Deliberate war crimes

It looks more and more as if Israel deliberately attacked the UN bunker in Lebanon, killing four UN observers.

Israel ignored repeated warnings it was shelling close to United Nations observers in southern Lebanon before an Israeli bomb killed four for them, the Irish foreign ministry has said.

The ministry said on Wednesday a senior Irish army officer had called Israeli military liasion officers at least six times to warn them that Israeli munitions were landing close to UN installations in the region.

The peacekeepers were killed on Tuesday night when an aerial bomb struck a United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) building in Khiam, southern Lebanon, an UNIFIL spokesman said.

"On six separate occasions he [the officer] was in contact with the Israelis to warn them that their bombardment was endangering the lives of UN staff in South Lebanon," a department of foreign affairs spokesman said.

The dead were Canadian, Finnish, Austrian and Chinese nationals.

Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, has condemned Israel, saying he was shocked by the "apparently deliberate targeting" of the post, and calling for it to investigate the incident.

Juan Cole asks why Israel would do this deliberately and concludes that if you plan to commit war crimes, it's best not to have neutral observers around.

I'm sorry, but this is NOT legitimate self defense. There is no way that the hundreds of people killed in Lebanon and the tens of thousands displaced can be blamed on inadvertent collateral damage. This is obviously a deliberate attempt to attack innocent civilians and undoubtedly constitutes a war crime. True, the Hizbollah attacks on Israel also constutute war crimes and were equally unjustified. But, one war crime does not justify another. Two wrongs do not make right. Both Hizbollah and those in Israel responsible for this should be tried for war crimes.

Meanwhile the US sits on its hands cheering Israel on, and neither party has the guts to speak out against this atrocity.

Shame.