Leftover Israeli bomb wounds four Lebanese children

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L27759032.htm

BEIRUT, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Four children were wounded when an unexploded Israeli cluster bomb went off while they were playing with it in southern Lebanon, the official National News Agency has reported.

One of the children, five-year-old Abbas Youssef Abbas, was in a critical condition, the agency reported late on Saturday.

Their fuhrer has a higher goal in mind.

Pretty much clones of the US ones

nt

FYI.

And where were the parents during all this?

The bomblets are that bright yellow color that fire engines are going to. Very easy to spot. Its done for just that reason.

Unfortunately, ANYONE can use that color, so air dropped rations were made the same color...not a good thing.

shouldn't parents in the world's most violent region make sure their kids know not to touch things that look like bombs? Especially, you know, after a war just ended?

Show the sources. Thanks. Parents are supposed to know these things? There is no end in this war. It's existed for centuries, and no end is in sight.

If you didn't know what they look like very specifically, they wouldn't strike you as being bombs, because you'd assume a bomb would be painted, oh, Army green or metallic silver or sky blue or something. But they're not. They're bright yellow.

Unless the parents have personal experience with the matter they wouldn't even know. Besides that, these villages are HUGE MESSES and putting your life back together makes supervision of kids that much harder. And these are bored kids. Excitable kids. Kids who just got home from being refugees inside their own country. They want to run around. They don't have MTV. They, and their parents, are largely poor and deprived, since they live in what was just a short time ago, a war zone.

I'm sure every parent who can, and who knows what to do, is doing EVERYTHING they can to keep their kids safe. Beyond that, please, stop blaming the victims and have the slightest regard for who put the damn bomb there in the first place. IMHO.

Though they may a little scorched. Air launched weapons are normally light gray

They look completely inert. UGH. They look like random pieces of trash! Worse, since they DON'T stand out, it's entirely possible to walk on one and never having known it was there, or never having suspected it was anything but some random piece of trash.

"Which ressemble the bulky batteries often used in torches." Er, this is from the BBC link above, so perhaps they mean large flashlights?

And I've never seen a yellow cluster bomb. The article states that the kids were playing with a cluster bomb, not the submunitions.



what else does that look like?

I've seen pictures of yellow submunitions. But for you to just look at the ... you've heard how reporters tend to call a lot of things assault weapons when they're semi-automatic rifles, right? Get your head out of your rear end and appreciate that just because the article says cluster bombs it doesn't mean a cluster bomb that didn't separate. The huge dud rate is for the submunitions, not the initial bomb. And I simply refuse to believe you are not well aware of this.

Edit: As they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

what you may not realize is that the region if littered with unexploded bombs. and it's not realistic to keep kids locked inside 24/7, especially if there is no "inside" since many homes were destroyed. I'm sure the parents are aware of the risk and are doing the best they can.

I do realize that the region is littered with them, which is why its all the more important for parents to make sure their kids stay away from them.

I think what Israel did was disgraceful and disgusting, but at the same time, parents are responsible for their children. If you have a pool, a parent is responsible for making sure the kid doesnt fall in and drown. If you live in a war zone, a parent is responsible for making sure the kid doesn't play with cluster bombs.

Lebanese security officials say it isn't known whether they were playing with it or stepped on it.

AP: One cluster bomb exploded outside a home in the village of Blida, wounding four children from the same family, the officials said. It was not clear whether the children, whose ages were not immediately known, were playing with the bomb or had stepped on it by accident.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060827/NATION/608270339/1020
http://www.theeagle.com/stories/082706/world_20060827017.php

And if they were playing with it, what doesn that mean? Would your child, who is so smart, know what a cluster bomblet is? Imagine a child in this situation:

Suddenly a strange object caught Sikna’s eye. It was small, round and metallic, with a tip that looked like a cigarette end. She picked it up to show her cousins. Marwa and Hassan remembered warnings not to touch strange objects. “It’s one of those bombs,” one of the children cried. Sikna panicked and dropped the cluster bomb, which exploded instantly.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2330633,00.html

Children are at particular risk from cluster bombs, such as the one that was lying in wait for 10-year-old Hassan Tahini and his cousin in the border village of Aita al-Shaab.
"We were walking without paying attention, we saw something, but we didn't know it was a bomb," said Tahini from his hospital bed in Tyre. "We saw a little bit of it sticking out of the earth. We said to ourselves, 'it's a toy, so what?'
"We trod on it. It exploded and we flew two or three metres through the air," he said. "God saved me."

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-08-25T012102Z_01_L24468429_RTRUKOC_0_UK-MIDEAST-LEBANON-CHILDREN.xml

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http://giyus.org/ is the url.

I mean there are lots of them but the GIYUS one gives them a program that finds out when there might be people being critical of Israel so they can go to blog and try to make them stop.

Sometimes they will post their talking points but some of them just call the person an anti-Semite. I didn't see any talking points on the giyus site but I guess if they want to be more sophisticated they can borrow the talking points of another one of them. There was an article on here from an English paper with links to some of them.

and am further to the left of most of you "Democrats". I am a "propagandist" because I dare to state that parents living in a war zone should make some attempt to prevent their children from playing with cluster bombs? We're not talking Kansas or Norway here...this is one of the most war torn regions of the world and parents should make sure their children know the risks involved in living there.

...if you give off even the slightest impression of supporting Israel, or apparently (as in your case) make a point that they view as directing attention away from Israel...

since coming here i've been called a "cybersoldier", a "right wing infiltrator" and worse... :|

Fairly straightforward tactics.

Perhaps this is jumping to conclusions, but if you are in any way shape or form advocating the stance that Israel was justified in these barbaric acts, then you are asking for it.
There was no need to destroy a country over 3 soldiers.

