The War of Lebanon is a 15-part documentary produced by Al Jazeera Satellite Channel. This 2-year project cost several hundred thousand dollars and entailed filming over 150 hours of interviews with the major players in the events that took place in Lebanon between 1976 - 1990. more>>
“Often, events told a different story: for example when that angry crowd set alight a soldier as he scrambled out of his armoured vehicle – the single best known image of the British in Basra – and not one of the city’s 20,000 police came to help.”
As I recall this was after two SAS soldiers dressed in Arab civilian clothing were stopped at a police check point. They killed a policeman but failed to escape, were arrested and the car was found to be full of weapons and explosives. Sounds to me like Black Ops, they were probably going to conduct a terrorist attack at a local religious festival that was on the same day, to heighten sectarian rivalries, the old British “divide and conquer.”
The British Army then attacked the police station to free them during which a civilian threw a petrol bomb on the tank.
All of this goes down Orwell’s memory hole and we are expected to wonder why “not one of the city’s 20,000 police came to help.”
Also a lesser point this sentence is misleading “set alight a soldier as he scrambled out of his armoured vehicle.” Wasn’t the tank set on fire, the petrol and flames leaked inside and the soldier then scrambled out? In this report it sounds like he was set on fire while scambling to safety. Scrambling to safety after attack an Iraqi police station, violating the sovereignty of Iraq and its people.
Its revealing what a mess we have made in that country “for ordinary Basrawis conditions are simply dreadful. Forty-two women have been murdered over the past three months for wearing make-up, or failing to wear the hejab, the Islamic headscarf.”
In Beirut, people are moving out of their homes, just as they have in Baghdad
Published: 24 November 2007
So where do we go from here? I am talking into blackness because there is no electricity in Beirut. And everyone, of course, is frightened. A president was supposed to be elected today. He was not elected. The corniche outside my home is empty. No one wants to walk beside the sea.
When I went to get my usual breakfast cheese manouche there were no other guests in the café. We are all afraid. My driver, Abed, who has loyally travelled with me across all the war zones of Lebanon, is frightened to drive by night. I was supposed to go to Rome yesterday. I spared him the journey to the airport.
The following is a documentary on the use of white phosphorus bombs in Iraq followed by an article were Israel admit to using these munitions in the July war. While the documentary is not strictly about Lebanon, its useful to see the effects of these weapons to put Israels use of them into context.
Lebanon had accused Israel of using the weapons but at the time Israeli officials said they were only for marking.
Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said in late July: “According to the Geneva Convention, when they use phosphorus bombs and laser bombs, is that allowed against civilians and children?”
Doctors in hospitals in southern Lebanon had said they suspected some of the burns they were seeing were being caused by phosphorus bombs.
BBC News, link bellow
Israel admits using phosphorus bombs during war in Lebanon
By Meron Rappaport, Haaretz Correspondent
Israel has acknowledged for the first time that it attacked Hezbollah targets during the second Lebanon war with phosphorus shells. White phosphorus causes very painful and often lethal chemical burns to those hit by it, and until recently Israel maintained that it only uses such bombs to mark targets or territory.
The announcement that the Israel Defense Forces had used phosphorus bombs in the war in Lebanon was made by Minister Jacob Edery, in charge of government-Knesset relations. He had been queried on the matter by MK Zahava Gal-On (Meretz-Yahad).
“The IDF holds phosphorus munitions in different forms,” Edery said. “The IDF made use of phosphorous shells during the war against Hezbollah in attacks against military targets in open ground.”
Edery also pointed out that international law does not forbid the use of phosphorus and that “the IDF used this type of munitions according to the rules of international law.”
Edery did not specify where and against what types of targets phosphorus munitions were used. During the war several foreign media outlets reported that Lebanese civilians carried injuries characteristic of attacks with phosphorus, a substance that burns when it comes to contact with air. In one CNN report, a casualty with serious burns was seen lying in a South Lebanon hospital.
In another case, Dr. Hussein Hamud al-Shel, who works at Dar al-Amal hospital in Ba’albek, said that he had received three corpses “entirely shriveled with black-green skin,” a phenomenon characteristic of phosphorus injuries.
Lebanon’s President Emile Lahoud also claimed that the IDF made use of phosphorus munitions against civilians in Lebanon.
Phosphorus has been used by armies since World War I. During World War II and Vietnam the U.S. and British armies made extensive use of phosphorus. During recent decades the tendency has been to ban the use of phosphorus munitions against any target, civilian or military, because of the severity of the injuries that the substance causes.
Some experts believe that phosphorus munitions should be termed Chemical Weapons (CW) because of the way the weapons burn and attack the respiratory system. As a CW, phosphorus would become a clearly illegal weapon.
The International Red Cross is of the opinion that there should be a complete ban on phosphorus being used against human beings and the third protocol of the Geneva Convention on Conventional Weapons restricts the use of “incendiary weapons,” with phosphorus considered to be one such weapon.
Israel and the United States are not signatories to the Third Protocol.
In November 2004 the U.S. Army used phosphorus munitions during an offensive in Faluja, Iraq. Burned bodies of civilians hit by the phosphorus munitions were shown by the press, and an international outcry against the practice followed.
Initially the U.S. denied that it had used phosphorus bombs against humans, but then acknowledged that during the assault targets that were neither civilian nor population concentrations were hit with such munitions. Israel also says that the use of “incendiary munitions are not in themselves illegal.”
Lebanese New TV revealed that at least 3 thousand members of Antoine Lahad’s Lebanese South Army, after years of unemployment in Israel, at last the US and Israel found something for them to do.
This report shoes that members of LSA are doing Israel’s dirty jobs in Iraq.
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Pity the Nation, Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk: Beirut to Bosnia
Why have so many Muslims come to hate the West? 3 part documentary by Robert Fisk filmed in Lebanon, Palestine and Bosnia.
“Disproportionate? More like obscene.” Paraphrasing Robert Fisk talking about the Israeli response to the Hezbollah kidnap of 2 soldiers
“Many Lebanese feel trapped between a Hizbollah they have no power to restrain and an Israeli onslaught that the rest of the world seems unwilling to hold back” London Financial Times
“most Lebanese appreciate what we’re doing” Israeli consul general in New York, reports Robert Fisk in the Independent 27/07/2006
“the third world war I believe has already started” Dan Gillerman, Israels ambasador to the UN said on CNN refering to the war on terrorism. London Financial Times 18/07/06
“This visit [by Blair to Lebanon] is an insult to the memory of thousands of Lebanese who have died as a result of Blair’s policies. Shame on you Tony Blair.” Caoimhe Butterley
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soldier as he scrambled out of his armoured vehicle – the single best known image of the British in Basra – and not one of the city’s 20,000 police came to help.”
Justice for Lebanon 