Now that Ayman al-Zawahiri, or rather the stand-in we are told is Ayman al-Zawahiri, has sanctioned Hezbollah's resistance against Israel's invasion of Lebanon, we can expect the corporate media to have a field day, connecting Hezbollah to "al-Qaeda" and its crazed Sunni beheaders.
As we know, al-Zawahiri has verified links to the Pentagon, as he served as commander of the Mujahedeen forces in the Balkans.
"The role of the Pentagon in airlifting the Mujahedeen terrorists into Bosnia and Kosovo between 1992 to 1995 has been well documented and widely reported in the European and Canadian media, but almost completely ignored in the United States," writes Tim Howells for Online Journal.
Another bit of information, long ago flushed down the memory hole (reconstituted here), reveals how al-Zawahiri was sponsored by FBI operative and failed CIA agent Ali Mohamed, who brought him to San Francisco on a "covert fund-raising mission" during the Pentagon's recruitment of "al-Qaeda," sent to Bosnia (see this congressional press release, dated 16 January 1997).
"The war with Israel does not depend on cease-fires.... It is a Jihad for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq," the Pentagon operative al-Zawahiri told the world through al-Jazeera television, never mind that al-Zawahiri's violent version of Wahabbi Sunni Islam is at odds with Shi'a Islam, the sect Hezbollah's follows.
"Zawahiri's comments indicated that Al-Qaeda, which is made up of Sunni Islamist extremists, was prepared to help Hezbollah despite differences with the Shia sect," adds the Khaleej Times.
If we are to buy the official version of events, "al-Qaeda" has spent a lot of time and money in Iraq slaughtering Shi'a Muslims, deemed infidels deserving little more than an ignoble death. But both have put aside their differences-for instance, the bloody Shi'a-Sunni sectarian violence in Iraq-and are now happily collaborating.
In an effort to iron out this inconsistency, the neocons have flipped into overdrive. "If the Lebanese conflict drags on, it would be likely that al Qaeda would try to work again with its occasional ally in an alliance of convenience that could benefit both groups," writes Douglas Farah, a former "investigative journalist" for the CIA's favorite newspaper, the Washington Post. "The chaos in the region benefits all the non-state armed groups, and such circumstances often give rise to transitory (or perhaps permanent) alliances between groups that share the same goals and resources. While Zarqawi fanned the flames of the Sunni-Shi'ite divide inside Iraq, it was in part a tactical decision to weaken the government and cause a civil war, rather than a theological decision."
Those silly Muslims didn't really mean it and they are as amoral and Machiavellian as their sponsors, a rotating lazy Susan of usual suspects, including the Pentagon, CIA, ISI, MI6, and of course Mossad.
"The shells and rockets ripping apart Muslim bodies in Gaza and Lebanon are not only Israeli (weapons), but are supplied by all the countries of the crusader coalition. Therefore, every participant in the crime will pay the price." In other words, the CIA-ISI spawned "al-Qaeda," supposedly headed up by the dead Freddy Kruger Islamic nemesis Osama bin Laden, will attack the "crusader coalition" in the name of Hezbollah.
Of course, no demonization of a legitimate resistance movement would be complete without a cameo appearance by the Muslim Evil One himself. "Another new audio or video message from bin Laden was also expected in the coming days and was planned to deal with Gaza and Lebanon, according to IntelCenter. The U.S.-based independent group provides counterterrorism information to the U.S. government and media," that is to say it serves as a propaganda outfit dispensing scary campfire stories, designed in part to stampede Americans into supporting the neocon Crusade and total "clash of civilizations" war, promised by our rulers to last a hundred or more years.
Back in 2003, the scurrilous neocon, Iran-Contra criminal, PNAC and CFR member, Richard Armitage, told CBS' Sixty Minutes "Hezbollah may be the 'A-Team of Terrorists' and maybe al-Qaeda is actually the 'B' team. And they're on the list and their time will come.... There is no question about it-it's all in good time. And we're going to go after these problems just like a high school wrestler goes after a match. We're going to take them down one at a time."
Here in America, a semi-somnolent and easily distracted public, consumers of endless official lies and dissimulation wrapped in fancy computer graphics and delivered by vacuous anchors, will likely buy into the effort to churn Hezbollah into an "al-Qaeda" variant, or if neocons such as Armitage have their way, an ominous terrorist group eclipsing "al-Qaeda."
However, in Lebanon, this make-over is meaningless, as Hezbollah will continue to fight against the invading and marauding Israelis, regardless of Israeli and American propaganda.
Finally, Hezbollah's Hasan Nasrallah told CBS' Ed Bradley in 2003: "I believe the Americans are just saying what the Israelis want them to say. I consider this to be an Israeli accusation coming out of an American mouth and nothing more."
Indeed, this is the case every time one flips on Fox News and its imitators. Comment on this Editorial
On July 26, Aljazeerah reported a story headlined - "Israeli invasion of Lebanon planned by neocons in June (2006)." It was done at a June 17 and 18 meeting at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado at which former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky met with US Vice President Dick Cheney. The purpose was to discuss the planned and impending Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) invasions of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Cheney was thoroughly briefed and approved the coming assaults - before Hamas' capture of an IDF soldier on June 25 or Hezbollah's capturing of two others in an exchange first reported as occurring in Israel and now believed to have happened inside Lebanon after IDF forces illegally entered the country.
Following the Colorado meeting, Netanyahu returned to Israel for a special "Ex-Prime Ministers" meeting in which he conveyed the message of US support to carry out the "Clean Break" policy officially ending all past peace accords including Oslo. At the meeting in Israel in addition to Binyamin Netanyahu were current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres.
Aljazeerah also reported that after the Colorado AEI conference Natan Sharansky met with the right wing Heritage Foundation in Washington and then attended a June 29 seminar at Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia sponsored by the Middle East Forum led by US Israeli hawk Daniel Pipes. Sharansky appeared there with Republican Senator Rick Santorum who on July 20 was hawkishly advocating war against Syria, Iran, and "Islamo-fascism" in an inflamatory speech at the National Press Club attended by a cheering section of supporters composed of members of the neocon Israel Project, on whose Board Santorum serves along with Georgia Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss and Virginia Republican Representative Tom Davis.
Aljazeerah reported further that in a published interview in the Spanish newspaper ABC on July 23, Syrian Information Minister Moshen Bilal warned Israel that his country would enter the Lebanon conflict if Israel launched a major incursion into the country. He said: "If Israel makes a land entry into Lebanon, they can get to within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of Damascus. What will we do? Stand by with our arms folded? Absolutely not. Without any doubt Syria will intervene in the conflict." Bilal said his country wanted above all a ceasefire "as soon as possible" combined with a prisoner exchange and explained he was working with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos with whom he had met in Madrid. Bilal also criticized the US saying it was "unjustifiable (that) the superpower is not working for a rapid ceasefire." He rejected claims by Washington that Syria had armed Hezbollah (which contradicted an earlier admission by the Syrian defense minister that his country did supply some arms to Hezbollah), saying it offered "moral support" but not financing for "any resistance."
The Aljazeerah report also cited the work of former intelligence officer and now author/writer James Bamford who wrote about "going after Syria (and then Iran) in accordance with the 'A Clean Break' war for Israel agenda" in his book A Pretext for War published in 2004 which concentrated on the abuse of the US's intelligence agencies to invent reasons to attack Iraq. If Bamford is right, Syria may soon be drawn into this conflict, and if so, will Iran be next?
Another Report Believes the "War With Iran is On"
Iran may indeed be next (and Syria too) according to UK political scientist, human rights activist and writer Nafeez Ahmed in an article published in OpEd News on July 23 titled: "UK Govt Sources Confirm War With Iran Is On." In it, Ahmed writes: "In the last few days, I learned from a credible and informed source that a former senior Labour government Minister, who continues to be well-connected to British military and security officials, confirms that Britain and the United States 'will go to war with Iran before the end of the year.' "
Ahmed goes on to say that in similar fashion to the lead-up to the March, 2003 Iraq invasion, current war plans may change and the scheduled time for it be begin may be postponed. But he quoted Vice President Dick Cheney in an MSNBC interview over a year ago saying Iran is "right at the top of the list (of) rogue states (and) Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel (so) Israel might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards." What the Vice President claimed the Iranians said was false (the Iranian president was deliberately misquoted), and he neglected to mention the immediate mass death and destruction that would result from this "act," and the resulting calamity from destroying commercial nuclear reactor and facilities sites that would spread devastating irremediable toxic radiation over a vast area making those territories uninhabitable forever and eventually killing an unknown number of people living there from the cancers and other diseases they will eventually contract from the deadly contamination.
