This essay, first published in August 2004, is dedicated to the over 3000 Palestinian and 1000 Israeli dead, who, in the last five years, have perished thanks to the sickness of human nature, as well as to the hundreds of Lebanese civilians and tens of northern Israelis slaughtered by the latest wave of Middle East violence. This essay is also dedicated to the thousands of injured on both sides, the thousands more who have lost loved ones, and the peace-loving, tolerance-striving, justice-seeking peoples of the Holy Land, all of whom have suffered enormously for the last four years. May you have the strength to put an end to madness and the worst in the human condition. May your troubled land find the peace you and the world desperately needs.
Original
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Is Beirut Burning?
By URI AVNERY
Counterpunch
26 July 06
Tel Aviv - "IT SEEMS that Nasrallah survived," Israeli newspapers announced, after 23 tons of bombs were dropped on a site in Beirut, where the Hizbullah leader was supposedly hiding in a bunker.
An interesting formulation. A few hours after the bombing, Nazrallah had given an interview to Aljazeera television. Not only did he look alive, but even composed and confident. He spoke about the bombardment - proof that the interview was recorded on the same day.
So what does "it seems that" mean? Very simple: Nasrallah pretends to be alive, but you can't believe an Arab. Everyone knows that Arabs always lie. That's in their very nature, as Ehud Barak once pronounced.
The killing of the man is a national aim, almost the main aim of the war. This is, perhaps, the first war in history waged by a state in order to kill one person. Until now, only the Mafia thought along those lines. Even the British in World War II did not proclaim that their aim was to kill Hitler. On the contrary, they wanted to catch him alive, in order to put him on trial. Probably that's what the Americans wanted, too, in their war against Saddam Hussein.
But our ministers have officially decided that that is the aim. There is not much novelty in that: successive Israeli governments have adopted a policy of killing the leaders of opposing groups. Our army has killed, among others, Hizbullah leader Abbas Mussawi, PLO no. 2 Abu Jihad, as well as Sheik Ahmad Yassin and other Hamas leaders. Almost all Palestinians, and not only they, are convinced that Yassir Arafat was also murdered.
And the results? The place of Mussawi was filled by Nasrallah, who is far more able. Sheik Yassin was succeeded by far more radical leaders. Instead of Arafat we got Hamas.
As in other political matters, a primitive military mindset governs this reasoning too.
A person returning here after a long absence and seeing our TV screens might get the impression that a military junta is governing Israel, in the (former) South American manner.
On all TV channels, every evening, one sees a parade of military brass in uniform. They explain not only the day's military actions, but also comment on political matters and lay down the political and propaganda line.
During all the other hours of broadcasting time, a dozen or so have-been generals repeat again and again the message of the army commanders. (Some of them don't look particularly intelligent - not to say downright stupid. It is frightening to think that these people were once in a position to decide who would live and who would die.)
True, we are a democracy. The army is completely subject to the civilian establishment. According to the law, the cabinet is the "supreme commander" of the army (which in Israel includes the navy and air force). But in practice, today it is the top brass who decide all political and military matters. When Dan Halutz tells the ministers that the military command has decided on this or that operation, no minister dares to express opposition. Certainly not the hapless Labor Party ministers.
Ehud Olmert presents himself as the heir to Churchill ("blood, sweat and tears"). That's quite pathetic enough. Then Amir Peretz puffs up his chest and shoots threats in all directions, and that's even more pathetic, if that's possible. He resembles nothing so much as a fly standing on the ear of an ox and proclaiming: "we are ploughing!"
The Chief-of-Staff announced last week with satisfaction: "The army enjoys the full backing of the government!" That is also an interesting formulation. It implies that the army decides what to do, and the government provides "backing". And that's how it is, of course.
Now it is not a secret anymore: this war has been planned for a long time. The military correspondents proudly reported this week that the army has been exercising for this war in all its details for several years. Only a month ago, there was a large war game to rehearse the entrance of land forces into South Lebanon - at a time when both the politicians and the generals were declaring that "we shall never again get into the Lebanon quagmire. We shall never again introduce land forces there." Now we are in the quagmire, and large land forces are operating in the area.
The other side, too, has been preparing this war for years. Not only did they build caches of thousands of missiles, but they have also prepared an elaborate system of Vietnam-style bunkers, tunnels and caves. Our soldiers are now encountering this system and paying a high price. As always, our army has treated "the Arabs" with disdain and discounted their military capabilities.
That is one of the problems of the military mentality. Talleyrand was not wrong when he said that "war is much too serious a thing to be left to military men." The mentality of the generals, resulting from their education and profession, is by nature force-oriented, simplistic, one-dimensional, not to say primitive. It is based on the belief that all problems can be solved by force, and if that does not work - then by more force.
That is well illustrated by the planning and execution of the current war. This was based on the assumption that if we cause terrible suffering to the population, they will rise up and demand the removal of Hizbullah. A minimal understanding of mass psychology would suggest the opposite. The killing of hundreds of Lebanese civilians, belonging to all the ethno-religious communities, the turning of the lives of the others into hell, and the destruction of the life-supporting infrastructure of Lebanese society will arouse a groundswell of fury and hatred - against Israel, and not against the heroes, as they see them, who sacrifice their lives in their defense.
The result will be a strengthening of Hizbullah, not only today, but for years to come. Perhaps that will be the main outcome of the war, more important than all the military achievements, if any. And not only in Lebanon, but throughout the Arab and Muslim world.
Faced with the horrors that are shown on all television and many computer screens, world opinion is also changing. What was seen at the beginning as a justified response to the capture of the two soldiers now looks like the barbaric actions of a brutal war-machine. The elephant in a china shop.
Thousands of e-mail distribution lists have circulated a horrible series of photos of mutilated babies and children. At the end, there is a macabre photo: jolly Israeli children writing "greetings" on the artillery shells that are about to be fired. Then there appears a message: "Thanks to the children of Israel for this nice gift. Thanks to the world that does nothing. Signed: the children of Lebanon and Palestine."
The woman who heads the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has already defined these acts as war crimes - something that may in future mean trouble for Israeli army officers.
In general, when army officers are determining the policy of a nation, serious moral problems arise.
In war, a commander is obliged to take hard decisions. He sends soldiers into battle, knowing that many will not return and others will be maimed for life. He hardens his heart. As General Amos Yaron told his officers after the Sabra and Shatila massacre: "Our senses have been blunted!"
Years of the occupation regime in the Palestinian territories have caused a terrible callousness as far as human lives are concerned. The killing of ten to twenty Palestinians every day, including women and children, as happens now in Gaza, does not agitate anyone. It doesn't even make the headlines. Gradually, even routine expressions like "We regret…we had no intention…the most moral army in the world…" and all the other trite phrases are not heard anymore.
Now this numbness is revealing itself in Lebanon. Air Force officers, calm and comfortable, sit in front of the cameras and speak about "bundles of targets", as if they were talking about a technical problem, and not about living human beings. They speak about driving hundreds of thousands of human beings from their homes as an imposing military achievement, and do not hide their satisfaction in face of human beings whose whole life has been destroyed. The word that is most popular with the generals at this time is "pulverize" - we pulverize, they are being pulverized, neighborhoods are pulverized, buildings are pulverized, people are pulverized.
Even the launching of rockets at our towns and villages does not justify this ignoring of moral considerations in fighting the war. There were other ways of responding to the Hizbullah provocation, without turning Lebanon into rubble. The moral numbness will be transformed into grievous political damage, both immediate and long term. Only a fool or worse ignores moral values - in the end, they always take revenge.
IT IS almost banal to say that it is easier to start a war than to finish it. One knows how it starts, it is impossible to know how it will end.
Wars take place in the realm of uncertainty. Unforeseen things happen. Even the greatest captains in history could not control the wars they started. War has its own laws.
We started a war of days. It turned into a war of weeks. Now they are speaking of a war of months. Our army started a "surgical" action of the Air Force, afterwards it sent small units into Lebanon, now whole brigades are fighting there, and reservists are being called up in large numbers for a wholesale 1982-style invasion. Some people already foresee that the war may roll towards a confrontation with Syria.
All this time, the United States has been using all its might in order to prevent the cessation of hostilities. All signs indicate that it is pushing Israel towards a war with Syria - a country that has ballistic missiles with chemical and biological warheads.
Only one thing is already certain on the 11th day of the war: Nothing good will come of it. Whatever happens - Hizbullah will emerge strengthened. If there had been hopes in the past that Lebanon would slowly become a normal country, where Hizbullah would be deprived of a pretext for maintaining a military force of its own, we have now provided the organization with the perfect justification: Israel is destroying Lebanon, only Hizbullah is fighting to defend the country.
As for deterrence: a war in which our huge military machine cannot overcome a small guerilla organization in 11 days of total war certainly has not rehabilitated its deterrent power. In this respect, it is not important how long this war will last and what will be its results - the fact that a few thousand fighters have withstood the Israeli army for 11 days and more, has already been imprinted in the consciousness of hundred of millions of Arabs and Muslims.
From this war nothing good will come - not for Israel, not for Lebanon and not for Palestine. The "New Middle East" that will be its result will be a worse place to live in.
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: The Public Eye: Take Me To Our Leader
Bob Burnett
The Berkeley Daily Planet
25 July 06
It's a famous cartoon setup: Aliens descend from a space ship, walk up to a human, and demand, "Take me to your leader." If aliens actually did land in Washington D.C., they'd probably be taken to meet George Bush. After all, he's the nominally elected president of the United States. Ah, but is he our leader?
No. Most of us believe that President Bush has failed as a leader. That's the crux of the problem facing the United States as we gaze into the eye of the Middle East maelstrom: There's civil war in Iraq; Israel is rampaging in Gaza and Lebanon; Iran grows more belligerent by the hour and seems determined to have nuclear weapons; India and Pakistan are at each other's throats; and George Bush cannot be counted upon to guide us through this tempest
Management theory teaches there are two types of leaders: one is a person who occupies a position of authority and the other is a someone who people go to for counsel because of his or her wise decision making. This theory argues that people want to respect their elected officials; that we gain or lose confidence in our leaders based upon two traits: trust and communication. As president, George Bush occupies a position of authority, but he has lost favor with Americans because he has proven to be an unwise decision-maker, untrustworthy public servant, and unreliable communicator.
Crises cause confidence in our leaders to rise or fall. George Bush has faced four crises during his presidency: The first was 9/11. Bush started out well but then made a series of bad decisions: He failed to unite the nation in common cause, to learn from the mistakes made before 9/11, and to destroy Al Qaeda. The second crisis was Iraq. Whatever we may think of Bush's stated reason for the invasion, he might have saved the situation with a carefully conceived plan for the occupation, but he didn't. The third crisis was Hurricane Katrina. Bush failed because he first refused to act beforehand and then had no comprehensive plan for recovery.
Now America finds itself in the fourth crisis of the Bush administration: For a variety of reasons, some centuries old, but many the result of bad decisions by this White House, the Middle East is spiraling out of control. Once again, the key requirement is leadership. Only America can restrain Israel. Only the United States can prevent Iraq from total collapse. Only American can initiate meaningful dialogue with Syria and Iran. And only the United States can mediate the confrontation between India and Pakistan.
But based on his past performance, we cannot expect George Bush to provide the leadership that these critical times require. He has proven incapable of the bold steps that these crises demand. As the Middle East deteriorates, Bush will remain a passive observer; our Nero content to fiddle while Rome burns.
Given the extremity of this crisis, and the dreadful track record of the president, it's important to ask who else can provide this leadership? Certainly no one else in the administration. It's useless to pin our hopes on the likes of Don Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. The Republican "leadership" on Capitol Hill seems similarly impaired; a number of terms are used to describe Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert, but "respected leader" isn't one of them.
That leaves the Democrats. At the moment, there are five front runners for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Evan Bayh, and Mark Warner. None of them stands out as someone able to provide the leadership needed in the Middle East.
However, there is a Democrat who has demonstrated the inspirational leadership the United States needs. A person who occupied high office and became familiar with the complex problems that are, once again, flaring up in the Middle East. An individual who suffered through misfortune and learned from it, whose hubris has long ago been swept away. A senior statesman has who shown extraordinary leadership in two critical areas: Bush's abuse of presidential power and global climate change. This leader is Al Gore.
We can all understand Gore's reluctance to again run for public office. None of us can forget the painful 2000 election—the stolen votes in Florida and other states, and the Supreme Court decision that threw the victory to George Bush. None of us can imagine how painful this must have been for Al Gore, how difficult it was for him to forget a campaign where he was maligned by an American press corps that was having an unsavory love affair with Bush.
These are perilous times, where America, and the world, teeters on the brink of disaster. In his famous "ask not" phrase, John Kennedy argued that there are occasions when Americans must sweep aside personal considerations and do what is best for our country. This is one of those moments. Al Gore can provide the leadership that the United States needs. He must take control of the Democratic Party and become the voice of sanity that America desperately needs to hear.
Bob Burnett can be reached at bobburnett@comcast.net.
Original
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Helplessly Hoping
By Cindy Sheehan
t r u t h o u t
25 July 2006
I have been in such a blue funk of depression and worry since Israel's over-reaction - or "over action" - in Lebanon in what seems to be insanity escalating out of control. What our media and some world leaders seem to expediently forget is that Israel massacred an entire family on a beach in Lebanon with a rocket and kidnapped two Palestinian citizens before Hezbollah and Hamas kidnapped some Israeli soldiers. Who started the cycle of violence in those countries? Who knows? Who cares! The important question is: who are going to be the courageous ones with integrity, wisdom and compassion who are going to at long last stop the absurdity?
As hard as I may try, I cannot wrap my mind around the fanatical rhetoric coming out of DC and from all over the world and the mindless and seemingly overwhelming support of Israel's right to "defend itself." What Israel is doing in Lebanon by killing hundreds of innocent civilians in a relatively short period of time is like the US defending itself from the tens of thousands of innocent babies, women and children in Iraq. It is morally reprehensible and just an extension of BushCo's campaign to enrich the voracious war profiteers.
I read yesterday that our State Department approved a new shipment of bombs and rockets to Israel. With the thousands upon thousands of US-made bombs and rockets being dropped on Lebanon by the IDF it makes one wonder if the expiration dates on the bombs were nearing and the war machine needed to sell and ship more bombs so that the CEOs could fill their Hummers, limos, and jets with gas. Naively, I always presumed that the State Department was there to prevent the use of military force, not support it by authorizing more weapons for more efficient killing! Don't we have a War Department for more killing? I feel like I am living in Bizarro World.
I have been watching a lot of cable news networks and have heard such one-sided phrases as: "Over 50 civilians killed in Lebanon today, but the real story is in the Israeli city of Nazareth, where two Hezbollah rockets landed." Why is that the real story, Tucker Carlson? It is an immensely tragic story, because two harmless children were killed in Nazareth, but how does it trump over 50 civilians being killed in Lebanon? Oh yeah, I forgot! John Bolton said that there is no "moral equivalency" between innocent Arabs being killed and innocent Israelis being killed. It's not immoral for Israel to kill innocent civilians because they are fighting terror with more terror: it's the American Way!
One day I heard another perfectly coiffed and composed talking head say while the fancy war graphics rolled across the TV screen in my hotel room: "This is day 12 of fighting in the Middle East." Day 12! Try selling that idiotic sound bite to the people of Iraq and who are dying by the dozens still every day in increasing violence. Try telling our soldiers who keep on dying over there that this is "Day 12" … It is more like 2,567 on day 1,200 plus of fighting in Iraq. The war crimes in Israel and Lebanon have so conveniently knocked Iraq completely off the radar screen, which is probably a thing of beauty and a welcome development to the White House and Pentagon.
We are being told that a few hundred people have been killed in Lebanon when we were shown a mass grave on CNN in the ancient city of Tyre that had almost 90 coffins in it being presided over by a distraught mayor, telling us that at least two or three hundred more of his city's residents were buried in the rubble of the barbaric Israeli attacks. Tyre is one city, and we viewed the mass grave days ago. Tyre and the rest of the country are being relentlessly bombed for the sins of a few, which is a crime against humanity.
It seems like we are armchair witnesses to Armageddon and ashamed witnesses to our fool of a President at the G-8: groping women; talking, eating, and swearing with his mouth full; drooling over slicing a pig and generally acting like a drunken and amorous frat boy at a toga party. I would like to ask George Bush a few more questions besides "What noble cause?" Like: "What the hell is so humorous, you jester in a tailored suit? You told us that you were making the world a safer place because of your War of Terror, and you are decidedly not!" I would also like to ask him if he is proud of himself for the way things are going on the 1200th plus day of fighting in the Middle East. Of course it is not about pride - it is about profit and the Project for a New American Century.
I mourn for the murders of the Israeli people, which are just as tragic (but not more tragic) and done just as barbarically (but not more barbarically) as the murders that Israel is commiting in this needless violence, as much as I mourn the deaths of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and the innocents in all Arab countries who are trapped in this insane spiral of bedlam. When is the world going to realize that bloodshed cannot be stopped, cured or even alleviated by shedding more blood? Killing is a cancer that spreads the more it is fed. This disease is spreading around the world, and instead of passing resolutions to condone the punishment of an innocent civilian population, Congress should be passing resolutions condemning ALL types of violence and should be supporting Rep. Dennis Kucinich's (D-Ohio) call for a truce (H.Con.Res 450) so a diplomatic solution can be sought - one that brings ALL sides to the table and one that ALL sides can feel comfortable and safer with. The only way to a "lasting cease-fire" that the weapons broker, Condi, keeps talking about is a negotiated settlement that includes and insists on peaceful co-existence in the region.
Martin Luther King Jr. said it is either "peaceful co-existence or mutual co-annihilation." Our planet is headed on a path of annihilation if we don't all stop and take a deep breath, relax and realize that our brothers and sisters are being killed in the Middle East so that more bombs and rockets can be rushed there (on all sides) and so that our oil companies can have total control of the world's oil resources.
I have felt so helpless in the face of such unwarranted carnage, calamity, and sorrow. I have felt hopeless that anything I do can even alleviate the suffering of one person. I am helplessly hoping that the people of the world will join me and rise up to say a collective: "In God's (Allah's - whatever's) name: enough is more than enough, already!"
One last quote: Dwight David Eisenhower said, "I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it." I believe that we the people of Earth should demand that our governments get out of our way and stop being beholden to the war machine and allow us to have peace. Selfishly, I would love to have a world that my surviving children and their children can peacefully co-exist with peoples of other nations in.
I recognize Israel's right to defend itself as I recognize the US's right to defend ourselves as I recognize Lebanon's and Iraq's right to defend themselves - but I do not, cannot, and will not recognize anyone's right to commit wholesale slaughter on babies and children. I refuse to recognize that right no matter who does it - terrorists or state-sanctioned wars of terror - I refuse to recognize the right to slaughter and, whether it makes a difference or not, I refuse to be silent about it.
It must stop: For my children, your children and their children.
They are all our children.
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: "Hell is empty, all the devils are here." - William Shakespeare
by William Hughes
26 July 06
Washington, D.C. - Close to 400 protesters showed up for a spirited demonstration on Tuesday, July 25, 2006, at the Israeli Embassy, 514 International Drive, NW, in the nation’s capital. They were there, despite the sweltering heat, to express their strong opposition to the ongoing barbaric conduct of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in Lebanon, as well as in Gaza. The IOF has given new meaning to the term “collective punishment” by their reckless, disproportionate and murderous treatment of the Lebanese and Palestinian civilian populations. It is a war crime under the provisions of the 4th Geneva Convention, (Article 33), to deliberately target a protected population for punishment.
Many of the protesters wore black. They carried 50 coffins draped in black, too. They began at 5:30 PM, at Van Ness and Connecticut Avenues, with a march done in silence. It then proceeded around the neighborhood and ended up in front of the Israeli Embassy. The event was sponsored by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Code PInk, Pax Christi USA, the Council for the National Interest, along with many other groups. (1)
I talked with Jamilah Shami at the rally. She’s with the American- Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s D.C. Chapter. She said: “We’re here to bring attention to what is taking place in Lebanon and Palestine. Israel is bombing on both sides and innocent people are being killed and, unfortunately, with our tax dollars and with our government’s okay. Every other nation, every other person is calling for an immediate cease fire, except the U.S. It’s not reigning in Israel. And they have the power to do so.” The Rev. Philip Wheaton, an Episcopal priest from D.C., told me: “I’m really concerned about Israel. They are being led down the worst possible path by Zionism. And they can’t win by power and might.” He added that if they didn’t get off the road that they are presently traveling, “that they will only increase the anti-Israel spirit around the world and it’s very serious. Jews in this country have to understand that if they want to do something serious for Judaism, then they have to stop this madness.”
With respect to Lebanon, since July 13, 2006, the Israeli Air Force has flown over 4,000 air sorties over cities, like Beirut, Sidon and Tyre, dropping cluster and bunker bombs and laying waste to bridges, roads, homes, apartment buildings, banks, water and electric power plants, reservoirs, hospitals, airports, milk and food factories, clearly marked ambulances, and even striking a Greek Orthodox Church. At least, 400 innocent Lebanese civilians, many of them women and children have been killed, thousands more have been seriously injured. Property damages will be in the mega-billions of dollars. It is now estimated that Israel’s terror tactics have created over 600,000 refugees. Close to 12,000 American have been evacuated. Canadians trying to escape the Israeli-made horror, weren’t so lucky. At least 8 were reported killed by the Israeli air strikes. The Israelis dominate the skies with their jet fighters, since Lebanon has no air force to combat them.
Suzanne Wilder, from Maryland, told me that she was at the rally because she “was upset at the loss of innocent lives.” She felt that the politicians “turn these things to their own benefit and profit. If you want peace in the Middle East, you have to work for justice.” Carol Moore from D.C., said she was there “to protest Israel’s barbaric attack on Lebanon. We’re afraid it’s going to escalate and go to Syria and Iraq. It could even go nuclear.”
Flashback! One of Israel’s evil deeds in Lebanon, which still sticks out in my memory, occurred on April 18, 1996. The IOF bombed a UN shelter in the village of Qana (Cana). This is the same place that the Bible tells us that Jesus (pbuh) performed his first miracle. There were 106 people in the shelter, including two children from Dearborn, Michigan, who were visiting their grandparents. They were all slaughtered. (2) The Israelis, just like they did when they murdered 34 Americans on the USS Liberty, on June 8, 1967, insisted that it was all “a mistake.” This is the same lame excuse that they used when they ran over Rachel Corrie, an Olympia, WA, peace activist, with a bulldozer and snuffed the life out of her on March 16, 2003. The half-demented Ariel Sharon was Prime Minister of Israel then. Now, Ehud Olmert, his successor, must bear the brunt of the responsibility for Israel’s latest serial excesses. The 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, when the ex-terrorist, Menachem Begin, was Israel’s P.M, left close to 18,000 Arabs dead. (3) UN Peace Keepers, some of whom were Irish, and knew about the Qana Massacre, said the Israelis were liars. (4)
With respect to Gaza, the IOF hasn’t let up their state-sponsored terrorism tactics there since the Palestinians dared to elect a government dominated by members of Hamas. The Israeli storm troopers have arrested Hamas members of the Palestinian Cabinet and its Parliament, too. According to Amnesty International, the IOF has also killed 150 Palestinians since the beginning of this year. Six more Gazans were killed yesterday, according to the Baltimore Sun. The IOF has also been systematically and maliciously destroying all the important civilian infrastructures of Gaza, the same as they are repeatedly doing daily in Lebanon. Gaza is now an entity of 1.4 million trapped, and desperate souls on the brink of a total humanitarian collapse. (5)
David Barrows of D.C. said: “I’m protesting the merciless slaughter of the Lebanese people...It’s just senseless and ruthless and it just makes you wonder: ‘Why in the world are we supporting Israel?’ I know we shouldn’t and this is real proof of it...Who speaks for the Palestinians? Very few! So, we the American people have to take charge of this renegade, corrupt and criminal government of ours and stop giving the green light to tyranny around the world.” An activist from the D.C. Antiwar Network (DAWN), Malachy Kilbride, shared his thoughts with me. He said: “I’m here to be a witness to what Israel and the U.S. are doing in Lebanon. Israel is perpetrating a war of aggression...I’m angry and I’m not going to be silent like so many in Congress, who won’t stand up to the Israel Lobby.” Lauren Barthel of D.C., one of the organizers of the affair, said she worked on the project “in order to keep the momentum going.” Another worker for the cause was David Kirshbaum, a D.C.-based activist. He said that he “was pleased by the turnout.” He added that the “collective punishment policy of Israel was illegal... and that America funds it.”
The dubious pretext for the Israeli assault on Lebanon was the supposed capture of two of their soldiers by Hezbollah, an indigenous political party, with militia capabilities, located near the Lebanon/ Israel border. Just suppose two U.S. soldiers were employed to border duty with Canada and then imagine them “captured” by guerrillas associated with a Separatist Movement in Quebec. What would you think if that happened and the response of our Washington-based government, instead of negotiating with our neighbor to the North, was to go ahead and bomb Ottawa, British Columbia, Montreal and Toronto? That would be sheer lunacy! And, this is exactly what the lawless Tel Aviv government has done in the case of Lebanon. Its conduct cannot be justified in any form or by any legal or moral standard. This is the same kind of M.O. used by the Israelis to let loose their Terror, Mayhem and Death Machine on the hapless Gazans. The Hezbollah fighters, however, continue to inflict telling casualties on the Israeli invaders, despite all of their superior weaponry. One Zionist observer, a professor, was quoted as saying of Hezbollah’s tenacity, “As long as they don’t lose...that’s a victory!” (6)
Some of the speakers at the rally in front of the Israeli Embassy were: Radney Wood, Noura Erakat, Rami Elamine, Pilar Saad and the anti-Zionist Orthodox Rabbi, Dovid Feldman.
Incredibly, the mostly cowardly U.S. Congress has given its legislative endorsement to Israel’s outrages. It was pushed by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), to take the despicable action, along with prodding by the powerful Israeli Lobby in this country. (7) The Bush-Cheney Gang’s complicity in Israel’s wrongs was even more precise. It gave them a “green light” and is reportedly sending the IOF more lethal military weapons for it to use, in violation of U.S. law, in order for Olmert’s regime to kill additional Palestinian and Lebanese civilians with impunity. (8) Like the warmongering Neocons, Zionist Israel, to date, has never suffered any real consequences for its rampant militarism. (9) It remains above the Law. The stain, however, on our Republic from all of this evildoing runs red with the blood of the innocents, both Arab and Israeli alike. As for Zionist Israel, a day of retribution is coming as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow for this arrogant mocker of human life and of human dignity.
Notes:
1. http://www.cnionline.org/
2. http://www.lubnan-alkawi.com/qanamass/main.htm
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Lebanon_War
4. http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/robert_fisk_qana.html
5. http://wrmea.org/ and http://www.pchrgaza.org/
6. “Hezbollah a Tough Foe for Israeli Military,” Steven Gutkin, AP, 07/24/06.
7. http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011/% 24File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf
8. http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1030.shtml
9. http://batr.net/neoconwatch/archives/ 2004_12_01_neoconswatch_archive.html
© William Hughes 2006.
William Hughes is the author of “Saying ‘No’ to the War Party” (IUniverse, Inc.). He can be reached at liamhughes@comcast.net.
Original
Comment on this Editorial
Israeli War Crimes
Civilian toll mounts in Lebanon conflict - At hospitals in Tyre, wounded cry out for slain loved ones
By Anthony Shadid
The Washington Post
24 July 06
"Where's my father? Where's my father?" asked Mahmoud Srour, an 8-year-old whose face was burned beyond recognition after an Israeli missile struck the family's car Sunday.
TYRE, Lebanon, July 23 - The day ended in Tyre as it began, with a desperate cry of grief.
"Where's my father? Where's my father?" asked Mahmoud Srour, an 8-year-old whose face was burned beyond recognition after an Israeli missile struck the family's car Sunday. His mother, Nouhad, lurched toward his hospital bed, her eyes welling with tears.
"Is he coming?" he asked her.
"Don't worry about your father," she said, her words broken by sobs.
Barely conscious, bewildered, he lay with his eyes almost swollen shut. His head lolled toward her. A whisper followed.
"Don't cry, mother," he told her.
Mahmoud's father, Mohammed, was dead. An Israeli missile had struck their green Mercedes as they fled the southern town of Mansuri, where the family had been vacationing. The boy's uncle, Darwish Mudaihli, was dead, too. The bodies were left in the burning car. Mahmoud's sister Mariam, 8 months old, lay next to him, staring at the ceiling with a Donald Duck pacifier in her mouth. Her eyes were open but lifeless, a stare that suggested having seen too much. Her hair was singed, her face slightly burned. Blisters swelled the tiny fingers on her left hand to twice their size. In other beds of Najm Hospital were their other brothers, 13-year-old Ali and 15-year-old Ahmed.
"What happened?" Ahmed shouted to no one in particular.
It was a question asked often Sunday in Tyre and its hinterland, a bloody day for civilians, even by the standards of this war. Israeli forces repeatedly struck cars on southern Lebanon's already perilous roads in attacks that victims said were indiscriminate. Seven people were killed, three of them when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile at a white minibus carrying 19 people fleeing the village of Tairi, which Israeli forces had ordered residents to evacuate. The missile tore through the roof of the vehicle as it sped around a bend in the road. Layal Najib, a 23-year-old photographer for the Lebanese magazine al-Jaras, was killed when Israeli forces struck near her taxi outside the town of Qana to the northwest. She was the first journalist killed in the 12-day conflict.
'Nothing more than revenge'
"Are there any armed men here? Is there any resistance here?" asked Ali Najm, a physician helping to treat the injured in Tyre. He surveyed the wounded, struggling to maintain the detachment of a medical professional and suppress the anger of a neighbor watching a war that he said he did not understand. "There is no aim to this," he said. "They are innocent people. They are carrying white flags, and they're trying to escape."
The day's events began at 10:30 a.m. when the Mercedes of Mahmoud's family was struck as it barreled down a coastal road dotted by palm trees and banana plantations. As it burned, Zein al-Abdin Zabit passed in his white Nissan with his wife and four sons. His drive was already frantic: Along the road from Naqoura, he had picked up someone wounded in Qlaile, trying to take him to the hospital. A few more miles, then he reached Maaliye, where he picked up two men wounded as they rode a motorcycle.
Near the hospital, a missile struck behind his car, and it caught fire. He floored it for 200 yards more, feeding the flames as he tried to make it to the hospital. Near its entrance, he crashed into a curb, and his ribs were broken. He and the others clambered out, and the gasoline tank exploded. Hours later, the car was a charred carcass. Its tires still smoldered along a row of seared palm trees.
"It's nothing more than revenge, revenge on civilians," Zabit said from his bed.
The hospital was in chaos. Someone with a fire extinguisher tried to put out the flames incinerating Zabit's car as other cars barreled past, fleeing the south. Mahmoud was carried in, cradled in someone's arms. Knots of women sobbed. Then the victims of the minibus arrived from near the town of Kafra. Gurney after gurney entered. One boy's left hand was shredded by shrapnel. A woman sat in a chair, dazed, as others tried to ask her questions. A stretcher smashed into a row of chairs.
"We didn't feel anything. We didn't see anything coming down," said Ali Shaita, a stocky 14-year-old, whose uncle, Mohammed, and grandmother, Nazira, were killed in the attack on the minibus. "It just hit us," said his 12-year-old brother, Abbas.
Ali sat in a bed at Najm Hospital, holding his IV. He was wounded in his chest and left leg. Blood, his and that of his relatives, drenched his red shorts. His brother was hurt in his right leg, head and right arm. His jeans were splotched with more blood. In another room, their mother, Muntaha, sobbed. Her head was wounded, as was her left arm. Her femur was broken in the attack.
"The bandages are too tight on my head," she pleaded to a nurse.
The Shaitas said the car was speeding out of the village at midmorning. The boys' uncle was carrying a white flag with his hand, as was another passenger. Soon after they were hit, a Red Cross ambulance arrived, the crew worried about roads they deemed too risky.
Abbas Bahr, an orthopedic surgeon, had just come out of six hours of surgery, and his face was drawn.
"This is so hard," he said. "I don't know." He repeated the words again.
"And still I don't know what will happen tomorrow."
The day before in Bint Jbeil, two cars carrying seven people were following a Red Cross ambulance when one was wrecked in an Israeli attack, he said. Two wounded women were put in the trunk of the other car. They had died when they arrived at the hospital in Tyre.
Pain and fear
The story of pain and fear was the same across the region, whose inhabitants have abandoned it or are in hiding. The Srours were one of the last families left in the village of Mansuri. They said they had been too afraid to leave. As elsewhere in the south, rumors flew among the huddled: that a ship would take them away, that they had safe passage, that they might be evacuated.
The sense of siege deepened Sunday in Tyre, where residents desperate for fish detonated dynamite in the sea to bring them to the surface. In one of the occasional scenes of confusion, an ambulance hit a 21-year-old resident on a motorcycle, injuring him. Most shops remained closed, and for those people remaining, items like baby's milk, gasoline and chicken were disappearing.
The signal of Hezbollah's radio station, al-Nur, was jammed by Israel, which repeated its own message. "Know that the state of Israel will continue its campaign with force and determination with the goal of ending the terrorist work coming from Lebanese land," the voice said. The message ridiculed Hezbollah's leader, saying he was hiding in a cave. "Where is Hasan Nasrallah?" the voice taunted.
At Jabal Amel Hospital, director Ahmed Mroueh opened the ledger of the wounded.
"This is today," he said. "It begins at No. 267 and ends at 300. This is today, until now."
The physician pointed out the children: 8-year-old Diana Said, 4-year-old Hatem Naame, 7-year-old Mariam Hamadeh.
He shook his head. "This is the worst day we've seen."
A relief worker arrived in an ambulance carrying two corpses from an attack on Srifa, where bodies remain buried in rubble.
'Our morgue is full'
"Take them to the government hospital," Mroueh told him. "Our morgue is full."
The hospital director turned away. "Ten days," he said -- that was how long he thought the staff could cope with the pace.
"It has to stop," he said matter-of-factly. "It has to stop."
Upstairs was Diana Said, hurt in the attack on the minibus. A white bandage covered her left eye. She sat at the foot of the bed of her father, 34-year-old Said Finjan. He asked a doctor about the car's Syrian driver, Mohammed Abed Sheikh, who was killed.
"Where did they put him?" he blurted out.
Across the hall was his wife, 25-year-old Fawziya Finjan, her face swollen and her head bandaged.
"Thank the Lord," she said softly. "God saved my daughter. That's the most important thing."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Comment on this Article
Israeli Missiles Rip Into Medics' Esprit de Corps
By Megan K. Stack
Los Angeles Times
25 July 06
TYRE, Lebanon - In the burning haze of the missile strike, Qasim Chaalan thought he had died. But piece by piece, he noticed that he was still there, inside the ambulance. He could still feel his body. He opened his eyes, and discovered he could see.
He and the other medics were lucky: They had survived the blow of an Israeli missile. Dazed and slow, one of the men fumbled for the radio and began, "We have an accident.... " He didn't finish the sentence. A second missile smashed with a roar into the ambulance behind them.
Six Red Cross volunteers were wounded in the Sunday attack, and the injured family they were ferrying to safety suffered fresh agonies. A middle-age man lost his leg from the knee down. His mother was partially paralyzed. A little boy's head was hammered by shrapnel.
Perhaps most dangerous of all, the attack blunted the zeal of the band of gonzo ambulance drivers who have doggedly plugged away as Red Cross volunteers. Young men and women with easy grins and a breezy disregard for their own safety, they have remained as the last visible strand of social structure intact after days of Israeli bombardment.
When the fighting erupted between Israel and Hezbollah, many of the volunteers sent their families north and stayed behind to help their countrymen. Clad in helmets and flak jackets, they brave a rain of Israeli bombs, a crazy maze of cratered roads and perpetual uncertainty over how bad the fighting might become. Fiercely proud of their work at the Red Cross, they had clung desperately to the hope that, as lifesavers, they would be spared.
Many times over nearly two weeks of bombing, medics say, missiles struck the roads nearby; they felt harassed. But somehow, they managed to convince themselves that they were invulnerable to attack.
"We used to kid ourselves, think we couldn't be hit," 38-year-old volunteer Imad Hillal said. "Even in this war, even when bombs fell around us, we never thought we'd be hit. But what happened has changed everything."
Sitting in the radio room at Red Cross headquarters here Monday, Hillal rested his head wearily on one hand. When asked whether the ambulances would continue running, tears clouded his eyes.
The Red Cross team had been sent out into a night that thundered with falling bombs. They'd been assigned to ferry three wounded civilians out of the heaviest battle zone of the southern borderlands on Sunday. One team of medics had headed north from the town of Tibnin, the wounded family stretched flat on gurneys in the back. The other team had rushed south from Tyre to meet them halfway.
From the time the call came in, Chaalan hadn't been able to shake his dread. He didn't understand why. He had made the trip plenty of times before.
As he made his way out to the ambulance, he turned to the other medics loitering around and, surprising even himself, used a traditional Arabic farewell that implies death may be near.
"I'll see you, forgive me," he told them. He'd never said that before. One of his colleagues followed him out the door. "Please take care," she said. She'd never done that before; it made him even more nervous. He brushed her off and climbed into the ambulance.
The three young men drove out to the town of Qana. Looking up, they could see red lights in the sky overhead. Israeli planes, Chaalan thought.
They came to a stop on a stretch of battle-pocked roadway in Qana.
The medics favor that spot because the ambulances, with their trademark red crosses emblazoned on the roofs, can be seen clearly from above. They thought it was safe.
They climbed down, removed the patients from the other ambulance and slid them into place. They moved fast; everybody was nervous.
Then the roar and smash of the missiles shattered the summer night. Both ambulances were hit, directly and systematically, by Israeli bombs, the medics said.
Everybody else must be dead, Chaalan remembered thinking as he slowly came to his senses. He called out his first medic's name, and got an answer. He called out the second man's name. Silence. "We lost one man," he thought.
The grandmother had crawled out of the ambulance after the first missile strike, but the medics didn't realize that. There was no way the adults could have survived, the medics decided.
So they grabbed the little boy and took shelter in a nearby basement.
Most of the houses on the street stood empty, abandoned by families who'd heeded Israeli evacuation orders and fled north. More bombings continued to puncture the night.
Huddled in the darkness of the basement, they ran their hands over their own bodies, checking for injuries. The boy's head, full of shrapnel, was bleeding badly. They used T-shirts to bandage his wounds.
Then they waited in the darkness. They managed to get through to the Red Cross station from their cellphones. An hour and a half dragged past.
Finally, Hillal and the other medics made it to the scene. "It was a disaster," he said.
"The cars had exploded all over the place. There was one man so badly injured we didn't know what to do for him."
At first, the Red Cross had considered whether to stop making ambulance runs altogether, he said. Then the organization thought better of it and recommended that the teams only stop driving south. Hillal didn't know what would happen. He only knew that the ground rules had been blasted away - the medics had been stripped of their sense of safety.
"When we were driving in the ambulance before, we did not feel we are safe 100%," Chaalan said. "But now it's direct on us."
On Monday, medics and the wounded family were all in the hospital. The grandmother lay on her side in a hospital bed, face turned to the sky outside her window.
"Give me something for the pain," she groaned. "I'm going to vomit." A son and grandson were unconscious in the intensive care unit. Her son, whose leg had been struck by the missile, lay under a tangle of tubes. The sheet reached just below the knee. His calf wasn't there anymore.
Chaalan was bleeding from the ear, and stitches bound his chin and a leg. He needed a few more days to recover, but he insisted on going home.
He peeled off his bandages before stopping by to kiss his mother.
And then he was back at the Red Cross station, padding around in a Las Vegas T-shirt, insisting that he was ready to get back to work.
"I prefer to die when I'm helping people," he said. "Not when I'm hiding."
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
Comment on this Article
Israeli strike 'kills four UN observers' as Rice leaves
Scotsman
26/07/2006
FOUR UN observers were reported to have been killed yesterday when their post was hit by an Israeli airstrike in south Lebanon.
"One aerial bomb directly impacted the building and shelter in the base of the United Nations Observer Group in Lebanon in the area of Khiam," said Milos Strugar, a spokesman for the UNIFIL peacekeeping force. He declined to say how many had died, but confirmed there had been casualties. Mr Strugar said air attacks had continued in the area as rescuers attempted to reach the wounded.
The strike came shortly after Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, left Israel following two days of half-hearted diplomacy.
Mr Strugar added: "There are casualties among the observers. A UNIFIL-dispatched rescue team which is on the spot is still unable to clear the rubble.
"There were 14 other incidents of firing close to this position in the afternoon from the Israeli side and the firing continued during the rescue operation," he said.
In Jerusalem, an Israeli army spokeswoman said the military was investigating the report.
In Rome, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan declined immediate comment on the bombing, saying only: "We are trying to get more details."
Reports also emerged from the Israeli army last night that it had killed the "senior Hezbollah militant" Abu Jafr in fighting in southern Lebanon.
The claims came as Mahmoud Komati, the deputy chief of the Hezbollah politburo, suggested the group had miscalculated Israel's response to its cross-border raids.
"The truth is - let me say this clearly - we didn't even expect [this] response ... that [Israel] would exploit this operation for this big war against us," said Mr Komati.
Comment: Traditionally (and it is sad that that word is so appropriate), when UN posts are bombed in war, it is to prevent UN observation of war crimes.
Comment on this Article
Lebanese Doctor Says Israel Using Illegal 'Phosphorus Weapons'
CNN via ICH
24 July 06
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 it's victims.
- WARNING -
Graphic images depicting the reality and horror of Israel's Invasion and destruction of Lebanon.
Comment on this Article
Why Is Israel Destroying Lebanon?
By Patrick Seale
Al-Hayat
21 July 06
Israel is waging a war of extermination in Lebanon. Without regard to the civilian population, it is seeking to destroy Hizballah, much as it has attempted over the past six months to destroy Hamas in the occupied Palestinian territories. It wants to root out these movements altogether.
Its strategy in Lebanon seems to be to empty the south of its population, driving the Shi'ites out of their traditional homeland, where they have lived for centuries, in much the same way as it continues its pitiless onslaught on Gaza. In Lebanon, some 600,000 people have already been displaced, while the entire country is being brutalized and strangled.
Why this Israeli savagery? By their cross-border raids and the capture of three Israeli soldiers, Hizballah and Hamas humiliated the Israeli army and dented its deterrent capability. In Israeli eyes, this cannot go unpunished. It is determined to bring home to the Arabs the tremendous cost of daring to attack Israel.
The Israeli army has a score to settle with Hizballah which, by guerrilla harassment, drove it out of Lebanon in 2000, ending its 22-year occupation of the south. With this success, Hizballah demonstrated to the whole Arab world - and to the Palestinians in particular -- that Israel was not invincible. Now Israel is trying to set the record straight.
No doubt some Israeli hawks, like chief of staff Dan Halutz, regret the 'unfinished business' of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon when, having killed 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, it failed to secure the political reward of bringing a submissive Lebanon into its orbit.
This time, too, Israel may find that its war aim of destroying Hizballah and Hamas is unattainable. These are popular movements enjoying mass support. If crushed in the short-term, they will eventually spring back to life and seek revenge. To 'win', Israel would have to kill, not just hundreds, but hundreds of thousands, of people.
Hizballah's leader, Shaikh Hassan Nasrallah -- Israel's 'Enemy Number One' -- has repeatedly warned Israel to expect 'surprises'. The missile attacks on Haifa, Israel's third largest city, and the disabling of one of Israel's most advanced warships, were certainly painful surprises. They carried the war into Israel's home territory, posing a severe challenge to Israel's strategic doctrine, which has always been to fight its wars on Arab territory.
The greatest 'surprise' Hizballah's might still have up its sleeve would be to survive the present crisis, bloody but unbowed. The longer Hizballah holds out, the greater Israel's problems with the international community, and the greater the pressure of Arab opinion on those Arab regimes that have so far stood shiftily on the sidelines.
Israel has always relied on brute force to ensure its security. Since its creation in 1948, it has sought to dominate the region by military means. This doctrine rests on the belief that the Arabs will never be strong enough, or capable enough, to challenge it. This is a fundamentally racist attitude.
But beneath the bluster and the muscle-flexing lies a deep-seated paranoia and insecurity, reflected in the conviction, shared by many of Israel's citizens, that the Arabs want to kill them and that they face a permanent existential threat. The choice, they seem to believe, is between killing or being killed. This dark view of their environment - something of a self-fulfilling prophecy -- goes some way to explaining the extravagantly disproportionate nature of Israel's attacks and its blatant disregard for international legality and any semblance of morality.
Israel is able to behave in this way because it has been given extraordinary immunity by the United States. A striking aspect of the crisis is, indeed, America's total political, diplomatic and strategic support for Israel -- even to the point of rushing to give it $300 million of aviation fuel with which to continue smashing Lebanon!
America's gross bias has paralysed the Security Council, the G8 and the European Union. So great is American pressure that none of these bodies has been able to insist on an immediate end to the Israeli onslaught. Britain dutifully followed its American Big Brother in repeating the mantra that 'Israel has the right to defend itself', while even France, Lebanon's traditional protector, has tended to put the blame on Hizballah, rather than Israel, for the massive destruction and loss of life.
Terrorism is usually defined as the indiscriminate killing of civilians in pursuit of political goals. Is this not what Israel is doing in both Lebanon and Gaza? It is killing large numbers of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians in pursuit of its political aim of annihilating Hizballah and Hamas. By any objective standard, Israel is guilty of state terrorism.
But killing Arabs in this wanton manner and smashing their countries must inevitably have negative consequences for Israel's own security. Israel's terrorist behaviour legitimizes the terrorism of its enemies. And America's uncritical support for Israel legitimises terrorism against the United States itself. That is what 9/11 was all about, although to this day the United States has not faced up to why it was attacked. The United States and Israel are sowing the wind and will reap the whirlwind.
Washington's unconditional backing for Israel highlights the fact that this is not simply a war between Israel and Hizballah. By seeking to bomb Lebanon into submission, Israel intends to strike a blow at the Iran-Syria-Hizballah axis, which has challenged US-Israeli dominance in the region. The key issue is whose will is to prevail in this vital part of the world.
If the conflict had been a purely local one, Israel might have agreed to an exchange of prisoners, as both Hizballah and Hamas demanded, and as has taken place a number of times in the past. Some 10,000 Palestinian prisoners still languish in Israeli jails. To secure their release is a major Palestinian objective.
But the war has a wider dimension. The United States has given Israel a free rein because it is confronted with the probability of two highly disagreeable developments: a nuclear-armed Iran and a humiliating defeat in Iraq. It urgently needs to regain the initiative in the wider Middle East and has persuaded itself - or been persuaded by Israel's friends inside and outside the Administration -- that Israel can help it do so. The pro-Israeli neocons in the U.S have been trumpeting that a victory for Israel in Lebanon will be a victory for the United States, and a defeat for Israel will be a defeat for the United States.
This is the essential background to Israel's war, which had clearly been long planned in concert with the United States, and with the encouragement of some Christian Lebanese extremists, not unhappy to see Israel 'do the dirty work' for them in 'breaking' Hizballah.
The situation is complicated by a further layer of conflict. The Arab oil producers in the Gulf dread an upset in the regional power balance. They want to continue enjoying their great wealth under the umbrella of American protection. These Gulf regimes fear a dominant Iran and an assertive Shi'ism. This may explain their astonishing passivity in the face of Israel's aggression. But by failing forcefully to condemn Israel's brutality or spring to the defence of beleaguered Lebanon and Gaza, they expose themselves to the anger of the Arab public.
The explosive impact on Arab opinion of the war in Lebanon and the martyrdom of the Palestinians should not be under-estimated, particularly in view of the graphic media coverage of Israeli atrocities, provided by Al-Jazeera and Hizballah's satellite channel, Al-Manar,
Israel's indifference to Arab life risks convincing many young Arabs that long-term coexistence with Israel is not possible. Arab intellectuals are increasingly expressing the view that Israel is a colonial state, which must eventually disappear, as Europe's colonial empires did in their time.
At their summit meeting in Beirut in March 2002, all the Arab states declared their readiness to establish normal peaceful relations with Israel within its 1967 borders. But Israel, intent on expanding its borders, rejected the offer. It must surely be time for Israel to think again. The offer may still be on the table.
Only by withdrawing from Palestinian territories, respecting Lebanon's sovereignty and returning the Golan to Syria will Israel live in peace.
Comment on this Article
My Letter to Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora
By Mike Whitney
Information Clearing House
25 July 06
Why would you allow yourself to be photographed "smiley-faced" and shaking hands with the woman who is destroying your country and killing your people?
Dear Prime Minister Fouad Siniora,
Perhaps you will be kind enough to answer a few questions regarding the recent visit of United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, so that people around the world who have looked on with sympathy as your country has been ravaged by Israeli aggression can understand your feelings on these important matters.
First of all, why did you allow the Secretary of State to visit Beirut? The Bush administration had already made its position entirely clear and everyone who followed the issue knew that the US would continue to give Israel the "green light" until it finished its military operations according to its original plans.
Were you unaware that Rice had already stated that she was not prepared to offer a "cease fire"?
Were you unaware that the United States was "rushing a shipment of precision-guided bombs to Israel" to continue the slaughter of Lebanese civilians and the destruction of the nation's infrastructure?
Why would you allow yourself to be photographed "smiley-faced" and shaking hands with the woman who is destroying your country and killing your people?
Haven't you seen the pictures of the vast devastation in the south of the country where 750,000 of your people have been forced off their land and shunted into refugee camps? Haven't you heard of the many incidents of the Israeli military intentionally bombing civilians, homes, bridges, milk factories, mosques, airports, power-plants, lighthouses, and ports? http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14069.htm
Haven't you seen the photos of the mass graves and the improvised coffins which have been laid side-by-side in long rows following Israeli bombardment? http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14137.htm
Haven't you heard the reports that Israel is using strange banned weapons in southern Lebanon including cluster-grenades, laser-weaponry, and white phosphorus? http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m25033&hd=0&size=1&l=e
Haven't you heard the haunting shrieks of the young boy who was filmed in hospital by CNN after being incinerated by Israeli napalm? http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14181.htm
Haven't you seen the heartrending picture of the dying Lebanese mother peering up for the last time at her blood-spattered and inconsolable child; another victim of the Israeli onslaught? http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14180.htm
What type of man would put out the "red carpet" for his enemy while his people are still being slaughtered in the field?
A simple phone call to the State Department could have stopped the Secretary from landing in Lebanon. How much courage does that take?
If you were a brave man you would have placed the Secretary and her entire entourage under "house arrest" demanding that Israel stop its "scorched earth" campaign before releasing Rice and her people. But, we do not expect you to do the "courageous thing", just the "decent thing".
No one expects you to join the resistance and fight the butchers who have invaded your country from the south. No one expects you to risk your life to show your love for Lebanon or your willingness to die for your countryman. But why would you humiliate yourself by posing with the very people who have devastated your homeland and killed your country's children? Is your dignity worth so little that you would grovel at Israel/America's feet for a villa in the Riviera and a pocket full of silver?
Jesus Christ said, "For what shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world but lose his soul."
What about your soul, Prime Minister? Was that part of America's bargain, too?
You have disgraced your country and betrayed your people. You should do the honorable thing and submit your resignation so that your people can elect a leader worthy of their respect.
Sincerely,
Mike Whitney 7-25-06
Comment on this Article
The spirit of resistance
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
25 July 06
As southern Lebanon is turned into a wasteland mirroring the Gaza gulag, Washington neo-cons may stridently celebrate the contours of a final solution for the Hamas-Hezbollah "problem". Or should they?
Israel's feverish military machine at least conveys the impression it knows exactly what it's doing - with its made-in-the-USA bombs destroying not just military but civilian targets. But this does not mean Israel is winning its war against Hezbollah.
What Israel wants
In March, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised that he would officially announce Israel's "new" and in theory "final" borders before 2010. Olmert has committed his government to finish the wall separating Israel from Palestine. Israel will then retreat inside its wall. There was never any intent by Olmert to deal with the duly elected government of Palestine led by Hamas.
As far as Lebanon is concerned, Israel wants nothing less than a permanent buffer zone on its northern flank. And if Lebanon turns into an Iraq, even better - although the Lebanese have learned the hard way about sectarianism and won't "Iraqify" their own country. Beirut will be rebuilt - again, and again the Hariri clan (with its dodgy deals with the US and the Saudis) will plunge Lebanon in further debt purgatory with regard to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as the clan did in the previous reconstruction process.
There's also the all-important matter of the waters of the Litani River in southern Lebanon. Israel might as well prepare the terrain now for the eventual annexation of the Litani.
Beyond Lebanon, Israel is mostly interested also in Syria. The motive: the all-important pipeline route from Kirkuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan, to Haifa. Enter Israel as a major player in Pipelineistan.
So Israel wants to grab water (and territory) from Palestine, water (and territory) from Lebanon and oil from Iraq. This all has to do with the inevitable - the 21st-century energy wars.
This is how we do it
Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, says that "of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared". Since 2000, in fact, when Hezbollah forced Israel out of occupied southern Lebanon.
As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, already in 2005 the Israelis circulated a "Three Week War" plan - as it unfolds now, almost to the letter - around selected Washington think-tanks and Bush administration officials. The plan was disclosed by an anonymous Israeli army officer equipped with a PowerPoint presentation.
In this war plan, the first week would be dedicated to destroy Hezbollah's long-range missiles, bomb its command-and-control centers, and bomb transportation and communication routes. That has already happened, at least in theory; but although southern Lebanon has been turned into a new Grozny, Hezbollah seems never to extinguish its stockpile of 12,000 rockets.
The second week would concentrate on attacks on individual sites of rocket launchers and weapons caches. Instead, we have seen the continuation of non-stop, indiscriminate attacks. Ground forces would enter the war in the third week - that's where we are now - but only to attack targets discovered during reconnaissance missions (these are ongoing). This plan did not call for a ground invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon. There's not much to occupy anyway - it's all been turned to rubble.
Only the foolish or the misinformed may doubt that this war is also a Pentagon war. As their mutual interest is obvious - Hezbollah must be destroyed - the only detail to be established is who wagged the other's tail first. According to the US-Israel axis' plan, cutting off Hezbollah from Lebanese society would lead to a vulnerable Syria extricating itself from a close relationship with Iran. That's pure wishful thinking, because what Syria wants back is the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights - and that's anathema for Olmert and the Likudniks.
A Vietcong master class
Some, but still only a few, Israelis - sometimes in the columns of the daily newspaper Ha'aretz - are beginning to notice that this carnage will lead nowhere. There are no more than 5,000 Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. Hezbollah the political party - heavily involved in health, education and social services - is what really matters for Lebanese. It's absurd to pretend to destroy a movement with such popular support as Hezbollah. Secular democrats may not empathize with the movement, but any serious Middle East observer cannot question its legitimacy.
It's as if the Israeli military machine were betting on the elimination of the Shi'ites from Lebanon (they're the majority of the population already) without facing any consequences. Israelis have reasons to believe it's doable. The mainstream US and European media work as nothing but press offices of Israel's Foreign Ministry.
A ceasefire remains "premature" (the whole world is for it, except the US, Britain and Israel). The House of Saud - supported by the US-Israel axis - has de facto encouraged a Sunni-Shi'ite war in the wider Middle East (that fear of the Shi'ite crescent again). It may take time, but the Arab street - and radical Islam - will renew efforts to try to hang the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait from lampposts sooner rather than later. Fawaz Trabulsi, a professor at the American University in Beirut, said, "Now you risk producing something worse than Hezbollah, maybe al-Qaeda No 2."
Meanwhile, Hezbollah's asymmetrical war effort is absorbing everything thrown at it. Resistance is fueled by a mix of beggar's banquet anger, creative military solutions and Shi'ite martyr spirit. Hezbollah fighters are using olive-green uniforms to confuse the Israelis. According to Jane's Weekly, Hezbollah has done a perfect Vietcong - its fighters operating in a network of underground reinforced bunkers and command posts near the Lebanese-Israeli border almost unassailable by Israel Defense Force bombs.
The practical result is that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is ever more popular all over the Arab street. Kind of like the new, 21st-century Saladin. Hezbollah's moral and political cache could not but rise among peoples and movements worldwide who keep being bombed to oblivion but never had a chance to bomb back.
For Hezbollah - as well as for Hamas - "winning" means not being disarmed and/or exterminated, the avowed goal of the State of Israel. Apart from Mao Zedong in China and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Hezbollah may have also learned a lesson or two from the battlefields of Chechnya - as it configures itself, like the Chechens, as one of the only guerrilla groups in the world capable of facing an extremely powerful state army.
In Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was forced to issue a fatwa denouncing the Israeli assault. This means that Sistani knows very well Iraqi Shi'ites may be on the verge of turning all their anger against - who else - the occupying Anglo-American axis.
The fatwa may not be enough to appease them. Israel's rampage has even unified Baghdad's parliament; Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds took a unanimous vote condemning Israel and calling for a ceasefire. Fiery nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr, whose rising influence rivals Sistani's in US President George W Bush's "democratic" Iraq, hinted what may happen when he said at his Friday sermon in Kufa, "I will continue defending my Shi'ite and Sunni brothers, and I tell them that if we unite, we will defeat Israel without the use of weapons."
As if the few thousand Sunni Arab guerrillas bogging down the mightiest army in history were not enough, Muqtada's Mehdi Army has all the potential to make life even more hellish for the Americans in Iraq.
The asymmetricals never sleep
So this is the way the "war on terror" ends - not with a single bang but with the multi-sonic bangs of asymmetrical actors getting re-energized in their fight against the US-Israel axis. The Israeli army could not put down a Shi'ite guerrilla outfit in southern Lebanon - nor a bunch of stone-throwing Palestinian kids, for that matter. The US Army could not cope with a bunch of scruffy Sunni Arabs armed with fake Kalashnikovs. Sunnis or Shi'ites, stateless or in failed states, freedom fighters or "terrorists", they simply will not go away.
Pursuing their own logic, equally impatient Washington neo-cons and Israeli Likudniks would cherish nothing better than the wholesale destruction of civilian infrastructure in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon, and then in Syria and Iran.
What happened in Iraq, and is still happening in Gaza and now in Lebanon, spells that the world will have to get used to a new reality. But against this, the asymmetricals will not only be lurking in the shadows; they will retaliate.
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd
Comment on this Article
More Israeli War Crimes
Israel to Occupy Area of Lebanon as Security Zone - Amounts to Land Grab
By GREG MYRE and HELENE COOPER
NY Times
26 July 06
JERUSALEM, July 25 - Almost two weeks into its military assault on Hezbollah, Israel said Tuesday that it would occupy a strip inside southern Lebanon with ground troops until an international force could take its place.
The announcement raised the prospect of a more protracted Israeli involvement in Lebanon than the political and military leadership previously signaled or publicly sought. Officials have talked about limited raids into Lebanon, but now they seem ready to commit ground forces for at least weeks, if not months.
They said the zone would be much smaller than the strip of southern Lebanon roughly 15 miles deep that Israel occupied for nearly two decades before withdrawing in 2000.
As the war between Israel and Hezbollah continued, four unarmed United Nations observers were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit their observation post near the Israeli border, United Nations and Lebanese officials said. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that Israel "regrets the tragic death" of the observers, and that it would investigate thoroughly.
The timetable and makeup of an international force remained vague, despite diplomacy by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her second day of a trip to the region. Ms. Rice, who met with Israeli and Palestinian officials after a surprise trip to Beirut on Monday, secured commitments from Israel to allow relief aid into Lebanon, and said she would press Israel to ease border restrictions for Palestinians.
But she left without any sign of a quick end to Israel's military campaigns in Lebanon or the Gaza Strip.
The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, in Rome for talks on the Middle East scheduled to start Wednesday, issued a statement saying that he was "shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting" of the United Nations post by the Israeli military. He said the post, at Khiam, was clearly marked, and called on the Israeli government to conduct a full investigation. The official New China News Agency said one of the dead was a Chinese observer.
Elsewhere in southern Lebanon, in fighting over the two Hezbollah strongholds of Bint Jbail and Marun al Ras, Israel said it had killed the Hezbollah leader in the area, Abu Jaafer, and 20 to 30 Hezbollah fighters in a 24-hour period. At least six people were killed in two neighboring houses in a predawn raid on the southern town of Nabatiye.
Hezbollah continued to strike at Israel, firing nearly 100 rockets as of Tuesday night, the Israeli military said. The group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, threatened missile strikes "beyond Haifa." Hezbollah is believed to have missiles able to reach Tel Aviv.
Another Hezbollah leader, Mahmoud Komati, deputy chief of the group's political arm, told The Associated Press that Hezbollah was surprised by the force of Israel's reaction to its capture of two Israeli soldiers. He said Hezbollah had expected "the usual, limited" response such as commando raids or limited attacks on Hezbollah strongholds.
Israel's defense minister, Amir Peretz, said Israel's plan for a buffer zone inside Lebanon was being worked out and did not provide details. "We will have to build a new security strip, a security strip that will be a cover for our forces until international forces arrive," he said.
"We are shaping it, but you can't draw a single line that will become a permanent line along the entire zone," Mr. Peretz said on Israeli radio. "Unless there is a multinational force that will enter and take control, a multinational force with the ability to act, we will continue to fire against anyone who enters the designated strip."
Israeli officials, mindful of the Israeli public's reluctance to repeat its long occupation of southern Lebanon, say they do not plan a major ground invasion, and do not intend to hold large areas of territory for extended periods. Israeli leaders say they want the Lebanese Army to assume control of the border eventually.
Israeli troops do not yet have control over the border strip. A senior government official said Israeli forces intended to clear out Hezbollah strongholds in border villages as the military is already doing in Bint Jbail and Marun al Ras.
The military plans to move into other villages as well, but "this will not be the re-establishment of the old security zone," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. "It is not remotely similar."
[Confirming the death of its United Nations observer, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Israel's ambassador to Beijing was summoned Wednesday and asked to convey China's request that Israel fully investigate the incident and issue an apology to the victim's relatives, The Associated Press reported. "We are deeply shocked by this incident and strongly condemn it," the ministry said in a statement.
[The victims included observers from Austria, Canada and Finland, United Nations and Lebanese military officials said,
[Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, expressed "deep regret" for the deaths and denied the post was intentionally targeted, saying he was "deeply distressed" by Mr. Annan's assertion, which he called "premature and erroneous," The A.P. said.]
Ms. Rice, meanwhile, won a promise from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel to allow relief flights into Beirut International Airport, where the runways have been bombed by Israel. Ms. Rice also told the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, that she would press Israel to ease border restrictions for Palestinians.
Ms. Rice received a warm welcome from Mr. Olmert in Jerusalem, in contrast to the much cooler receptions she received in the West Bank city of Ramallah, and in Beirut on Monday.
But her visit to the West Bank had echoes of her surprise stop in Beirut. In both cases, she assured a largely powerless leader that the United States was sympathetic to the suffering of his people, though American leaders have stopped short of pressuring Israel to let up on its campaign against militants.
Ms. Rice pointedly characterized Mr. Abbas as the "duly elected president" of the Palestinian Authority, and said "the Palestinian people have had to live too long" under harsh conditions.
But just as pointedly, she did not respond to Mr. Abbas's urgent appeal for cease-fires in region, to ease what he said was suffering "beyond the capacity of any human being to endure."
Ms. Rice and Mr. Abbas discussed the release of an Israeli soldier who was seized by Palestinian militants on June 25, setting off the current crisis in Gaza. But Mr. Abbas is seen as having little influence.
Hamas, which holds the Palestinian prime minister's post and controls the cabinet, is demanding an exchange for a large number of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas militants were one of three factions that claimed responsibility for seizing the soldier.
In Ramallah, just as in Beirut, demonstrators protested Ms. Rice's visit. About 250 turned out, with some carrying signs that said in Arabic and English, "Rice, Go Home."
With the Beirut airport closed, even Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon had to make special arrangements to travel abroad. He boarded a United Nations helicopter near a conference center north of Beirut that took him to Cyprus. He was heading to Rome for the international conference, which Ms. Rice will also attend.
The Lebanese government has now adopted four Hezbollah conditions for a settlement as its own: giving the small disputed slice of border territory known as Shabaa Farms to Lebanon, returning three Lebanese prisoners held by Israel, ending Israeli flyovers into Lebanese airspace, and providing a map showing the location of Israeli land mines in southern Lebanon.
The issue of Shabaa Farms has been the public rationale for allowing Hezbollah, alone among civil war-era militias, to keep its weapons. It was, Lebanese officials have said, resisting continued Israeli occupation.
As the fighting continued, the Israeli military said its aerial attacks included bombing a Hezbollah rocket launching site near the southern city of Tyre, and hitting 10 buildings used by Hezbollah in southern Beirut.
In Mughar, in northern Israel, a 15-year-old Israeli Arab girl died in a Hezbollah rocket strike, family members said. Three other family members were wounded.
Israel also struck in Gaza, with the air force bombing three buildings used for making and storing weapons, according to the Israeli military.
A Palestinian teenager was shot and killed by Israeli troops near Gaza's border fence, Palestinian hospital officials said. The Israeli military said it had fired at people who had planted a bomb.
Palestinian militants fired several rockets into southern Israel on Tuesday, the Israeli military said.
[Agence France-Presse reported that seven Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air raid on a group of people in the east of Gaza City on Wednesday, according to Palestinian hospital officials. That strike followed three Israeli air raids in the Gaza Strip that killed one Palestinian and wounded several more, the news agency said.]
Ms. Rice and other administration officials have repeatedly blamed Hezbollah for starting the crisis in Lebanon with a raid into Israel on July 12 that resulted in