\"\"<\/a>
\nIf there were ever a need
\nto provide further fuel for America’s favorite diplomatic past-time,
\nFrance-bashing, the French Foreign Minister served it up it in spades
\non Monday. Speaking during a trip to Lebanon, Minister Philippe
\nDouste-Blazy declared, “In the region there is, of course, a country
\nsuch as Iran – a great country, a great people and a great civilization
\nwhich is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region.”<\/span>Douste-Blazy’s comments
\nwould be outrageous at any time, but coming a day after Israel’s tragic
\ntargeting of an apartment block housing terrorists, missiles, rocket
\nlaunchers\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6and – depending on conflicting reports – somewhere between 28 and 56 innocent civilians, including many children, who were killed in the blast,
\nDouste-Blazy’s words epitomize the double standard that has plagued
\nIsrael throughout all its battles, no less so in its current conflict
\nwith Hezbollah and Hamas.<\/p>\n

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Yes, the attack in Qana on
\nSunday was horrific. But sucking up to Iran isn’t going to make
\nHezbollah stop hiding behind civilians, a tactic it has employed
\nnumerous times to turn the tide of world opinion as it did in Qana. Nor
\nwill the words of UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett who, referring
\nto the deaths in Qana, said “it’s absolutely dreadful, it’s quite
\nappalling.”<\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/p>\n

Where were Ms. Beckett’s
\nwords of shock and condemnation these past three weeks as Hezbollah has
\ndeliberately targeted Israel’s cities, forcing over a million citizens
\ninto bomb shelters?<\/p>\n

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How did the apartment
\ncomplex in Qana come to be targeted in the first place? After much
\nscrambling, Israel released footage late Sunday night purporting to
\nshow a similar building being used as cover for the launching of dozens
\nof Katyushas headed for Haifa, Afula and beyond (see image above of a Katyusha launcher).<\/p>\n

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The Israeli Air Force
\nidentified the building that collapsed as being a Hezbollah command
\ncenter and said it had no idea there were civilians hiding in the bomb
\nshelters. Israel says that it had warned residents to get out of town,
\ndropping leaflets and making announcements by bullhorn.<\/p>\n

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In Gaza, Israel has taken
\nthis kind of advanced warning system to a new level: the army is now
\nmaking telephone calls to the residents of a building about to be
\ntargeted for its use by terrorists in launching Qassam rockets against
\nsouthern Israeli towns.<\/p>\n

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Did the Pesachov family
\nnear Safed get a phone call from Hezbollah before the Katyusha landed
\nin the family’s living room, killing a grandmother and her
\nseven-year-old grandchild? Did Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah
\napologize to even a single Israeli the way all of Israel’s top brass –
\nfrom the Prime Minister on down – did immediately after the Qana
\nincident?<\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/p>\n

United Nations Secretary
\nGeneral Kofi Annan on Sunday urged the U.N. to condemn the air strike
\nin Qana but, remarkably, the Security Council couldn’t figure out the
\nlanguage and, blocked by objections to strengthen the language from
\nQatar of all places, for once showed momentary restraint “only”
\nexpressing its “extreme shock and distress.”<\/p>\n

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Israel announced on Monday
\na 48-hour quasi-ceasefire – the Air Force would halt proactive
\nmissions, although it pledged to provide cover for ground forces and
\ntake out “imminent threats.” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
\nhightailed it back to Washington after canceling a trip to Beirut,
\nbroadly telegraphing her intentions to get a full ceasefire in place by
\nthe weekend.<\/p>\n

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The Israeli army says it
\nstill needs 10-14 days to completely silence Hezbollah, but some
\ngenerals on Monday were already hinting that all of Hezbollah’s border
\nbases within two kilometers of Israel could be cleared as early as
\nThursday. Another report optimistically claimed that Israel had taken
\nout 2\/3 of Hezbollah’s long-range missile arsenal.<\/p>\n