Ahmed goes on to discount the possibility of Israel taking the lead in an assault against Iran saying it prefers to be a "regional proxy force in a US-led campaign." And he reports that writer Seymour Hersh quotes a former high-level US intelligence official saying that despite the increasing disaster in Iraq, overall "This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign. We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah-we've got four years, and we want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism." Hersh has been on and off in what his sources are telling him about the likelihood of war with Iran so it may be uncertain what conclusion he now has as of this article's publication. But whatever it is, it's clear it can change in an instant as things in the Middle East are so fluid.
Nafeez's article also reported an analysis of the Monterey Institute for International Studies on the likely consequences of a war against Iran in which, if it happens, the US said it would use "bunker-buster mini-nukes." The language is deceptive as these are powerful nuclear bombs. The Institute painted the dire possibility that an extended conflict with Iran could catastrophically spin out of control with irreversible consequences for the global political economy. It would affect energy security, relations with other nations like China and Russia concerned about their own access to energy supplies in the region, and the US "dollar-economy" that would be under pressure, greatly harmed and even potentially threatened with collapse.
If this scenario is possible, why then would US, UK, Israeli, and other Western leaders who see what's going on, be willing to take the risk? Ahmed states what a growing number of knowledgeable observers now believe - that the Western, mainly US, so-called neoliberal imperial freewheeling "free-market" model is failing and may collapse short of a desperate "Hail Mary" military solution to try to save it even though the chance for success at best would be uncertain and in some views unlikely. And if it fails, the result may be an unimaginable social, political and economic calamity.
The fate of the corrupted neoliberal model may be what's now at stake. That model is already unraveling in Latin America where Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is proving his alternate Bolivarian participatory democracy is overwhelmingly popular and working. It's based on a government serving the people by providing essential social services, especially to the poor and desperate ones most in need of it. Chavez's success has made him a symbol of hope and a hero in the region and beyond, it's allowed his form of governance to spread to Bolivia, and there's every reason to imagine and hope it will continue spreading unstoppably because people in other Latin countries are beginning to fight for it. It's all greatly alarmed the ruling authority in Washington that views Chavez as the threat it most fears, even above Iran - a powerful good example that will spread unless the US acts forcibly to stop it, which clearly is its plan.
Apparently though, with the conflict raging in the Middle East, including in Iraq, the US attention is focused there as well as on the upcoming mid-term elections in which Republicans fear they will lose their control of the Congress because of their geopolitical failures that have turned the public against them. Politicians never accept defeat without a determined fight to prevent it including assuming the added risk of expanding an already out-of-control conflict in the Middle East to one or more countries in it hoping to convince a doubting public it's only being done to protect our national security. Up to now, an unknowledgeable and naive public has bought the story, and with enough effective packaging of a new contrived Iranian and Syrian threat, likely may do it again. If it happens, the potential calamitous consequences may be enormous and unimaginable, and the likely disaster will only be worse if Iran is attacked with nuclear weapons. The world, indeed, is holding its collective breath with no clear idea yet what may unfold or what will result if the worst happens - a nuclear terror-war against Iran.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Comment on this Editorial Editorial: Friends True and False
Israel Shamir
After two weeks, the war settled down comfortably in the Middle East, like an old aunt on a regular visit to her nephews. It came to stay for a while, and as the first shock of the battle for Lebanon is over, the picture clears up. First, the news. Despite the awesome, crushing might of the Israeli onslaught, despite its unprecedented viciousness and brutality, the steadfast warriors of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah held their ground. The blitzkrieg planned by Tel Aviv strategists ground to a halt in the low hills of Maroun Ras, and came to naught in the streets of Bint Jbail. If in 1982, during the previous Israeli invasion, Jewish tanks crossed the Litani River in just 48 hours, now their advance is measured in single yards.
An old but fearsome weapon forged by the Russians in the days of their fateful struggle with the Germans, and given a girl's name, Katyusha, keeps fretting the always-so-safe Israeli hinterland all the way to Haifa. Israeli Apache gunships, navy's Saar warships, Israel's best Merkaba tanks were met with precise missiles. The frustrated invader covered the roads and villages of Lebanon with hundreds of charred bodies of Lebanese children; but remarkably few Hezbollah fighters were killed or taken prisoner. They wield a secret weapon: Hezbollah is the first-ever Arab body the Jews failed to infiltrate. Israeli intelligence did not know what weapons they had and what plans they had prepared. Hezbollah warriors did not oblige the Jews and did not commit suicide a-calling "Allah is Great": they fight, defeating the enemy and destroying the twin myths of Israeli invulnerability and Arab impotence.
The importance of their stand can't be overestimated: if Lebanon were overrun with little resistance, Israeli tanks would roll on to Damascus, and Israeli jets soar to Teheran. This is the wish of the American neocons (or should it be spelled neo-Cohns?). William Kristol speaks plainly: "For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained?" Michael Ledeen brings back Cold War rhetoric: "You cannot escape the mullahs. You must either defeat them or submit to their terrible vision."
Larry Kudlow is sure of victory: "It will take the U.S. and Israel about 35 minutes to knock out the entire Iranian navy and air force... Now is the time to really put the squeeze on Syria's dictator, Baby Assad." The neocons have a good reason to push for war now: their positions in the US administration have recently weakened, and the first signs of goy rebellion have materialised in a notorious critique of the Jewish Lobby. A "good war" would return them into full power in Washington.
The Israeli attack on Damascus and Teheran can still take place, but every day the Lebanese hold out diminishes the chances of a regional war. The troublesome word "defeat" is being noised on Israeli TV: "bogged down in Lebanon" is the old nightmare of Israelis who have already had this experience and do not cherish its repetition. A "defeat in Lebanon" would be quite a limited defeat: it will not lead the victor to Haifa, but it will teach the Israelis some modesty. That is why in this war, a real friend of Israel wishes its army a sound defeat in South Lebanon, a defeat that will return the boys home and will keep the generals from seeking new adventures for a good while. A false friend of Israel wishes an Israeli victory, a victory that will lead to Teheran, to nuclear war, to mass destruction and death. While the false friends, the organised US Jews, marched in support of the Lebanese adventure, the true friends, Israelis, marched the streets of Tel Aviv denouncing their leaders' war crimes.
As an Israeli I can't rejoice when Haifa is shelled and Tel Aviv is threatened. There are too many innocents who cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle. However, I can't condemn it either, for this bitter medicine can help where soft-spoken sermons have failed. The missiles of Hezbollah may yet sober up the Israeli minds and break their addiction to military might. Likewise, a good German would have prayed for his compatriots' defeat in Holland in 1940 for such a rout would have saved them from the tragedy of 1945.
The Germans were too strong for their own good. This excessive might led them to disaster. Now the same fate is prepared for Israel. Excessive might is no better than lack of it: might intoxicates and destroys. "The strong are never absolutely strong, nor are the weak absolutely weak. Those who have Might on loan from fate count on it too much and are destroyed. Might is as pitiless to the man who possesses it (or thinks he does) as it is to its victims. The second it crushes, the first it intoxicates", wrote Simone Weil, the French philosopher, referring to the Trojan War.
This war is a good illustration: a minor skirmish was turned into a great battle and massive destruction of nature and cities because of excessive military strength of Israel. Small border incidents occur all over the world, but they do not result in such excesses. If Israel were wiser, it would understand the predictable response to their brutality towards Gaza. If Israel were weaker, it would make a proportionate military response. But it is too stupid and too strong for its own good.
