Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Deadly Hezbollah chess match - How Hezbollah used civilians

Despite the fact that the human rights council was intent upon heaping blame upon Israel for alleged war crimes during the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, the truth about the real criminals is starting to emerge. Hezbollah was playing a very deadly game with the civilian population, and this article, by James Zumwalt highlights the criminality of Hezbollah. Prior to the commencement of hostilities there was a secret Hezbollah operation that was mounted well before the commencement of hostilities. This secret operation was in violation of international law because its aim was to put the civilian population at risk, and significantly increased the civilian toll. During the 1980s, when Syria was in control in Lebanon, a group of 500 Iranian Revolutionary Guards were allowed into the country and to settle in the Lebanese city of Baalbek. This group was funded by Tehran, and they curried favour with the local population by providing social services. Thus, the Hezbollah were able to carry out their real task with the local population accepting the activity in blind faith and without knowledge of what was involved. The activity was the conversion of private homes into mini-military sites from which Hezbollah operatives could easily target Israel's civilian population. The Lebanese population became the unwitting sacrificial lambs for the sinister aims of Hezbollah. The modifications that were carried out in these homes was done at night, when the military equipment was enclosed in a sealed room. The operation of building these sites was kept under wraps to the point that the homeowner and neighbours were not aware of what was taking place. The homes were chosen for their proximity to the Israeli border. The Hezbollah might have thought that they were unobserved but Israel, through its spy planes knew exactly the location of each of these military sites, meaning that they could pinpoint these locations with significant accuracy. Every time a new site was completed it was added to the list kept by the Israelis. I do suspect that if we were to discover more about the Qana incident that the house that was "bombed" had been remodelled and that it did contain a piece of military equipment. I also think it is probable that the owner of the building knew the purpose of the room, and that when the building was "struck", that the operatives then destroyed the military equipment that led to the building collapse. The house was located in a position where a rocket launched from there could reach into Israel.