The
Child Lies Like A Rag Doll -
A Symbol Of The Latest Lebanon War
By Robert Fisk in
Beirut
20 July, 2006
The Independent
How
soon must we use the
words "war crime"? How
many children must be
scattered in the rubble of
Israeli air attacks before
we reject the obscene phrase
"collateral damage" and
start talking about
prosecution for crimes against
humanity?
The child whose dead body
lies like a rag doll beside the cars which were supposedly taking her
and her family to safety is a symbol of the latest Lebanon war; she
was hurled from the vehicle in which she and her family were traveling
in southern Lebanon as they fled their village - on Israel's own instructions.
Because her parents were apparently killed in the same Israeli air attack,
her name is still unknown. Not an unknown warrior, but an unknown child.
The story of her death, however,
is well documented. On Saturday, the inhabitants of the tiny border
village of Marwaheen were ordered by Israeli troops - apparently using
a bullhorn - to leave their homes by 6pm. Marwaheen lies closest to
the spot where Hizbollah guerrillas broke through the frontier wire
a week ago to capture two Israeli soldiers and kill three others, the
attack which provoked this latest cruel war in Lebanon. The villagers
obeyed the Israeli orders and initially appealed to local UN troops
of the Ghanaian battalion for protection.
But the Ghanaian soldiers,
obeying guidelines set down by the UN's headquarters in New York in
1996, refused to permit the Lebanese civilians to enter their base.
By terrible irony, the UN's rules had been drawn up after their soldiers
gave protection to civilians during an Israeli bombardment of southern
Lebanon in 1996 in which 106 Lebanese, more than half of them children,
were slaughtered when the Israelis shelled the UN compound at Qana,
in which they had been given sanctuary.
So the people of Marwaheen
set off for the north in a convoy of cars which only minutes later,
close to the village of Tel Harfa, were attacked by an Israeli F-16
fighter-bomber. It bombed all the cars and killed at least 20 of the
civilians travelling in them, many of them women and children. Twelve
people were burnt alive in their vehicles but others, including the
child who lies like a rag doll near the charred civilian convoy, whose
photograph was taken - at great risk - by an Associated Press photographer,
Nasser Nasser, were blown clear of the cars by the blast of the bombs
and fell into fields and a valley near the scene of the attack. There
has been no apology or expression of regret from Israel for these deaths.
The innocent continued to
die yesterday in Israeli air attacks across Lebanon. Five civilians
were killed when an Israeli missile struck a house near the town of
Nabatea. Three members of the Hamed family were killed along with their
Sri Lankan maid. In the village of Srifa, in the south, Israeli air
strikes flattened 15 houses which were homes to at least 23 people but
- with no lifting vehicles able to reach that part of the country -
there was no way of rescuing anyone alive trapped in the buildings.
The Lebanese civil authorities,
however, were able to give names to the dead after an Israeli air raid
on the Bekaa Valley village of Nabi Chit; they included Ali Suleiman;
Daoud Hazima; Khadija Moussawi and her children Bilal, Talal and Yasmine;
Maouffaq Diab; Ahmed and Khairallah Mouawad; Mustafa Jroud and Bushra
Shuqr. At least three of the names were female. Another four civilians
were killed in an air raid on the village of Loussi in eastern Lebanon.
The Israelis constantly boast
of their "pin-point" or "surgical" precision in
air attacks. If this is true, then there are far too many civilians
being killed in the Lebanese bloodbath to make every one of them an
accident. And since Israel's target list now includes obviously civilian
targets - deliberately bombed to punish the civilian population - the
evidence is mounting that these air raids are intended to kill the innocent
as well as the Hizbollah guerrillas whom Israel claims to be fighting.
True, the Hizbollah are killing
civilians in Israel, but their missiles are inaccurate and the West,
which has done no more than mildly disapprove of Israel's retaliatory
onslaught, must surely expect higher standards of the Israeli armed
forces than of the men whom both Israel and President George Bush describe
as "terrorists".
Why, for example, did the
Israelis attack and destroy the headquarters of the Liban-Lait company
in the Bekaa Valley, the largest milk factory in Lebanon? Why did they
bomb out the factory of the main importer for Proctor and Gamble products
in Lebanon, based in Bchmoun? Why did they destroy a paper box factory
outside Beirut? And why did Israeli planes attack a convoy of new ambulances
being brought into Lebanon from Syria yesterday, vehicles which were
the gift of the medical authorities of the United Arab Emirates? The
ambulances were clearly marked as a relief aid convoy, according to
an Emirates official. Were all these "terrorist" targets?
Was the little girl in the field at Tel Harfa a "terrorist"
target?
An example of Israel's lack
of care in targeting Lebanon came yesterday morning when an Israeli
plane fired four missiles into a disused parking lot in the Christian
district of Ashrafieh in Beirut. Their targets turned out to be two
derelict water drilling lorries which were standing tyre-deep in weeds.
Were the tubes on the back of the lorries supposed to be missile launchers?
And if so, who imagined that Hizbollah would ever try to conceal such
weapons in a Christian area of Beirut where Hizbollah believe many of
Israel's own collaborators live.
In Beirut and Nabatea, Lebanese
security men claim to have arrested "collaborators" who were
"painting" houses and cars with phosphorus to guide in Israeli
jets to destroy them. At the same time, the Lebanese Minister of Finance,
Jihad Azour, stated that 45 bridges had been destroyed across Lebanon
and 60,000 families - 500,000 civilians - have been displaced.
Thousands of foreigners -
many of them Lebanese holding dual citizenship - continued to leave
the country by bus and ship yesterday, including hundreds of Britons
who started the evacuation on Monday in HMS Gloucester. Americans were
leaving by sea, although a French security company in Amman - SPO Middle
East - was reported to have been hired by the US to evacuate its citizens
by bus at a cost of $3,000 (£1,700) a head.
They, of course, are the
lucky ones, who will finish their journeys in Damascus or Cyprus rather
than beside a burnt convoy at Tel Harfa.
© 2006 Independent News
and Media Limited