Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

Here is a report from Roger Assaf in Lebanon on what the Fox-BBC-CNN axis has been describing as Israeli commando’s “daring raid” on Ba’albek:

1. The parachutists landed on a hospital: Dar el Hekmat.
2. The glorious battle of the elite soldiers provoked 17 dead among which eight children.
3. The five people who were captured are ordinary civilians living in a house near by. Two of them, a father and his son, are called Nasrallah and have no relation whatsoever with the Hezbollah leader. Nasrallah is a common name not only in Lebanon, but in the Middle East. Such as Youssri Nasrallah, famous Egyptian filmmaker and Christian (please forgive this distinction, Youssri my friend, it’s for the good cause) well known in the French film world). It’s very possible that they would have been Hezbollah sympathizers, as are more than one million people in Lebanon, but they are not on the staff of Hezbollah.
4. Inside the car that rushed out of the hospital area and that was chased and filmed by the Israelis were a man and his wife, eight-months pregnant. The first rocket hit the back of the car. The two passengers leave the car screaming for help. The helicopter makes a U-turn and shoots again. The man manages to escape, the woman doesn’t. A little bit later, the neighbors rush to the car and find her dead, with an exploded belly and the fetus projected outside.

Yesterday the Israeli airforce destroyed five bridges along the main North-South coastal highway, killing five and injuring 19 and completely isolating the capital from the North. With this the only remaining land outlet through Syria has been eliminated. Robert Fisk reports that another 7 civilians were killed and 10 wounded while seeking shelter from attack in an air raid on a house in the village of Taibeh in the south.

For the first time, the Israelis also targetted the Christian areas of Lebanon. Fisk reports:

The Israelis gave no reason for the attacks – no Hizbollah fighters would ever enter this Christian Maronite stronghold and the only hindrance was caused to humanitarian convoys – and there were growing fears in Lebanon that the latest air raids were a sign of Israel’s frustration rather any serious military planning.

33 were killed in an air raid on Qaa in the Beka’a valley while loading peaches and plums on to trucks (Robert Fisk puts the number at 40). Most of them were Syrian Kurdish farm workers. The Guardian reported:

 

In Qaa, the bodies of the dead were laid in a row at the scene of the bombing. Some were covered with blankets, others lay in the clothes in which they died. Baskets and fruit were strewn around them. Another 20 people were wounded and taken to hospital across the nearby border into Syria. Israel said its aircraft had targeted a Hizbullah weapons storage site in the Beka’a.

Juan Cole’s satire is not far from the official Israeli version which claimed that it had “had targeted a Hizbullah weapons storage site in the Beka’a”. Cole fills in the details:

Intrepid Israeli fighter jet pilots tracked down sinister terrorist cucumbers and other vicious vegetables being loaded onto a refrigerated truck by Syrian seasonal laboerers. Unfortunatedly the wicked terrorist cucumbers were hiding themselves amidst civilian workers, and it was necessary to kill 26 of the latter to end the threat of pickling. Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman castigated the cucumbers as “animals.” Alan Dershowitz pointed out that vegetables cannot be considered civilians.