In war you talk about killing, not murder

FINTAN LANE tries to attack Israel, this time from a different angle (Irish Examiner letters, August 15).

Unfortunately, he makes a number of statements that are not based on fact. He accuses the Israeli military of continuing to infringe Lebanese sovereignty by occupying farmlands in the very south of the country.

With his great knowledge of the Middle East I’m sure he meant the Shebaa Farms, and of course he knows that after the withdrawal from Lebanon, the UN certified that Israel had done everything required of it for the simple reason — accepted by everyone except Hezbollah —that the Shebaa Farms were part of Syria.

Mr Lane uses the word ‘murder’ to describe the victims of Israeli military action against Hezbollah.

I resent this because in war you talk about killing — not murder. However, if he believes this was not a war, let him read the preamble to UN Resolution 1701 which refers to “Hezbollah’s attack on 12 July 2006” and which, incidentally, was accompanied by rockets fired into northern Israel.

Mr Lane tries to pull at our heartstrings by talking about images which have been truly heartrending when he writes about the 1,000 people in Lebanon who have been killed.

Every life is sacred as far as Israelis are concerned and so is every death. However, in this case, more than 400 of the dead were Hezbollah terrorists dressed as civilians.

Unfortunately, life is not so sacred to Hezbollah, when the main reason for the casualties was their contravention of the Geneva Conventions by using civilians as shields and stopping them from leaving their villages as advised by Israeli leaflets.

Of course, Mr Lane knows all that.

He talks about bombs falling on Beirut as if the city was destroyed. Having spoken to people who have just come from there, 95% of the city was unaffected by bombing; the beaches are full and night life is as busy as ever.

They carried on with their normal life because they knew that Israel has no fight with Lebanon. The 5% of Beirut that has been destroyed is a suburb — the Iranian satellite state of Hezbollah. The Israeli air force made 15,000 sorties into Lebanon.

If it had not been for their very careful targeting trying to avoid civilians, the death toll would have been many tens of thousands. Mr Lane finishes with his usual appeal to boycott Israeli goods. Of course this would also include all the goods made by the one million Israeli Arabs, some of whom have been killed by Hezbollah rockets.

Henry Guterman

42 Lidgate Grove

Didsbury

Manchester M20 6TS

England