The Israeli spindoctor on the ABC’s Lateline (July 26 2006) lied unconvincingly about the bombing of the UN building and the ambulances in Southern Lebanon.
Here is a brief excerpt of what he said. Note that the Hizballah leader’s threats are canvassed at the end of the interview. This is a very worrying development. If Hizballah uses bigger rockets, the Israeli response could be a greater catastrophe than has already happened.
Tony Jones, Australian Broadcasting Corporation interview with MARK REGEV, ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTRY SPOKESMAN on the bombing of the UN and ambulances in South Lebanon
TONY JONES: OK. How can you explain the attack on Sunday night reportedly by an Apache helicopter on that ambulance heading for Tyre in a convoy where an Israeli missile went straight through the centre of the Red Cross on the roof of the ambulance?
MARK REGEV: I’m sorry, but I haven’t been briefed on that particular event and so I don’t have a good answer for you.
TONY JONES: It’s on front page of the newspapers here in Australia and it’s received coverage all round the world because I’ve read it on the Internet.
MARK REGEV: I’m just not familiar with that event and I apologise and I can say the following: we do not deliberately target civilian targets, whether they are Lebanese civilians or anyone’s civilians. They are not our enemy. Ultimately, we hope for a day of peace with Lebanon. We are trying to deal with a very formidable military machine – that is the Hezbollah military structure. A machine, as your reporter from Lebanon says, continues to hurl missiles into Israeli civilian cities. A machine whose outposts, every time we take on one of their fortresses, we are losing some of our service people because they are well fortified, they are very well defended. Ultimately, I would say the following: this whole tragedy, this whole crisis, is a result of the fact that Hezbollah has initiated this conflict and that is why it is just so important that we implement UN Security Council resolution 1559 for calls for the disarming of Hezbollah as a military instrument.
TONY JONES: Let’s look at Sheik Hassan Nasrallah threatened today that his attacks would now go, as he put it, beyond Haifa. Do you understand what he means by that?
MARK REGEV: I am afraid so. I mean he is threatening us with missiles to go even deeper into Israel, maybe coming as far south as cities like Natania, getting close to Tel Aviv. We take these threats very seriously. We saw from day one of this crisis they had a formidable military machine, the way they took out our naval vessel with a very sophisticated land-to-sea missile…
For complete interview go to http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1697956.htm
More than 2,500 people in Israel on Saturday 23 July 2006 attended a demonstration against the war in Lebanon, marching from Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square to a rally at the Cinemateque plaza.