How the IDF blew chance to destroy short-range rockets

It is about the cheapest trick in the book used by "civilized" armies to legitimize mass murder of civilians or inflate "enemy" kills. Remember the massacre of innocent villagers at My Lai, Vietnam?

Maybe we can put to rest the fiction that "innocent " Lebanon was subject to an unprovoked attack. These orchard owners fired rockets at civillian targets with no pretense at all of attacking military installations, killing and wounding many civillians (including arabs).

How creative for Hezbollah to pay the grove owners for the privilege to fire the Katyushas from their orchards. Someone better add this to fine print in the farm subsidy program!

Hizb-Olagh? like that. How about Hizb-Ahmagh for Ahmagh-Nejad?

whats the point of this report any ways? they found the lunch pads.. destroy them!.. why doesn't Hizbolagh say anything about his losses or discoveries?... all we hear is they're sorry and didn't expect such a overwelming reaction from Israel and what does it make a difference where they hide their pads,it matters where they shoot them at.. right into the civilians area and equally they get bombed the same way.. you think if Hizbolagh had lazer guidaed bombs wouldn't use them?.. I can sware if they had nuclear bombs the would use it at first appotunity in high valume

looks like sweden has a few skeletons regarding the aboriginal Sami people: "One should consider the cultural origin of the Sami: ideas of Swedish and Norwegian racial supremacy over the more Eastern, and therefore inferior peoples, used to retroactively justify military invasions to Finnic-speaking territories. These theories still survive in Swedish and Norwegian neo-Nazi circles." you've been spoken to...hypocrite

Hizbollah avoided using cell phones. Rather the preferred hand radios. Cell phone reveal location too easily.

& how brave are your hezbollah with their 4000 katusha rockets bombing cities & settlements miles away, each packed with 20000 ballbearings designed to maim & kill civilians. Wake up Robert!!

early in the conflict it occored to me that by burning vegetation in south Lebanon the launchers would become visible. Does anybody know if this tactic was even used? --------------- No. This tactic was nt used. Though during the last days of the wars after retaking Eit ash Shaab for god knows what time IDF finally brought bulldozers and started levelling the place with the ground. Its the story that was repeating itself throughout the war - the IDF takes a town or village, thinks its clean and the very next night eigher from underground tunnles or simply from nearby hills came hezbs and reinfiltrate the place. For sure the next time IDF is going to fight similar wars the IDF should serioulsy consider reshaping the landscape in its favor, both in terms of bulldozing urban landscape and in terms of burning out vegetation. From the moment the IDF ensures that the civilains are moved out of the area , it should do this.

ahh, We will come and we will destroy you, you stupid arogant asslicking islamonazi. Go and suckup to the syrians and the Ayatollas--it aint going to help you. you and your descendants are finished--its only a matter of time, a short time. Get out of Lebanon while you still can so you might live a little longer in a Syrian Camp or in a Iranian Mosque singing alllahuaqkibar.

that's what you need, because obviously you aren't getting any...

Bob, you are very moral in hiding behind the children and the womwnen, just like the rest oresults f your islamonaqzi buddies. you can't fool anybody. Of course you and your ilk are going to harp on the morality of Israe, its what you liars and child killers do. The is clear about criminals whose acts result in the death of bystanders--the criminals are guilty of murder. You are a murderer for aiding and abetting the criminal Hez. they are criminals becdause they acted outsdide their own governments laws. If their government allowed and encouraged them, as it dide both by voice and deed, then that government is as criminal as the hez. so there you have it Bob, you are the immoral criminal, murderer, and worst of all liar aqnd false witness. Your day of reconning is near. Get on your knees and pray, pray brother pray. Get on your knees and pray. At least some of the arabs put their lives on the line--but you are a totally despicable cowardly liar.

Yep, I noticed cellphone use as well. It would seem that while the zionist entity has nuclear weapons, it has not even the most basic technological apparati to trace phone calls. Dumb, dumb and dumber. And this type of diborim yafeem lihlo ma'aseem (all talk, no action) is why the IDF left Lebanon with their tails between their collective legs.

