The Human Rights Blog

Olmert tells Europe to stop preaching to Israel

" Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told European leaders to stop preaching to him about civilian war casualties in an interview published on Sunday in German newspaper Welt am Sonntag."

Omert compares Israel's strikes against Lebanon with those of NATO on the Kosovo war. The comparison, however, is a faulty one and based on completely invented facts.

According to Andras Riedlmayer:

NATO's 1999 air strikes, in three months of much more intense bombing on a
much more populous country, managed to kill barely half as many civilians
as the Israelis have managed to kill in Lebanon in barely three weeks.
Human Rights Watch, which did not treat NATO with kid gloves, estimated
the total number of civilians killed by NATO air strikes in Serbia and
Kosovo in March-June 1999 at ca. 500. The estimated number of civilians
killed by Israel's air campaign in Lebanon is now approaching 1000. The
number of Israeli civilians killed by Hezbollah rockets stands at 31.

That estimate of 10,000 total civilian deaths in Kosovo, which originates
with the office of the prosecutor of the ICTY, is not a tally of victims
of the NATO bombing. It includes primarily victims of the ethnic cleansing
campaign carried out by Belgrade's army, police and militia, as well as
a smaller number of victims of killings carried out by the KLA rebels
and their sympathisers.

Olmert is also mistaken in holding "the Europeans" primarily responsible
for the 1999 war in Yugoslavia and its civilian casualties. As some may
recall, at the time of the 1999 Kosovo war both the Sharon government
and much of the Israeli public were sympathetic to the Serbian propaganda
argument that Belgrade was merely doing its part to fight the "Muslim
menace" in Kosovo and thus deserved Israel's support. Olmert's misguided
attempt at finger-pointing must be related to a dim memory of that time.
The former Jerusalem mayor conveniently forgets that the 1999 bombing
of Yugoslavia was initiated and spearheaded not by the Europeans, but
by the U.S. -- Israel's patron.

A far more ominous and apt parallel between the events of 1999 in Kosovo
and Israel's current war in Lebanon is the number of (deliberately)
displaced civilians -- 900,000 in Lebanon thus far, and a similar number
in Kosovo in 1998-1999. Every country has the right to defend itself.
But no one -- not even Israel -- is entitled to do so by illegitimate
and disproportionate means.

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Olmert tells Europe to stop preaching to Israel

BERLIN, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told
European leaders to stop preaching to him about civilian war casualties
in an interview published on Sunday in German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

Olmert also said it would not be possible to completely destroy
Hizbollah and insisted he did not underestimate them, saying they
had fired just 3,000 of their arsenal of 15,000 rockets so far.

"Where do they get the right to preach to Israel?" Olmert said
when asked about criticism from European capitals of Israeli
military operations that have led to a heavy civilian toll.

"European countries attacked Kosovo and killed ten thousand civilians.
Ten thousand! And none of these countries had to suffer before that
from a single rocket.

"I'm not saying it was wrong to intervene in Kosovo. But please:
Don't preach to us about the treatment of civilians."

Kosovo became a U.N. protectorate in June 1999 after a 78-day
NATO bombing campaign forced out Serb security forces accused of
atrocities against Albanian civilians during a rebel insurgency
by separatist Albanian guerrillas.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch estimates about 500 civilians
were killed in the NATO bombing in Kosovo.

Some 10,000 Albanians died in Serbia's 1998-99 counter-insurgency war
and there were allegations of random brutality by both sides.

In the Welt am Sonntag interview, Olmert was asked if he had
underestimated Hizbollah.

"No, we know that they have only fired 3,000 rockets so far and that
they have 15,000," he said. "The question is more: If Hizbollah knew
what the consequences of their attack would be, would they nevertheless
have done it? I don't think so."

Olmert said Hizbollah was being defeated but it was not possible
to eradicate a grass-roots guerrilla movement.

"They are beaten but it is not possible to completely destroy they.
Israel has nevertheless been more successful than any other country
in the battle against a guerrilla organization."

Lebanon Images

Often times images speak louder than words. That was true in Abu Ghraib. We knew they were torturing people right and left, but it was the images that really got into our consciousness and let us understand the inhumanity of what they were doing.

Same thing with these pictures from Lebanon. War is far away, eternal, a conflict that unless it touches us we can look away from while going with our daily routine. And then come the pictures. Of children. Children like my own, that too soon and for no reason lost their lives, were killed.

For me, the worst pictures are those of the injured children. Knowing the pain, feeling the pain they must feel. Thinking of my daughters, knowing that there is no difference. The children are our children.

Let us move to action. The world has spoken against these atrocities - but the English speaking world has been silent. Let's call our government, let's pressure them, let's take to the streets. We cannot allow this to continue happening.