QANA, Lebanon - Abu Shadi Jradi pulled bodies out of wreckage for hours — two toddler girls wearing tiny gold earrings, a small boy whose pale blue pacifier still hung from his neck. Somewhere in the middle, Jradi slumped beneath a tree and wept.
“There are so many children, so many children,” the veteran civil defense worker said Sunday, barely able to get out the words.
The dead still had signs of their last moments, when dozens of members of the Shalhoub and Hashem families had gathered together for shelter and company during another night of Israeli bombardment. Kids wore the shorts and T-shirts they slept in. One body was wrapped in a child’s bed sheet covered with Raggedy Ann and Andy figures.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14109907/Qana was a target before.
Local Lebanese quickly branded the strike “Qana’s second massacre.” In April 1996, Israeli shells hit a U.N. peacekeepers’ compound where 800 Lebanese had taken refuge during another offensive against Hezbollah, called Operation Grapes of Wrath. The shelling killed 106 refugees. Israel said at the time Hezbollah fighters had slipped into the U.N. compound.
Another example of the disregard the Israelis have for innocent bystanders in their pursuit of their enemies.
By their own actions, the Israelis have made it crystal clear that the lives of innocent civilians are expendable (and therefore worth precisely nothing) in the current conflict.
Death toll since Israeli offensive began:
Over 600 in Lebanon - almost entirely innocent civilians
Over 50 in Israel - almost entirely soldiers.
Our unconditional support for Israeli actions means that we too have the blood of these innocents on our hands.