Some very bizarre thought processes here......

A challenge to you: Sweden has always, and I mean always, supported decency and the rule of those national and international laws which promote decency. You, in your childish attacks on all those who do not support zionist mass murder of innocent civilians, go to far when you accuse Sweden in the way you have. So come with some facts, or are you just one of those many, many zionists who have no facts, but do have lots of paranoid aggression.

This is just another example of the extensive failure of Israeli's intelligence services. That there were many - far too many - such failures has been obvious from early in the war. All the "high-tech" weapons in the world are useless if they are used based upon faulty intelligence. Intelligence is the most important of all force multipliers. Israel cannot afford incompetence and ineptness in it's intelligence services. No one expects perfection in the intelligence business, but the existence of extensive fixed fortifications without the intelligence services having a clue is unacceptable. One must ask other questions. How much did defective intelligence bear upon the decision to go to war. Is all of Israel's intelligence product as defective and deficient as that involving Hisbollah?

Ver biz

So? The goyim have navels, and the chosen people have nazels? Do, please, say more on this very important subject.

SUCH A NICE ANSWER? DIDNT YOU KNOW THAT LEBANEASE ARE TAKING HOSTAGE BY ISRAEL SINCE 27 YEARS? DIDNT YOU KNOW THAT YOUR PLANE PASS BY OUR LAND EVERY DAY SINCE 2000. DIDNT YOU KNOW THAT YOU SOLDIER KILLED A FARMER NEAR CHIBAA FARMS IN 2005. DIDNT YOU KNOW THAT ISRAEL HAD TOOK HOSTAGE A FISHERMAN IN THE SOUTH IN 2005. DO YOU WANT MORE STOP STOP YOUR MADNESS AND THAN WE WILL NOT BOMB YOUR COUNTRIE. ALWAYS TO ALL ISRAEL WE WILL NOT KEEP SILENCE AGAIN WE ARE NOT WEEK NOW AS 1982 AND WE ARE NOT GAZA THIS IS LEBANON YOU WILL PAY FOR EVERYTHING YOU DO! AT THE END HOPE THAT THE PUBLISHER IN HAARATZ WILL PUBLISH THIS IF NOT AT LEAST ONE HAD SEEN IT.

I have to laugh each time I see you folks posting under your honourific. It reminds me of the old joke about the archetypal Jewish mother at the seaside, seeing some sort of trouble in the water, and running up and down the beach, screaming "Help, help: my son the doctor is drowning?" So what? we'll all die if we don't listen to the good zionist doctors?

Here in Norway, the anti-Israel campaign is really picking up. Mothers with baby carriages with stickers saying the equivalent of Boycott Israel, osv. No Israeli products on the shelves in the town where I shop. Let us hope that Israel will soon mend their ways!

Islamofacism is a term that is extremely insulting

No one will comment on you ... after all you're American= total ignorant (according to top 10 news USA magazines consensus) go sniff something , or get fat ... stay out of politics

stupid stupid stupid trying to play with terrorists with kid gloves.

Just the same boring old zionist drivel from the sidelines: boys pretending to be men while sitting in sunny California (where there apparently are no kangaroos to be put up in comparison to other's real kangaroos). All of you silly zionists sitting out there in the comfort of diaspora should confine yourself to giving wise advice to so-called Israel, lest your summer holiday plans for your kids be interrupted.

Exactly what chance did so-called Israel blow? Let's fact it folks, Israel had no chance in Lebanon. It sent in boys to do a man's job and, of course, they failed and came home weeping and sobbing. Is that the best you've got? The zionist state is clearly powerless and bankrupt: morally, ethically, economically and militarily.

Those rockets are well hidden and they work on timers. Many of them can be seen from near by villages. The main pb is that hizbos are using modified rocket with max damage and they have heat signals scrambles located specially in the south. IDF and IAF were very polite this time simply because they didnt level off the south. and for that stupid who is sayin that israel didnt attack xstaians villages , they didnt coz there is no hizbos there. Long Live IAF and IDF

This is something I wondered about during the war. It should have seemed obvious that cellphone communication was the mode of choice, as the videos always showed the terrorists using their cellphones.

Zeve mentioned "farmers" as if ALL farmers in south Lebanon were Hizballah operatives. Why could he not use the word Hizb fighters? All he is trying is to justify killing civilians by branding all farmers as guerillas. This is a despicable try at best!

Anti-artillery counter fire radar can't fix the position of a rocket launcher better than a 30m radius. This is good enough to kill a tank or artillery piece, or an above ground launcher truck, but you could shoot 155mm shells all day to these coordinates, and not hit a 2m x 3m bunker into which a 14 barrel launcher had been lowered. Only with a lucky shot. Likewise, precision munitions han't hit what can't be seen. In hindsight, correct tactics to defeat these units would have been to locate the fixed launcher site with radar, and then saturate the coordinates with 10-20 1000 Kg "dumb bombs" or better, GPS-guided JDAMS targeting the coordinates. That would kill a multi-barrel katyusha launcher hidden fruit trees and lowered into a 2-3m pit for protection. Israelis assumed fire from vegetation was from shoot-and-scoot trucks, that cluster/frag weapons into the coordinates would kill the trucks (sometimes did). Hydraulic launchers in pits. Neat trick, Hezbollah, but that only works once

john let's not kid ourselves, the reason you raised money for the lebanese in stockholm is because sweden has a long history of being pro arab and anti-Israel. As is made totally clear in your comment that completely omits the kidnapping and killing of 10 Israeli soldiers by hizbollah. You are a revisionist.

The problem is that, why were these rockets fired? If you read back in the news of July 12, you'll notice that these rockets were fired in retaliation to Israel's targetting of civllian infrastructure and homes. Warning were given to the IDF not to strike civillian infrastructure and civillian areas. The IDF, obviously with the killing of over 1000 civillians and demolishing of the infrastructure, ignored this call.

You are a Swede, but it does not mean mean that you should not be able to understand a text. John: read again the piece. It is not so complicated. Even a Swede can understand. Make an effort!

I have been asking for weeks on this talkback why the IDF simply didn't shoot down the rockets as they claimed they knew where they came from - no answer. Now I know why. Those rockets are 5 foot long for petes sake, if you tried to blow them from a house you would blow the house up. Australian, English, German, Dutch, American journalists from all over the world, the Red Cross, Human rights Watch, Amnesty International, the UN and every other aid group and person in Lebanon said they were not firing rockets from houses. Israels leaders lied to everyone to justify what was their real purpose - to wipe out the shi'ite's in an exercise of scorched earth ethnic cleansing. How else does one explain Dutch TV film showing christian collaborators areas completely untouched while shi'ite areas were bombed to rubble. Hezbollah has only about 1-2,000 "fighters" who trained to kick Israel out of the occupied land - the other million are innocent civilians. Some from the US are insane.

Paul, There is a new breed of Jew/Israel hate bloggers out here. It could be one guy or an organization. Ofter "they " use use sweet, wholesome, innocuous, female names like "chris" "valerie" marilyn" etc. They load up the Talkback with Jew/Israel hate and Haaretz lets them go non-stop. They get especially wild on any story that eulogizes an IDF soldier or has a sypathetic view of Israelis who suffered during the war.Inflicting pain IS their objective. Sadism is their tool. Responding to them is, of course , a waste of time. Discovering and exposing them is better. It takes a little work but it's easy to see through.

What a shame! IDF was killing civilians and destroying civilian infastructure using an excause that Katchushas were hiding in civilian areas. Shame!

Please don't treat the Haaretz Jewish readers as "village idiots". The platforms were in villages, amongst farmhouses, burnes, sheep pens. Many were in build cities next to schools , hospitals and apartment buildings. There were close to 4000 rockets over the 34 days. Don't play stupid word games you morons. 2 picture in Toronto Star after the ceasefire showed a building before the hostilities and after it was bombed. You could see that IAF really targeted the one building.A picture during the war zoomed in only on the ruins with no surroundings. The impression left that all Beiruth was in ruins. Yesterday the Lebanese government announced that the cities will be rebuild in record time! Its either like under Satlin the Stachanov Campaign where workers were worked to death or that the bombing by IDF was indeed very targeted on hidden Hezbollah installations and damage is limited. So much for the PR campaign by islamo-fascists Hezbollah and its western admireres like Bob and Tim.

