Qana - by Lebanese artist Mazen Kerbaj

Over 60 Lebanese dead from Israeli bombs, 34 of them children.

That's not surprising. After all, Israel did the same thing 10 years ago, in the exact same place, with 100 dead. What is surprising, is that it happened all at once. Israel has been murdering Palestinian children for years, a few at a time.

If only the Palestinians could take a page from Qana, and put all their kids in one place. (Gaza's a good start, but it's still too big.) Send them to a town square, the Israeli military could fire a single missile and everyone wins. Israel gets to conduct its war on the cheap, and the Palestinians win a small chance to be noticed.

Lebanon should learn from this too. Israel has to make sympathetic noises now, apologizing and declaring a 48 hour ceasefire. Now we know that 1 day = 17 children. You could do away with all these complicated ceasefire negotiations. Simply hand over 119 Lebanese children to an Israeli firing squad, and you’ve bought yourself a week.


Palestinian child displaying the weapons of terror

Because you know, it's really not the Israeli military's fault. They dropped leaflets on Qana, warning civilians to flee. Hezbollah guerillas were firing missiles from Qana - they had to be stopped, just like 10 years ago:

Israel apologised and said it had been an accident caused by old maps and poor calculations. Backed by the US, Israel blamed mainly Hizbullah for using civilians as human shields. But a UN report noted many inconsistencies in the Israeli account and said it was "unlikely" the deaths were the result of technical errors.

And why should the Israelis settle for a technical failure this time? They did their homework: "They had to have known there were children in that house," [villager Mohsen Hachem] said. "The drones are always overhead, and those children - there were more than 30 - would play outside all day."


A Zionist website lovingly called this photo 'pisschild' - same child arrested by police

Serves Hezbollah right. It’s unfair of them to use their neighbours, friends, relatives and fellow citizens as human shields. They should just march to the border carrying their rockets, and line up neatly for the Israelis to kill them. We all know Israel displays the same courage in their U.S.-supplied tanks and warplanes.

For that matter, it serves the Lebanese right too. How dare they stay in their homes? Israel was generous enough to tell them to give up everything they own, and risk death on their own roads trying to flee.


Qana 1996 - the Israeli equivalent of stone-throwing

Where do the Lebanese think they are, their own country?

Some call the Israeli state Zionist butchers. To me, that's just an honest skilled trade. Look how Israel restrains itself:

1940 - Zionist Irgun gang bombs the ship Patria in Haifa harbour to foment anti-British sentiment, killing 240 Jewish refugees
1946 - Zionists terrorists bomb the King David hotel: 92 Britons, Arabs and Jews dead
1949 - 13,000 Palestinians killed as Israelis drive 700,000 from their land
1973 - Libyan passenger airline shot down by Israeli air force: 107 dead
1974 - Israeli air force napalms Palestinian refugee camps, 200 killed
1978 - Israeli incursion into Lebanon, 2000 dead
1979 - Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, 969 dead
1982 - 200 refugees killed near Nabatiye during Israeli invasion of Lebanon
1982 - 6000 civilians killed in Beirut by Israeli army (Israeli causalties: 8, 3 by accidents)
1982 - 2000 Palestinian refugees massacred at Sabra & Shatila by Christian fascists, by the authority of Ariel Sharon

1967-1982 - Israeli causalties in 15 years of PLO resistance: 105

Sources: Fateful Triangle, Noam Chomsky; Dossier on Palestine, Shunpiking Press


Qana 2006 - the terrorist Red Cross gets what's coming to it

These don’t count displacement, the destruction of homes, torture as official policy and mass imprisonment. They don’t count the 100s of thousands killed around the world as Israel sold weapons and provided training to regimes like Guatemala, Honduras and apartheid South Africa. But hey - who does?

Palestinians and Lebanese, listen up: those left alive in Qana can take some comfort in knowing their sacrifices will be footnotes of history. But unless you can think of a more efficient, visible way to get your citizens slaughtered, we in the west won't give a damn. We'll call Israel's response measured; we'll get decent, god-fearing men like John Bolton to blame you for making your own corpses. You better stop fighting and start dying in bigger numbers, or this war will last a long, long time.