The Jews incessantly repeat their old errors. In AD 66, almost two thousand years ago, the Jews performed a mighty deed: they defeated the XII Legion of Cestius Gallus. It was as incredible as the Six Days War, for Roman legions were not an easy prey. The Jews were carried away by this feat, and rather vaingloriously thought that God would fight for them. But God had other plans, and by AD 70, Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed. Now, again, the Jews are intoxicated by their military prowess, by obedience of the US and EU, by their control over media. Their arrogance and brutality are leading them to disaster, for after this Rape of Gaza and Rape of Lebanon, even the most tolerant man of the Middle East will come to the conclusion the Romans came to 2000 years ago: there can be no peace in the area as long as the Jewish state exists. After experiencing neocon rule, this conclusion will be shared by the Americans.
Another error the Jews repeat is the error of mistreating native people. After the Hasmonean victory over Seleucids, the victory described in the biblical Books of Maccabees, they took over Palestine. Their first deed was expulsion of the native population of Caesarea and its repopulation by Jews. There was a Nakba even then. In those days, the natives of Palestine had no power plants, so the Jews had to be satisfied with destroying their temples. In order to become the Light Unto The Nations, the Jews had to put the Nations into complete Darkness, and so they did. A hundred years of Jewish absolute rule (168-68 BC) were the most horrible times for the country, and the Roman general Pompey the Great was met as a liberator when he subdued the Jews and limited their power to Jerusalem and a few other areas.
"This is not a war, but an anti-terrorist campaign; Israel is fighting the terrorists of Hezbollah", says the Jewish media. But hundreds of burned-out buildings, destroyed bridges and power stations, slain women and children, and strafed refugees refute this oldest PR trick. Napoleon claimed he was fighting the Mamluks, not the Porte, but the Empire sent its troops down to Palestine and he had to escape after deserting his soldiers. Adolf Hitler claimed he was fighting "communists", not Russia, but Russians united around Stalin and foiled the trick. George Bush claims he is fighting Saddam Hussein, not Iraq, and thousands of dead American soldiers disproved the lie. Now the Lebanese have rejected the line, saying: this is a Jewish war against Lebanon. A total war against its citizens; its motto expressed by Israeli Generalissimo Halutz: "For every rocket we shall destroy ten high rise buildings in Beirut". And the Lebanese understood it; they did not take the Jewish bait of condemning Hezbollah. They felt that Hezbollah represents them, is an integral part of Lebanon. The Lebanese army should take its place next to Hezbollah - this would completely derail the plans of the invader.
The Jews have bombed even Ashrafieh, the well-off Maronite suburb of Beirut, which led the movement for removal of the Syrian army from Lebanon. "Haram, ya Ashrafieh", sorry for you. Your folly was visited on you too soon. Weak and rude as they were, the Syrians would protect your heavens from the black vultures from South. You are like a lamb that rejected your nasty old shepherd and was then swiftly fleeced by a wolf. The dream of independent Lebanon was just an illusion produced by the Masters of Dreams. The concept of independence does not work: Lebanon would be better off as an integral and autonomous part of Syria; Syria would be better off in union with Iraq, Jordan, Palestine. The Ottoman Empire had to be transformed into a Commonwealth of the East, not destroyed, for united we stand, divided we fall.
France bears heavy responsibility for the destruction of Lebanon. It was France that forced the Syrians out of Lebanon. The US, this obvious enemy of Arabs, would not have been able to do it without the support of Paris. By removing the Syrian protector, France came under moral obligation to defend Beirut. "You are forever responsible for those you tamed", said the Fox to the Little Prince in Saint-Exupéry's story, and France tamed Lebanon. The sad and racist sight of the evacuation of foreign nationals should be replaced by another one: by landing French battle troops, not as UN or NATO peacekeepers, but as outright defenders of Lebanon. They know the way: in 1860, when the Druze ran amok, the French soldiers landed and restored peace by repelling the aggressor. They can repeat this deed; if the French would fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the Lebanese against the Jewish invader, it would bring peace to the Middle East and to France.
Some Arab countries have betrayed their brotherly duty. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan condemned - not the Jewish aggressor, but the resister, Hezbollah. The Gulf countries did nothing to save Lebanon. They should be ashamed for their treachery. Indeed, they could repeat the successful oil embargo of 1974 and force Europe to pull back the crazed Zionist pit bull. Hezbollah's brave and staunch resistance is a sign of honour for the fighters and a sign of shame for other Arab leaders. They should remember that those who betrayed Palestine were punished: King Faruk was overthrown, while King Abdullah was assassinated. The longer the war lasts, the bigger the chance for these leaders to be removed by their peoples. This is a strong reason against seeking cease-fire.
The Hezbollah are the true heroes of the Middle East. Not because of their might, but because of their compassion. They are the only ones who felt compassion for the plight of Palestinians. They did not remain indifferent observers at the Rape of Gaza - they tried to stop the violator with their modest means, just as England once protested the German conquest of Poland. Compassion and solidarity are more important than sovereignty.
For this reason we can't condemn the Hezbollah fighters or even "both sides". A Russian philosopher named Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954) made a clear distinction (in his Resistance to Evil By Force) between the violator and the resister.
«The Violator says to his victim: «you are given unto my power», while the Resister replies to the violator: «you destroy and will be destroyed, desist! Here I put the end to your tyranny".
Indeed, the Jews tried to dominate Palestinians so completely, they tortured them so freely and without remorse, that a Resister had to appear. In face of shameful obedience of the rest of Arabs, fighters of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah deserve praise. They were the first opponents who challenged the Israeli rules of the game and took the war into Jewish territory, - up until now, the enemies of Israel have tacitly accepted its sanctity. Even in 1948 the armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq did not cross the borders of the Jewish state, and were satisfied with securing the territories given by the UN to the Palestinian Arab State. In 1967-1971 Nasser's Egypt did not dare to send even one bomber jet to Tel Aviv, though Israeli air force bombed and strafed Egyptian cities. Thanks now to Sheikh Nasrallah, the cities of Israel experienced - though in homeopathic doses - the feelings of Gaza and Beirut.
Let us hope that this experience will destroy the Jewish superiority complex, so that the people of Israel will come out of it - more modest, more willing to compromise, more considerate to their neighbours. They should not push their luck too much, for the present Luck of Jews is a dangerous reminder a Friedrich Schiller's poem (based on a story by Herodotus) about the extremely lucky Polycrates. His guest was worried because such run of luck is likely to end in disaster. He begged Polycrates to take his most valuable ring and throw it in the sea, and so he did. But next morning, a fisherman came to his court to present him with a huge fish he had caught. When the fish was cut open, the precious ring was in its stomach. "The guest with terror turned away. "I cannot here, then, longer stay, The gods have willed that thou shouldst die Lest I, too, perish, I must fly" And indeed, Polycrates suffered a terrible reversal of fate and was crucified by the Persians.
Israel is too lucky by far. Her generals are guilty of the worst war crime, that of aggression. They kill with impunity and get hailed by their American vassals. Now they targeted the UN and killed some of peacekeepers, but not to worry, nobody will begrudge them. The Israeli Ambassador in the UN already demanded an apology from spineless Annan and I am sure he will get it. The Jews have nothing to fear - but the leading Orthodox churchmen, the Greek Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and the Palestinian Archbishop Theodosios Atallah Hanna of Sebaste reminded them: "Fear God's wrath."
Just for the record, let's define the two most important terms in this manufactured crisis.
From the point of view of the small group of psychopaths running Israel's government and military "terrorism" is: any act that seeks to redress the long years of Israeli government repression and brutality against the Arab people and their aspirations.
A "terrorist": is anyone who supports the aspriations of the Arab people in the middle East, advocates resistance against Israeli brutality and believes that Israel should be called to account for its flagrant violation of the rights of Arab people.
View the below video and decide for yourself if Israel's "war" is simply a bloody free-for-all where Israeli jet and helicopters deliberately attack their civilian Lebanese "enemies".
50% of Americans today think that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded the country in 2003.
64% Believe that Saddam Hussein had "strong ties" with al Qaeda.