Marilyn, you are hostile to Israel. These articles are not about convincing those who think like you to the Israeli or the Zionist cause. Hezbollah's rockets are not defensive, but offensive; the ultimate goal is to increase their lethality not as a deterrent but to liquidate the Jewish state. Ze'ev's *starting point* here is that everyone recognizes the IAF (that is the Israeli Air Force) campaign was ineffective and imprecise. It is not nazel gazing to prepare for the next war that is inevitable since the nations of the world (the "goyiim") patently lied to hapless King Ahab Olmert, and told him that the nations would separate Israel from Hezbollah and disarm Hezbollah: the nations have now declared not they, not Lebanon, not the UN have any intention of stopping Hezbollah from rebuilding, instead pretending to believe the ludicrous lies from Iran and Syria, Hezbollah's military suppliers. In the next war Israel has to be led by sober and prepared men, not fools and clowns.

If civilian farmers were in fact receiving cell-phone instructions on when to fire rockets from bunkers, and how to cover them up once fired, then these farmers, their orchards, their houses and their families in those houses -- WERE LEGITIMATE MILITARY TARGETS. This places a fresh perspective on the so-called "collateral damage" to "civilians" in southern Lebanon. Obviously, many of the "farms" and "innocent farm families" obliterated by Israeli bombing were not so innocent. Likewise, these areas should receive no economic assistance from my country to rebuild destroyed "farms" if the "farmers" were involved in rocket launching, receiving payments from Hezbollah. Next time, Israel has a right to consider all such "orchards" as military targets, and to pursue a scorched earth policy as perfectly legal under international law, since Lebanon now has a history of using "farms" as rocket bases. We will see if the "peacekeepers" destroy these fixed "orchard" launchers, as 1701 requires.

IN THIS ARTICLE THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT 122 MM MORTAR SHELLS NOT KATYUSHAS NO)2:ONLY SOME OF THE MORTAR SHELLS WERE IN THE GROVES.NO)3:IN THE ARTICLE ITSELF IT SAYS THAT CIVILIANS WERE SHOOTING THE ROCKETS NOT EVEN HIZBOLLAH.TO ALL YOU ANTI-SEMITES LIBERALS COME LIVE IN ISRAEL AND DO THE ARMY AND SEE WHAT IS REALLY GONG ON.YOU IDIOTS

You are the hypocrit! Right after the Gana massacre, foreign Press including the biased and unbalanced reporters of FOX and Sky News were on the site of the killing immeiately and found NO PROOF of any Hizbualla fighters or missile luanchers. Check for yourself the archives of Fox and Sky News for that day!

It seems strange to me that anti-artillery radars - radars used to pin point the origin of an artillery shell or rocket were not effective on this threat. After all is this was they are all about? thus i dont think that the real failure could be on locating the rocket launch site them selve - after all rockets leave a visible trace - but at destroying a well organized network of launching pads, even with so0me destroyed the others could still operate. so the story about vegetation etc seems to me like an excuse.

Tim, the orchards close to the houses are civilian areas, aren't they? Didn't you see videos on TV news showing launchers between trees few mwtwrs from biuldings? So, why dou put those hypocritical questions?

It seems to me that when israel comes out of territory we loose very essential intelligence it happened when we came out of lebanon and Gaza so I hop the government will not come out of the Shomron and Judea as all the central part of Israel will be under attack from Hadera, Netanya to Tel aviv, from Kfar Saba, Petach Tikva to Jerusalem. Hashem gave us this land and if our government gives our blessings away G-d forbid, we will pay for it dearly.

