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TechnoratiWELLINGTON, New Zealand - A leading human rights group called Sunday for a U.N. investigation into Israel's use of cluster bombs during its 2006 campaign against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Israel said the majority of the weapons were used in areas that were "not built up." It that said built-up areas were targeted only if they contained sites for launching rockets or missiles, and that residents were always warned.
New York-based Human Rights Watch called for an independent inquiry to determine whether individual Israeli commanders "bear responsibility for war crimes."
The group claimed in a report that Israel violated international humanitarian law with hundreds of "indiscriminate and disproportionate cluster munitions attacks on Lebanon."
It released the report ahead of the opening Monday of a 120-nation conference in New Zealand's capital, Wellington, on a proposed convention to ban cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.
The United States, Russia, China and Israel - all important producers and stockpilers of cluster bombs - oppose a ban and have blocked efforts to negotiate one at the United Nations.
At a news conference Sunday, Human Rights Watch said Israel had rained as many as 4.6 million submunitions, or cluster bomblets, across southern Lebanon.
The report's lead author, Bonnie Docherty, said the United Nations must investigate whether Israel deliberately targeted civilians with the munitions.
"Ninety percent of the (bombing) strikes occurred in the last three days (of the war when) Israel knew a cease-fire was imminent," she told reporters.
Steve Goose, director of the Arms division at Human Rights Watch, said unexploded cluster bomblets "have killed and maimed almost 200 people since the war ended."
"The Lebanon story is just the latest example of something we've have seen over and over again: Whenever cluster munitions are used, large numbers of civilians get killed and injured," Goose said.
Israel said Sunday it had used cluster munitions in southern Lebanon in direct response to Hezbollah launching more than 4,000 rockets and missiles against Israeli civilians - "as well as cluster munitions."
"Israel's operations were directed against legitimate military objectives. The majority of cluster munitions used by Israel were directed against areas which were not built up. In those cases where cluster munitions were used against built-up areas, it was done toward rocket/missile launching sites and only after numerous warnings were given to the local population," said Arye Mekel, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman.
"The use of cluster munitions is not prohibited under international law. Like other weapons, its use is subject to the laws of war," he said.
© 2008 Associated Press
8 Comments so far
Show AllIsrael and Lebanon are both approximately the size of a handkerchief. It is not possible to drop a bomb in either territory in an area that is "not built up".
So what's new? Likudniks like to blow shyt up. Men, women, children, dogs, cats, birds, fish, mice, worms, are all the enemy and nothing will be left alive. They have plenty of good company in the Middle East who think just as they do. The odds of survival being zero seems only to stimulate the race to the end. These cluster fu*k bombs are just another sign of moral depravity. What's next, cluster suicide bombers?
The photo looks like a damn seed-pod, all ready to 'grow some Democracy' near Israel...[except that I don't see any school-children's messages scrawled on it?]
It's not money, it's greed.
"The United States, Russia, China and Israel - all important producers and stockpilers of cluster bombs - oppose a ban and have blocked efforts to negotiate one at the United Nations."
Herein lies the problem: money, like it is for every other damned thing that's wrong with the world.
These two ZioNazi Nations won't do a thing.
It's time for the ICC to try the warcriminals that make these things in absentia or Abyssinia.
For a single simple reason the US and Israel won't do a damn thing to stop their single minded crusade of genocide against the Arabs. Israel and Amerika are merging into the right lane to disaster:
http://www.viewzone.com/dualcitizen.html
"...the laws of war." hmmm, what a concept. And where is justice as you lie dieing when some so-called law of war has been breached? Come on people, there is no such thing as "law" in war. This is yet another 50s anachronism. War itself must be outlawed. The purveyors of munitions and all their friends arrested and held - trained and given jobs as plumbers and finishing carpenters.
As a 60s flower child (dob Dec 11, 1953), I continue to hold THIS truth to be self evident, that national security lies in state recognition of the collective responsibility to facilitate first principles: food, clothing, shelter (I was led to believe that these were a given!) education (my personal desire) and social inclusion (viva Chavez).
On the home front... Is Obama into pouring some public debt into the UN? I am heartened to perceive the timbre of idealism in his campaign rising from the ashes of your realist police state. I can hardly wait for the Canadian federal election when we hope to throw out "Steve" Harper - our very own "we did not evolve!" holy roller, let's build more prisons, pharmacutical military industrial complex lacky.
love, liz