Germany joins US, British, Israeli axis of aggression

Two days later, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democratic Party—SPD) began an interview in the Süddeutsche Zeitung with the words: “What took place on Sunday in Qana was appalling. The large number of civilian victims of the Israeli air raid is terrible and unacceptable.”

However, while the German population as a whole was genuinely appalled by clips of the charred and mutilated corpses of children in Qana, the German government, a grand coalition of the CDU, Christian Social Union (CSU) and SPD, has refused to recognise and condemn this act for what it is—a despicable war crime. Steinmeier’s warning to the Israeli government—that within the context of the “right to self-defence” any application of military force had to be appropriate and civilian victims avoided—was a cynical and cowardly evasion.

In Qana, it was not a case of inaccurate targeting or failure to take steps to avoid civilian casualties. Rather, innocent women and children were deliberately slaughtered so as to accelerate the flood of refugees from south Lebanon. This massacre was not an “unfortunate exception,” but rather an expression of the true character of Israel’s aggression, which up to now has cost the lives of more children than combatants.

At the meeting of European foreign ministers held in Brussels on Tuesday, Steinmeier, one day after his interview in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, not only blocked any condemnation of Israeli war crimes, but exerted pressure to strike the demand for an immediate ceasefire from the final joint statement issued by the ministers. The original draft, proposed by the Finnish presidency, called for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon and included a sentence warning that “disregard for necessary precautions to avoid loss of civilian life constitutes a severe breach of international humanitarian law.”

Under pressure from Britain and Germany, both formulations were dropped and an alternative resolution was agreed (with the support of the Czech Republic, Poland and Denmark) that called instead on all parties to “do everything possible to protect civilian populations and to refrain from actions in violation of international humanitarian law”—a formulation which dovetails with Israel’s own hypocritical justification for its war crimes. The resolution was further altered to place criticism of Hezbollah’s rocket attacks on Israel before a reference to Israel’s killing of Lebanese civilians in Qana.

These facts make it clear that, irrespective of Merkel’s declarations of “regret and deep sadness” for the victims in Qana, the German government bears a large degree of responsibility for the war crimes that are being committed in Lebanon. Nothing has served to strengthen and encourage the American-Israeli war policy more than the pro-American turn which has taken place in German foreign policy.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/germ-a04.shtml