Scorched Earth
John Rodsted is a campaigner against landmines and cluster bombs, a member of a Nobel Peace Prize winning team and a freelance photographer. He recently returned from Lebanon, where he examined Israel’s use of cluster bombs in the war last summer. Here’s an excerpt from an interview he conducted on ABC in Australia (Phill Adams is the presenter):
John Rodsted: Well, we got in there just after the ceasefire, actually, and what we found was the Southern part of Lebanon was just saturated with cluster bombs. And we were there to do a survey mission for Norwegian People’s Aid, they were going to send in bomb disposal experts, and 3 of us had to do a survey as to how big the problem was and what should be then deployed. But we found, I mean, villages, houses, farms, roads, you name it, the place had been absolutely carpeted with cluster munitions.
And the thing that really blew us away was that most of these were fired in the last 72 hours. And militarilly that doesn’t make any sense. You have a war that lasts for 34 days, for 31 of those days it’s been effectively unitary [unclear audio] bombing on the targets and then on the last 3 days, when there’s a peace package on the table, you just saturate the southern part of the country with cluster munitions.
Phill Adams: So this is a scorched earth policy?
John Rodsted: I believe it is, yeah.
You’ll recall similar statements made last year by top UN humanitarian official Jan Egeland, who described Israel’s use of cluster bombs in Lebanon as “shocking” and “completely immoral”. David Shearer, the UN’s chief humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, condemned Israel’s actions as “outrageous”. “For a humanitarian person”, he said, “it defies belief that this would happen.”
The full interview can be listened to here, and downloaded from here.
UPDATE: It appears that the Government of Israel has still failed to provide accurate information about its cluster bomb co-ordinates to the United Nations to aid the clear-up operation, which is ongoing. There are no words.
Indeed, convincing Israel to hand over the maps was one of the principle aims of UN special representative for children and armed conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy’s recent visit to Lebanon. She noted that the danger posed by the cluster bombs “is not over yet”, and commented “that many of the actions taken during the war this summer seem to violate international humanitarian law” – a conclusion shared by Amnesty International, among others:
‘The evidence strongly suggests that the extensive destruction of public works, power systems, civilian homes and industry was deliberate and an integral part of the military strategy, rather than “collateral damage”…
Many of the violations examined in this report are war crimes that give rise to individual criminal responsibility. They include directly attacking civilian objects and carrying out indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks. People against whom there is prima facie evidence of responsibility for the commission of these crimes are subject to criminal accountability anywhere in the world through the exercise of universal jurisdiction. [my emphasis]
The cluster bombs have killed around 30 people and wounded at least 187 since the war ended last August.
On a related note, the Belgian Defense Minister has called on Israel to pay for the clean-up operation, so far estimated at roughly $13 million. He described the weapons as “the resort of cowards and a violation of international law.” (Cluster bombs are not actually illegal per se, although there are strong movements to change this (opposed by Britain, amongst others). Firing them indiscriminately into civilian areas, as Israel did last summer, most definitely is.)
The most recent victim of the cluster bombs was a 70 year-old Lebanese woman, who was seriously wounded earlier this month when, gathering herbs, she mistakenly touched an unexploded bomblet, which detonated.
Filed under: Israeli / Palestinian, Lebanon, News and politics | 5 Comments
Tags: cluster bombs, War
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I am horrified beyond words.
Your Daily Kos article “On Supporting the Iraqi Resistance” was well written and finely argued. I agree entirely with it, in fact I would go further and say that other nations should be supporting the resistance.
I also appreciated your tenacity in rebutting the false points raised against you by the various jingoes you enraged.
Frizzled
Thanks frizzled. I’m not sure about whether we (as individuals or as states) should be supporting the Iraqi resistance – it depends on whether an “honourable resistance” actually exists (i.e. it depends on whether there are a significant number of resistance fighters who never target civilians and who are not also engaged in the sectarian civil war). I suspect, though, that it does exist, and if so then support for it would surely be justified.
However, regardless of this, it is important that the official propaganda about the resistance – that it is comprised totally of terrorists and murderers and psycho-baby-killers – is exposed, because the goals of the resistance are, in fact, admirable: to liberate Iraq from an unwanted occupation.
this seems to be a little biased, the people that question israels motives and actions dont know the whole truth.
even a guy who came to lebenon for 4 days and saw some mines doesnt really know how it like.
southern lebenon is what you could call a human shield. the leadership of this country learned from the palastinean conflict with israel that if you put people instead of walls you can control the actions of the israeli army.
israel doesnt want to harm the civilians, but in every city that has 5000 souls there are 10 percent that arent civilians but enemy combatents.
the entire demilotarized area betwen israel and lebenon is a spawning ground for rocket soldiers that fire daily towards israeli settlements.
the cluster mines are ment to keep these soldiers/ terrorists from setting up their rockets.
the problam with this perdicament is that the human shield settlements are living in the DMZ and will get hurt because their goverment is using them.
Thanks for your comment. In fact, all independent investigations into the conflict (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, etc.) have found that Israel deliberately targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure, as a matter of policy. Human Rights Watch actually directly addressed Israel’s claims about so-called “human shields” – it sent researchers onto the ground and investigated what was then a third of the total Lebanese casualties: it found no evidence of any combatants hiding amongst civilians in any of the cases. It is important not to simply take what the Israeli government (or any government) says as fact, just because they say it, because of course they’re going to say it.
And by the way – Israel, without even a shadow of a doubt, also used ‘human shields’ in that conflict. As Jonathan Cook notes, “Israel has located many of its military installations in the north close to population centres, including Arab towns and villages”. Funny how no one has tried to claim that this entitles Hizb’allah to fire on those towns.
The effect of saturating an entire area pf a country with mines is predictable – many people will get killed and maimed, farmers will not be able to return to their crops and the internal refugees will not be able to return to their houses. And that’s exactly what happened.