Someone has obviously done a lousy job... the media or those who did the poll?
And how to explain the increase? (They were respectively at 35% and 62% a year ago.)
Translated by Signs of the Times Comment on this Editorial World Politicians Neutered Over Lebanon
Arab countries have expressed disappointment at the Rome talks' failure to demand a ceasefire in the Middle East, while Israel says the talks gave it "authorisation" to press its offensive in Lebanon.
Ahmed Abul Gheit, the Egyptian foreign minister, said the international conference in Rome "failed to meet Arab demands", the official Middle East News Agency reported on Thursday as Israel continued its attacks. Air attacks
Israeli warplanes carried out raids on suspected Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley east of Beirut on Thursday.
One policeman and two civilians died in the Bekaa, police said.
Warplanes also hit a Lebanese army base and a radio relay station, fired more than 400 missiles overnight at Khiam in the south, and destroyed several roads.
Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, had called for an "immediate cessation of hostilities" at the Rome talks, but Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, argued that Hezbollah needed to be disarmed first.
Abul Gheit acknowledged that despite the setback, the conference had been "a step forward in the direction of a ceasefire".
Israel, however, saw it differently.
Haim Ramon, the Israeli justice minister, told army radio on Thursday: "We received yesterday in the Rome conference permission, in effect, from the world - part of it gritting its teeth and part of it granting its blessing - to continue the operation, this war, until Hezbollah's presence is erased in Lebanon and it is disarmed."
Ramon also said that "everyone who is still in south Lebanon is linked to Hezbollah, we have called on all who are there to leave. Bint Jbeil is not a civilian location, we have to treat it like a military zone".
The minister was speaking before a security cabinet meeting on Thursday that was to decide whether to expand the offensive, now in its 16th day.
Israeli media said the cabinet wants "to step up air strikes and limit ground operations".
Israelis growing weary
But any decision to expand the campaign might give fuel to an increasing number of Israelis criticising their government.
Nine Israeli soldiers were killed and 22 wounded in bloody battles in the south Lebanon stronghold of Bint Jbeil on Wednesday alone, and the army has been unable to stop the rocket barrages on northern Israel that have killed 18 civilians in 15 days.
After Hezbollah fighters crossed the border on July 12, killing three soldiers and capturing two others, there was strong support for the government's decision to launch a large-scale offensive to crush the resistance group.
But that consensus is beginning to crack, and critics are starting to say the government launched the offensive hastily, with no exit strategy, and many fear the country is again entering a quagmire across its northern border.
"The war is leading us by the nose to sink deeper in the Lebanese mud. The Hezbollah wants to drag us into its territory. The moment the army will be in Lebanon for an extended period, it will be hell for us in there," said Ran Cohen, a dovish lawmaker and a colonel in the Israeli army reserves.
Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, tried to quell the criticism on Wednesday, warning of tougher times ahead and asking lawmakers to hold their tongues until the fighting ended.
But Danny Yatom, a retired general and Labour Party legislator, said the initial goals of the Israeli operation were too grandiose, and the government now realised that wiping out Hezbollah was no longer realistic.
A poll conducted before the announcement of the nine deaths on Wednesday showed that public support for pressing the offensive had begun to slip slightly, with 82% n favour, compared to 90% the previous week.
Fifty-one Israelis have been killed since July 12, including 33 soldiers and 18 civilians.
More than 405 people, many of them civilians, have been killed in Lebanon.
The United States blocked the UN Security Council on Wednesday from issuing a statement that would have condemned Israel's bombing of a UN post on the Lebanon border that killed four military observers overnight Tuesday.
US diplomats refused to comment, and US Ambassador John Bolton was in Washington preparing for a new confirmation hearing before the Senate; however, several diplomats said the United States objected to one paragraph, which said the council "condemns any deliberate attack against UN personnel and emphasizes that such attacks are unacceptable."
Comment: Note that the paragraph that Bolton and the US objected to was the statement that killing UN observers was wrong. Far from caring about Lebanese civilians, the US does not care even for the life of a citizen from any other country (from which the UN are pulled). Hence we deduce that the US government and the pyschopaths in control of it, care nothing for any human life other than their own. Leading us to further conclude that the US government would willingly sacrifice the lives of American citizens also, indeed as they did on 9/11.
KUALA LUMPUR, July 27 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice here on Thursday defended the U.S. administration's position on "a sustainable and stable cease-fire" in the Middle East.
Expressing her country's deep concern over the humanitarian situation in Lebanon, Rice said that she was ready to go back to the Middle East "at any time that I think we can move towards a sustainable ceasefire that can end the violence."
Rice, who arrived here Thursday afternoon for her first official visit to Malaysia, said the key to resolving the Israel-Lebanon conflict is extension of the Lebanese authorities throughout the country, the ability for the Lebanese government tocontrol all forces, all arms within the country.
She told a press conference at the end of the ASEAN-led Post Ministerial Conferences (PMC) here Thursday that reigning in the forces and arms in Lebanon as well as having a United Nations-mandated international troops in the country formed a basis for seeking an end to the crisis.
Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon have been battling the Israeli army for the past two weeks. And the bloody fightings have claimed about 400 lives on both sides so far.
The U.S. government is working urgently to try to make it possible to get aid supplies to reach the people in Lebanon, she said.
Earlier, Rice and her counterparts from the 10-member regional grouping witnessed the signing of the Framework Document for the Plan of Action to Implement the ASEAN-U.S. Enhanced Partnership, a framework aimed at boosting political, economic and security ties.
Rice is also scheduled to attend the 13th ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) on Friday and discuss common security concerns in the region with other ARF participants.
The ARF meeting is intended to intensify ASEAN's external dialogue in political and security matters as a means of building cooperative ties with states in the Asia-Pacific region.
Friday's meeting will bring together the 10 ASEAN members with representatives of Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, South Korea, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Russia, East Timor and the United States.
The United States is a dialogue partner of ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Rice flew in from Rome with two fellow diplomats, the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and Canadian Foreign Minister Peter McKay.
Prior to her visit to Malaysia, Rice has traveled to the Middle East and to Rome on July 26 to discuss the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Comment: Let's be clear. Rice is not talking about a ceasefile. She is talking about the military defeat of Lebanon and the imposition of Israeli dictate upon that country.
Diplomats Back Troops, but Not Cease-fire, for Mideast
In the face of United States opposition, an international conference here today stopped short of calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Lebanon crisis. The conference instead adopted more nebulous language that reflected America's desire to give Israel time to continue its bombardment of Hezbollah targets.
In a statement, diplomats from the United States, Europe, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia expressed their "determination to work immediately to reach with the utmost urgency a cease-fire that puts an end to the current violence and hostilities."
The diplomats also called for an international military force to be deployed in southern Lebanon under the auspices of the United Nations, after NATO members said their alliance was already overstretched. And they called for a regional conference, including Syria and Iran, to discuss security issues.
The release of the diplomats' prepared statement was delayed by almost two hours by wrangling over its contents. The key sticking point was the phrase concerning a ceasefire, according to two European diplomats who were in the room.
Most of the officials in the room were seeking, at the very least, a phrase that said the group would "work towards an immediate ceasefire," one of the diplomats said. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused, and won, he said.
"She insisted it say 'work immediately to bring a ceasefire,' not 'work to bring an immediate ceasefire,'" the diplomat said. He said that the group argued about that for more than 30 minutes before ceding the point to the United States.
The change reflects the Bush administration's view that the conflict will not be settled in a lasting way unless Israel is given the leeway to diminish Hezbollah's military capabilities.
"This is a region that has had too many broken cease-fires," Ms. Rice said at the conference's conclusion.
Hanging over the discussion was the killing of four members of the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon on Tuesday by Israeli artillery. On Tuesday night, Israel called the incident a mistake but United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said it was "apparently" deliberate.
Asked about the incident today, Mr. Annan said that while he accepted the apology of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, he wanted a separate U.N. investigation into the incident.
"Mr. Olmert definitely believes it was a mistake," Mr. Annan said. But, he added, "the shelling of the U.N. positions began early in the morning, and carried on all day" despite repeated calls to the Israelis from the United Nations that the posit, which Mr. Annan said was "long established and clearly marked" was being shelled.
