Ten Precision Mistakes. posted by Richard Seymour

Ehud Olmert insists that the killing of UN personnel was a mistake, and has attacked Kofi Annan for saying that it was anything else. Annan, who occasionally stirs to life in a way not completely redolent of a puppet, said that the attacks looked perfectly deliberate. How deliberate? Well, the UN's initial report says that they called the IDF ten times to urge that the firing stop: each time they were assured it would, and each time a precision-guided rocket hit their post.

Olmert's denial is obviously contemptuous, not even offered seriously, flung out there because it is the sort of thing a statesman is expected to say. The reason for the attacks is obvious: Israel is warning the UN that any more outbursts such as we have heard from Egeland and Annan will be severely dealt with. It is curious that Israel would be so blatant about this - they can't have expected that the truth would not come out. Presumably they intend for people, particularly in surrounding countries, to understand that they are serious, ruthless, psychopaths. If this is how they behave when they know for certain that people will hear about it, how do you suppose they behave when they operate under cover, when the people they target and kill do not have a direct line to international institutions, when their actions are strictly covered up by the Israeli censor?