Saturday war briefs

Hezbullah got another three Israeli civilians. Arab-Israelis, that is.

Rockets claim heavy price: Three residents of the village of Arab al-Aramshe, a 55-year-old mother and her two daughters, were killed Saturday afternoon after being directly hit by a rocket. The village is located very close to the Lebanon border, east of Shlomi.

You won’t find their identification in this AP story, as usual. Israeli victims—apparently, even Israeli Arab victims—have no names in the world press. They weren’t killed by Israel, you see, so the world doesn’t need to know their names.

Rahamim Sides, a Magen David Adom worker, recounted the rescue efforts: “We didn’t have much to do there. We just determined the death. It was a mother and her two daughters who were sitting in the yard.”

A heavy rocket barrage was fired at the entire north of Israel, hitting Kiryat Shmona, Tiberias, Nahariya, Shlomi, Ma’alot and Akko. Within 90 minutes – between 4 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. – 120 rockets landed in northern communities.

Sure, these people want peace: Our pals the pals are celebrating every rocket hit on Israel.

The village of Yabed near Jenin overlooks Hadera. Many of its Palestinian residents heard the warning sirens followed by the loud blasts of the rockets. Villagers told Ynet that they hurried to celebrate the rockets that reached deep into Israel’s territory.

One of the residents said, “We wished for the rocket to hit the two big smokestacks (Ed.: of the Hadera power station), God willing it will still happen soon.”

Say, moron—if the rockets hit the power station, your power goes out. Yeah, these people want peace with Israel. Not.

By the way, those were long-range Iranian rockets that fell on Hadera. The ones that can’t be fired without Iranian permission.

Meryl’s prediction: Rockets will be fired at Tel Aviv. I do believe that Gorilla Boy is mad enough to create an all-out regional war.

It’s a pinch-me moment: Three weeks into the war, Human Rights Watch has discovered that Hezbullah is targeting Israeli civilians.

(New York, August 5, 2006) – Hezbollah must immediately stop firing rockets into civilian areas in Israel, Human Rights Watch said today. Entering the fourth week of attacks, such rockets have claimed 30 civilian lives, including six children, and wounded hundreds more.

“Lobbing rockets blindly into civilian areas is without doubt a war crime,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. ”Nothing can justify this assault on the most fundamental standards for sparing civilians the hazards of war.”

Okay, so they noticed it a while ago, but I’ve not seen anywhere near the volume level that is always reached when Israel defends herself against terrorists. HRW has known for weeks that the rockets are filled with ball bearings to deliberately kill more civilians.

Some of the rockets, such as those that killed eight rail workers in Haifa on July 16 and two young brothers in Nazareth on July 19, have warheads packed with thousands of metal ball bearings that spray out from the blast. Launched on civilian areas, the ball bearings are intended to inflict maximum harm.

Under international humanitarian law – also known as the laws of war – parties to an armed conflict must not make the civilian population the object of attack, or fire indiscriminately into civilian areas. Nor can they launch attacks that they know will cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects that exceeds the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. Such attacks constitute war crimes.

The problem there is that you are assuming Hezbullah are human.

Accident or deliberate? Hezbullah mortar shells are landing in Syria. Have their Syrian masters told them to try to kill Syrians to give the Dorktator a reason to send his troops to the Golan Heights?

Six mortar shells that were fired from Lebanon on Saturday cleared the Golan Heights and landed in Syrian territory.

The IDF assessed that the launch, the second that landed in Syria in the past 24 hours, was meant to encourage Damascus to join the fight against Israel.

And that’s enough for now. Time to go write my podcast. I think this one may be a doozy.