"You can imagine the anguish of the" U.N. peackeepers over the death of their colleagues, said a clearly angry Mr. Annan.
The observers were from Austria, Canada, Finland and China. In Beijing today, officials said that President Hu Jintao had condemned the killings and demanded an investigation and an immediate cease-fire, Reuters reported.
The conference here did not reach a decision on the makeup of an international force that would be sent to occupy southern Lebanon once a ceasefire package is reached, but did agree that the force would fall under U.N. auspices, and not NATO. European envoys said that France and Germany both balked at the idea of using NATO forces because of its commitments elsewhere.
Ms. Rice said that the prime purpose of the force will be to support the Lebanese government in disarming Hezbollah, a position that Lebanon's prime minister, Fouad Siniora, said he supported.
While agreement was reached on the need for the international force and a follow-up conference on aid for repairing the damage done to Lebanon, perhaps the most stark aspects of the meeting were how isolated the United States appears, and the growing impatience, particularly in the Arab world, over the delay in calling for a ceasefire. While France and other European countries have delayed calling for an immediate ceasefire, in support of the U.S. position, some daylight is now starting to show between Europe and America.
A senior U.S. official denied that America stood alone on the issue, saying that "there was broad agreement in the room over the urgent need for a ceasefire."
In Washington, White House Tony Snow rejected a suggestion that the United States had blocked a desire by the other nations at the conference to push for cease-fire.
"If the talks broke down, they wouldn't have come out with a joint statement that showed they are knitted up on the key items," he said, The Associated Press reported.
During the closed door session, diplomats said, Mr. Siniora gave a heartrending speech which left many in the room calling for immediate action.
"Is the value of human life less in Lebanon than that of citizens elsewhere?" Mr. Siniora asked. "Are we children of a lesser God? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?"
Mr. Siniora said Lebanese will begin "legal proceedings" against Israel, and appeared to accuse Israel of war crimes. He said he would "spare no avenue to make Israel compensate the Lebanese people for the barbaric destruction it has inflicted on us."
He ended his remarks with a quote from the Roman historian Tacitus, which he said describes well what Israel is doing to Lebanon and the region today.
"They created a desolation and call it peace," Mr. Siniora said.
Diplomats said there was visible emotion around the room after Mr. Siniora's comments.
During her remarks after the conference, Ms. Rice acknowledged Mr. Siniora's "very impassioned" speech, saying he had "put a human face" on the crisis.
While still pressing for an immediate halt to the fighting, Mr. Siniora in his remarks after the conference seemed to accept the prospect of negotiations over the conflict's end. He said that as part of any negotiations, he would press several conditions first put forward by Hezbollah: that Israel withdraw from a disputed slice of border territory it continues to occupy, that it release Lebanese prisoners, and that it turn over a map showing the locations of land mines it placed in southern Lebanon.
Ms. Rice called on Syia and Iran to do more to rein in Hezbollah, and said that Mr. Annan had pledged to use his "good offices" to reach out to Damascus and Tehran. The United States has no diplomatic ties with Iran and limited representation in Syria.
She singled out Syria in particular as needing to take action to end the crisis.
After she spoke, the senior administration said that the crux of the matter for the United States is making sure that any ceasefire will last, and that Hezbollah won't emerge after all still able to rain rockets down on Israel.
Exasperated, he said: "What's a ceasefire?"
A reporter answered: "People stopping killing each other."
"We're for people stopping killing each other," the official said. "but how do we do that? Do we do it by walking into a room and saying, 'everybody stop?' That's what happened before. What's going to make them stop?"
Helene Cooper reported for this article from Rome and John O'Neil from New York. Contributing reporting were: Greg Myre from Jerusalem, Jad Mouawad from Beirut, and Elaine Sciolino from Paris.
By Kim Murphy and Sebastian Rotella, Times Staff Writers
July 26, 2006
LONDON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's calls this week for a deliberate approach to building "a new Middle East" are facing increased skepticism among many who ordinarily would be America's strongest backers in efforts to end the conflict in Lebanon.
U.S. allies in Europe and the Arab world are warning that without Washington's endorsement of an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, the possibility of escalating violence could eclipse any hope to transform a region beset by autocracy and terrorism to one based on democracy.
"Now more than ever, we call for moderation, with the goal of a cessation of hostilities that are provoking enormous damage and a humanitarian tragedy," said Massimo D'Alema, foreign minister of Italy, which today will hold a meeting of Western and Arab leaders in an attempt to broker a resolution to the crisis.
Britain has continued to back President Bush's call for a "sustainable," if not immediate, cease-fire, and supported Israel's right to guarantee security on its borders.
France, which initially called for an immediate cease-fire and condemned Israel's campaign as "totally disproportionate," in recent days has eased closer to the U.S. position, blaming Syria and Iran >for inciting Hezbollah.
But Italy and Spain have pointedly criticized the United States' failure to halt the bloodletting.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose Socialist government has had testy relations with Washington since coming to power a little more than a year ago, has also been critical of "abusive" force in the region, alluding to Israel.
"The silences of today in light of what is happening in the Mideast could become the regrets of tomorrow, because waiting for time to pass costs human lives," Zapatero said.
Germany, while recognizing Israel's right to defend itself, warned that Lebanon could be "further destabilized" under a prolonged bombing campaign.
Perhaps more worrisome for Washington, two of its strongest Arab allies, Saudi Arabia and Egypt - which had generally sided with the U.S. as the conflict began - on >Tuesday voiced strong misgivings over the severity of the Israeli airstrikes and echoed European calls for a speedy end to the crisis.
In an apparent reference to Rice's description of the turbulent "birth pangs" of a "new Middle East," Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called for an immediate cease-fire and warned that "what is happening in the region is destructive chaos, not creative chaos."
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah went further, warning that "no one can predict what will happen if things get out of control" in Lebanon. If peace options fail, he said, "there will be no other option but war."
A Saudi government advisor said that "America is doing a disservice to everyone by not reining in the Israelis."
Washington's closest Arab allies are entrenched, undemocratic regimes whose leaders support the Bush administration's stance on Lebanon in part because >they fear that the popular Islamic activism embodied by Hezbollah and Hamas could turn against them at home. Those governments now worry that the popular perception that the United States is standing behind Israel will undermine their credibility at home and invite new militancy.
"Yes, there is a new Middle East - in the worst sense, not in the sense the Americans would like it," said Nawaf Obaid, an analyst in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and an adjunct fellow with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
New rifts, Obaid said, may result in "a Shia world headed up by Iran vs. a Sunni world headed up by Saudi Arabia - and this is exactly what no one needs."
France, which headed European opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, now looks to be almost allied with the U.S. over the conflict in Lebanon.
President Jacques Chirac had expressed >great concern about the destruction wrought by the Israeli bombardment and called for an immediate cease-fire. But he recently tempered that criticism of Israel with rebukes of Hezbollah that have hardened over time, narrowing the distance between French and U.S. viewpoints.
This week, Chirac referred to "initiatives taken by Hamas and Hezbollah which could not have been taken alone." This was, the French newspaper Liberation suggested, "an almost explicit allusion to Damascus and Tehran."
Many European countries now find themselves forced into a balancing act, not wanting to offend the U.S. or Israel, but mindful of public opinion that has tended to favor the underdog in Lebanon, said Italian analyst Furio Colombo, a former newspaper editor and a senator for the ruling Democratic Left party.
As a result, he predicted, the Europeans probably will not be able to act >with the determination necessary to find a solution, at least in the short term, such as during today's meeting in Rome.
"The results will be mild, watered down ... very European," he said.
Murphy reported from London and Rotella from Paris. Times staff writers Tracy Wilkinson in Rome and Christian Retzlaff in Berlin contributed to this report.
NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer declined Wednesday to rule out a role for the military alliance in an international peacekeeping force in Lebanon, but France immediately voiced skepticism.
French President Jacques Chirac dismissed the idea of NATO involvement in the violence-scarred country because the organisation "is perceived, if we like it or not, as the armed wing of the West in the region."
