[IslamCity] Rep. John Conyers to Mark 10th Anniv. of Qana Massacre

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 04:03:09 -0700

We should never forget how brutal the Qana massacre was:
 
http://www.geocities.com/mewatch99/zionmassacre.html

The Qana Massacre 1996 Reported by Robert Fisk:
 
Qana, southern Lebanon - It was a massacre. Not since Sabra and Chatila had I seen the innocent slaughtered like this. The Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their hands or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disemboweled. There were well over a hundred of them. A baby lay without a head. The Israeli shells had scythed through them as they lay in the United Nations shelter, believing that they were safe under the world's protection. Like the Muslims of Srebrenica, the Muslims of Qana were wrong.
 
In front of a burning building of the UN's Fijian battalion headquarters, a girl held a corpse in her arms, the body of a gray- haired man whose eyes were staring at her, and she rocked the corpse back and forth in her arms, keening and weeping and crying the same words over and over: "My father, my father." A Fijian UN soldier stood amid a sea of bodies and, without saying a word, held aloft the body of a headless child.
 
…When I walked towards them, I slipped on a human hand...
 
Israel's slaughter of civilians in this terrible 10-day offensive - 206 by last night - has been so cavalier, so ferocious, that not a Lebanese will forgive this massacre. There had been the ambulance attacked on Saturday, the sisters killed in Yohmor the day before, the 2-year-old girl decapitated by an Israeli missile four days ago. And earlier yesterday, the Israelis had slaughtered a family of 12 - the youngest was a four- day-old baby - when Israeli helicopter pilots fired missiles into their home.
 
Shortly afterwards, three Israeli jets dropped bombs only 250 meters from a UN convoy on which I was traveling, blasting a house 30 feet into the air in front of my eyes. Traveling back to Beirut to file my report on the Qana massacre to the Independent last night, I found two Israeli gunboats firing at the civilian cars on the river bridge north of Sidon…
 
A French UN trooper muttered oaths to himself as he opened a bag in which he was dropping feet, fingers, pieces of people's arms…
 
We had suddenly become not UN troops and journalists but Westerners, Israel's allies, an object of hatred and venom. One bearded man with fierce eyes stared at us, his face dark with fury. "You are Americans", he screamed at us. "Americans are dogs. You did this. Americans are dogs."
 
President Bill Clinton has allied himself with Israel in its war against "terrorism" and the Lebanese, in their grief, had not forgotten this. Israel's official _expression_ of sorrow was rubbing salt in their wounds. "I would like to be made into a bomb and blow myself up amid the Israelis", one old man said…(23)

Anisa Abd el Fattah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 16:02:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Council for the National Interest Foundation <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Rep. John Conyers to Mark 10th Anniv. of Qana Massacre



For Immediate Release
April 24, 2006
Contact: Noura Erakat, 202.332.0994

10 years later, survivors of Qana massacre still seeking justice

Tuesday, April 25th, 2:00 - 3:00 PM
Capitol Building HC-7
Washington, DC
NOTE: Please arrive a half hour early and use the south entrance to the Capitol building.

Speakers:
  • Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan)
  • Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia)
  • Judith Brown Chomsky, Center for Constitutional Rights
  • Haidar Bitar, Member of a CCR class action lawsuit against retired Israeli Gen. Moshe Ya'alon
Seating is very limited. To RSVP to attend the briefing please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or call 202-332-0994.

Washington, DC—Exactly ten years have passed since the shelling of a UN Compound in Qana, Lebanon, which left 106 Lebanese civilians dead and hundreds wounded. Families of the victims – and the victims themselves – are still pursuing justice. Now, a decade after the April 18, 1996 massacre, a U.S. Congressman who represents many of the victims is introducing legislation on their behalf. A major U.S. rights group is litigating a class action lawsuit in the hope of bringing them closure.
 
Nearly 45 households with family members killed in the shelling presently live in Dearborn, Michigan. Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D, 14th-MI), plans on introducing a Congressional resolution to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the shelling on behalf of his constituents. Mr. Conyers said, "It is with great sorrow that we remember the events of April 18, 1996. On behalf of Michigan's 14th Congressional District, my family and I offer our support and prayers to the Bitar family and to the many others who lost loved ones on that tragic day."
 
Among his constituents is Haidar Bitar, who has been living in Dearborn for 13 years. In 1996, Bitar lost his two sons Hadi, 7 years old, and Aboudi, 9 years old, in the Qana shelling while they were on vacation in Qana visiting their ailing grandmother.
 
Bitar is a member of the class on whose behalf a lawsuit was filed against Moshe Ya’alon, a retired Israeli general who served as Head of Israeli Army Intelligence during the shelling. Filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the claims in the suit, Belhas, et. al., v. Ya’alon, include war crimes, extrajudicial killing, crimes against humanity, and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
 
Judith Brown Chomsky, a CCR cooperating attorney, said, “There is no official in any country that is above the law. It is important that we have a single standard by which people of any country can be called to justice for the violation of human rights. It’s not just for petty dictators who are on the U.S. enemies list.”
 
Israeli military forces shelled the compound as a part of its military operation, “Grapes of Wrath,” which sought to quell the resistance to its occupation of Southern Lebanon. Deemed illegal by UN Security Council resolution 425, Israel’s occupation of Southern Lebanon lasted 21 years from 1978 until 2000.
CAPITOL HILL PRESS BRIEFING SCHEDULED
Chomsky and Bitar, and Bitar’s daughter will participate in a press briefing in the Capitol Building HC-7 on Tuesday, April 25th from 2-3 PM. The briefing, “Commemorating Qana and Still Seeking Justice Ten Years Later,” will discuss the suit, as well as the devastation and lingering effects wrought by the 1996 shelling. This event is co-sponsored by the Council for the National Interest and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. To RSVP to attend the briefing please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED].

###


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