[LCM Articles] Civilians targeted on purpose

[Farid Abi-Zeid]

Hi Guys, thought I share this email. Can anyone find the German interview translated somewhere? It seems the kind of quotes showing that Israel is purposefully targeting civilians never make it to the US media!! (or at least you'll find them in a footnote with a microscope).

Thanks
-Farid
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Here is the interview you asked about (in German) with Olmert:

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/ausland/artikel/60/81978/

Babelfish does a decent translation, but the "interesting" paragraph
is the following and I'll tranlate it for you:

"Das Ergebnis unserer Invasion ist, dass ein großer Teil der
Hisbollah-Infrastruktur zerstört worden ist. Außerdem sind ganze
Bevölkerungsteile, welche die Hisbollah unterstützt haben, aus ihrer Heimat
vertrieben worden und haben all ihre Besitztümer verloren. Darüber sind sie
fürchterlich verbittert..."

The result of our invasion is that a large part of the Hisbollah infrastructure was destroyed. In addition, large parts of the population, which has supported Hizbollah were driven from their homeland and have lost all their possessions.
They are naturally bitter about this...

He mentions something very similar in an interview with the (London) Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,251-2296832,00.html

While he claims every loss of civilian life is a "failure for Israel", he also clearly says that innocent civilians might not be what they seem and therefore the population in Hizbollah vicinity are simply terrorists and "rightful" targets of the Israeli army:

"And by the way, how do you really know that 400 innocent civilians were killed?
How do you know who is innocent and who is not? Why? This is not an army. They Don't wear uniforms that distinguish them from other civilians. We
Didn't attack any of the Christian quarters of Beirut. We didn't
attack any of the Christian residential areas in any part of Lebanon. We
attacked only those areas where they had the Katyusha launchers, where they had the missile launchers, where they had the command positions of Hezbollah, where they had the storage houses, the logistic centres and so on and so forth.

So the fact that people were killed there who were not dressed in uniforms
Doesn't mean that they were innocent civilians. There were Hezbollah
people, they are the terrorists. Did you ever see terrorists dressed with
military uniforms like we have in our army? No."

This interview is interesting in hindsight, especially when he calls the
military campaign "brilliant"...