Israel has voiced support for a NATO role in such a force, a key agenda item at an international conference in Rome Wednesday on the Mideast crisis - and NATO's secretary general refused to rule out that option.
"I do not include or exclude anything, but at the moment
I will not speculate about any NATO role," de Hoop Scheffer told reporters in Brussels, when asked about a possible involvement by the 26-nation alliance.
Referring to the Rome conference of foreign ministers, including US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he said: "Many suggestions are on the table including people, ministers...who talk about a NATO role."
But he said: "This is not the moment and that has nothing to do with being unenthusiastic," adding: "I see many suggestions ending with a question mark.
"I take the position that I hope the Rome conference will yield some results ...and begin to draw a common line."
On Sunday Israel said it was ready to back an international force led by NATO in south Lebanon to ease tensions.
"Israel supports the possibility of deploying a multi-national force with a strong mandate," possibly sponsored by NATO, Israeli Defence Minster Amir Peretz was quoted as saying in Jerusalem.
Chirac meanwhile, in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde, proposed that international peacekeepers could be sent to secure Lebanon's borders with Israel and Syria without NATO involvement.
The mission of the international force "would be to control the ceasefire and assure the respect of the borders, both the Israeli-Lebanese border and Syrian-Lebanese border of course," he said.
Sending troops is contingent on "a political agreement that assumes a ceasefire."
The agreement "must be negotiated partly by the Lebanese government and Hezbollah and partly between the international community, the Lebanese government and Israel," he said.
Last Updated Wed, 26 Jul 2006 20:32:38 EDT
CBC New
The family of a professor accused of being a Hezbollah spy says the Canadian government has abandoned them as they try to learn more about his fate.
Gahzi Falah, a professor at the University of Akron in Ohio who formerly taught at the University of Toronto, was arrested in northern Israel near the Lebanese border in early July. Falah has both Canadian and Israeli citizenship.
"He was taking pictures of Israeli installations along the northern border," said Nancy Goldfarb, spokeswoman for the Israeli Consulate General in Philadelphia to the Associated Press on Wednesday. "He was arrested on suspicion that his pictures were taken for intelligence purposes. Currently, he is still under investigation and I don't know whether he will be indicted."
An Israeli court extended Falah's detention through Sunday and an appeal is scheduled for Thursday in Haifa, according to his lawyer in Israel, Husein abu-Husein.
Falah's son, Naail, told CBC News that the family's daily calls to Foreign Affairs have been ignored.
"I've seen more effort done by the American government than I have from the Canadian government, and we are not American citizens," he said.
Alan Baker, Israel's ambassador to Canada, said he first heard about the case this week.
"I was approached by some members of Parliament yesterday, and I passed their request on to Jerusalem, and as soon as I get an answer I will be in a position to reply," Baker said on Wednesday.
A renowned Middle East geographer, Falah often takes pictures of landmarks for his work, according to his son.
"If he is detained on the basis of his academics, it's a sad situation for Israel, because academic freedom should be respected all around the world," Naail Falah said.
He said that his father considers himself pro-Palestinian and has written articles critical of Israeli policies in the past, but is not a security threat.
Abu-Husein said he was only able to visit his client for the first time on Wednesday.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discussed the Israeli offensive in Lebanon and Iran's nuclear program with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Reuters news agency reported, quoting a release by the Kremlin press service.
"The crisis situation surrounding Lebanon was at the center of discussion," Kremlin press service said of the telephone conversation late on Tuesday. "Different aspects of resolving the Iranian nuclear program were also touched upon."
"On both topics, Vladimir Putin stated the fundamental position of the Russian side," it said.
Russia has called for a ceasefire in Lebanon and criticized the Israeli attacks, saying they went beyond the anti-Hizbollah military operation the Jewish state said it was conducting.
Russia is one of six powers that want Iran to respond to an offer of incentives in exchange for Tehran stopping uranium enrichment. Unlike the United States and some other Western powers, it says it is too early to talk about economic or other sanctions against Tehran.
The telephone exchange took place at Ahmadinejad's request.
Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday during a visit to Tajikistan that the conflict between Lebanon and Israel could sweep through the entire Middle East like a hurricane.
The United States and key European countries fear Iran's nuclear activity is a cover for bomb making. Tehran says it has a right to civilian nuclear power and that its nuclear program is aimed only at producing electricity.
PARIS - The families of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbollah guerrillas appealed to the French government on Wednesday to use its contacts with Lebanon to help bring their sons home.
"France is the first place we chose to come because we think here we've got our best chance," said Omri Avni whose son-in-law Ehud Goldwasser was captured in a raid by Hizbollah on July 12.
"Using diplomatic connections, formal or not formal, between France and the Lebanon government, they can help us to bring our sons back home," he told a news conference in Paris.
"You have the connections with the Lebanese nation," Malka Goldwasser, the soldier's mother, said.
France has criticized Israel's offensive on its former colony Lebanon, unleashed after the soldiers' capture, but it has also called on Hizbollah to release the two men immediately.
Members of the Goldwasser family and the family of Eldad Regev, who was taken in the same incident, are due to meet French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy and an official from President Jacques Chirac's office on Thursday.
The father of Gilad Shalit, who was taken in a separate incident by Hamas militants and who has French citizenship, may also be present, according to officials from the Jewish group Siona, which helped organize the families' visit to France.
"We have the feeling that here in France, we will be able to get support that we cannot get in Israel," Avni said. "We need to know if they are OK, if they are healthy and if anyone can help us to bring them back home because the army cannot do it."
Malka Goldwasser and the other families did not question the actions of the Israeli government and placed the blame for the 15-day-old crisis squarely with Hizbollah which has unleashed a stream of rocket attacks on northern Israel.
"We want to underline that those who are holding Eldad and Udi (Goldwasser's nickname) and Gilad Shalit as well have no respect for accepted conventions," said Eyal Regev, brother of Eldad Regev, speaking in Hebrew through a French interpreter.
"We have had no information on the condition of the soldiers or the state they're in, and that's why we're asking the French government and the international community to help us."
Qlaya, Southern Lebanon -- Is it possible - is it conceivable - that Israel is losing its war in Lebanon?
From this hill village in the south of the country, I am watching the clouds of brown and black smoke rising from its latest disaster in the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil: up to 13 Israeli soldiers dead, and others surrounded, after a devastating ambush by Hizbollah guerrillas in what was supposed to be a successful Israeli military advance against a "terrorist centre".
To my left smoke rises too, over the town of Khiam, where a smashed United Nations outpost remains the only memorial to the four UN soldiers - most of them decapitated by an American-made missile on Tuesday - killed by the Israeli air force.
Indian soldiers of the UN army in southern Lebanon, visibly moved by the horror of bringing their Canadian, Fijian, Chinese and Austrian comrades back in at least 20 pieces from the clearly marked UN post next to Khiam prison, left their remains at Marjayoun hospital yesterday.
In past years, I have spent hours with their comrades in this UN position, which is clearly marked in white and blue paint, with the UN's pale blue flag opposite the Israeli frontier. Their duty was to report on all they saw: the ruthless Hizbollah missile fire out of Khiam and the brutal Israeli response against the civilians of Lebanon.
Is this why they had to die, after being targeted by the Israelis for eight hours, their officers pleading to the Israeli Defence Forces that they cease fire? An American-made Israeli helicopter saw to that.
In Bint Jbeil, meanwhile, another bloodbath was taking place. Claiming to "control" this southern Lebanese town, the Israelis chose to walk into a Hizbollah trap. The moment they reached the deserted marketplace, they were ambushed from three sides, their soldiers falling to the ground under sustained rifle fire. The remaining Israeli troops - surrounded by the "terrorists" they were supposed to liquidate - desperately appealed for help, but an Israeli Merkava tank and other vehicles sent to help them were also attacked and set on fire. Up to 17 Israeli soldiers may have died so far in this disastrous operation. During their occupation of Lebanon in 1983 more than 50 Israeli soldiers were killed in just one suicide attack.