.. which illustrate exactly what i'm talking about.

i have NEVER claimed i don't view any "humans as equal", but one can provide ample evidence of attempts to dehumanize Jews in radical islam propaganda.

i was horrified by what happened in Lebanon, and am extremely heartbroken in Israel's handling of it.... but that doesn't shake the fact this has been instigated by those who view Jews as animals to be slaughtered.

The targets were not militarily significant - consider the oil sludge that has ruined most of Lebanon's coast. So far all justifications that I have seen come from the standpoint of 'strategic objectives' whence something that can be done strictly via diplomatic channels has been done via brute force.
If you want the Lebanese government to reign in Hezbollah, then diplomacy is not the answer. Gross violations of Human Rights is not the answer, and to accept them is to also accept the premise that some people are born at a higher caste than others.

like i said, i was horrified as things unfolded.

but i'm curious, what do you think the answer is to the fact that Hezbollah hasn't been disarmed as agreed (and has been steadily rearming) since Israel withdrew?

And this is where Iran has chosen the battlefield for this chapter of this conflict.
It is a good battlefield to fight in:
- It is geographically distant from its borders, so success here means regional influence,
- It is in the middle of heavily populated areas, scoring it a large propaganda victory when Israel irrationally started killing people that had nothing to do with the conflict. This is why Alan Dershowitz & Party started calling these civilians as natural accomplices to the guerrilla, since doing so would ameliorate the PR catastrophe (also makes me wonder why the New York Times would willingly publish this garbage),
- With all this in mind, it makes no sense to consider a situation where Hizbollah is unarmed, and harmless. This would constitute a loss in Iran's regional influence, and would lead to its eventual decapitation as a nation-state (such as what has happened to Iraq).
I sincerely believe that the display of cheap conventional weaponry (RPG-29) succesfully engaging armored forces is a warning shot to any interested in attacking Iran (USA). And, come to think of it, Iran has as much of a reason to fear for its national integrity as Israel does -- take a good long look at its history since ca. 1950's. The importance of its oil fields cannot be underestimated.

because their attempts failed.

Though I would like to point out that implying DU'ers are paid posters for a foreign country is against the spirit and the letter of forum rules (no personal attacks).

In my case I'm criticizing the words and not the person behind them.

But the fact remains that there are pro-israeli organizations that have made it their mission to influence public opinion. From the World Union of Jewish Students:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphone_desktop_tool

"The Megaphone desktop tool is a Microsoft Windows application distributed by the World Union of Jewish Students and other pro-Israel organizations, through the Giyus.org website."

It would be patently silly to assume that this effort would contain fair and accurate characterizations of the conflict. The software was 'allegedly' endorsed by Israel's foreign ministry:

"Many of us recognize the importance of the Internet as the new battleground for Israel's image. It's time to do it better, and coordinate our on-line efforts on behalf of Israel. An Israeli software company have developed a free, safe and useful tool for us - the Internet Megaphone.

"Please go to www.giyus.org, download the Megaphone, and you will receive daily updates with instant links to important internet polls, problematic articles that require a talk back, etc.

"We need 100,000 Megaphone users to make a difference. So, please distribute this mail to all Israel's supporters.

"Do it now. For Israel."

Amir Gissin
Director
Public Affairs Department
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem "

The website itself is located at:
http://www.standwithus.com/news_post.asp?NPI=914
The software is located at:
http://www.giyus.org/

And this is probably only an example of efforts such as these. It is well understood that Israel's support in the USA depends largely on the public, and its ability to influence the decisionmakers in D.C., hence these efforts are targeting precisely that angle, and constitute a type of foreign intervention in America's internal affairs. Which is made odious due to the consequences that this support has for the people that live within Israel's immediate military influence (Gaza, West Bank), and immediately to its north (Lebanon).

nor should it be a basis to dismiss anybody's opinion.

and really, it seems odd that a community web site that bonds together on common goals like DU should condemn other people on the Internet for banding together for causes they care about.

Not all of Megaphone's notices are propaganda - some of it is quite legitimate. To wit, just a few minutes ago a call was sent out to stop an effort to sell Hitler's paintings in England. That makes sense to me, for this person (Hitler) cannot enjoy a minute's worth of justification, in light of what he did.
But some of it is bound to be propaganda, and the Foreign Ministry's endorsement of this product renders it highly suspect in *certain* regards.

but it's also worth noting that "propaganda" by definition is just information with a goal of influencing opinion... that doesn't automatically mean it's wrong or inaccurate. it certainly can be, but one should be careful about just dismissing something as "propaganda", if you have a problem with what is said, point out where it's inaccurate.

unfortunately, the "truth" (if there even is such a thing anymore) is often stuck somewhere in the middle of what the empassioned masses on any side of a debate fling at each other.

and of course, what we see online or selectively presented via any media source tend to be the most dramatic examples. i wouldn't be surprised at all if one were to find that the vast majority of Israelis, Palestinians or even Americans are sick of hearing extreme rhetoric from any side.

as for the "foreign ministry's endorsement", do you really expect them to condemn people who support them?

From the examples above, the tendency will be to not consider the human side of Israel's targets, since doing so would distract from whatever overall mission is being implemented.
This is the source of recoil at the propaganda tactic. If this is difficult to understand, then the initial criticism, that you do not consider human life to be equal in all regards, stands.

I am a member of the Zionist Conspiracy™

We even have little membership cards...and we get newsletters. Because what would a conspiracy be without newsletters?

If you're interested, its $9.95 a month to join, and they have a special offer going right now where if you join for a year, you get a free AIPAC tee-shirt.

Very, very bad.
There is no excuse for the employment of these weapons, which are dispensed by fundamentally cowardly Air Force personnel, who will have no opportunity to see first hand the gruesome results of their actions.