Friday, January 04, 2008
Hiding behind civilians
It's a common accusation against Palestinian resistance fighters, Hezbollah during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Iraqi Army at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iraqi resistance fighters now, and on and on. Sometimes it's true, sometimes not, sometimes just bogus (resistance fighters are just that, they sleep in homes where they live, not out in the middle of a field).
Jonathan Cook writes about one group who you never hear accused (at least in the Western corporate media) of hiding behind civilians, but who a new study has demonstrated does exactly that - the Israeli Army. Not only did they fire rockets into Lebanon from civilian areas in Israel during the invasion, but also have a practice of situating military facilities near civilian areas, and especially near civilian areas populated by Arab Israelis, who actually comprised just under half of all Israeli civilians killed during that war.