The battle for southern Lebanon is on an epic scale but, from the heights above Khiam, the Israelis appear to be in deep trouble. Their F-16s turn in the high bright sun - small, silver fish whose whispers gain in volume as they dive - and their bombs burst over the old prison, where the Hizbollah are still holding out; beyond the frontier, I can see livid fires burning across the Israeli hillsides and the Jewish settlement of Metullah billowing smoke.
It was not meant to be like this, 15 days into Israel's assault on Lebanon. The Katyushas still streak in pairs out of southern Lebanon, clearly visible to the naked eye, white contrails that thump into Israeli's hillsides and border towns.
So is it frustration or revenge that keeps Israel's bombs falling on the innocent? In the early hours two days ago, a tremendous explosion woke me up, rattling the windows and shaking the trees outside, and a single flash suffused the western sky over Nabatiyeh.
The lives of an entire family of seven had just been extinguished.
And how come - since this now obsesses the humanitarian organisations working in Lebanon - that the Israelis bombed two ambulances in Qana, killing two of the three wounded inside. All the crews were injured - one with a piece of shrapnel in his neck - but what worried the Lebanese Red Cross was that the Israeli missiles had pierced the very centre of the red cross painted on the roof of each vehicle. Did the pious use the cross as their aiming point?
The bombardment of Khiam has set off its own brush fires on the hillsides below Qlaya, whose Maronite Christian inhabitants now stand on the high road above like spectators at a 19th century battle. Khiam is - or was - a pretty village of cut-stone doorways and tracery windows, but Israel's target, apart from the obviously marked UN position whose inhabitants they massacred, is the notorious prison in which - before its retreat from Lebanon in 2000 - hundreds of Hizbollah members and, in some cases, their families, were held and tortured with electricity by Israel's proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army.
This was the same prison complex - turned into a "museum of torture" by the Hizbollah after the Israeli retreat - that was visited by the late Edward Said shortly before his death. More important, however, is that many of the Hizbollah men originally held prisoner here were captives in cells deep underground the old French mandate fort. These same men are now fighting the Israelis, almost certainly sheltering from their fire in the same underground cells in which they languished, perhaps even storing some of their missiles there.
In Marjayoun, next to Qlaya, once the SLA's headquarters, Lebanese troops are trying to prevent Hizbollah guerrillas using the streets of the Greek Catholic town to fire yet more missiles at Israel. Seven-man Lebanese army patrols are moving through the darkened roads of both towns at night in case the Hizbollah brings yet more Israeli bombs down on our heads.
In Beirut, one observes the folly of Western nations with amusement as well as horror, but, sitting in these hill villages and listening to how the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, plans to reshape Lebanon is clearly a lesson in human self-delusion. According to US correspondents accompanying Ms Rice on her visit to the Middle East, she is proposing the intervention of a Nato-led force along the Lebanese-Israeli border for between 60 and 90 days to assure that a ceasefire exists, the deployment of an enlarged Nato force throughout Lebanon to disarm Hizbollah and then the retraining of the Lebanese army before its own deployment to the border.
This plan - which, like all American proposals on Lebanon, is exactly the same as Israel's demands - carries the same depth of conceit as that of the Israeli consul general in New York, who said last week that "most Lebanese appreciate what we are doing".
Does Ms Rice think the Hizbollah want to be disarmed? By Nato? Wasn't there a Nato force in Beirut which fled Lebanon after a group close to the Hizbollah bombed the US Marine base at Beirut airport in 1983, killing 241 US servicemen and dozens more French troops a few seconds later? Does anyone believe that Shia Muslim forces will not do the same again to any Nato "intervention" force? The Americans are talking about Egyptian and Turkish troops in southern Lebanon; Sunni Muslims ruling Shia territory.
The Hizbollah has been waiting and training and dreaming of this new war for years, however ruthless we may regard the actions. They are not going to surrender the territory they liberated from the Israeli army in an 18-year guerrilla war, least of all to Nato at Israel's bidding.
Yesterday's assault on the Israeli army in Bint Jbeil proved that. The problem is that the US sees this slaughterhouse as an "opportunity" rather than a tragedy, a chance to humble Hizbollah supporters in Tehran and help to shape the "new Middle East" of which Ms Rice spoke so blithely this week.
It is Israel which is running out of time in southern Lebanon. Its attacks have for the fifth time in 30 years placed it in the dock for war crimes in Lebanon. The toll of Lebanon's civilian casualties has reached 400. And still the US will not intervene to prevent the carnage, even to call for a 24-hour ceasefire to allow the 3,000 civilians still trapped between Qlaya and Bint Jbeil - who include a number of foreign nationals - to flee.
The only civilian walking those frightening roads to Qlaya was a goatherd, guiding his animals around the huge bomb craters in the tarmac. Talking to him, it emerged that he was almost stone deaf and obviously could not hear the bombs. In this, it seemed, he has a lot in common with Condoleezza Rice.
Israel says the decision by diplomats not to call for a halt to its Lebanon offensive at a Middle East summit has given it the green light to continue.
"We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world... to continue the operation," Justice Minister Haim Ramon said.
His comments came ahead of an Israeli cabinet meeting to decide whether to intensify the military offensive.
There have been more Israeli air raids and fighting continues in the south.
At least 423 Lebanese and 51 Israelis have died in the violence since Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on 12 July.
Foreign ministers attending emergency talks on the crisis in Rome on Wednesday did not call for an immediate ceasefire, vowing instead to work with "utmost urgency" for a sustainable truce.
Speaking on Israeli army radio, Mr Ramon - a close confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert - said "everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror".
He said that in order to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by the Israeli air force before ground troops move in.
'All southerners terrorists'
He added that Israel had given the civilians of southern Lebanon ample time to quit the area and therefore anyone still remaining there can be considered Hezbollah supporters.
"All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah," Mr Ramon said.
Mr Ramon's call for the use of greater firepower came as the Israeli cabinet was set to decide whether to broaden its military offensive.
The chief of Israel's northern command, Maj Gen Udi Adam, has warned that he expects the fighting to "continue for several more weeks".
The head of political programmes at Hezbollah's TV station, al-Manar, Ibrahim Moussawi, says the organisation is determined to continue fighting:
"Israel is a mighty army. You're talking about a regional superpower with hi-tech weaponry," Mr Moussawi said. "But when you talk about resistance and determination and resolve to face and to confront this, yes, Hezbollah has the will and the determination to do it."
"The Israelis have tried this before since 1982, which culminated in the year 2000 with the defeat of the Israelis and their withdrawal from south Lebanon," he added.
In other developments:
* Following the deaths of four UN observers in an Israeli air strike, Australia withdraws 12 UN peacekeepers, describing the prospect of sending an international force to Lebanon right now as a 'suicide mission'
* UNHCR chief Antoni Guterres says 500,000 people have been displaced within Lebanon by the fighting and 200,000 have crossed the border
* A poll of Israelis published by Israel's Maariv daily newspaper suggests 82% back the continuing offensive and 95% say Israel's action is justified.
The BBC Jim Muir in Tyre says that the progress of Israeli ground troops has not been as fast as expected as they battle through the difficult terrain of southern Lebanon.
They still have not managed to capture the Hezbollah stronghold of Bint Jbeil, where they have suffered their worst losses.
An Israeli military official told the BBC that Israel has destroyed 50% of Hezbollah's weapons arsenal, but nonetheless the group's ability to inflict damage appears undiminished - on Wednesday they fired some 150 rockets into Israel, more than on any other day of the conflict.
Tyre exodus
Pursuing Mr Olmert's plan of pushing Hezbollah back from border areas, in order to prevent them continuing to fire rockets into Israeli territory, and establishing a "security zone" in the south will take many weeks, our correspondent adds.
Meanwhile, Israel's attacks on Lebanon have continued with air strikes on a Lebanese army base and a radio relay station north of Beirut.
Fighting is ongoing around the town of Bint Jbeil and in Tyre the bombing of nearby areas, combined with last night's raid on apartments right inside the city, has sparked a civilian exodus.
