Dear all,
I read Alan Dershowitz argument that "all those civilians being killed in
Lebanon may not really be civilians after all" and his invented notion of "the
continuum of civilianality" with disbelief. For me his argument was an act of
desperation, trying to make excuses for Israel for killing more than 375
civilians and injuring more than 1000 so far in its bombardment of Lebanon. 
One story that Suzanne Goldenberg reported from Kafra and the Guardian ran on
its cover page on Monday says why the civilians of south Lebanon stay behind and
don't 'obey' the Israeli 'orders' of evacuation. They follow 'orders' to
evacuate, but still the Israeli missiles cut their journey to safety short. 
Death is the only choice Israel has left the residents of South Lebanon with, if
they stay they will die and if they leave they will die. Many have decided to
stay. 
If you have Alan Dershowitz email could you please forward this article to him
and ask him: does he consider those who died in Kafra civilians or not?
One more thing, could you please draw his attention to the fact that the
population of south Lebanon fear that if they evacuate their villages and towns,
Israel might not allow them to return. Does he know that there is a history of
fear among the inhabitants of South Lebanon that Israel wants to uproot them
from their land and villages?  This history goes back to 1948 the year Israel
was established.  

N.B. Human rights watch has confirmed today that Israel is using artillery-fired
cluster munitions in populated areas of Lebanon. Human Rights Watch believes
that the use of cluster munitions in populated areas may violate the prohibition
on indiscriminate attacks contained in international humanitarian law. 
for full story go to 
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/07/24/isrlpa13798.htm

Zahera Harb


Blasted by a missile on the road to safety
Family ordered to flee were targeted because they were driving minivan
Suzanne Goldenberg in Kafra, Lebanon
Monday July 24 2006
The Guardian


The ambulanceman gave Ali the job of keeping his mother alive. The 12-year-old
did what he could. "Mama, mama, don't go to sleep," he sobbed, gently patting
her face beneath her chin. Behind her black veil, her eyelids were slowly
sinking. "I'm going to die," she sighed. "Don't say that, mama," Ali begged, and
then slid to the ground in tears.

On the pavement around mother and son were the other members of the Sha'ita
family, their faces spattered with each other's blood. All were in varying
shades of shock and injury. A tourniquet was tied on Ali's mother's arm. A few
metres away, his aunt lay motionless, the white T-shirt beneath her abaya
stained red. Two sisters hugged each other and wept, oblivious to the medics
tending their wounds. "Let them take me, let them take me," one screamed.

Their mother was placed on a stretcher, and lifted into the ambulance. "God is
with you, mama," Ali said. She reached up with her good arm to caress his face.

The Sha'itas had thought they were on the road to safety when they set out
yesterday, leaving behind a village which because of an accident of geography -
it is five miles from the Israeli border - had seemed to make their home a
killing ground. They had been ordered to evacuate by the Israelis.

But they were a little too slow and became separated from the other vehicles
fleeing the Israeli air offensive in south Lebanon. Minutes before the
Guardian's car arrived, trailing a Red Cross ambulance on its way to other
civilian wounded in another town, an Israeli missile pierced the roof of the
Sha'itas' white van. Three passengers sitting in the third row were killed
instantly, including Ali's grandmother. Sixteen other passengers were wounded.
In recent days, families like the Sha'itas are bearing the brunt of Israel's air
campaign and its efforts to rid the area of civilians before ground operations.
A day after Israel's deadline for people to leave their homes and flee north of
the Litani river, roads which in ordinary times wind lazily through tobacco
fields and banana groves have been turned into highways of death.

Plumes of smoke rise in the distance, and the road in front of us offers up
signs of closer peril: car wrecks, still smoking after Israeli strikes, and
abandoned vehicles with shattered rear windows. Some were direct hits by Israeli
aircraft. Others were drivers who had lost control. Overhead is the menacing
roar of Israeli warplanes and the buzz of drones tracking every movement.

With bridges on the main coastal roads severed by Israeli air strikes, and
secondary mountain routes scarred by craters, the means of escape for Lebanese
trying to follow Israel's orders are limited. "All the smaller roads leading to
the coastal roads are destroyed," said a spokesman for the UN in the border town
of Naqoura. "In some areas you have people pushing cars by hand through
obstacles made by a rocket or a bomb." By yesterday afternoon, for many
villagers, there was truly no way out.

Death came crashing into the Sha'ita family soon after 10am, in the form of an
Israeli anti-tank missile, seemingly fired from an Israeli helicopter high
overhead, in Kafra, about nine miles from their home. Those passengers who were
not killed or injured by shards of burning metal were hurt when the van plunged
into the side of a hill.

In their village of et-Tiri, the Sha'itas were an extended clan of 54 people.
Between them they had three cars. When the Israeli evacuation order came, in
leaflets shot out of aircraft, the family planned at first to stay. "We were at
home living our lives," said Musbah Sha'ita, Ali's uncle.

By 7pm on Saturday night, the deadline set by Israel for people in about a dozen
villages in south Lebanon to leave, the Sha'itas were close to panic. "Whoever
could run was running," said Mr Sha'ita. "I pushed them to go."

One of their fleeing neighbours said he would send transport for them, and the
next morning all 54 of the Sha'itas set out in a convoy of three white minivans.
That choice of transport proved a fatal mistake.

In their leaflet campaign, the Israelis have warned repeatedly they would
consider minivans, trucks and motorcyles as targets. "The minivans are a target
for Israel because they can take Katyusha rockets for Hizbullah, so they do not
contemplate too long," the UN official said. "They just shoot it."

Dozens of others have met a similar fate as Israeli F-16 jet fighters and attack
helicopters intensify a campaign meant to cut off the supply of Hizbullah
rockets, and the movement of its fighters.

But Israel's offensive is being felt across a much wider swath of south Lebanon.
The Lebanese Red Cross in Tyre said 10 cars carrying civilians and three or four
motorcycles had been hit by Israeli missiles yesterday. Red Cross ambulances
were no safer; a spokesman said an ambulance had narrowly escaped a missile near
the village of el-Qlaile, south of the city. A number of the dead, including the
three members of the Sha'ita family, remained trapped in their cars because it
was too dangerous to retrieve their bodies.

In Tyre, south Lebanon's main town and a stopping point on the flight to the
north, the hospital received a steady flow of injured. By late afternoon there
were three dead and 41 injured, two critically."They are bombing them all in
their cars," said Ahmed Mrowe, the director of Jabal al-Amal hospital.

Those who choose not to flee - the UN estimates that 35%-40% of villagers are
too poor or too frail to make the journey - are being left stranded.

That was the predicament facing the Sha'itas when Musbah Sha'ita urged them to
flee. In a car on the way to the hospital, his ear was welded to his phone,
trying to find out where his wounded relatives were, and he could not stop
blaming himself.

"We put a white flag. We were doing what Israel told us to do," he says. "What
more do they want of us?"

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited