Hypocrisy
And The Clamor
Against Hizbullah
By Jonathan Cook
in Nazareth
10 August, 2006
Countercurrents.org
A reader recently emailed to
ask if anyone else was suggesting, as I have done, that Hizbullah’s
rocket fire may not be quite as indiscriminate or maliciously targeted
at Israeli civilians as is commonly assumed. I had to admit that I have
been ploughing a lonely furrow on this one. Still, that is no reason
in itself to join everyone else, even if the consensus includes every
mainstream commentator as well as groups such as Human Rights Watch.
First, let us get my argument straight. I have not claimed, as most
of my critics wish to argue, that Hizbullah targets only military sites
or that it never aims at civilians. According to the Israeli army, more
than 3,300 rockets have hit Israel over the past four weeks. How can
I know, or even claim to know, where all those rockets have landed,
or know what the Hizbullah operatives who fired each rocket intended
to hit? I have never made such claims.
What I have argued instead is twofold. First, we cannot easily know
what Hizbullah is trying to hit because Israel has located most of its
army camps, weapons factories and military installations near or inside
civilian communities. If a Hizbullah rocket slams into an Israeli town
with a weapons factory, should we count that as an attack on civilians
or on a military site?
The claim being made against Hizbullah in Lebanon -- that it is “cowardly
blending” with civilians, according to the UN’s Jan Egeland
-- can, in truth, be made far more convincingly of the Israeli army.
While there has been little convincing evidence that Hizbullah is firing
its rocket from towns and villages in south Lebanon, or that its fighters
are hiding there among civilians, it can be known beyond a shadow of
a doubt that Israeli army camps and military installations are based
in northern Israeli communities.
An obvious point that no one seems to be making -- and given a news
blackout that lasted several hours, Israel clearly hoped no one would
make -- is that the 12 soldiers who were killed on Sunday in Kfar Giladi
by a Hizbullah rocket were, under Egeland’s definition, “cowardly
blending” with the civilian population of that community. We know
there are still civilians in Giladi because their response to the rocket
barrage was quoted in the Israeli media.
My second claim was that Israel’s military censor is preventing
foreign journalists based in Israel, myself included, from discussing
where Hizbullah rockets are landing, and what they may be aimed at.
Under the censorship rules, It is impossible to mention any issue that
touches on Israeli security or defence matters: the location of military
installations, for example, cannot be divulged. It is arguable whether
it would actually be possible to report a Hizbullah strike that hit
a military site inside Israel.
I therefore have to tread carefully in what I say next, relying on information
that is already publicly available, but which at least challenges the
simplistic view that Hizbullah is firing rockets either indiscriminately
or willfully to kill civilians. I draw on two pieces of coverage provided
by BBC World.
On Tuesday, the BBC’s Katya Adler reported from the northern community
of Kiryat Shmona, which has taken the heaviest pounding from Hizbullah
rockets and from which many of the local residents have fled over the
past month. As she stood on a central street describing the difficult
conditions under which the remaining families were living, she had to
shout over the rythmic bark of what sounded like an Israeli tank close
by firing into Lebanon. She made no mention of what was doing the firing
-- and given the censorship laws, my assumption is she cannot. But it
does raise the question of how much of a civilian target Kiryat Shmona
really is.
Consider also this. Throughout the four weeks of fighting, the BBC have
had a presenter and film crew at the top of an area of Haifa known as
the Panorama, above the beautiful Bahai Gardens. As the name suggests,
from there the film crew have had an unrestricted view of the port and
docks below and the wide arc of heavily developed shoreline that stretches
up to Acre.
The spot where the BBC presenters have been standing, telling us regularly
that they can hear the wail of sirens warning Haifa’s residents
to head for the shelters, is in the centre of this sprawling ridge-top
city, in one of the most heavily built up and inhabited areas of Haifa.
So why have the BBC’s presenters been standing there calmly every
day for weeks under the barrage of rockets?
Because all the evidence suggests that Hizbullah has not been trying
to hit the centre of Haifa, where it would be certain of inflicting
high casualties, whether its rockets were on target or slightly adrift.
Instead, as BBC presenters have repeatedly shown us, the overwhelming
majority of rockets land either in the mostly-abandoned port area or
fall short into the bay -- and on the odd occasion travel a little too
far, as one did on Sunday landing on an Arab neighbourhood near the
port and killing two inhabitants.
