"If
You Haven't Left, You're Hezbollah"
By Dahr Jamail
31 July, 2006
Inter Press Service
SIDON, Lebanon, Jul
30 (IPS) - The Israeli attack on Qana has taken the biggest
toll of the war, but it is only one of countless lethal attacks on civilians
in Lebanon.
Large numbers fled the south
after Israelis dropped leaflets warning of attacks. Others have been
unable to leave, often because they have not found the means. The Israelis
have taken that to mean that they are therefore Hezbollah.
Israeli justice minister
Haim Ramon announced on Israeli army radio Thursday that "all those
in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah."
Justifying the collective
punishment of people in southern Lebanon, Ramon added, "In order
to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants
in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by the Israeli air
force before ground troops move in."
This policy explains the
large number of wounded in the hospitals of Sidon in the south..
Wounded people from southern
Lebanon narrate countless instances of indiscriminate attacks by the
Israeli military.
Thirty-six-year-old Khuder
Gazali, an ambulance driver whose arm was blown off by an Israeli rocket,
told IPS that his ambulance was hit while trying to rescue civilians
whose home had just been bombed.
"Last Sunday people
came to us and asked us to go help some people after their home was
bombed by the Israelis," he said from his bed in Hamoudi Hospital
in Sidon, the largest in southern Lebanon. "We found one of them,
without his legs, lying in a garden, so we tried to take him to the
nearest hospital."
On way to the hospital an
Israeli Apache helicopter hit his ambulance with a rocket, severely
injuring him and the four people in the back of the vehicle, he said.
"So then another ambulance
tried to reach us to rescue us, but it too was bombed by an Apache,
killing everyone inside it," he said. "Then it was a third
ambulance which finally managed to rescue us."
Khuder, who had shrapnel
wounds all over his body, said "this is a crime, and I want people
in the west to know the Israelis do not differentiate between innocent
people and fighters. They are committing acts of evil.. They are attacking
civilians, and they are criminals."
At Labib Medical Centre in
Sidon, countless survivors of Israeli bombardment had similar stories
to tell.
Sixteen-year-old Ibrahim
al-Hama told IPS that he and his friends were hit by an Israeli bomb
while they were swimming in a river near a village north of Tyre.
"Two of my friends were
killed, along with a woman," said al-Hama. "Why did they bomb
us?"
In an adjacent room, a man
whose wife and two small children were recovering from wounds suffered
in Israeli bombing told IPS that they had left their village near the
border because the bombings had become fierce, and the Israeli military
had dropped leaflets ordering them to leave.
"We ran out of food,
and the children were hungry, so they left with my wife and her sister
in a car which followed a Red Crescent ambulance, while another car
took the two other sisters of my wife," he said. "They reached
Kafra village, and an F-16 bombed the car with my wife's two sisters.
They are dead."
Such killings have been common
throughout the south.
On July 23, a family left
their village after Israelis dropped leaflets ordering them out. Their
car carried a white flag, but was still bombed by an Israeli plane.
Three in the car were killed.
The same day, three of 19
passengers in a van heading away from the southern village Tiri were
killed when it was bombed by an Israeli plane.
A 43-year-old man from Durish
Zhair village south of Tyre lay at the Labib Medical Centre with multiple
shrapnel wounds and half his body blackened by fire.
"Please tell them to
stop using white phosphorous," he said. "The Israelis must
stop these attacks. Do not allow the Israelis to continue murdering
us." He and his family were bombed in their home.
Zhair said his family were
scattered in hospitals and refugee centres in Sidon and Beirut. But
in the hospital hallway outside his room, head nurse of the hospital
Gemma Sayer said "all of his family is dead. We cannot tell him
yet because he is so badly injured."
United Nations forces have
been targeted again by the Israelis. Two soldiers with the UN peacekeeping
force in southern Lebanon were wounded after their observation post
was damaged in an Israeli air strike.
Last week, an Israeli missile
killed four UN observers; an attack that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
described as "apparently deliberate."
Thousands of angry protestors
stormed the UN building in Beirut Sunday after at least 34 children
and 20 adults were killed inside a shelter targeted by an Israeli air
strike in the southern town Qana.
As Israeli military drones
buzzed over the capital city, smoke was seen rising from the building
as UN troops struggled to control the crowds.
Efforts to evacuate the wounded
in Qana have been hindered because roads around the town have been destroyed
by air strikes.
The Israeli military refused
to take responsibility for the Qana deaths, because they said Hezbollah
had used the village to launch rockets.
Lebanese President Emile
Lahoud told reporters Sunday that the Qana attack was a "disgrace"
and that there was no chance for peace talks until an immediate ceasefire
was called. "Israel's leaders think of nothing but destruction,
they do not think of peace."
Prime Minister Fuad Siniora
described the bombing in Qana as a "war crime." At least 600
Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 51 Israelis have been killed since the
conflict began.