ISRAELI ARMY CLEARED OF WRONGDOING FOR DROPPING CLUSTER BOMBS ON SOUTHERN LEBANON

Here's a decision that cannot be unexpected. Israel's military prosecutors absolve the Israeli Defense Forces of violating any rules of warfare by dropping thousands of cluster bombs on southern Lebanon during the recent Israel-Lebanon II War.

Isabel Kershner reports today in The New York Times:

"Israeli military prosecutors announced Monday that they would not press charges over the army’s use of cluster bombs during the war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, actions that had been widely criticized by human rights organizations. . . ."

"Cluster bombs are not prohibited in warfare, but their use is criticized because they contain "bomblets" that explode over a wide area and may strike unintended targets. In addition, bomblets that fail to explode become, in effect, land mines that can be detonated by civilians long after fighting has stopped. More than 30 Lebanese are said to have been killed by munitions left behind after the monthlong war in 2006.

"Soon after the fighting stopped, a top United Nations aid official, Jan Egeland, described Israel’s use of cluster bombs as "shocking" and "completely immoral," not least, he said, because most had been fired in the last 72 hours of the war, when it was clear that the conflict was moving toward a resolution."

Why did Israeli Defense Forces inundate 30 miles of southern Lebanon with these deadly cluster bombs? Israel says it was targeting Hezbollah fighters, but many suspect that IDF was punishing Lebanon's civilian population for aiding and supporting Hezbollah.

To me, the whole military strategy of IDF in firing and dropping cluster bombs smacks of illegal collective punishment and the shameful targeting civilians for their political views. Because so many Lebanese would vote for Hezbollah in parliamentary elections and because so many Lebanese civilians oppose Israel's harsh military responses to the perceived terrorist threat from Hezbollah, the IDF carpets a thirty-mile swath with those immoral clusterettes.

Children be warned, don't pick up that shiny attractive looking cylinder lying there in the dirt if you don't want to give up a hand or a foot, or be blinded for life.