Bombing Civilians

Hezbollah is committing war crimes by shooting rockets into civilian areas.

There does not seem to be a factual divide on that issue.

There is a large divide regarding Israel's actions.

Giving lie to the spin that Isral is only targeting Hezbollah, two stories are up - one from CNN and the other from the BBC - regarding Israel's bombing of civilians in Southern Lebanon.

The People of Lebanon are being punished generally and the civilians in Southern Lebanon are being punished specifically by Israel for the acts of Hezbollah. Like Hezbollah's rockets, Israel's attacks on civilians deserve our criticism.

Read both pieces. Here's a snippet from the CNN piece:

Standing in front of this 8-year-old boy lying in a hospital bed, the "conflict in the Middle East" and the "cost of war" seem endless and suffocating. His pain cannot possibly be imagined as he shakes uncontrollably in and out of shock. He has blood coming from his eyes.

His name is Mahmood Monsoor and he is horribly burned. In the hospital bed next to him is his 8-month-old sister, Maria -- also burned. Screaming at the top of her lungs is the children's mother, Nuhader Monsoor. She is standing over her baby, looking at her son -- and probably thinking of her dead husband. The smell of burned flesh is overwhelming.

UPDATE: The New York Times has also weighed in with another tale of Israeli violence directed at a Lebanese family.

Muntaha Shaito’s eyes rolled back as the paramedics screamed at her to stay awake and implored her son Ali to keep her engaged, as she teetered near death from shrapnel wounds inflicted by an Israeli rocket.

“Pray to God!,” one paramedic shouted at her as she writhed in Ali’s arms.

“Don’t go to sleep Mama, look at me!,” Ali shouted, tears streaking his bloodied face. “Don’t die, please don’t die!”

* * * *

“They said leave, and that’s what we did,” said Musbah Shaito, another uncle, as his niece, Heba, 16, cried hysterically behind him for her dead father, whose head was nearly blown off. This reporter watched as paramedics struggled to remove the dead from the van, but soon gave up, as an Israeli drone hovered overhead.