Soccer Dad

Disturbing pictures

Though many of the pictures coming from the Palestinian Authority have a flavor of absurdity to them; others are not so funny for a variety of reasons.

Though the picture isn't as important, what's disturbing here is the caption

The vigil was held to mark the 10th anniversary of an Israeli massacre in south Lebanon in which 101 people where killed when Israeli forces bombed a U.N. shelter in the village of Qana in 1996.

This is inexcusable. Yes I know the UN called it massacre. (Yes I'm aware that there was a UN investigation by a Dutch General Franklin Van Kappen that didn't question any information he received from the terrorist organization Hezbollah.) Yes I know the Arabs called it a massacre.

What happened in Qana ten years was a tragedy. Or even an outrage. Residents of Israel, at the time had to flee their cities by the thousands due to shelling from Hezbollah. Hezbollah subject to no constraints by either their own morals or the UN was bombarding Israel with impunity. On April 18, 1996 Israel retaliated against a Hezbollah bombardment. What the IDF didn't know until it was too late was that the Hezbollah positions were in and around a UN compound. A number of Israel shells missed their target and hit a building into which 800 people had fled. Over 100 were killed.

(One of the charges against Israel was that it knew where it was shelling because a drone had been over the area prior to the shelling was shown to be false by an Israeli videotape of the drone. Still the charge persisted. The Israeli gunners were responding to mobile terrorists.)

Israel was blamed for a massacre. In fact the ineffectual UN troops were second to Hezbollah in culpability. But for Reuters, I guess that this blood libel was too good to pass up.

And this picture disturbing for a different reason

I understand that Jews like to spend Pesach (Passover) in Israel and that it's customary to go on tiyul (trip) during Chol Hamoed ( the intermediate days of the holiday) but to Ramallah? To meet the Doctor of Holocaust Denial? I thought better of Senator Lieberman.

And while I can't blame Yahoo! or the AP for juxtaposing the two pictures below, seeing one right next to the other was jarring.

It does seem that Hamas, a movement that's strapped for cash did manage quite a nice spread for the meeting. Whether it was for Haniyah or if he planned to share it wasn't clear.

Technorati tags: Mideast Conflict, Hamas, Palestinian Authority.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad