Israel is a terrorist state

The Israelis are using US-made fighter jets to kill children

Personally, I don't give a crap what you think about Hizbollah or Hamas, or Elmer Fudd's quest to kill Bugs Bunny, for that matter, and I don't even care who threw the first stone. When Israel targets children - which is what they are doing - then their claims to "self-defence" go down the crapper, and Israel becomes a nation not only sponsoring terrorism itself, but the perpetrator of the death of innocents.

When Israel tells us that there will be "collateral damage" - a term that used to mean 'Oops, sorry, we missed," - then they are telling us that they will kill civilians, and they are doing it on purpose. Why? Because civilians are 'sheltering the terrorists,' and therefore are as responsible as if this five-year-old child had held the AK47 herself.

Lies, disengenuiousness, and bullshit. You don't carpet bomb civilians, blow up water reservoirs, TV stations, and tourist hotels to flush out a paramilitary army, which is what Hizbollah is. But does Israel care? Obviously not, and the destruction of Hizbollah is not the objective. The first rule of terrorism, which is a tactic (that has become a strategy in Israel's case) is deliberate and arbitrary targeting of CIVILIANS, in order to promote the maximum amount of TERROR. Not to cause regime change, or make the bad guys give up, but to cause fear in the civilian population, and hope the civilians will change their government. Period. And it's illegal under the Laws of War, the Geneva Conventions, and the love of God.

Robert Fisk, from on the scene:

How soon must we use the words "war crime"? How many children must be scattered in the rubble of Israeli air attacks before we reject the obscene phrase "collateral damage" and start talking about prosecution for crimes against humanity?

The child whose dead body lies like a rag doll beside the cars which were supposedly taking her and her family to safety is a symbol of the latest Lebanon war; she was hurled from the vehicle in which she and her family were traveling in southern Lebanon as they fled their village - on Israel's own instructions. Because her parents were apparently killed in the same Israeli air attack, her name is still unknown. Not an unknown warrior, but an unknown child.

The story of her death, however, is well documented. On Saturday, the inhabitants of the tiny border village of Marwaheen were ordered by Israeli troops - apparently using a bullhorn - to leave their homes by 6pm. Marwaheen lies closest to the spot where Hizbollah guerrillas broke through the frontier wire a week ago to capture two Israeli soldiers and kill three others, the attack which provoked this latest cruel war in Lebanon. The villagers obeyed the Israeli orders and initially appealed to local UN troops of the Ghanaian battalion for protection.

But the Ghanaian soldiers, obeying guidelines set down by the UN's headquarters in New York in 1996, refused to permit the Lebanese civilians to enter their base. By terrible irony, the UN's rules had been drawn up after their soldiers gave protection to civilians during an Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon in 1996 in which 106 Lebanese, more than half of them children, were slaughtered when the Israelis shelled the UN compound at Qana, in which they had been given sanctuary.

So the people of Marwaheen set off for the north in a convoy of cars which only minutes later, close to the village of Tel Harfa, were attacked by an Israeli F-16 fighter-bomber. It bombed all the cars and killed at least 20 of the civilians travelling in them, many of them women and children. Twelve people were burnt alive in their vehicles but others, including the child who lies like a rag doll near the charred civilian convoy, whose photograph was taken - at great risk - by an Associated Press photographer, Nasser Nasser, were blown clear of the cars by the blast of the bombs and fell into fields and a valley near the scene of the attack. There has been no apology or expression of regret from Israel for these deaths.

I have no love for terrorists of any stripe, and Israel is a terrorist state.

Israel can kiss my ass.

Here's a picture of some Hizbollah paramilitaries in their underwear: