Omar Barghouti on the (second) massacre at Qana:

Israel apologists who will try to spin this new massacre as yet another "mistake" must expect their audience to have an awfully short memory or a very low IQ. Israel has explicitly indicated in the past few days that it may resort to such atrocious measures, especially since its armed forces have failed to achieve any tangible military gains after 19 days of rolling massacres and wanton destruction across Lebanon. Israeli minister of justice, Haim Ramon, issued a stern warning [2] only days ago that a large area in south Lebanon was regarded by his government effectively as a free-fire zone, advocating indiscriminate bombing of villages inside it to ease the so-far unsuccessful advance of the Israeli army. "These places are not villages. They are military bases in which Hizbollah are hiding and from which they are operating," he said, adding that, since Israel had ordered Lebanese civilians to leave the area, "All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hizbollah."

Israel's biggest-selling paper, Yedioth Ahronoth, advocated [3] raising the threshold of Israel's response to Katyusha rockets: "In other words: a village from which rockets are fired at Israel will simply be destroyed by fire." It is worth noting that all available evidence points to the fact that no Katyusha was fired by the Lebanese resistance from Qana before the bombing.

Among Israel's staunch Zionist supporters in the West, the same "talking points" were parroted. Harvard academic Alan Dershowitz recently argued [4] that, "Hezbollah and Hamas militants [] are difficult to distinguish from those 'civilians' who recruit, finance, harbor and facilitate their terrorism. Nor can women and children always be counted as civilians, as some organizations do. Terrorists increasingly use women and teenagers to play important roles in their attacks." He concluded saying, "The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit."

Thus the massacre in Qana.

Qana's name is associated with an earlier Israeli massacre. In 1996, during its military offensive codenamed "Grapes of Wrath," Israel's air force bombed a UN shelter in the village, slaying more than 100 civilians, mostly children...