"But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. The common people still vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act on it... it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect..."This Preface was censored when the book came out in 1945 and it was only published in The Times Literary Supplement on 15 September 1972. Twenty seven years after Animal Farm was first published.
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Annexation, ethnic cleansing continue amid Zen-like calm from Western media
Lenins Tomb
25/07/2006
You remember how quickly the driving out of the Lebanese population from the area south of the Litani and the annexation of the land became 'buffer zone'? Mark how rapidly the 'buffer zone' has become 'civil administration'. See the Jerusalem Post:
OC Northern Command Maj.-Gen. Udi Adam acknowledged in a briefing at Northern Command headquarters in Safed on Sunday afternoon that the commander of the IDF's civil administration unit had already begun preparations toward the possibility of instituting a military administration in areas captured by the IDF over the last week.
According to Adam, "certain units who will give us breathing space have been called up, including the commander of that unit." The unit's activation, however, would only take place following comprehensive consultations, he said.Yes, "comprehensive consultations" - now, which of the hundreds of thousands of people they've driven out of their homes in the latest episode of Zionist barbarism do you suppose they'll put the questionnaire to? Is it too late for a referendum on this?
In Israel itself, the very thought that they should Let Lebanon Live is a minority position held by cranks and peaceniks, especially since the hated UN is in town making obsequious pleas and expressing shock that "block after block" of civilian housing has simply been destroyed, blasted to simmering husks. The UN? The UN lets Syria in it, and other evil-doers, and don't they loathe the Jewish State? Is it not, in fact, part of the global conspiracy? As the commenters to this story say, isn't it time to blow up the UN?
So as the brutal destruction of Lebanon continues, Shin Bet warns of a mini-Lebanon in Gaza. This repellent warning comes from the state that tells the media: "don't count the dead", while claiming to have knocked out two rocket launchers in the repeatedly blitzed Tyre which, reporters on the ground have already confirmed, has no rocket launchers because it is too far to the north. This from the state that bombs convoys and fleeing vehicles and destroys main roads to block emergency vehicles while blowing up medicine facilities. Yet more fleeing people wasted. This from the state that drops leaflets on those who are soon to die, warning them that they must stay away from houses used to store weapons (in Gaza) and rocket installations (in Lebanon) or they will be bombed. There is already Lebanon in Gaza, and already Gaza in Lebanon.
***A case study in self-deception: Nick Cohen in today's Observer moaning about the demise of 'interventionism'. He wonders why liberals do not wish to send troops from surrounding countries, from the UK and US to Lebanon under UN auspices to "separate the two sides". He adds that there is a "powerful argument" from the Zionists, whom he once abhorred, that says that if they withdraw from occupied territory, it will be used by Hamas and Hezbollah to launch rocket attacks. Surely therefore and international force could sort them out and provide the model for a withdrawal from Gaza "in safety".
This is a curious sequence of arguments (I speak in the broadest possible terms): Israel attacks Lebanon so we must "separate the two sides" rather than stop providing financial, military and diplomatic support for one side; Israel claims it will be attacked if it ceases marauding and murdering and thieving in territories it occupies, as if rocket attacks from Hezbollah and Palestinian groups were not a response to Israeli crimes, and so since Israel must be right, Israel's backers must step in to secure those areas for it. One could spend hours picking apart the ideological knots that Cohen has tied himself up into, but I have some better things to do and no desire to free him from his self-imposed bondage. However, it is worth noting:
1) the extraoardinary lengths of circumlocution to which Cohen will go in order to avoid the reality that this is interventionism. Craig Murray, who has sat across a table from Cohen once or twice in the past, writes that British diplomats are working overtime to prevent a ceasefire - they are intervening, in other words, to ensure Israel's destruction of Lebanon continues;
2) the pungent racism involved, in which imperialist states must, instead of ceasing to engage in imperialism, instead of ceasing to prop up local bullies and thugs as extensions of their power, 'intervene' to suppress the inherent barbarism of the Middle East. Cohen reminds us of the multinational force that was driven out of Lebanon by Hezbollah and bemoans the fact that few international forces would want to go in and face that again, but the thought of what those forces did and why the Lebanese did not wish to be occupied by a multilateral mission force simply doesn't occur to him;
3) the deep trauma of Iraq in Cohen's conscience. Evidently at some loss to say something good about the occupation, he babbles about Iraqi democrats (by which he means the occupation's supporters), and avers that the reason no one will 'intervene' here is because of Iraq, and the awful stigma of mass murder, torture, rape, US death squads and so on that antiwar protesters have conferred on it. In Cohen's imagination, "Generals" resile from combat if Al Qaeda are involved, while "liberals" are insufficiently apprised of the threat of "barbarism" and too much apprised of the threat of Bushism. To put it another way, Generals are too soft to like smacking foreigners around any more, because they're too scared of Al Qaeda, and liberals are too soft to smack them around because they're too scared of Bush. If only the military men weren't so chicken shit and the antiwar protesters weren't so, well, antiwar, then all would be well in Palestine.
***
Speaking of racism, have a look at this BBC story:
The children's father paces the hospital corridor. His dress, language, beard and the fact that he was "elsewhere" when the attack occurred, all indicate he may be a member of Hezbollah.
This describes a father whose family has been attacked by Israeli fire in Rmeich, a Christian village where they had fled to in the hope of finding safety. They decided to travel back to Tyre by car when they found Rmeich being targeted as well - and the car was blown up. The odious insinuation of that quote, that the family was targeted because the father "may be" a member of Hezbollah - because he has a fucking beard and looks religious - is galling enough. But the other insinuation is that the father's absence is indicative of guilt, that being away from one's children for a period of time is unusual and must suggest that he is a fighter and - what? - that he stayed away from the car and let his kids cop it? What's next? "The man's bad bwoy looks, bling bling, ethnic mannerisms and the fact that he was 'elsewhere' when the police shot his family up suggested that he may be a yardie"?
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: That right-wing logic
Dave Neiwert
Orcinus
My dad is always sending me crappy e-mail jokes. You know the kind: dependent on stereotypes, often predicated on violent fantasies, and utterly devoid of wit or insight. I think everyone has someone in their family like this.
I love my dad, though, and am content to have him send me these things. It's kind of a way of staying in touch.
So last week he sends me this joke. It depends on the usual stereotypes (this time about rural hicks and professors), but ...
- Two South Texas farmers, Jim and Bob, are sitting at their favorite bar, drinking beer. Jim turns to Bob and says, "You know, I'm tired of going through life without an education. Tomorrow I think I'll go to the community college, and sign up for some classes."
Bob thinks it's a good idea, and the two leave.
The next day, Jim goes down to the college and meets Dean of Admissions, who signs him up for the four basic classes: Math, English, History, and Logic.
"Logic?" Jim says. "What's that?"
The dean says, "I'll show you. Do you own a weed eater?"
"Yeah."
"Then logically speaking, because you own a weedeater, I think that you would have a yard."
"That's true, I do have a yard."
"I'm not done," the dean says. "Because you have a yard, I think logically that you would have a house."
"Yes, I do have a house." "And because you have a house, I think that you might logically have a family."
"Yes, I have a family."
"I'm not done yet. Because you have a family, then logically you must have a wife."
"And because you have a wife, then logic tells me you must be a heterosexual."
"I am a heterosexual. That's amazing, you were able to find out all of that because I have a weed eater."
Excited to take the class now, Jim shakes the Dean's hand and leaves to go meet Bob at the bar.
He tells Bob about his classes, how he signed up for Math, English, History, and Logic.
"Logic?" Bob says, "What's that?"
Jim says, "I'll show you. Do you have a weed eater?"
"No."
"Then you're a queer."
OK, so I laughed at this one. Because this is what passes for logic not just among rural hicks, but nearly the entire right wing in this country.
[FWIW: In strictly logical terms, the joke illustrates a false syllogism, or more precisely, a failed enthymeme. A simple Venn diagram would make clear how it fails.]
This is true not just when it comes to sexual politics and cultural assumptions. It's also true of nearly every other issue that the American right confronts these days:
-- Worried about global warming? You're the same as the Nazis!
-- Opposed to the war in Iraq? You're "objectively pro-Saddam". Even if it turns out later you were right.
-- So you object to nativist scapegoating in the immigration debate? You must be part of the "open borders crowd" willing to surrender our national sovereignty to the "Reconquistas"!
-- You think Joe Lieberman is an out-of-touch Democrat who needs to be replaced? You must be an angry liberal blogger!
-- Think President Bush overstepped his constitutional bounds by ignoring the law and ordering surveillance of American citizens? You must by a traitor who wants to harm national security!
The list, and the beat, goes on and on.
And you were wondering why so much of our modern discourse resembles Bizarro World? Wonder no more.
Original
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Lebanese Doctor Says 'Phosphorus Weapons' Cause Suffering
Signs of the Times
CNN Video
25/07/2006
CNN video correspondent, Karl Penhaul, follows a family that had been mistakenly caught in an Israeli air strike. The doctor treating the family says that there is phosphorus in the weapons that cause extremely painful burns on its victims.
Comment on this Editorial
A Time to Speak
American media unquestioningly defends Israeli violence
By David Walsh
21 July 2006
Over the past week, the American mass media has obediently fallen into line in defense of Israeli violence and aggression. As hundreds of civilians have died in Lebanon and an estimated half a million been made homeless by Israeli bombs and shells, the US media has consistently painted the conflict as a defensive action by the Zionist regime against provocations by "terrorists."
The American public is deliberately being kept ignorant about the history and reality of the situation in the Middle East, as part of the combined effort by Washington and Tel Aviv to impose their brutal will on the people of the region.
The major television networks and cable channels, through which much of the population receives its information about world events, have played an especially foul role in concealing the real political and social questions. To watch the television news channels and network news programs for a single afternoon and evening is largely to bathe in ignorance and reaction.
This begins with the manner in which the Middle East conflict is portrayed. The language and phrases used are carefully calibrated to conform to the arguments of the Israeli government and its sponsors in the US.
The television news programs inevitably present the current conflict as a struggle between Israel and "terrorists." Right-winger and xenophobe Lou Dobbs of CNN, for example, on Wednesday evening, in the course of a one-hour program, repeats this thought no less than eight times: "Israel tonight is stepping up its offensive against terrorists in Gaza," "Israeli troops tonight are fighting Hezbollah terrorists in one of the biggest ground battles of this conflict," "Hezbollah terrorists tonight are firing a barrage of rockets at cities and towns in northern Israel," and so forth (from CNN transcripts).
Without fail, as well, any reference to the fighting must place the blame for its eruption on Hamas and Hezbollah, not long-term Israeli ambitions. Bob Schieffer, on the CBS Evening News Wednesday, for example, almost in passing, refers to Hezbollah as the group that "started the trouble in Lebanon." Tucker Carlson of MSNBC explains that Hezbollah "sparked the conflict." On CNN, Miles O'Brien comments, "At the same time, Israeli troops have moved into central Gaza. Six Palestinians killed in that offensive. That operation began last month after Palestinian militants kidnapped an Israeli soldier."
No hint emerges from any of the television news programs that underlying the massive Israeli operation might be geopolitical aims, that what we see unfolding is an operation that has been long in the planning and only waiting for a pretext. Such a possibility is not even suggested.
The news on American television is nothing but propaganda. It has, in fact, a totalitarian character. No effort is made to educate the public. The news is delivered for the most part by ignorant individuals, unaware of history and social reality, simply repeating lines fed to them.
When there is any question about the nature and scope of the current operation in Lebanon and Gaza, the television news programs simply turn to the State Department or the Israeli government itself for clarification.
For example, when is an invasion not an invasion? When the Tel Aviv regime says so. O'Brien of CNN, on the Israeli incursion into Lebanon, July 19: "Israeli troops are on that side. They say it's not an invasion, they say it's part of an effort to root-out Hezbollah bunkers, strongholds and those rockets which continue to besiege the northern part of Israel."
And when is the destruction of a country's infrastructure no such thing? Also when the Israelis say so. Israel is not responsible for the destruction of bridges, roads, tunnels, apartment complexes, port facilities, factories. The "terrorists" are responsible. Israeli hands could not be cleaner. A parade of Zionist government officials appears on American television: on Wednesday alone, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres (to borrow a phrase from Philip Roth, speaking with "all the cold authority of that voice dipped in sludge"), former prime ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, Israeli ambassador to the US, Dan Gillerman.
All the veteran Israeli leaders have blood on their hands. They bandy about the word "terrorist," but the state of Israel was formed through explicitly terrorist means and the various political figures have personally participated in or presided over deadly military operations against the Palestinian, Lebanese and Jordanian populations.
They are all well-trained practitioners of the Big Lie-that tiny Israel is under siege from its barbarous Arab neighbors. They know the "hot buttons" to push. They interact with their US interviewers like members of the same club. Israel, they seem to suggest, is "America in the Middle East," practically the 51st state.
Peres appears at least twice on US television Wednesday, on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on MSNBC and "Larry King Live" on CNN. Both interviewers are deferential to the veteran war criminal. Peres claims to King, "Israel didn't start the war. Israel didn't attack anybody. We gave back to Lebanon all the land, all the water.... We were living for six years in total peace. We didn't hurt anybody."
Peres, of course, is lying. Israeli history in relation to Lebanon is one of provocation, violence and criminality. Before Israel's establishment, Zionist leaders envisioned a greater Israel that would include the southern portion of Lebanon as far as the Litani River (perhaps Israel's military goal today in any invasion). In the 1950s, the Israeli government considered the fracturing of Lebanon, the establishment of a Christian state and the annexation of the southern part of the country.
Between 1968 and 1974, the Lebanese army recorded more than 3,000 violations of Lebanese territory by Israeli armed forces; 880 Palestinians and Lebanese were killed in the attacks. Some 150 Palestinian camps and villages in southern Lebanon were razed and olive groves and crops destroyed.
In March 1978, Israel invaded Lebanon, killing more than 2,000 people and making some 250,000 homeless. In one of the most gruesome crimes of modern times, the Israelis allowed their allies in the fascist Southern Lebanon Army to enter the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla in September 1982, where the latter carried out the slaughter of an estimated 2,000 men, women and children. An Israeli inquiry later found that Defense Minister Ariel Sharon bore "personal responsibility" for the massacre. The Israeli military proceeded to occupy southern Lebanon for another 18 years, during which time countless Lebanese and Palestinians suffered at their hands.
For the American television networks, however, history began when Hamas guerrillas seized a single Israeli soldier on June 25.
Defense of civilian deaths
On Wednesday, Netanyahu, the extreme right-winger beloved of the neo-fascists in the Republican Party, defends the killing of civilians to MSNBC's Tucker Carlson. In keeping with the Zionist regime's line (and the line of every imperialist bully), civilian deaths are the fault of the "terrorists," who insist on mingling with the general population. "If you have to take out a rocket emplacement in a crowded neighborhood, you have to do it," explains Netanyahu, to which Carlson audibly adds, "That's right." Carlson is an empty-headed yuppie, formerly of CNN where he was most famous for his bow tie, who suggested in 2001 that torture "may be the lesser of two evils."
When Lebanese casualties are mentioned by the television news, they are inevitably balanced by reports of Israeli deaths and wounded, as though the figures were equivalent. On Wednesday afternoon, the Fox News Channel's John Gibson, a fanatical right-winger, intones, "Hezbollah attacked the holy city of Nazareth," where a rocket killed two Israeli Arabs. The various news commentators are astounded to learn that local residents blame Israel, first, for not providing bomb shelters for the predominantly Arab population, and, second, for launching its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon.
"Hundreds dead, more than a thousand wounded, half a million displaced" proclaim the various anchormen and women, not bothering to explain that the overwhelming majority of those suffering are Lebanese civilians. With a vast military preponderance, the Israelis are targeting a virtually defenseless population. Wednesday witnesses the highest daily toll of civilian casualties yet, with some 70 killed, and this fact is barely mentioned.
If the American television networks had the slightest honesty, they would have begun their news programs Wednesday with the fact that Louise Arbour of the UN High Commission on Human Rights suggested that Israel might be guilty of war crimes. She declared that the obligation to protect civilians during hostilities is entrenched in international law, "which defines war crimes and crimes against humanity." Moreover, she argued that individual political leaders could find themselves charged with war crimes, adding, "I think one must issue a sobering signal to those who are behind these initiatives to examine very closely their personal exposure," she told the BBC.
The International Red Cross, the enforcer of the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war, also declared Wednesday that Israel had violated the principle of proportionality provided for in the Conventions and their protocols.
US television reports none of this on Wednesday.
The fighting is invariably described as "fierce exchanges between Hezbollah guerillas and the Israelis," again, as though there were some sort of equivalence between the Islamic movement's Katyusha rockets and mortars, and the Zionist military's F-16 bombers, Apache helicopter gunships, artillery, tanks and armored personnel carriers.
Almost unavoidably, glimpses of the truth appear on American television news programs. Certain reporters on the spot in Lebanon, obviously affected by the mass suffering, provide some picture of what life is like under the Israeli siege.
Nic Robertson of CNN reports on the bombing of a food distribution warehouse in Beirut, which burns for hours. He warns of a "humanitarian crisis in the making," with half a million people out of a population of 4 million displaced, "airports bombed, ports blockaded." Cooking gas is difficult to find, he reports, and food will run out. CBS News carries a report from southern Lebanon-a father has lost two children to an Israeli bomb. Over the bomb crater, the father demands to know, "Do you see Hezbollah fighters here?" David Wright of ABC News notes, "Civilians have borne the weight of this war."
One of the most moving encounters appears on ABC, with an Ethiopian woman, who works as a maid in Beirut. The young woman is crying, obviously terrified, cowering in a doorway. The reporter notes, with sympathy, "No ship is coming for her."
The hostility of the Lebanese population to the Israeli war and the backing of the resistance cannot be entirely evaded. CBS News notes that Hezbollah is "drawing support from the war meant to destroy it." Even a Fox News report from a park in Beirut, where the homeless are camped out, has to admit that there are "no hard feelings toward Hezbollah." An aid worker tells the Fox reporter, "the refugees here adore Hezbollah."
A British ITN report on the devastation of Lebanon, shown on MSNBC, however, is the most forthright piece of reporting to appear on the US television networks Wednesday.
Genuine bloodthirstiness also raises its head. Carlson of MSNBC casually asks the former prime minister Netanyahu if the latter doesn't think it would be a good idea if Israel were to bomb Syria. Carlson likes the question so much, he asks it twice on his program.
Billionaire reactionary Steve Forbes, who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, appears on Fox News to advocate "letting 'em fight" in the Middle East. Crushing Hezbollah will be good for stocks, we learn.
Brit Hume of Fox News somewhat mournfully asks his usual panel of Fred Barnes, Mort Kondracke and Mara Liasson "how long can the US hold out" against the pictures of refugees and devastation in Lebanon before it is forced to pressure Israel into considering a ceasefire. Not long, they regretfully reply.
The Israeli embassy, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the entire Zionist lobbying enterprise expend vast amount of time and money to intervene in and manipulate the US media. The lobbying in and of itself would not be successful if its aims did not coincide with American imperialist policy. Apart from that, the pro-Israel operation would simply be considered a criminal conspiracy.
How else to explain certain stories that suddenly appear on each television network and cable channel simultaneously? On Wednesday, for example, the various American news programs, as though on cue, run stories on the supposed threat posed by Hezbollah terrorist attacks in the US.
Each of the networks or channels treats the story with its own particular touch. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News pulls no punches. "Your World with Neil Cavuto," an afternoon program, asks Wednesday, "Are Hezbollah cells a bigger threat than Al-Qaeda?" Brian Levin, "terror analyst," and Wayne Simmons, a former CIA operative, unsurprisingly, answer in the affirmative. Simmons suggests, without providing a shred of evidence, that Hezbollah is "much more of a threat than Al-Qaeda." Fox subsequently runs a headline, "FBI hunts for Hezbollah sleeper cells inside US."
Not to be outdone, CNN asks its viewers, to most of whom the question has no doubt never occurred before: "How concerned are you about Hezbollah attacks in the US?" The cable channel's Wolf Blitzer, formerly the Jerusalem Post correspondent in Washington, warns of "fears that Hezbollah is going to hit the US."
The CBS Evening News with Bob Schieffer also introduces the allegation with a sensational headline, "Hezbollah in the US," only later to half-debunk the story by pointing out that Hezbollah supporters in the US have never been charged or suspected of any terrorist attacks.
Another carefully coordinated story appears on CNN and other channels Wednesday: about a group of American Jews emigrating to Israel. CNN reports, "For Jehuda Saar, a father of three, the fighting only strengthened his resolve to pick up his family and leave New Jersey." Saar comments, "Without shooting one bullet, without holding a gun, we're Israel's best weapon against any detractor, anyone that wants to destroy Israel." However, 22-year-old Steven Rubin is more than eager to "shoot bullets" and "hold a gun"; he plans to join the Israeli army.
Rubin tells CNN that the current fighting "only makes me want to go there more. And it validates everything I've been thinking for the existence of the state of Israel to see how important everything is at this point." More than a few of Israel's most fanatical settlers come from Brooklyn, Queens, New Jersey and Long Island.
Conveniently, Arye Mekel, Israeli Consul General is on hand for the departure of the group of émigrés at Kennedy Airport in New York. He tells CNN: "For us, for Israel, it's a huge boost to our morale, feeling that fellow Jews around the world are not deterred."
One afternoon, one evening of US television news...
Comment on this Article
Schwarzenegger: All of California stands with Israel
Ynet News
25/07/2006
[...] The street was packed with people and it was difficult to see where it ended. Large police forces guarded the area and prevented a handful of Arab supporters of Hizbullah and Hamas from approaching the demonstration.
Speakers included California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Wiesenthal Institute Head Rabbi Marvin Hier, Israel's General Consul Ehud Danoch, rabbis from all streams of Judaism and heads of Christian churches.
The speakers harshly condemned Hizbullah, Hamas, Iran and Syria, and stressed Israel's right to self-defense.
Comment: Arnie, in a thick Austrian accent, was heard to say: "In the movies, I was the terminator, but now we must terminate the Lebanese!"
Comment on this Article
Democrats blast Maliki on Israel statements
Tue Jul 25, 2006
Reuters
Congressional Democrats voiced alarm on Tuesday over Iraq's denunciation of Israel in the Mideast conflict, and some said Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's upcoming address to Congress should be canceled unless he apologizes.
A group of House of Representatives Democrats was circulating a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert urging the Illinois Republican to secure an apology from Maliki or cancel the address on Wednesday to a joint meeting of Congress.
Ron Bonjean, Hastert's spokesman, said there was no intention to cancel Maliki's speech, and accused Democrats of "political gamesmanship during an election year."
Iraq's U.S.-backed government on Saturday denounced Israel's "criminal" raids on Lebanon and Gaza and warned that violence could escalate across the Middle East.
Senate Democrats in a letter to Maliki said his failure to condemn Hizbollah's "aggression and recognize Israel's right to defend itself raise serious questions about whether Iraq under your leadership can play a constructive role in resolving the current crisis and bringing stability to the Middle East."
With more than 2,500 U.S. service members killed in the Iraq conflict, more than 18,000 wounded and more than $300 billion in U.S. tax dollars spent, the Senate Democrats said, "Americans deserve to know whether Iraq in an ally in these fights."
Comment: Do you notice anything wrong with this article? "Democrats" denouncing a condemnation of Israel? Isn't that the Republican's job? But we forget, any semblance of a two-party political system in the US has long since been eradicated by the "war on terror" wherein all US politicians are mindless warmongers
Comment on this Article
US Concerned Israel Not Hitting Hezbollah Hard Enough
July 24, 2006 4:00 p.m. EST
Ryan R. Jones - All Headline News Correspondent
(AHN) - Israel's offensive against Hezbollah is seriously lacking in the kind of "shock and awe" employed by US forces against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and threatens to end with a nominal victory for the Lebanese terror group.
President George W. Bush has stated his belief that the root cause of the current conflict must be dealt with in order to reach a lasting resolution, and has been seen to be giving Israel a free hand against Hezbollah in line with that premise. But senior American defense analysts feel Israel is squandering the opportunity.
World Tribune quoted one unnamed analyst as saying, "There's no shock and awe here. Hezbollah has been hurt but has managed to continue."
They noted that Israel appeared to be imitating the strategy used by US-led NATO forces against Serbia and the regime of Slobodan Milosovic in 1999, but warned that formula would not work against Hezbollah.
"I can't see this as a successful strategy. In Yugoslavia, NATO had all the time in the world. Israel can't count on more than two weeks," said another analyst.
Hezbollah is expected to declare victory if it survives this fight, regardless of the damage done to its infrastructure.
Comment: Let's deal with the "root cause of the conflict" then! Israel is occupying Arab land and is continuing to persecute Palestinian and now Lebanese civilians!!!!!!
Comment on this Article
Rice holds talks with Israeli PM
Tuesday, 25 July 2006, 08:36 GMT 09:36 UK
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is holding talks in Jerusalem with Israeli PM Ehud Olmert as she seeks to ease Israel's conflict with Lebanon.
As the talks began, Mr Olmert declared there would be no let up in the campaign against Hezbollah.
Mr Olmert said he was "very conscious" of the humanitarian needs of Lebanon's civilians, but insisted Israel was defending itself against terrorism.
Israeli troops are battling Hezbollah militants in Bint Jbeil inside Lebanon.
Israeli army radio says its troops are preparing to complete their takeover of the border town, a stronghold of Hezbollah militants, which has been the scene of a fierce battle since the Israelis took the nearby village of Maroun al-Ras on Saturday.
The BBC's Martin Asser in Tyre, on the Lebanese coast, says there is heavy bombardment of the hills south of the city both from Israel and from the sea.
Overnight a Lebanese family of seven in Nabatiyeh was killed when an Israeli missile struck their house, Lebanese officials said.
Mr Olmert said Israel was not at war with the Lebanese people, but with Hezbollah, which he described as a terrorist organisation, insisting that Israel would take the "most severe measures" against it.
'Durable solution'
Israel has recently signalled that it would be prepared to see a strengthened international peacekeeping force sent into southern Lebanon.
But the BBC's Jonathan Beale in Jerusalem says there is still plenty of scepticism about whether such a force would have the mandate and the political backing to take on Hezbollah.
Ms Rice has also been highlighting the need for Israel to consider the humanitarian needs of both Lebanon and the Palestinian people.
"The people of this region, Israeli, Lebanese, indeed Palestinian have lived too long in fear and in terror and in violence," she said.
"A durable solution will be one that strengthens the forces of peace and democracy in this region. It is time for a new Middle East, it is time to say to those who do not want a different kind of Middle East that we will prevail; they will not."
'No outright criticism'
Following her surprise visit to Beirut on Monday, in which she held talks with Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, she has been stressing the importance that innocent civilians should not be harmed.
However, our correspondent says there is no suggestion that she will tell Mr Olmert that Israel must halt its military operations, or that she will make any public criticism of Israel's actions.
The BBC's World Affairs Editor John Simpson in Jerusalem says it is understood that Ms Rice is telling Israel that the US will allow it more time to continue its military operations against Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon.
Some 380 Lebanese and up to 40 Israelis have died in 14 days of conflict, which began after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on 12 July.
'Hezbollah cowardice'
The UN's aid chief Jan Egeland has accused Israel of using excessive force, but on Monday he accused of Hezbollah of contributing to the problem by what he called "cowardly blending in among women and children".
"I heard there was a statement they were proud they had lost very few fighters, and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think you want to be proud of having many more children and women than armed men [killed]," Mr Egeland said, speaking in Beirut.
The UN has launched a $150m (£81m) aid appeal for Lebanon and the US has announced its own $30m package to ease the suffering of civilians.
Mr Egeland said the money was needed to help feed and shelter about 800,000 civilians caught up in the conflict.
About $24m was on behalf on Unicef for children who have been displaced inside Lebanon or who have fled to Syria.
Mr Egeland said he was asking the Israelis for safe passage for aid ships to enter the ports of Tripoli and Tyre.
A White House spokesperson said the US was also working with Israeli and Lebanese officials to open up humanitarian corridors in Lebanon, after President George W Bush promised ships and helicopters to provide aid to Lebanon.
The EU has already pledged $12.6m in aid while on Monday the UK increased its pledge to £5m.
Comment on this Article
Annan, Rice intensify diplomatic efforts to end conflict in Lebanon
Last Updated Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:32:05 EDT
CBC News
Diplomatic efforts to end hostilities in Lebanon intensified Monday with the UN secretary general saying he's going to Rome to try to broker a peace deal, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice making a surprise visit to Beirut.
Kofi Annan said he will attend the international conference in Italy Wednesday where he hopes a peace plan will be established that includes a ceasefire, the release of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah and the deployment of an international force in southern Lebanon.
"There are many ideas being put forward. I have my own ideas. The Americans have ideas. The Egyptians have put forward proposals and I'm sure by the time we get to Rome, others will come forward with ideas," Annan said.
Annan said it's important that "we don't walk away empty-handed and once again dash the hopes of those caught in this conflict."
Rice will also attend the summit in Rome, along with foreign ministers from Israel, Lebanon, the European Union, the United Nations and a number of Arab states.
Rice, who is on a diplomatic mission to the Mideast, was in Beirut to meet Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, who greeted her with a kiss on both cheeks.
Siniora said he was pleased Rice decided to visit Lebanon and his government would like to "put an end to the war that is being inflicted on Lebanon."
But he also told Rice that Israel's bombardment was taking his country "backwards 50 years" and called for a "swift ceasefire," his office said.
The area around Beirut and southern Lebanon has been pounded since July 12, when Israel began conducting air strikes, set up a naval blockade and sent troops and tanks across the border. The offensive began after Hezbollah militants - who are based in southern Lebanon and have long been launching periodic rocket attacks across the border into Israel - conducted a cross-border raid and attacked an Israeli army post, killing eight soldiers and capturing two others.
Yet even though the fighting had, as of Monday, killed 381 people in Lebanon and driven an estimated 600,000 people from their homes, the Lebanese government has ordered its military not to respond to Israeli military actions.
U.S. administration officials told the Associated Press that Rice's visit was designed to show U.S. support for the Lebanese government and its people.
President George W. Bush and his administration have repeatedly asserted that any ceasefire agreement must include an end to Hezbollah's rocket attacks against Israel, the disarmament of the militants and an assurance that they no longer pose a threat to Israel.
Washington has also made clear that it agrees with Israel's insistence that no ceasefire was possible until its military campaign against Hezbollah was complete.
Washington will work with Syria: Rice
While in Beirut, Rice said Washington was open to the idea of working with Syria to end the crisis - but also said it was up to Damascus to take action.
The Bush administration - and the leaders of a number of other Western countries - have long pointed the finger at Syria and Iran for encouraging Hezbollah's attacks on northern Israeli cities and towns.
The two Mideast countries have long been Hezbollah's key supporters, supplying money, weapons and shelter.
Some critics have accused Washington of exacerbating the crisis by refusing to talk with Damascus, but Rice dismissed the accusation as false.
"The problem isn't that people haven't talked to the Syrians: it's that the Syrians haven't acted," she said.
"I think this is simply just a kind of false hobby horse that somehow it's because we don't talk to the Syrians. It's not as if we don't have diplomatic relations," she told the Associated Press. "We do."
Rice pointed out that the United States has maintained a diplomatic mission in Syria, which gives Washington a direct "channel" to the country.
According to diplomats in Cairo, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have begun to put pressure on Syria to stop supporting Hezbollah, even though its other supporter, Iran, is believed to give it much of its money and weapons.
Syria, for its part, indicated on the weekend that it would be willing to enter talks with the United States to help forge a ceasefire. But it has said it would only participate in talks to end the violence if the conditions include the return of the Golan Heights.
Hope of ceasefire, says Blair
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said a plan will emerge over the next few days that he hopes will lead to the end of hostilities in Lebanon.
"There have been, as you might expect over the past few days, enormous diplomatic efforts to get us to the point where I hope at some point within the next few days we can say very clearly what our plan is to bring about an immediate cessation of hostilities," Blair said during a news conference with Iraq's visiting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Blair said the plan stems from his proposal during the meeting of G8 leaders in Russia last week that calls for the end of hostilities, the return of the captured Israeli soldiers and an international peacekeeping force in south Lebanon to buffer both sides.
Blair also rejected calls by some for him to condemn Israel's military response in Lebanon. Some critics have complained Israel's response has been disproportionate.
"All of that means absolutely nothing but words unless there's a plan of action in place that can stop the hostilities and then address the long-term underlying causes of instability in that region."
While referring to the situation as a "catastrophe" and the loss of all civilian life as a "tragedy" he blamed Hezbollah for its "deliberate attempt" to destabilize the Israeli/ Lebanon border.
Blair said the only solution to the problems gripping the Mideast is to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
Comment on this Article
Israel violating humanitarian law - EU aid chief
25 Jul 2006
Reuters
The European Commission's aid chief accused Israel on Tuesday of violating international humanitarian law in Lebanon, saying its right to self-defence did not allow it to destroy Beirut and key infrastructure.
"The right of Israel to self-defence does not allow it to raze Beirut and all of the country's vital infrastructure to the ground in the name of the fight against Hizbollah," EU aid commissioner Louis Michel told Reuters.
"The way it is happening is a violation of international humanitarian law," he said in a phone interview.
Michel's remarks are in contrast to more reserved statements by European Union member states, who have called for all parties to protect civilians and adhere to international law without specifically accusing Israel of abuses.
Michel said the Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah was also abusing international humanitarian law and urged both parties to protect safe corridors to deliver humanitarian aid.
Israel has launched daily air strikes on southern Lebanon, Beirut and other parts of the country. Hizbollah has fired rockets into northern Israel. A total of 411 people in Lebanon and 42 Israelis have been killed in the conflict.
Aid efforts have been hit by Israel's bombing of civilian infrastructure including roads and bridges and its targeting of commercial trucks, the United Nations said on Monday.
Israel announced on Tuesday that it will allow aid airlifts to land in Beirut airport, but Michel said it must go further.
"It is a first small positive point but it will not be enough," he said, adding that land routes must be opened to get the aid through.
The European Union is due to give a second 10 million euro ($12.7 million) tranche of aid in coming days to help people in Lebanon caught in the conflict, Michel said.
That aid comes on top of a first tranche of 10 million euros announced last week. Another 30 million euros might be added next month, Michel said.
The new EU cash comes after the United Nations appealed on Monday for $150 million in humanitarian aid for the Lebanese.
Comment: And Israel cares about International law? Since when? Excuse us for pointing it out, I mean, we are not "anti-semitic", but Israel has been in breach of international law for about 40 years.
Comment on this Article
Editorial: Deploy UN force to calm Lebanon
Jul. 25, 2006. 09:53 AM
The Toronto Star
Editorial
The sheer ferocity of the Mideast crisis has caught the world by surprise. Just weeks ago, few could have foreseen Beirut, Haifa and other centres in Lebanon and Israel reeling from air strikes and rocket fire, some 400 civilians dead and 700,000 driven from their homes on both sides of the border amid scenes of intolerable suffering and devastation. Such is the speed with which the region can unravel when things go wrong.
And indeed there is no easy fix for Lebanon's current agony, caught between Hezbollah's unprovoked terror attacks on Israel and harrowing Israeli counterstrikes. But the shock and the complexity of the crisis must not paralyze the international community. It must step in to broker a humanitarian truce, provide aid for refugees and work to restore order.
Comment: How is the capture of two soldiers, on Lebanese territory, a "terror attack"? It was an act of war, a war started by Israel with its illegal invasion of Lebanon decades ago. But, because Hezbollah is an Arab party, it is "terrorist".
That is what United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan is hoping to accomplish in the next few days, armed with a UN Charter mandate to save innocents from the scourge of war. Talks open tomorrow in Rome.
At the same time, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a surprise visit yesterday to Beirut, before flying to Jerusalem, in a diplomatic mission to create conditions for a ceasefire, which she says is urgently needed. Also yesterday, U.S. President George Bush ordered American helicopters and ships to Lebanon to start supplying humanitarian aid.
Comment: Get the sick bag! Rice doesn't want a ceasefire! She openly admits that she doesn't want a ceasefire. No, she wants "the conditions" for a ceasefire, that is, the destruction of Hezbollah and Lebanon so that Israel can dictate its conditions.
To help Annan in his efforts, Prime Minister Stephen Harper should give the UN secretary general every encouragement. Such support by Harper would reassure Canadians that Ottawa is alert not only to the fate of 50,000 Lebanese Canadians, but also to the well-being of everyone in the region who is threatened by this conflict.
With our military tied up in Afghanistan, Canada can afford to make only a modest material contribution to any peacemaking or peacekeeping effort in southern Lebanon, where the weak Beirut government has been not enforced a Security Council demand to disarm Hezbollah.
Moreover, Harper has shaken confidence in Canada as an impartial arbiter with his failure to balance his comments on Israel's right to defend itself with a caution for Israel to be as restrained as possible. And Ottawa has formally - and rightly - labelled Hezbollah a terror group. These factors limit our credibility as an effective arbiter in the current conflict.
Comment: So an "impartial arbiter" must defend Israel's brutal assualt under cover of syaing it is "defending itself"??? That's impartiality?!?!?! It has to be leavened with a throwaway line about Israel showing restraint?!?!
Even so, Harper can do some good for Lebanon's shell-shocked civilians and help restore Canada's once enviable name in the region. He can achieve that by placing Canadian diplomacy firmly behind Annan's scramble to broker a humanitarian truce. Annan then hopes to work on a durable ceasefire with the Lebanese and Israelis, plus Hezbollah's Syrian and Iranian sponsors. That would allow the deployment of a credible and effective force of UN "blue helmet" peacekeepers with a mandate and the firepower to help the Lebanese government disarm Hezbollah and defuse violence south of the Litani River on the Israel-Lebanon frontier.
Comment: How about getting Israel out of Lebanon, or, better yet, getting rid of the political regime there altogether and having one state, a secular state, where everyone has a vote?
In a clear policy shift over the weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is starting to warm to the idea of a peacekeeping force, although one preferably led by European countries rather than the United Nations.
Comment: More lies and smoke from Israel, like their evacuation of Gaza last year. Israel does not want peace, have never wanted peace, and will never accept peace until it has wiped the Arabs out of Greater Israel. That should be clear from their action over the last fifty years.
While many Lebanese and Israelis who are cowering in their basements would no doubt welcome an international military presence of any sort, a broad UN-led force would have greater credibility with the Arab world than a narrower one led by Americans, Canadians and Europeans under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization banner.
Comment: Yeah, those poor Israelis cowering in their basements for a few Hezbollah rockets. Got to mention them because that is what "objective" reporting is all about. One country is bombed back to the stone age while the other continues on a usual.
Ideally, the Security Council should now broker a humanitarian truce, with an eye to putting UN blue helmets into place as quickly as possible, with support from NATO but also with troops from Russia and other guarantors of the frayed Mideast peace process.
That done, the United States and other power brokers in the region should press for a resolution of the wider Syria-Israel conflict, and for a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Comment: Empty words. Israel does not want peace.
As Annan tries to salvage hope from cinders, he must have the Harper government's strong and public support. And if Canada cannot send many troops to Lebanon, we must heed the United Nation's appeal yesterday for $150 million in urgent humanitarian aid to those whose lives have been shattered by this spasm of violence.
Comment: Another wonderful example of the kind of thinking that passes for objective in the West. It is the "sheer ferocity of the Mideast crisis", not the sheer ferocity of Israel's attacks against an entire country for the capture of two of its soldiers on Lebanese territory. Right there, you see the bias.
And the reference to cities in both Lebanon and Israel would make you think that the horrors are somehow equally shared, the horrors of the few Hezbollah rockets versus the might of the Israeli Army. Even fight, right? The destruction of an entire country versus the occasional rocket. No difference.
Certainly, the leaders of Israel care as little for their own citizens as they do for their Arab neighbours or the Palestinians. They are setting up the final solution by rounding up as many Jews as possible into Israel so that they will all be killed when the region blows. They are only concerned with themselves and their psychopathic brethren elsewhere. People with conscience must be annihilated at all costs.
Comment on this Article
Israel vows to keep up Lebanon campaign
James Sturcke and agencies
Tuesday July 25, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, warned today that there would be no let-up in his country's military campaign aimed at destroying Hizbullah in southern Lebanon.
With the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, standing at his side at a press conference in Jerusalem, a bullish Mr Olmert threatened Lebanese guerrillas with "severe measures".
Ms Rice reiterated the Bush administration's view that there would be no US push for an immediate ceasefire.
"We need to ensure that we will not return to the previous situation," Rice said. "We need to begin to really lay the groundwork for an enduring peace in this region."
After meeting with the Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, and parliamentary speaker, Nabih Berri, in Beirut yesterday, Ms Rice will hold talks with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah later today.
She is understood to have proposed that the Lebanese army deploy along the southern border with Israel, backed up by an international force.
Israel has demanded that Hizbullah pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border and that the Lebanese army be deployed in its place, but it has indicated it would accept an international peacekeeping force in the area. The Lebanese government insists that there must be a truce before a longer-term deal is worked out.
"Israel is determined to continue on in the fight against Hizbullah. We will ... stop them," Mr Olmert said. "We will not hesitate to take severe measures against those who are aiming thousands of rockets and missiles against innocent civilians for the one purpose of killing them."
Mr Olmert acknowledged that the Israeli offensive had caused humanitarian problems and said he would work with the US to try to alleviate them. Up to a fifth of the Lebanese population is thought to have been displaced by the past two weeks' fighting.
"We are aware of the state of humanitarian affairs of the population of Lebanon as a result of the brutality of Hizbullah," he said. "I think I can say in complete sincerity that Lebanon and Israel are both victims of this brutal, terrorist, murderous organisation."
In southern Lebanon, Israeli troops tightened their grip on Bint Jbail, preparing to complete the takeover of the town after a day and a night of fierce fighting with Hizbullah guerrillas, military officials said.
Israeli troops began fighting before dawn yesterday in an attempt to take control of the area, considered by the army to be of symbolic significance to Hizbullah. By this morning, military officials said the forces had surrounded the village and seized some houses on the outskirts, but fighting was continuing.
"There is fighting from every direction, including from the air. We are hitting terrorists; we have also taken several prisoners in this fighting. The enemy has more than a few casualties and overall we are now stabilising the situation to completely take over the village," Lieutenant-Colonel Itzik Ronen, a deputy commander of a unit operating in the area, said in comments broadcast on Israel's Army Radio.
At least two Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting in and around the village, which sits just over a mile from the Israeli border. An Israeli airstrike killed a family of seven, Lebanese security sources said. Hizbullah said five guerrillas have died in the past two days.
Elsewhere, Palestinians in Gaza fired homemade rockets at a southern Israeli town, wounding one person, police and rescue services said. The rockets landed in Ami-Oz, near the border with Gaza.
In Britain, an international security expert, Lord Garden, was sceptical about the chances of success of any international force in Lebanon.
"Who are they going to get to do the policing? The great trouble will be when Ms Rice goes to Rome [to meet US, European, Israeli and Arab officials]," he told Sky News.
"It looks as though the US has the vision of the Lebanese army acting as protectors of Israel and keeping Hizbullah under control. But if the Israelis cannot do this, the idea that the Lebanese can is optimistic."
Lord Garden also questioned which countries would be prepared to provide soldiers for an international force, with the US already ruling itself out and the British being stretched in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"France might be prepared and Turkey has indicated it might be. But it [an international force] will be difficult to put together in a way that does not make the situation worse."
Among proposals for an international force are an EU or Nato deployment with a clear UN mandate.
At least 390 people in Lebanon and 41 Israelis have been killed in the conflict, triggered by Hizbullah's capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12.
Comment: So the groundwork for peace is laid by bombing the crap out of a country that did absolutely nothing. And the US isn't interested in a "ceasefire" because that would just put things back like they were before, the "previous situation" in Rice's words... except for all the dead and the ruined infrastructure of Labanon. That obviously doesn't count.
How about getting rid of Israel and allowing everyone in Palestine a vote on their future, regardless of who they are? How about one single secular state where everyone can worship the the god they wish? With no nukes and no standing army?
Comment on this Article
Olmert vows to take "most severe measures" against Hezbollah
www.chinaview.cn 2006-07-25 15:21:14
JERUSALEM, July 25 (Xinhua) -- Israel is determined to keep on its fight against Hezbollah and will not hesitate to take the "most severe measures" against those firing rockets on Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday.
"We are using the basic right of self-defense," Olmert told reporters before a meeting with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was on a visit to the Middle East region to defuse the escalating crisis in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
The prime minister said that he noticed "humanitarian difficulties" caused by Israel's two-week military offensive in Lebanon, pledging to work with the U.S. to help solve it.
Rice again expressed the need to create conditions for a sustainable cease-fire.
She will also meet with Defense Minister Amir Peretz before going to Ramallah for a meeting with Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
On Monday night, Rice met with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni upon arriving in Jerusalem from Beirut, underlining the importance to prevent a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon.
"We are concerned about the humanitarian situation," she said. "And nobody wants to see when innocent civilians are harmed." "Any peace is going to have to be based on enduring principles and not on temporary solutions," said Rice.
Describing Rice's visit as "very important", Livni reiterated that Israel had the right to protect its citizens. Livni said that Israel would only agree to a cease-fire that included the release of two soldiers that Hezbollah kidnapped on July 12, the dismantling of Hezbollah and the deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon.
Rice arrived in Jerusalem on Monday night after she paid a surprise visit to Beirut for talks with Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
Comment on this Article
Israel bans reporting of use of "unique" weapons in Lebanon
Redress Information & Analysis
July 24, 2006
Israel has issued new censorship guidelines banning reporting of the "use of unique kinds of ammunition and weaponry" in Lebanon. This comes amid reports that Israel is using chemical weapons against civilians in Lebanon. Below is the text of the guidelines, sent to international and local news organizations by the chief Israeli military censor, Colonel Sima Vaknin-Gil, on 23 July.
Subject: Military Operations in the North -- Censorship Guidelines Regarding Ground Operations.
1. Following are the main censorship guidelines regarding the continuation of military operations in the north, with emphasis on ground warfare on the northern border.
2. The guidelines in this document are comprehensive and refer to the option of large-scale military activity. The relevant guidelines should also be applied to the current ground operations.
3. Please brief editors, producers, broadcasters, correspondents with emphasis on field correspondents and other network employees on these guidelines in order to avoid any misunderstanding.
4. Due to the frequent broadcasts and the many live updates considerable attention should be given to what is said by the correspondents in the field. Please make sure that any correspondent/analyst in the field knows the censorship guidelines. The potential error during a live update is very high and you are held responsible for everything broadcast during a live update.
5. This document has been sent to local news agencies as well.
6. This document is the follow-up to the former document "The Fighting In The Northern Arena".
Sincerely,
Col. Sima Vaknin-Gil
Chief Censor
The Censorship Guidelines Regarding Ground Operations In The North For Reports And Live Updates.
General
1. This document will detail the main guidelines regarding operations on the northern border by the Censor.
2. This document contains three main topics: general guidelines for news coverage, coverage of activity leading to the ground operation and the coverage of the combat itself.
3. Any news item that is not within these boundaries must be submitted to the Censorship before it is published.
General guidelines
4. Coverage of any kind, that states intent, specific/general abilities and/or any operational activity (in a live broadcast) is not authorized by the Censorship. In principle, analysis based on matters that were approved for publication is allowed.
5. In a case where a news item is not within the boundaries given by the Chief Censor, the issue should be dealt with by the two censorship bases either in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
6. There is a special emphasis on matters regarding the activity of special forces and the use of unique kinds of ammunition and weaponry.
7. In principle, news items on the intelligence abilities / lack of abilities during the operation will not be authorized.
Coverage of activity leading to ground operation
The censorship does not approve any verbal information or visual photography that attest to:
8. The military order-of-battle.
9. The type of force, the forces' special abilities and warfare equipment.
10. Movement routes.
11. Assembly areas and deployments.
12. Information on forces transferring from one area to another (thinning of forces).
13. Locations of command posts.
14. It is strictly forbidden to mention the time and location in which the army forces might enter the enemy's territory.
15. The codename of the operation will be approved for publication only from the moment it begins.
16. Pictures of the army forces will be approved as long as the location in which they were taken is not disclosed.
The live coverage of the combat itself
17. It is strictly forbidden to show a picture of the full battle coverage, with an emphasis of identifying the location (long shot pictures).
18. It is strictly forbidden to mention military targets while these targets are being pursued.
19. It is strictly forbidden, until the information is cleared by the censorship, to publish information concerning missing personnel and captives (from both sides).
20. Coverage of aerial accidents in Israeli territory can only be approved by the censor. In hostile territory, this information will not be approved until the evacuation of the staff and equipment from that area is completed.
21. It is strictly forbidden to conduct real time coverage on visits of officials. Interviews and photography will be approved later, after the end of the visit.
22. During an incident authorization for coverage of the reasons for the incident will be given as long as there is no breach of Israeli security concerns (thus personal opinions and analyses for the reasons of the incident are allowed).
23. Coverage of an incident with casualties as always, must be submitted to the censorship.
Comment on this Article
Syria not partner in diplomatic process: Israeli PM
www.chinaview.cn 2006-07-25 06:00:52
JERUSALEM, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday that Syria was not a partner in the diplomatic process to end the current conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah guerillas.
According to an statement released by the prime minister's office, Olmert said that the Syrians could have risen to the occasion if they did not have their finger on the trigger on both the Lebanese and Gazan fronts.
In addition, Olmert said that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah had "made a mistake."
"If he (Nasrallah) would have thought and would have known that this would be our reaction, he would have responded and acted differently," he said, referring to an ongoing Israeli onslaught in Lebanon.
"The international response and the changes in the Arab world will allow us to, within a reasonable timeframe, build a model solution that will significantly weaken and isolate Hezbollah," he added.
Syria, which supports the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, has condemned the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and called for a ceasefire as soon as possible.
Israel has been battling along its northern border with Hezbollah over the past 13 days in an effort to bring back its two soldiers taken hostage by Hezbollah guerillas and remove Hezbollah from the border area.
Olmert is scheduled to meet with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Jerusalem on Tuesday over the Lebanon crisis.
Rice has said that the United States would push for a "sustainable" ceasefire.
Comment: It's Syria that has their finger on the trigger in Lebanon and Gaza? Is Syria dropping chemical bombs on Gaza? Is Syria bombing Lebanon?
It is incredible what the psychopath can come up with as an excuse to justify his behaviour.
Remember, Israel's invasion was planned long ago. The Israel leaders were only looking for an excuse to launch this invasion and destruction of a sovereign country.
Comment on this Article
A Time To Die
Red Cross ambulances destroyed in Israeli air strike on rescue mission
Suzanne Goldenberg in Tyre
Tuesday July 25, 2006
The Guardian
The ambulance headlamps were on, the blue light overhead was flashing, and another light illuminated the Red Cross flag when the first Israeli missile hit, shearing off the right leg of the man on the stretcher inside. As he lay screaming beneath fire and smoke, patients and ambulance workers scrambled for safety, crawling over glass in the dark. Then another missile hit the second ambulance.
Even in a war which has turned the roads of south Lebanon into killing zones, Israel's rocket strike on two clearly marked Red Cross ambulances on Sunday night set a deadly new milestone.
Six ambulance workers were wounded and three generations of the Fawaz family, being transported to hospital from Tibnin with what were originally minor injuries, were left fighting for their lives. Two ambulances were entirely destroyed, their roofs pierced by missiles.
The Lebanese Red Cross, whose ambulance service for south Lebanon is run entirely by volunteers, immediately announced it would cease all rescue missions unless Israel guaranteed their safety through the United Nations or the International Red Cross.
For the villages below the Litani river, the ambulances were their last link to the outside world. Yesterday, that too was gone, leaving the 100,000 people of Tyre district with no way of reaching hospital other than to take to the roads themselves, under the roar of Israeli war planes.
The fateful call to the Red Cross operations room came through at about 10pm - well after dark, a time when almost no Lebanese now dare venture out.