If Hizbullah’s primary goal is to kill as many civilians as possible
in Haifa, it seems to be going about it in a very strange manner indeed
-- unless we are to believe that none of its rockets could be fired
the extra 1km needed to hit central Haifa. Instead, as is clear from
the view shown by BBC cameras, the port includes many sites far more
“strategic” than the roads, bridges, milk factories and
power stations Israel is destroying in Lebanon: it has the oil refinery,
the naval docks and other installations that, yes, I cannot mention
because of the censorship laws.
At the very least, we should concede to Hizbullah that it is not always
targeting civilians, and very possibly is not mainly targeting civilians,
which might in part explain the comparatively low Israeli civilian casualty
figures.
That said, there are two valid criticisms, both made by Human Rights
Watch, of Hizbullah’s rocket fire -- though exactly the same or
worse criticisms can be made of the Israeli army. Those, unlike HRW,
who single out Hizbullah are being either disingenuous or hypocritical.
One is that Hizbullah has filled many of its rockets with ballbearings.
Most critics of Hizbullah take this as conclusive proof that the group’s
only intent is to kill and injure civilians. Anyone who has seen the
damage done by a katyusha rocket will realise that it is not a very
powerful weapon: it essentially punches a hole in whatever it hits.
The biggest danger is from the shrapnel and from anything added -- like
ballbearings -- that spray out on impact. The shrapnel can kill civilians
nearby, of course, but it can also kill soldiers -- as we saw at Kfar
Giladi -- and can puncture tanks containing flammable liquids like petrol,
causing explosions.
The damage inflicted by the ballbearings is not in itself proof that
Hizbullah is trying to kill Israeli civilians, any more than Israel’s
use of far more lethal cluster bombs is proof that it wants to kill
Lebanese civilians. Both are acting according to the gruesome realities
of war: they want to inflict as much damage as possible with each rocket
strike. That is deplorable, but so is war.
The second criticism made by HRW is that because Hizbullah’s rockets
are rudimentary and lack sophisticated guidance systems they are as
good as indiscriminate. That conclusion is wrong both logically and
semantically. As I have tried to show, the rockets are mostly not indiscriminate
(though presumably some misfire, as do Israeli missiles); rather, they
are not precise.
This, according to Human Rights Watch, still makes Hizbullah’s
rocket attacks war cimes. That may be true, but it of course also means
Israel’s missile strikes and bombardment of Lebanon are war crimes
on the same or a greater scale. Hizbullah’s strikes against civilians
may be intentional or they may be the result of inaccurate guidance
systems trying to hit military targets. Israel’s strikes against
civilians are either intentional or the result of accurate guidance
systems and very faulty, to the point of reckless, military intelligence.
Finally, what about the defence offered by Israel’s supporters
that its air force tries to avoid harming Lebanese civilians by leafletting
them before an attack to warn them that they must leave? The argument’s
thrust is that only those who belong to Hizbullah or give it succour
remain behind in south Lebanon and they are therefore legitimate targets.
(It ignores, of course, hundreds of civilians killed in areas that have
not been leafletted or who were trying to flee, as ordered, when hit
by an Israeli missile. )
Hizbullah, of course, has done precisely the same. In speeches, its
leader Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly warned Israeli residents of areas
like Haifa, Afula, Hadera and Tel Aviv that Hizbullah will hit these
cities with rockets days before it has actually done so. Hizbullah can
claim just as fairly that it has given Israelis fair warning of its
attacks on civilian communities, and that any who remain have only themselves
to blame.
This debate is important because it will determine in the coming months
and years who will be blamed by the international community -- and future
historians -- for committing war crimes. Hizbullah deserves as fair
a hearing as Israel, though at the moment it most certainly is not getting
it.
Like every army in a war, Hizbullah may not acting in a humane manner.
But it is demonstrably acting according to the same standards as the
Israeli army -- and possibly, given Israel’s siting of military
targets in civilian areas, higher ones. The fact that the contrary view
is almost universally held betrays our prejudices rather than anything
about Hizbullah’s acts.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth,
Israel. His book, Blood and Religion: the Unmasking of the Jewish and
Democratic State, is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net