Day 25: Qa'a Massacre

Many of us wonder how many massacares must take place and how many innocents must be killed before Israel decides to put a stop to the atrocities it is committing in Lebanon and Palestine. I personally wonder how many massacres must take place and how many innocents must be killed before the US stops blindly supporting Israel's aggression against Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories. It seems as though we have truly become desensitized to this war and are only shaken when we see gruesome pictures like those that appeared today after Israeli forces resorted yet again to easy targets against Lebanese civilians. This time, the victims were farmers picking their crops, attempting to conduct their daily as normal as possible in a country where normalcy no longer exists. Thirty-three shattered and tarred bodies are shown strewn across the fields, their freshly picked fruits lying close by.

One Israeli air strike hit a farm near Qaa, close to the Syrian border in the Bekaa Valley where workers, mostly Syrian Kurds, were loading plums and peaches on to trucks, local officials said. They said 33 people were killed and 20 wounded.

Television footage showed bodies of what appeared to be farm workers lined up near the ruins of a small structure in fruit groves. Strewn nearby were fruit baskets.

"I was picking peaches when three bombs hit. Others were having lunch and they were torn to pieces," said Mohammad Rashed, one of the wounded. Syria's official news agency said 17 of the dead were Syrian workers, five of them women.

"The air force spotted a truck that was suspected to have been loaded with weapons cross from Syria into Lebanon on a route that is routinely used to transport weapons," an Israeli military source said. "The truck entered into a building and remained inside for an hour, then left and returned to Syria."

Gee, could this truck have possibly been loading fruits to be taken across the Syrian border? I wonder if there is a resemblance between plums and katyosha rockets...I wonder how that didn't show up on the Israeli radar screen...

Israel did not hesistate after this massacare but continued its destruction of Lebanese towns and villages, despite rumors of a cease-fire within the next 24 hours. Maybe Israel realized that it only has a few hours left so it made a final push to destroy more infrastructure and kill more innocent Lebanese civilians.

Israeli warplanes destroyed four key bridges on Lebanon's last untouched highway Friday, severing the country's final major connection to Syria and deepening its isolation.

The number of Lebanese deaths has risen to more than 900 since the beginning of the war, specifically 958 according the most recent Aljazeera news broadcast. Hopefully we will continue to remember that they're not just numbers, they are human beings.

[technorati tags: Lebanon, war, Israel, Qa'a, massacre]