At the Red Cross office in Tyre, three volunteer medics dressed in their orange overalls, and got into their ambulance. The plan was to drive halfway, meet the local ambulance, and transfer the three patients to their vehicle to return to Tyre.
By Nader Joudi's reckoning, the ambulances had been stopped for barely two minutes. Two patients had been loaded: Ahmed Mustafa Fawaz, who had been hit by shrapnel in the stomach, and his son, Mohammed, 14. The volunteer attendant was just easing Jamila Fawaz, 80, inside and setting up a drip when the missile struck. He managed to get the old woman and the child outside, but there was no way to reach Mr Fawaz. "It was horrible," Mr Joudi said. "He was screaming, and we couldn't do anything."
One of the members of the three-man crew from Tibnin radioed for help when another missile plunged through the roof. Ambulance crew and patients retreated to the cellar of a nearby building, then waited to be rescued, trying as best as they could to help the injured. "Each of us treated ourselves. There was no light," said Kassem Shaalan, a medic from Tyre.
By the time patients and ambulance crew reached Tyre, Mr Fawaz was unconscious after losing one leg, and suffering severe fractures to the other. His son had lost part of a foot, and his mother's body was riddled with shrapnel. Mr Joudi had shrapnel wounds in his left arm, and Mr Shaalan cuts to the face and leg.
He was adamant that the ambulances, with their Red Cross insignia on the roof, were clearly visible from the air. "I don't think there can be a mistake in two bombings of two ambulances," he said.
Although the air strike marked the first time ambulances have been hit by Israel in this war, for Mr Shaalan and the other Red Cross volunteers it was only a matter of time. After two weeks of strikes designed to choke off possible supply lines to Hizbullah guerrillas, travel to many villages was just too dangerous. Coastal villages even within a few kilometers of Tyre are cut off. In some, corpses remain trapped in the rubble for days.
But nothing is more perilous than travelling by night, and no more so than just before midnight that Sunday when another Red Cross crew set off from Tyre to pick up their injured colleagues.
"I was trembling," said Ali Deeb, one of the volunteers on the mission. "It was too dangerous, and helicopters buzzing, and all through this, I am thinking one thing: the ambulance that left half an hour before you has already been injured, and you could be next." Later yesterday afternoon, two missiles landed in the building across the road from the Red Cross office.
The toll
Lebanese
Yesterday
Civilian deaths 8
Hizbullah deaths 0
Since outbreak
Military deaths 66
Civilian deaths 377
Wounded 1,550+
Israeli
Yesterday
Civilian deaths 0
Military deaths 4
Since outbreak
Military deaths 24
Civilian deaths 17
Wounded 360+
Comment on this Article
Israeli missiles kill 7 in home
Last Updated Tue, 25 Jul 2006 00:32:14 EDT
The Associated Press
Israeli missiles struck a house in south Lebanon early Tuesday, killing seven people and wounding another, hospital and security officials said.
Israeli jets fired a missile at the house in the market town of Nabatiyeh, destroying it and killing its owner, Mohammed Ghandour, along with six other people, including his son, Hassan, the officials said.
It was not immediate clear if the five others killed were related. One woman was also wounded, according to the officials.
It was not immediately clear why the Israeli planes had targeted the house.
The attack, on the 14th day of fighting since eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two captured by Hezbollah fighters, came a day after Israeli troops battled their way to a key Hezbollah stronghold in south Lebanon, seizing a hilltop in heavy fighting and capturing two guerrillas, according to the Israeli army.
Comment on this Article
Israeli Cluster Munitions Hit Civilians in Lebanon
Report, HRW
25/07/2006
Pallets of 155mm artillery projectiles including DPICM cluster munitions (center and right with yellow diamonds) in the arsenal of an IDF artillery unit on July 23 in northern Israel. Each DPICM shell contains 88 sub-munitions, which have a dud rate of up to 14 percent. (Human Rights Watch)
Israel has used artillery-fired cluster munitions in populated areas of Lebanon, Human Rights Watch said today. Researchers on the ground in Lebanon confirmed that a cluster munitions attack on the village of Blida on July 19 killed one and wounded at least 12 civilians, including seven children. Human Rights Watch researchers also photographed cluster munitions in the arsenal of Israeli artillery teams on the Israel-Lebanon border.
"Cluster munitions are unacceptably inaccurate and unreliable weapons when used around civilians," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "They should never be used in populated areas."
According to eyewitnesses and survivors of the attack interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Israel fired several artillery-fired cluster munitions at Blida around 3 p.m. on July 19. The witnesses described how the artillery shells dropped hundreds of cluster submunitions on the village. They clearly described the submunitions as smaller projectiles that emerged from their larger shells.
 |
| Close-up of a M483A1 DPICM artillery-delivered cluster munition present in the arsenal of an IDF unit in northern Israel. (Human Rights Watch) |
Human Rights Watch researchers photographed artillery-delivered cluster munitions among the arsenal of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) artillery teams stationed on the Israeli-Lebanese border during a research visit on July 23. The photographs show M483A1 Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions, which are U.S.-produced and -supplied, artillery-delivered cluster munitions. The photographs contain the distinctive marks of such cluster munitions, including a diamond-shaped stamp, and a shape that is longer than ordinary artillery, according to a retired IDF commander who asked not to be identified.
The M483A1 artillery shells deliver 88 cluster submunitions per shell, and have an unacceptably high failure rate (dud rate) of 14 percent, leaving behind a serious unexploded ordnance problem that will further endanger civilians. The commander said that the IDF's operations manual warns soldiers that the use of such cluster munitions creates dangerous minefields due to the high dud rate.
Lebanese security forces, who to date have not engaged in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, also accused Israel of using cluster munitions in its attacks on Blida and other Lebanese border villages. These sources also indicated they have evidence that Israel used cluster munitions earlier this year during fighting with Hezbollah around the contested Shebaa Farms area. Human Rights Watch is continuing to investigate these additional allegations.
Human Rights Watch believes that the use of cluster munitions in populated areas may violate the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks contained in international humanitarian law. The wide dispersal pattern of their submunitions makes it very difficult to avoid civilian casualties if civilians are in the area. Moreover, because of their high failure rate, cluster munitions leave large numbers of hazardous, explosive duds that injure and kill civilians even after the attack is over. Human Rights Watch believes that cluster munitions should never be used, even away from civilians, unless their dud rate is less than 1 percent.
Human Rights Watch conducted detailed analyses of the U.S. military's use of cluster bombs in the 1999 Yugoslavia war, the 2001-2002 Afghanistan war, and the 2003 Iraq war. Human Rights Watch research established that the use of cluster munitions in populated areas in Iraq caused more civilian casualties than any other factor in the U.S.-led coalition's conduct of major military operations in March and April 2003, killing and wounding more than 1,000 Iraqi civilians. Roughly a quarter of the 500 civilian deaths caused by NATO bombing in the 1999 Yugoslavia war were also due to cluster munitions.
"Our research in Iraq and Kosovo shows that cluster munitions cannot be used in populated areas without huge loss of civilian life," Roth said. "Israel must stop using cluster bombs in Lebanon at once."
Human Rights Watch called upon the Israel Defense Forces to immediately cease the use of indiscriminate weapons like cluster munitions in Lebanon.
Background
Israel used cluster munitions in Lebanon in 1978 and in the 1980s. At that time, the United States placed restrictions on their use and then a moratorium on the transfer of cluster munitions to Israel out of concern for civilian casualties. Those weapons used more than two decades ago continue to affect Lebanon.
Israel has in its arsenal cluster munitions delivered by aircraft, artillery and rockets. Israel is a major producer and exporter of cluster munitions, primarily artillery projectiles and rockets containing M85 DPICM (Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munition) submunitions. Israeli Military Industries, an Israeli government-owned weapons manufacturer, has reportedly produced more than 60 million M85 DPICM submunitions. Israel also produces at least six different types of air-dropped cluster bombs, and has imported from the United States M26 rockets for its Multiple Launch Rocket Systems
There is growing international momentum to stop the use of cluster munitions. Belgium became the first country to ban cluster munitions in February 2006, and Norway announced a moratorium on the weapon in June 2006. Cluster munitions are increasingly the focus of discussion at the meetings of the Convention on Conventional Weapons, with ever more states calling for a new international instrument dealing with cluster munitions.
Human Rights Watch is a founding member, and a steering committee member, of the Cluster Munition Coalition.
Related Links
Comment on this Article
Israelis Kill Three Teenagers 'In Cold Blood Without Guilt or Reason'
umkahlil
July 24, 2006
Israel's Occupation Forces, representing a country that sits on ninety-two percent of land which it stole from the Palestinians in 1948, land to which Palestinians still have deeds, shot three kids in Jenin today: 16 year old Wael Ahmed, 16 year old Ala Farhanh, and 18 year old Husam Mahmoud Sa'adi.
Israel, which refuses to implement Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13, Section 2, which states that "Every man may leave his home and return to his home," displaying their usual immorality and inhumanity did not let ambulances access the youths.
At Husam's funeral a relative eulogized him: "He was in the flower of youth, 18 years old, however, the Israelis killed him in cold blood without guilt or reason."
But they have their reasons. Dr.Harold Sternlicht, American, recently immigrated to Israel. He says: "I believe that Israel is God's gift to the Jews, and that's where we belong." And his God, evidently, believes Palestinians belong in their graves.
Comment on this Article
3 Palestinians killed as Israel shells Gaza Strip
Last Updated Mon, 24 Jul 2006 11:41:32 EDT
CBC News
Three Palestinians died and eight were wounded on Monday after the Israeli military shelled a town in the Gaza Strip used by militants as a base to fire rockets.
The shelling hit Beit Lahiya, a town of about 40,000 in the northern Gaza Strip. Palestinians had just used the town to fire seven rockets at southern Israel, according to the Israeli army. The Palestinian rockets caused no deaths or injuries.
The Israeli army said it was aiming at Hamas militants behind the rocket attacks and it expressed regret at any civilian deaths.
Israeli officials had asked Palestinian officials to urge town residents to stay inside during the shelling.
One shell went off near an apartment building, while another exploded in an open space between two buildings. Some shattered windows, while others cracked walls.
Ahmed Obeid, 40, said that he was eating lunch with his wife and two children when the shelling began, causing damage to their apartment.
"If we had not moved to the hall, we would have been killed," he said.
Doctors said one of the dead was a 14-year-old boy.
Israel launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip on June 28 after Palestinian militants killed two Israeli soldiers and captured a third in an attack on a military outpost. The offensive killed more than 100 Palestinians, most of them armed men.
Israel launched an offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon on July 12 after Hezbollah militants killed eight Israeli soldiers and captured two others in a raid on Israel.
Palestinians to protest Rice's Mideast visit
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Beirut on Monday as part of a diplomatic mission to the Middle East. She is expected to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank to discuss Palestinian issues.
Palestinians are getting ready to protest her visit by planning a general strike and "a day of rage" in Gaza City on Tuesday.
Omar Assaf, a member of a political action committee that organizes activities by Palestinian groups in Gaza and the West Bank, said stores in the Gaza Strip are being asked to close their doors that day.
"She is responsible for the killing of children in Lebanon and Gaza. She, her administration, and her policies are not welcome here," he said.
Comment: "The Israeli army said it was aiming at Hamas militants behind the rocket attacks and it expressed regret at any civilian deaths."
Sure, like they do every time they kill civilians. "Oops. Sorry." How many more civilians will have to die before people wake up to the fact that Israel wants to kill Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. That is the whole point: kill as many Arabs of any shape, size, age, or sex as possible. The leaders of Israel would kill them all if they could.
And if things continue as they are going, they will.
Comment on this Article
Scale of the human crisis emerges
Brian Whitaker in Beirut
Tuesday July 25, 2006
The Guardian
The people of Lebanon are facing their "hour of greatest need", the UN said yesterday in launching an emergency appeal for $150m (£81m) to help an estimated 800,000 civilians whose lives have been disrupted by Israeli bombing of Lebanon.
The relief plan would focus on providing food, water, healthcare and other essential services, Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief coordinator, said.
The situation in Lebanon is "very bad, and deteriorating by the day", said Mr Egeland. On Sunday he described the bombing of south Beirut as "a violation of humanitarian law".
But last night he had harsh words for Hizbullah as well, rebuking the Shi'ite group for cravenly using civilians as human shields. "Hizbullah must stop this cowardly blending ... among women and children," Mr Egeland said.
A UN report accompanying the appeal highlighted the scale of the devastation during 12 days of warfare, saying:
- The ongoing [Israeli] military operation has caused enormous damage to residential areas and key civilian infrastructure such as power plants, seaports and fuel depots.
- Hundreds of bridges and virtually all road networks have been systematically destroyed, leaving entire communities in the south inaccessible.
- Skyrocketing prices for basic goods (eg: the price of sugar has risen by 600% and cooking gas by 400%) further deplete the coping mechanisms of the Lebanese.
- The longer the hostilities last, the more dramatic the humanitarian situation will become. Food, water, health, fuel, and other basic needs will increase; so will the number of internally displaced persons.
- Reports indicate that there is a lack of essential goods, with needs particularly acute in villages along the Israeli-Lebanese border, which have been isolated by the conflict. There are reports that food supplies in some villages have been exhausted.
- The widespread destruction of public infrastructure ... as well as the targeting of commercial trucks, has seriously hampered relief operations.
- As many as 800 persons live in a school designed for 200 to 300 children. School water systems cannot cope with the extent of needs. Neither can sanitary facilities ... a resurgence of diarrhoea cases has been noted in some centres.
In addition to this list, Mr Egeland said there was one school housing 1,000 people which had only six toilets. He warned that fuel was becoming critical in many areas and power failure would affect water supplies and sewage, bringing increased health risks. Calling for an immediate ceasefire, he said: "Only cessation of hostilities can really make it safe for us [to deliver aid]." Failing that, the UN was hoping to arrange a "notification scheme" which would allow safe passage for humanitarian goods.
The UN already had 100 trucks contracted or on their way to deliver aid within Lebanon, Mr Egeland said. The first convoy could head south from Beirut to Sidon and Tyre as early as tomorrow, and the UN was working on details with the Israeli military, he said.
The UN is asking Israel for safe passage through three Lebanese ports. Initially, it hopes to have two ships ferrying supplies into Beirut from Cyprus, with the ports of Tripoli, in the north, and Tyre, in the south, to be added later.
It has also asked Israel to grant safe passage for convoys from Syria. Mr Egeland said the plan was to set up a staging area on the border to receive aid and prioritise it for distribution. "We are hopeful that in the course of this week you will see a real difference on the ground. By next week we will have a major operation really started," he said.
The White House said yesterday that George Bush had ordered helicopters and ships to Lebanon to give humanitarian aid. "Humanitarian supplies will start arriving in Lebanon tomorrow by helicopter and by ship," said White House spokesman Tony Snow. "We are working with Israel and Lebanon to open up humanitarian corridors." He described the move as "a significant US commitment".
Mr Bush still opposed the idea of an immediate ceasefire, he added, saying there was no reason to believe it would stop violence in the Middle East; instead the world should confront Hizbullah and its practice of using the Lebanese people as "human shields".
Comment on this Article
Tales from a Lebanese hospital
Jul. 25, 2006. 09:44 AM
SANDRO CONTENTA
EUROPEAN BUREAU CHIEF
BEIRUT-Zakaria Alamiddine's face is heavily bandaged and badly burned, yet his youthful eyes beam bright and full of life.
There's relief in his 18-year-old voice when he describes surviving the Israeli bombing of the basement shelter in south Lebanon where he and his family - and 50 other civilians - had gathered to wait out the conflict.
It's the relief of a young man whose older sister has so far spared him the news that his father and 14-year-old brother were killed in the attack.
"I'm waiting until he gets better. It will hurt him so much," his sister Kawsar, 24, warned the Star before entering his room at the Beirut Government University Hospital.
There are many heartbreaking stories in a conflict that has killed at least 384 Lebanese, all but 30 of them civilians, and 40 Israelis, 23 of them soldiers.
But knowing a devastating secret about a survivor's life is all the more wrenching, especially when the person is so happy to be alive.
"When I get out of here, I'm going back to my studies to become a doctor," said Zakaria, speaking in French.
And his eyes light up again.
About a week ago, the Alamiddine family fled their village and took refuge in a basement used as a bomb shelter in the city of Tyre.
Zakaria was calling out to his mother when the bomb slammed into the shelter.
All he remembers is seeing the wall he was looking at explode.
Next thing he knew he woke up in hospital, his face badly burned and a deep wound in his thigh caused by shrapnel.
His mother, Mariam Atwi, a school principal, is in the burn unit of another hospital. She too is unaware that her husband Mohammed, a chemistry teacher, and her son Ali, a talented pianist, were killed in the bombings.
"I will never forgive those who did this to my father and little brother, who was really an angel," said Kawsar, who was in Beirut at the time of the attack, finishing her studies as a pediatrician.
"They're not fighting Hezbollah. They're fighting the population," she added.
Said Zakaria: "Tell the people of Canada that they (Israel) can destroy Lebanon, but they can't destroy its people."
There are 45 people wounded from the conflict at this Beirut hospital, and many of their stories bear witness to the growing criticism of Israel's bombing campaign as excessive and heedless of civilian casualties.
In one room, Radya Shaito, 54, was lying on a bed, her face burned and body covered in scars. She and 17 other members of her family were crammed into their white van Sunday and fleeing south Lebanon when an Israeli missile struck them just outside of Tyre.
Two members of the family died.
"They must have known the van was full of people. It's a crime, a crime. We are civilians; we are not fighting Israel," Shaito said.
Comment on this Article
'10 buildings for every rocket'
07/24/06
Aljazeera
The Israeli air force has been ordered to hit 10 buildings in south Beirut - where Hezbollah has its headquarters - for every rocket the group fires at the Israeli port of Haifa.
"Army chief of staff Dan Halutz has given the order to the air force to destroy 10 multi-storey buildings in the Dahaya district (of Beirut) in response to every rocket fired on Haifa," a senior air force officer told army radio on Monday.
Hezbollah rockets killed two people in the northern Israeli city of Haifa on Sunday.
Seventeen Israelis have died in rocket attacks since the beginning of the conflict on July 12.
More than 2,200 Hezbollah rockets had hit northern Israel by Sunday. They have struck as far as Afula, 50km south of the border.
Large areas of predominantly Shia Muslim southern Beirut have been destroyed by Israeli raids. On Wednesday Israeli aircraft dropped 23 tons of explosives on the site of an alleged Hezbollah bunker in the south of the capital.
Jan Egeland, the United Nations humanitarian co-ordinator, on Sunday accused Israel of violating humanitarian law as he toured the destroyed suburbs of south Beirut.
"This is destruction of block after block of mainly residential areas. I would say it seems to be an excessive use of force in an area with so many citizens," he said.
Israel's offensive in Lebanon has claimed at least 365 lives, mostly civilians.
Comment: But Israel is "not targetting civilians". Blatant, barefaced lie anyone?
Comment on this Article
Israel to get U.S. "bunker buster" bombs - report
July 24 2006
Reuters
DUBAI, - The United States will soon provide Israel with some 100 "bunker buster" bombs to kill the leader of Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrilla group and destroy its trenches, Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Monday.
Quoting unidentified informed sources in both Washington and Tel Aviv, the Saudi-owned Arabic daily said the bombs, which can penetrate up to 40 metres (130 feet) under ground, would be shipped to Israel from a U.S. military base in Qatar.
Israel has been bombarding Lebanon since Hizbollah killed eight soldiers and abducted two others on July 12 and the guerrilla group has fought back. Some 320 people, almost all civilians, have been killed in Lebanon and 37 in Israel. On at least two occasions, the Israeli air force hit Beirut buildings in what media reports described as bids to assassinate Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and senior group officials.
Nasrallah emerged unscathed both times and said other top guerrillas were also unhurt. Some Israeli military experts blamed the missions' apparent failure on the absence of air force ordnance capable of cracking Hizbollah command bunkers.
Israel asked the United States in 2004 to sell it bunker busters. Pentagon approval for the sale of 100 GBU-28 bombs, capable of penetrating some 20 feet (7 metres) of concrete, came through last year but Israel's Defence Ministry, amid steep budget cuts, decided against making the purchase.
Citing U.S. officials, the New York Times reported on Saturday that the Bush administration was rushing a delivery of satellite- and laser-guided bombs to Israel in response to an Israeli request connected to the Lebanon offensive.
The report did not give details on the munitions in question but said they were part of a sale the Pentagon approved in 2005.
Comment on this Article
Israelis 'will have to destroy half of Lebanon'
Globe and Mail
24/07/2006
SIDON, LEBANON -- As he mentally girds for war, the signs that things are grim in south Lebanon are all around Nasser Bahjat.
The 40-year-old butcher and Hezbollah reservist was standing next to a building that used to be the head office of an Islamic charity until it was transformed by an air strike yesterday morning into a smoking heap of concrete and metal. The nearby road north was packed with refugees -- sometimes crammed a dozen or more into a single car -- fleeing the slow advance of the Israeli army into Lebanese territory.
