When You Look Into The Abyss...

Remember when Human Rights Watch released a report criticizing Hezbollah for committing war crimes in the July War, by indiscriminately targeting Israeli citizens in North Israel? And remember when Hezbollah strong-armed the human rights organization into cancelling their press conference in Hamra, with the Siniora government's complicity? A week after that adventure, HRW released a report condemning the IDF for "indiscriminate airstrikes...[which] caused most of the approximately 900 civilian deaths in Lebanon."

The executive director of Human Rights Watch, has an editorial in today's Haaretz, comparing the response to HRW's reports in Beirut and Jerusalem. While Israel allowed the press conference to go forward, they were no more willing to accept blame for their conduct during the July War than Hezbollah:

"Faced with this troubling evidence, even the IDF was reluctant to confront the facts. The top IDF lawyers with whom we met noted several times that, unlike Hezbollah, the IDF did not deliberately try to kill civilians. But of course, the laws of war, not Hezbollah, provide the proper measure for Israeli conduct. The lawyers noted, correctly, that the IDF was under intense political pressure to end the Hezbollah rocket barrage on northern Israel, but it is precisely such difficult circumstances for which the laws of war are intended."

One meets very few people who believe that another Israel-Hezbollah conflict can be avoided. When civilians are once again indiscriminately killed in South Lebanon and North Israel, I don't want anyone to claim that they were unaware of the war's consequences.