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That won’t stop the
\nKatyushas, though, of which an estimated 9,000 still exist, but it
\ncould quell the clamoring and complaints within Israel that will erupt
\nif the war is forced to be called off “too soon,” providing the
\ngovernment and the army with at least some mild face saving.<\/p>\n

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Will Qana prove to be the
\nturning point in the war with Hezbollah? It certainly was in 1996 when
\na stray Israeli shell aimed killed 102 civilians in nearly the same
\nlocation, forcing the government of Shimon Peres to order an abrupt and
\nearly end to an Israeli counter-terror operation known as “Grapes of
\nWrath.”<\/p>\n

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Ten years later, Israeli
\nPrime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz are singing
\na different tune. Olmert and crew undoubtedly knew “their” Qana moment
\nwould come and were ready for it.<\/p>\n

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“Israel is continuing to
\nfight,” Olmert declared in an address to the nation on Monday night as
\nthe cabinet to expand the ground operation – something that had been
\nturned down just days before in favor of more air power. “We will stop
\nthe war when the threat is removed, our captive soldiers return home in
\npeace, and you are able to live in safety and security \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 we are
\ndetermined to come out victorious in this battle.”<\/p>\n

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“We are fighting against
\nruthless terrorists and we will not stop until they are pushed back
\nfrom our border,” Olmert added.
\n“We have to finish the operation,” Defense Minister Peretz declared.
\n“The army will expand and deepen its actions against Hezbollah.”v
\nIsraeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon also downplayed the ceasefire in
\nthe air. “It is not stopping the war. If it ends today it means a
\nvictory for Hezbollah… and for world terror, with far-reaching
\nconsequences. Therefore this war is not about to end, not today and not
\ntomorrow,” he said.<\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel may, ironically,
\nreceive help in its PR campaign from an unlikely source – an
\nanti-Syrian Lebanese group, which is claiming that Hezbollah gunmen
\ndeliberately “placed a rocket launcher on the building’s roof” in Qana,
\nthen brought “invalid children inside, in a bid to provoke an Israeli
\nresponse.” The Lebanese website Libanoscopie, which is associated with
\nthe Christian “March 14 Forces” group, says that Qana was picked
\nbecause it is already a symbol for “massacring innocent civilians” and
\nthat Hezbollah’s plot was meant to turn attention away from Lebanese
\nPrime Minister Fouad Siniora’s “Seven Points Plan” which calls for
\ndeployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon and the disarming
\nof Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/p>\n

It was Nachman Shai,
\nthough, who perhaps put it best. Writing on Monday, the former IDF
\nspokesperson, who served in that capacity during the first Gulf War and
\nwho is currently the Director-General of the United Jewish Communities’
\nIsrael Office, addressed both the war and the public relations
\nchallenge.<\/p>\n

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“Israel must continue its
\nmilitary actions,” Shai stressed. “I know this is a difficult decision,
\nwhich some claim shows callousness and indifference. Nevertheless …
\nthis kind of accident should not divert attention from the main
\nchallenge we face: a democratic, Western country which acts according
\nto moral standards faces a fundamentalist terror organization that acts
\nagainst and from within the civil population, intentionally and
\nbrutally. We must present and market these facts, repeatedly and
\npersistently.”<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/span>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

In a world where battles
\nare fought both on and off the battlefield, carefully choosing one’s
\nwords may be the best weapon Israel has against the international
\ndouble standard.<\/p>\n

——————————-<\/p>\n

A perfect flight tracker<\/a> site should not only have information on airlines<\/a> but details on even Florida hotels<\/a> and should get hotel reservations<\/a> for you as well. The site should be able to book you on jet airlines<\/a> with as much ease as any car rental<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/span>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was posted on Jewish.com on Tuesday, August 1, 2006. The link is here.Will Qana tragedy be the turning point for the war? \u00c2\u00a0 If there were ever a need to provide further fuel for America’s favorite diplomatic past-time, France-bashing, the French Foreign Minister served it up it in spades on Monday. Speaking during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,6,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1174,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/1174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}