But rather than defeat, angry defiance was etched into the features of Mr. Bahjat's unshaven face as he spoke of what will come next for this already war-ravaged land. By starting its ground offensive, he says, Israel has begun a battle it cannot win. "They will have to destroy half of Lebanon to defeat Hezbollah because we're all with the resistance. We're all with Hezbollah and we will sacrifice anything for Hezbollah," he said.
A crowd gathered around him, nodded their heads iagreement. "The kids will pick up stones, and we will pick up Kalashnikovs," said a man, who refused to give his name.
The first 12 days of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, or the Party of God, has largely been a long-range exchange of fire, with Hezbollah lobbing hundreds of deadly rockets at Israeli cities and Israel responding with heavy artillery barrages and waves of air strikes. But with Israeli troops crossing into south Lebanon over the weekend and seizing the village of Marun al-Ras, the fight is about to get a lot more personal.
Military experts say that Hezbollah, which has about 5,000 full-time fighters, has another 10,000 reservists. Mr. Bahjat says he is one of them, and that he is ready to fight when the time comes.
"Hezbollah so far hasn't asked us for help, but we're ready the second they do. We all have hidden weapons," he said without elaborating.
Despite a growing humanitarian crisis -- Sidon's normal population of 100,000 has been swelled by 35,000 refugees from hard-hit villages farther south -- Hezbollah and its supporters say they have no intention of surrendering to Israel's demands that the group disarm and hand back two soldiers it kidnapped this month.
Instead, the militia says the battle is going well. The group acknowledged yesterday that the Israeli army was occupying Marun al-Ras, but tried to spin the loss as a victory.
"When the enemy tried to present the occupation of Marun al-Ras as a great military achievement, it was fooling its people and the world because an army which is fighting with elite troops and tanks, backed by air forces, could not enter a village on the border without days of fighting and huge losses," read a statement released yesterday by Hezbollah. Five Israeli soldiers died during several days of fierce clashes in the village, while Hezbollah says it lost three fighters.
But while the fighters bragged yesterday of their readiness for more bloodshed, south Lebanon's morgues and emergency wards continued to overflow with the civilian casualties of what so far has been a lopsided war.
In Sidon's Labib Medical Centre, Ikhlas Hamzeh and her seven-year-old son, Jaber, lay in neighbouring beds recovering after a missile exploded near their car as they tried to flee their town of Bint Jbeil.
The mother had a broken right leg, while Jaber had two broken legs and gauze bandages covering much of his face. In obvious pain, the boy stared at the ceiling, trying not to cry in front of strangers.
"Tell Israel and tell [Hezbollah] -- tell both sides -- that children are getting hurt, that children are dying," Ms. Hamzeh said.
Comment on this Article
Olmert rules out halt to Lebanon offensive
by Yana Dlugy
AFP
July 25, 2006
JERUSALEM - Israel has vowed to press on with its war on Hezbollah as clashes raged on the border, effectively ruling out any chance of an early ceasefire in the two-week-old Lebanon conflict.
Despite a mission to the region by US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, the bloodshed continued. An entire family of seven was killed when an Israeli missile slammed into their home in southern Lebanon while troops besieged a key border town where Hezbollah has a military headquarters.
"Israel is determined to carry on the fight against Hezbollah," Olmert said at a press conference Rice, on the latest leg of her tour to discuss a conflict that has now left more than 380 people dead in Lebanon alone.
But Olmert said: "We are not fighting the Lebanese government or the Lebanese people. We are fighting against Hezbollah."
Rice, in Israel after making a surprise visit to bomb-scarred Beirut, said it was "time for a new Middle East" and underlined Washington's stance that an immediate ceasefire would only put off a long-term solution to the conflict.
"A durable solution will be one that strengthens the forces of peace and democracy in the region," she said. "The people of this region, Israelis, Lebanese, and the Palestinians have lived too long in fear, and in terror, and in violence."
In Lebanon Monday, Rice said she was "deeply concerned" about the plight of civilians and the government announced a 30 million dollar aid package, with US forces due to begin airlifting supplies Tuesday.
She also met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who appealed for a ceasefire to end Israel's similarly aggressive offensive on the Gaza Strip, where 114 people have been killed in an operation to free a captured soldier and halt rocket attacks.
"Rice, Rice, you are a crow, what misery you bring with you," a crowd of about 2,000 protestors chanted before her arrival in Ramallah.
On a visit to the Gaza Strip's main power plant which was bombed by Israel, leaving many of the area's 1.4 million residents without power, UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland said it was a "clear" example of excessive force.
The United States has been unwavering in its support for Israel's war on Hezbollah and Hamas militants -- even sending in more weapons -- despite the heavy human cost of the conflict.
Hundreds of thousands in Lebanon have been forced to flee their homes, creating what the United Nations warns is a humanitarian catastrophe. Human Rights Watch accused Israel Monday of using artillery-fired cluster bombs in Lebanon and demanded the Jewish state immediately cease the practice.
Rice held talks with Lebanese leaders including Prime Minister Fuad Siniora on her trip to Beirut, where she reportedly outlined plans for a ceasefire that would involve creating an internationally-patrolled buffer zone in southern Lebanon for 60 to 90 days and a Hezbollah withdrawal from the border area.
Washington is under pressure from European and Arab allies to try to bring an end to the crisis amid charges it was dragging its feet to allow Israel time to attempt to wipe out the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which set off the conflict after seizing two soldiers on July 12.
But Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, who is acting as an intermediary for Hezbollah, rejected Rice's reported plan and said there must first be a ceasefire and a prisoner swap.
Israel is struggling to knock out Hezbollah despite its vastly superior military might and has now suggested it would accept some form of international force in southern Lebanon, currently in the grip of the Shiite militia.
A 15-year-old Arab Israeli girl was killed after a rocket hit her house in a village in northern Israel as more than a dozen rockets fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon pummelled the northern port of Haifa, wounding at least five people.
Israeli forces were also beseiging the border town of Bint Jbeil, a Hezbollah stronghold, amid fierce gunbattles as troops in tanks and bulldozers pushed even deeper into Lebanon.
"Beit Jbeil is in our hands," General Alon Friedman, one of Israel's top commanders for its northern region, told army radio. It was not confirmed if troops were actually inside the town.
Israel has massed troops on the border and warned residents of southern Lebanon to flee but says it has no plans for an all-out invasion -- for now.
But a senior army officer said the military would limit its incursions to southern Lebanon in its bid to annihilate Hezbollah.
Two soldiers were killed in fighting Monday, bringing to 41 -- 24 servicemen and 17 civilians -- the toll of Israelis killed since the crisis erupted.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington's closest ally, called the conflict a "catastrophe" that was damaging fledgling democracy in Lebanon, a country that had gradually been rebuilding since the 1975-90 civil war and the end of Syria's long military and political dominance last year.
He said he hoped a plan would be announced in the next few days to bring about an end to the worst cross-border conflict since Israel invaded its northern neighbour in 1982.
The offensive has left Lebanon virtually cut off from the world, made hundreds of thousands of people refugees in their own country and destroyed billions of dollars of infrastructure.
Siniora, who has issued several desperate appeals for a ceasefire, accused Israel of trying to set his country back 50 years in his meeting with Rice.
Israel launched a public relations offensive led by its best-known elder statesman Shimon Peres to tell the world why it was not yet silencing its guns.
"The free world is facing a threat, the goal of Hezbollah is to set the world aflame and we will not let them succeed," Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah remained defiant, vowing that deeper incursions would not stop the rocket fire, and ruling out any efforts for a negotiated settlement unless it involved a prisoner swap.
Egeland, issuing an urgent appeal for 150 million dollars for 800,000 people made homeless by Israel's onslaught, criticised both Israel and Hezbollah for attacking civilians.
He also branded the Shiite militants "cowards" for boasting that Lebanese civilians rather than their fighters were bearing the brunt of the Israeli bombardments.
Southeast Asian nations called for an immediate ceasefire and condemned Israel's "excessive" military operations, saying the situation threatened international peace and security.
As the bombardments continued, foreign governments have laid on flotillas of ships to evacuate stranded nationals, mainly to the nearby resort island of Cyprus which has been battling to find temporary accommodation and flights for the estimated 70,000 evacuees at peak summer holiday season.
Comment on this Article
A Time For War
Sarah Whalen: Kidnapping? There Ought To Be A Law
Palestine Chronicle
25/07/2006
By Sarah Whalen
Palestinian militants, weary of beachside picnicking families getting killed by Israeli naval shelling and ground-based artillery, captured a very young Israeli soldier--bespectacled, deer-in-the- headlights-looking Corporal Gilad Shalit--and refuse to give him back until Israel meets their demands. Israel responded that the life of even one Israeli would be well worth the trouble it would take to murder every non-Jewish man, woman and child not only in Palestine, but in the region. It then undertook massive military retaliation.
Hezbollah, taking Israel's dare, captured two more Israeli soldiers.
U.S. President George W. Bush says the kidnappings are terrorist acts.
Is Bush right?
No, he's not.
Kidnapping is always vile.
But it's not uncommon. And in the United States, it's not even illegal anymore, as long as the kidnapped victim is accused (not proven guilty, but merely suspected) of committing some bad act.
The U.S. Supreme Court says so in its ruling in the notorious case of Dr. Humberto Alvarez-Machain, a Mexican obstetrician implicated in the kidnapping, torture and murder of Enrique "Kiki" Camarenas, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agent. Although Mexico has an extradition treaty with the United States providing that Mexico decides whether sufficient evidence justifies forcibly sending someone in Mexico's sovereign jurisdiction to another state, the United States griped that extradition took too long.
So the DEA hired thugs to break into the obstetrician's house, clobber him, boink him on the head, inject him with drugs, and then tie him up and bundle him onto a plane flying to Texas, where he was arrested at the airport.
The federal court where the Mexican obstetrician was eventually tried was so horrified by the DEA's acts that they acquitted him.
Safely back in Mexico (where he likely won't be answering his own door anytime soon), Alvarez-Machain sued to recover damages from the government for his kidnapping. However, America's highest court said it really didn't care how mere suspects were brought into U.S. jurisdiction.
But Bush now says Israel can respond to kidnappings with unrestrained military force! Luckily for us here in the mighty United States, Mexico isn't a highly militarized state like Israel, or we'd be in big trouble.
Kidnapping is always vile. But not only the U.S. Supreme Court, but America's closest ally, Israel, says it's okay. In fact, so legendary are