Melanie Phillips - Grasp On Reality Continues to Spiral Out of Control

Another classic moment from the Madness of Queen Mel:

Next, there was no ‘massive loss of civilian life’ — quite the contrary. As far as I know, some 1200 people in Lebanon died during the war. Although it is not known how many of them were Hezbollah soldiers since they disguised themselves as civilians, according to the Israelis 500-600 of these fatalities were actually Hezbollah fighters. Only relatively small areas of Beirut were bombed. Given the scale of the bombardment of Israel from Lebanon, with more rockets fired at it in some four weeks than during the Blitz on London during World War Two, the relative restraint and carefully limited nature of the Israeli response (which certainly had many faults) would never have been shown in similar circumstances by any other country. But the British media nevertheless viciously misrepresented the whole thing, inducing a national hysteria and madness — which was what drove Tony Blair from office earlier than he had intended. It was one of the most disgraceful episodes in contemporary British history. Patently false Hezbollah propaganda claims were uncritically regurgitated by the British media as fact, which I commented upon here.

She also quotes an Israeli army captain (entirely impartial of course):

This was perhaps both the most cynical and barbaric disregard for innocent civilian lives of all of Hezballah’s and Iran’s strategic choices. It was also the most successful. It was predicated not on its knowledge of its enemy (Israel) but its true genius lay in its knowledge of the press. The calculus was simple: launch a rocket from within a civilian population; if you kill Jews that’s a victory. If the Jews hit back and in so doing kill Lebanese civilians, that’s a victory. If they don’t hit back because they’re afraid to hit civilians, that’s a victory. Now repeat the process until you kill so many Jews they have to hit back and in so doing kill more Lebanese civilians. That’s the ultimate victory, because they know that in striking just those chords exactly what music the press will play. The awful truth, which the western press was manipulated to ignore or downplay, was that Iran, through its terrorist operational arm Hezballah, had invaded Lebanon from within. Hezballah did not protect Lebanon, they occupied it and they used those Hezballah occupied territories to launch Iran’s offensive in response to the West’s ultimatum to cease development of nuclear weapons.

Of course, this has proved to be an utter fallacy but that will not stop Mad Mel from perpetuating lies to further her own warped, hateful agenda. An independent report by Human Rights Watch has already exposed the truth behind the allegations of fighting from within civilian populations. As my earlier post reported:

Israel was accused yesterday of firing indiscriminately during last year's 34-day war in Lebanon in a report by Human Rights Watch which challenged Israel's claim that the high number of civilian casualties resulted from Hizbullah shielding itself among the Lebanese population.

In a 249-page investigation, the New York-based group said its research showed that even though the militants were also guilty of serious violations of the laws of war, there was no evidence that they systematically fought from among civilians.

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, dismissed Israel's claim to have killed 600 Hizbullah fighters. He said the best estimate was that there were 250 Hizbullah fighters among the 1,109 Lebanese deaths. About 160 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed.
See? Bullshit.

Of course, loonies like Mad Mel would claim that Human Rights Watch is full of soft lefties who are hardly impartial. If that is indeed the case, perhaps Mad Mel could shed some light on why she is so keen to utilise HRW reports when they back-up her world-view, yet dismiss them when they challenge her. Look forward to hearing from you Mel (ps a post on Burma might be nice - wouldn't want people to think you support the military junta).

Hezbollah Fighters Did Not Systematically Embed Themselves With Civilians in Lebanon

A little while back, certain commentators were jumping all over a report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) regarding the war in Lebanon last summer. According to reports:

"Human Rights Watch's report said it found numerous rockets fired by Hezbollah in which there was no apparent legitimate military target, indicating civilians were deliberately attacked.

The report also said Hezbollah's justifications that the rocket attacks were a response to Israeli fire into southern Lebanon and aimed at drawing Israel into a ground war had no legal basis under the rules of war.

"Hezbollah's explanations for why it fired rockets at Israel's civilian population utterly fail to justify these unlawful attacks," said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division. "Hezbollah, like Israel, must respect the laws of war."

This was given as evidence, by the usual suspects (ie USS Neverdock), that Hezbollah was the only guilty party in the conduct of the war. Amongst the many other accusations of bloggers such as these, were claims that the reporting of civilian casualties in Lebanon was grossly exaggerated. Marc at USS Neverdock has gone so far as to call these claims 'lies'. Now a new report by HRW has exposed these counter-claims as lies themselves. According to The Guardian:

Israel was accused yesterday of firing indiscriminately during last year's 34-day war in Lebanon in a report by Human Rights Watch which challenged Israel's claim that the high number of civilian casualties resulted from Hizbullah shielding itself among the Lebanese population.

In a 249-page investigation, the New York-based group said its research showed that even though the militants were also guilty of serious violations of the laws of war, there was no evidence that they systematically fought from among civilians.

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, dismissed Israel's claim to have killed 600 Hizbullah fighters. He said the best estimate was that there were 250 Hizbullah fighters among the 1,109 Lebanese deaths. About 160 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed.

So, the levels of civilian deaths would appear to be accurate after all. Not only that, it would appear that the oft-repeated claims of elements of the mainstream media (that embedding themselves within the civilian population was part of a systematic policy) was entirely fabricated in order to support Israeli bombing raids. This report was itself buried on page 8 of the international edition of The Guardian (I would be interested to know where it was placed in the domestic edition).

Of course, we shouldn't expect this report to make an appearance on right-wing blogs, unless they attempt to discredit it. This is the problem with many right-wing commentators when they use human rights organisations' reports to support their arguments. They spend too often discrediting them, it seems hard to believe that they would then take the report as gospel just because it 'supports' their tenuous arguments. There will, no doubt, be further attacks on HRW on blogs like USS Neverdock which rather undermines their arguments when they use them as evidence. Who decides when a report by a human rights organisation is worthy or not? You either support their findings in their entirety, or you do not. You cannot pick and choose which ones are valid based on political prejudice. Those that do, can never be taken seriously as a political commentator. But then I guess these bloggers have no intention of being treated as serious commentators, they are merely interested in spreading one-sided propaganda.

Breakthrough in Censorship on 'Net

The Observer reports today that three giants of the internet have agreed to work on a code of conduct for protecting human rights online. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft will hold talks with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders to:

'seek solutions to the free expression and privacy challenges faced by technology and communications companies doing business internationally'

Google have no accepted that the censorship of its search engine in China was a massive mistake. According to The Observer, Sergey Brin, its billionaire co-founder said that:

'On a business level, that decision to censor ... was a net negative.'

This policy in China has been a huge blow for freedom on the internet. It has led to many arrests, such as the journalist Shi Tao, who is serving a 10 year sentence of forced labour. Tao was arrested after sending an email on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square which was passed on to the Chinese authorities by Yahoo's Chinese partner company. This is just one example from a long list of attacks on free speech not only in China, but across the world.

Since establishing the irrepressible.info campaign, over 60,000 people have pledged their support. Whilst the figures are encouraging, they are well short of what is needed to show the governments of the world that freedom of speech is a right and not a privilege.