There was a photo of one of those permanent sites doing the rounds on the Internet during the war. It was in a farm... a cattle farm I think. I saw it on a pro-Israeli site, but don't ask me which. (I was surfing a lot, both pro-Israeli sites and pro-Lebanese sites, all the way through.) How could the Internet 'know' and MI didn't? Isn't it likely those kind of small launchpads are simply impossible to spot from the air? The one in the picture was near to animal sheds, and disguised to look very like one of them from above. The photo was taken at ground level.

And all this time we were told that they were being fired from civilian areas.

Olmert and his defeatist left wing government must resign not only because of their military failures but also because they still fail to admit that it was the caving in to terror by giving up Gush Katif which caused this crisis to begin with ( by emboldening the terrorists to believe that Olmert would always cave in).

lets look the fakts in the eye. The most ethical army in the world (the IDF for those that do not know) wanted to resolve the issue with bombs which didnt work. The coward hezbullah didnt come out of the wholes to be bombed by f16. Now at least they have bombed lebanon 15 years back in time. I hope one day someone will hold you guys accountable.

fact 1. It is Israel that started to bomb cities....that is 100% fact, not Hezbollah. Hezbollah responded only to Israeli madness of bombing cities and civilian infrustructure ...that is why they lost the sympathy of the world. If the IDF could have captured 1000 Hezbolah fighters or nazrallah himself...we would have supported you..... But the minute you started bombing cities and killing civilians ...we stopped supporting you. That is why we Swedes held fund raising for Lebanese only in Stockholm..

He was the previous IAF Commander. He was for over a year second in Command to ramatkal. He has been for over a year the Ramatkal and yet the information between Army intelligence and MI and IDF was not passed on. The buck stops at the chiefs desk.Halutz must go without further delay so in the next round of Lebanese war (Hezbollah or hezbollah within the Lebanese Army)

Marilyn, let be be blunt, if your city or town in Australia were bombed by hundreds of rockets, how would you feel? How would your gov't react? Your criticism of the author is blatantly absurd. Get a life, lady, or get a kangeroo..you can both bounce all over the place. Israel has been attacked dozens of times and by thousands of rockets (anti-tank, etc.), not to forget attempted and successful kidnappings, illegally (per the UN) by Hezbo-Allah. Those farmers who fired rockets are as guilty as regular Hez-boAllah forces. In fact, if Israel fired thousands of shells (which they most likely did), they were perfectly correct to defend themselves. What would you have them do, send in the boys (IDF) to get slaughtered? During WW2, Australia was one of the major allies..in defeating Hitler. Now you want Hitler's goal (final solution) to be rekindled by your statements. But my kangeroo is bigger than your kangeroo, so lets put on the gloves. They did hide behind and in homes.

Marilyn, there is plenty of evidence, but you think you are apparently a very credible expert. You are not. So now let's see: We all saw the video footage of katyusha trucks driving into residential garages on TV post-launch. We all saw video footage of medium range rockets stationed outside of houses. Clearly you didn't. Some expert.

early in the conflict it occored to me that by burning vegetation in south Lebanon the launchers would become visible. Does anybody know if this tactic was even used?

I dont know where you heard about shoulder launched katyushas . Its nonsense and i can t remember ever reading or hearing anything like this not in the press and not on tv.

ISREAL CLAIMED ROCKETS WERE FIRED FROM VILLAGES SCHOOLS ETC TO JUSTIFY THE HUGE NUMBEMR OF CIVILIAN DEATHS

Why did they not systematically spray and burn the vegetation to remove the cover? Sure, there would have been damage to the environment, probably some Lebanese casualties as well, but it would have been much easier to justify than some of the things the IDF did, and probably more effective.

Why were we told about shoulder launchings from motorcycles then? Did IDF spokesmen invent them? When one doesn't know there's no shame in shutting up until one does.

It was easier for the IAF to continue the lie that Hezbollah were firing from within houses in spite of not one person ever being able to find a trace of evidence/ As for the war of attrition - my god what the hell are you on? Israel dropped or shot over 5,000 bombs and bullets every day for 34 days from south Lebanon to Tripoli. Get a grip on reality please Israeli's, you are making total fools of yourselves with the mindless drivel and navel gazing you are indulging in.