David Aaronovitch has a good piece today about Qana, making the point that while Israel and its supporters can’t stand the sight of innocent blood, that’s exactly what Hezbullah wants to see:

We understand the problem. Israeli violence may damage the democratic and reform movements in Lebanon and Syria. But Hezbollah’s violence, apparently, serves only to strengthen the forces of religious ecstasy. To us, hitting a UN force is a humanitarian outrage. To Hezbollah it’s a tactic. To Hezbollah every civilian is a warrior.

Take the Israeli killing of four UN soldiers last week, condemned by Kofi Annan as “deliberate”. On July 18 one of the doomed officers e-mailed home to say that Israeli ordnance was landing nearby and that, “this has not been deliberate targeting, but has rather been due to tactical necessity”. A retired Canadian general interpreted this for Canadian television. “What he was telling us was Hezbollah soldiers were all over his position and the IDF were targeting them. And that’s a favourite trick by people who don’t have representation in the UN. They use the UN as shields, knowing that they can’t be punished for it.”

[...]Today, on the website of Hezbollah’s own propaganda agency, al-Manar, you can find the boast that on one day at the end of last week: “Islamic resistance fighters launched barrages of rockets at northern Israeli settlements . . . According to Israeli media, some 20 settlers were injured in today’s attacks.” “Settlements” is Hezbollah for towns and villages, and “settlers” is Hezbollah for civilians. So when a 240lb Hezbollah rocket slammed into the Israeli countryside last week, it should have prompted the thought that when the Israelis miss their targets they hit civilians and when Hezbollah misses, they don’t.

The invasion of Lebanon by Israel, for that’s what it is, is a monstrous injustice.

I side with the resistance to that injustice. Hizbollah is leading that resistance. I do not hesitate to say, and Blair and his law officers may take note, that I glorify that resistance.

I glorify the Hizbollah national resistance movement, and I glorify the leader of Hizbollah, Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

George Galloway, Respect MP, Socialist Worker Online, July 29.

I am ashamed every time I pick up a newspaper or turn on the radio to hear about innocent Lebanese being killed by the Israeli Army but Qana is a tragedy. The fact is that for many civilians there was no choice but to sit it out:

“We heard on the news they were bombing the Red Cross,” said Zaineb Shalhoub, a 22-year-old who survived the bombing. She was lying quietly in a hospital bed in Tyre.

“What can we do with all of our kids?” she asked. “There was just no way to go.”

There are two sides to the war in Lebanon. And as long as one side chooses to fight as the video above shows, the chances of another Qana are always possible. But that is no excuse.

Whether this video is real or fake remains to be seen. But Qana did happen. And it would be foolish to think that it is anything other than a catastrophe for Israel as well as for the innocent people who died this weekend. Michael Totten is totally downbeat:

The (second in a decade) attack on Qana that killed scores of civilians has all but cemented the Lebanese public and Hezbollah together.

Cable news reports that 82 percent of Lebanese now support Hezbollah. Prime Minister Fouad Seniora – whatever his real opinion in private – is now closer to openly supporting Hezbollah in public than he has ever been.

The March 14 Movement (the Cedar Revolution) is, at best, in a coma if not outright dead.

If I could find a glimmer of hope, believe me I would.

Thanks to Ben Baruch for the scoop on his latest Shabot6000 cartoon. More cartoons here.

Michael Totten argues that Israel ought to help pay for reconstruction of the country it is destroying. And why not?