Soup of the Day

Why Israel are fighting a loosing battle

Since fighting broke out between Hezbollah and Israel over two weeks ago, the Western propaganda machine has been very busy making Hezbollah look like extremist terrorists. But this is far from the truth. To be fair, the UK press, at least some of it, has been very objective with the reporting, The Independent and Guardian producing balanced and properly informed analysis of the crisis. BBC News has also been objective for the most part, but this is where reality stops. If you even for a second look at the US news networks, you instantly see how distorted the news can be. The war for the Middle East is being fought on the ground and in the media.

Due to Israel’s relentless bombing in recent days, they have finally killed enough innocent civilians to make the international community sit up and say, “now hang on a minute, we’re not sure about this!”. Most of the world was already singing this tune, but if the US wasn’t singing along, nothing was going to happen. But the mood changed after the Qana bombing, killing about 60 civilians, forcing Tony Blair to break the ranks with America and condem Israel’s behavior.

But there are several facts in this war that seem to be overlooked by the public. The first and most important fact is that Hezbollah are not extremist terrorists. Israel and the US both class them as such, mainly so they can bomb the hell out of them without gaining international consent. Europe, including the UK, class Hezbollah as a militant organisation, not a terrorist organisation. Afterall, this is a true Army with soldiers and reserves. Hezbollah run communities, provide health care and education and are strongly admired by the Lebonese community who benefit from their presence. Does that sound like a terrorist organisation to you?

It is true that Hezbollah are funded heavily by Syria and Iran, but then who are we to condem that fact when Israel is funded by the US and UK at a scale many times larger. The reason that Israel and the US have a big problem with Hezbollah is because they are fighting to return Israel to it’s rightful owners, the Palestinians. It has become even more obvious recently of how much Israel know they are totally unfounded in their actions.

One former Israeli defence minister when speaking on BBC News about the four killed UN observers nervously said, “what were they doing there, they were unarmed peace observers. There was no peace to observe, so why didn’t the UN pull them out. They had no business being there! [nervous laugh]“. It was the nervous laugh at the end which gave the game away, almost as though that statement had almost convinced a little part of himself they Israel where actually justified in their actions of killing four innocent UN observers.

Whatever the world thinks or says in the coming weeks, please remember the facts. It is true that Hezbollah are firing Katusha rockets at Israel and these rockets kill innocent civilians. This in itself is completely deplorable. But the Katusha rocket technology does not allow for pin-point accuracy when targeting. Israel has state of the art laser-guided weaponry, bombs that in theory should prevent any unnecessary loss of life, yet they use these laser-guided bombs to target civilians and the UN. Israel has bombed civilian houses, vehicles, ambulances, airports, roads, bridges and bomb shelters in the past two weeks. Because the infrastructure has been destroyed, the civilians in the south that Israel claim are warned to leave can’t because there are no roads. If they do try and leave, Israel attack them as they move, even if escorted by the UN. So what choice do they have but to stay and hope they don’t get bombed. This is utterly disgusting and should be considered a crime against humanity. Maybe sometime in the future the current Israeli government will find themselves in the Hague charged with grievous war crimes. It would be nice to think so, but I doubt it.

As this conflict continues, I will continue to watch with disbelief and try to dispell some of the rediculous statements coming from Israel and its supporters.