IAF Targets Launch Sites

Compare, if you will, these two scenarios: An armed group launches explosive laden rockets at civilians during rush hour. No warning, just a rain of rockets. Which is a war crime. Second scenario: Military authorities issue pleas to civilians to leave a certain area and announce airstrikes will be coming in several hours. This, of course, gives any bad elements warning of where attacks will be coming and increases the danger to the pilots flying the strike.

But that is exactly what Israel is doing. They are warning civilians to evacuate Southern Lebanon in a effort to minimize civilian casualties. Then they are going in and hitting every rocket launching site they can identify. They are also hitting every rocket storage area they can locate, including the ones that cowards secreted inside civilian homes. So as to use the civilian inhabitants as human shields. Which, by the way, is a war crime.

Israel Air Force jets attacked ten rocket launching sites in southern Lebanon on Sunday. According to the Israel Defense Forces, a mobile Hezbollah missile battery was hit in the strike.

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday warned the residents of southern Lebanon to leave their homes within two hours, ahead of Israel Air Force attacks that would follow shortly after the deadline expires.

"We want to say to the population in the south of Lebanon, we want to avoid innocent victims, so we recommend them to leave their villages and homes and go to the north of the country and let us work in the south of Lebanon, because in two or three hours we are going to attack the south of Lebanon heavily," said GOC Northern Command Major General Udi Adam.

IAF strikes on Sunday killed at least 10 civilians and wounded scores in Lebanon's southern port city of Tyre, witnesses said. The strikes also hit the Dahiya neighborhood of Beirut and Baalbek in the Bekaa.

The warning came after a Hezbollah rocket attack killed eight people and wounded 19 others in the northern port city of Haifa.

"Hezbollah's actions do not surprise us," Adam told reporters. "They've been stockpiling these weapons for many years and the Lebanese government allowed this to happen."

He said that Hezbollah "is in Lebanon not to defend [the country] but to wait for the day they would be able to harm Israel. As far as we are concerned, there are no surprises, and only determination will change the situation."

"We have no intention of dragging Syria into this conflict and all of our steps are cautious and measured. The objective is to change the reality here in Israel and this is why our targets in Lebanon keep changing," he said.

"We have a pretty good idea where they are launching their rockets from - villages and small communities - and [as such] we have warned civilian residents to evacuate their homes," he said.

The deafening silence of the left, except to criticize Israel speaks volumes about them. Where are the UN denunciations of the war crimes the Hezbollah terrorists are committing?

Other Links to this Post

1. Blue Crab Boulevard » Blog Archive » Israel Under Fire — Monday, 17 July , 2006 @ 12:23 pm