Israel Use of Cluster Bombs Appalling

Lebanon will be cleaning up from this war with Israel for decades. One of the worst consequences of the war is the indiscriminate use of cluster bombs by Israel in the last 72 hours of the war, after the cease fire was negotiated. Clearly, Israel desperately seeking to retrieve a lost struggle, they started using cluster artillery shells, hardly precisely placed smart bombs, on civilian targets. Admonishing Hizbullah for using "civilian shields" and believing such practices justified killing the civilians. Since when does two wrongs make a right?
WaPo

Clearing unexploded cluster bombs used by Israel in Lebanon during the month-long war, many of them U.S.-manufactured, could take 10 years, a British-based demining group said on Friday. "We will be clearing unexploded cluster munitions from the rubble of the villages of southern Lebanon for another decade," said Simon Conway, director of Land mine Action. "That is the grim reality," he told reporters in Geneva.


Before the recent war between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas in the south, demining teams were still clearing unexploded cluster munitions from Israel's 1978 and 1982 incursions into Lebanon, according to the advocacy group which is campaigning for an international ban on their use. Such weapons continue to kill and maim civilians, especially children, for years after a conflict, it said. The United Nations estimates that 100,000 cluster bomblets that failed to explode lie in Lebanon, with most landing during the final 72 hours of the war, which ended in an August 14 ceasefire.


U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland has called Israel "completely immoral" for using them in residential areas.

AlterNet calls the use of cluster bombs on civilian targets a "war crime" and notes that TV news in the US provided very little coverage of the cluster bomb use.

Could you imagine the coverage this would get if Hezbollah had done this to Israel? There would be endless coverage, pundits would have a much easier time comparing Hezbollah to Nazi Germany, and the Bush administration would certainly consider this grounds for bombing Iran.