Agencies
Thursday July 27, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Osama bin Laden's deputy issued a worldwide call today for Muslims to rise up in holy war against Israel and join the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza, until Islam reigns from "Spain to Iraq".
Ayman al-Zawahiri warned that al-Qaida would not stand "idly by, humiliated", as Israeli "shells burn our brothers".
In a video tape broadcast by al-Jazeera, the Egyptian terror leader said: "How can we remain silent while watching bombs raining on our people? Oh Muslims everywhere, I call on you to fight and become martyrs in the war against the Zionists and the Crusaders. "
He said that the weapons being used by the Israelis were from the "crusader coalition" and added that "every participant will pay the price".
Zawahiri, wearing a grey robe and white turban, and speaking in front of a picture of the World Trade Centre on fire, said al-Qaida now saw "all the world as a battlefield open in front of us".
He said: "The war with Israel does not depend on ceasefires ... . It is a jihad for God's sake and will last until [our] religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq ... We will attack everywhere."
In another section of the tape, he said: "The shells and rockets ripping apart Muslim bodies in Gaza and Lebanon are not only Israeli [weapons], but are supplied by all the countries of the crusader coalition. Therefore, every participant in the crime will pay the price."
The Arab broadcaster appeared not to have transmitted the entire tape, using instead selected quotes interspersed with commentary from an anchor. There are long-standing fears that tapes from al-Qaida leaders might contain coded messages to followers.
In this latest tape, as well as the twin towers image there were also photographs of two militants behind Zawahiri. One appeared to be a bearded Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian ringleader of the September 11 attacks. The other was Mohammed Atef, also known as Abu Hafs al-Masri, a former top lieutenant of Bin Laden who was killed in a US airstrike in Afghanistan in November 2001.
Zawahiri, a medical doctor, is believed, like Bin Laden, to be hiding somewhere around the Afghan-Pakistan border.
A new audio or video message from Bin Laden about Lebanon and Gaza is expected to emerge in the coming days, according to IntelCenter, a US-based independent group that provides counterterrorism information to the US government and media.
Today's message was al-Zawahiri's tenth this year. Bin Laden has issued five messages in what has been a particularly active year in terms of messages from the al-Qaida leadership.
Al-Zawahiri last appeared in a video posted on an extremist website on July 7, the one-year anniversary of the train bombings in London. In that tape, he said two of the four suicide bombers in London spent time in an al-Qaida training camp, preparing themselves for a suicide mission.
An audio message, purporting to be from Bin Laden, was broadcast last month in which he eulogised the al-Qaida leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed by US airstrikes.
Comment: Ah yes, we were wondering when 'ol "al-Zawahiri" would speak up and help the US and Israel to demonise Hizb'allah by association. Isn't it always the way? This little ploy, stage-managed by the US or Israel, will now help to remind the world that Israeli and American murder of Lebanese civilians is all about the "war on terror". Remember 9/11! Remember the pain?! Let's kill the Arabs!! Just don't remember that the Israeli and US government's carried out 9/11.
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations said on Wednesday it asked Israel a dozen times to stop bombing near a U.N. post in Lebanon in the hours before an Israeli air attack destroyed the position killing four peacekeepers.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan initially referred to Tuesday's deadly Israeli strike as the "apparently deliberate targeting" of the Khiam U.N. observer post.
But he softened his stance after talking with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who said he believed it was a mistake and would order an investigation.
"We await the end of the investigations, and I am grateful for the prime minister for what he has said, and we accept his words," Annan said in Rome, where he was attending a conference on the conflict between Israel and Hizbollah.
Jane Holl Lute, a deputy head of U.N. peacekeeping operations, told the Security Council behind closed doors there were 21 strikes within 300 meters (yards) of the observer post during the six hours before it was completely destroyed.
Twelve of the 21 struck within 100 meters (yards), including four which scored direct hits, Holl Lute said, according to a text of her remarks.
Firing continued during the rescue operation, "despite repeated requests to the Israeli Defense Forces for an abatement," she said. Another U.N. base came under Israeli fire on Wednesday as an artillery round fell 10 meters (yards) from its headquarters compound in Naqoura, she added.
While there was speculation Israel may have been targeting Hizbollah positions near the Khiam post, Holl Lute said there was no Hizbollah firing coming from near the outpost.
'LIVES MAY BE LOST'
An Irish army officer in south Lebanon warned Israeli forces six times that its strikes threatened the lives of the four observers, Ireland's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
Lieutenant Colonel John Molloy, the chief U.N. liaison officer with Israel in south Lebanon, told the Israelis on six separate occasions "that their bombardment was endangering the lives of U.N. staff in south Lebanon," a Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman said.
"He warned: 'You have to address this problem or lives may be lost,"' the spokesman said.
In New York, Holl Lute and U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown telephoned Israeli U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman and his deputy half a dozen times to convey the same message, U.N. officials said.
"The base is clearly marked, a well-known. well-established position for a generation," said a U.N, official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity.
The United Nations still wanted a joint investigation, as Annan requested, despite Olmert's decision to conduct a solely Israeli inquiry, the U.N. official said.
Gillerman wrote the Security Council on Wednesday "to express Israel's deep sorrow" over the four deaths and to "categorically deny" the attack had been deliberate.
Separately, Israeli Brig. Gen. Udi Dekel wrote U.N. commanders that the deaths resulted from "a tragic operational mistake" and said an investigation was already under way.
Last Updated Thu, 27 Jul 2006 08:09:07 EDT
CBC News
Israeli government officials are expected to decide Thursday whether they will widen the military offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon after a summit of world leaders failed to reach a consensus on conditions for a ceasefire.
Military officials have told reporters they would like to expand the military campaign that includes air strikes, a naval blockade and ground operations.
An aide to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel should increase its air strikes on villages to destroy Hezbollah infrastructure.
Justice Minister Haim Ramon, an Israeli cabinet minister who is close to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said the failure at the summit in Rome to agree on the conditions necessary for a ceasefire is permission for Israel to push harder in its campaign to crush the Lebanese-based militant group.
Ramon said Israel interprets the lack of agreement as a signal that it can continue its offensive. "We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world ... to continue the operation, this war, until Hezbollah won't be located in Lebanon and until it is disarmed," he told Israel Army Radio. "Everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror."
As the offensive entered its 16th day on Thursday, Israel continued to pound Hezbollah positions across Lebanon. Its air strikes also hit a Lebanese army base and a radio relay station and damaged several roads. The series of raids in northern, eastern and southern Lebanon killed at least one person.
Meanwhile, Israel was recovering from its heaviest losses in its ground operations in southern Lebanon after nine soldiers were confirmed dead in fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon on Wednesday. The deaths are believed to have occurred in house-to-house fighting in Hezbollah strongholds.
At least 423 people in Lebanon and 51 people in Israel have been killed since the offensive began on July 12 after Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.
JERUSALEM - Top Israeli Cabinet ministers on Thursday decided not to expand the country's Lebanon offensive, Israel Radio reported. But they approved calling up three additional divisions of reserve soldiers.
During a meeting of the security Cabinet, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the goals of Israel's 17-day offensive are being met.
The decision came as the military pounded suspected Hezbollah positions across Lebanon on Thursday. The attacks extended the air campaign a day after the military suffered its highest one-day casualty toll since the offensive began.
An Israeli Cabinet minister said lack of agreement on a cease-fire gave Israel permission to press deeper to wipe out the Islamic militant group.
The airstrikes also hit a Lebanese army base and a radio relay station and destroyed several roads. The series of raids in northern, eastern and southern Lebanon killed at least one person and wounded others.
On Wednesday, a high-level Mideast conference in Rome ended in disagreement, with most European leaders urging an immediate cease-fire, but the U.S. willing to give Israel more time to punish the guerrilla group.
From mass targeting of mobile phones with voice and text messages to old-fashioned radio broadcasts warning of imminent attacks, Israel is deploying a range of old and new technologies in Lebanon as part of the psychological operations ("psyops") campaign supplementing its military attacks.
Israeli leaflet says: "People of Lebanon! Understand! A face like a brother, a back of the head like a snake."
Israel dropped leaflets over Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon
According to US and UK media outlets, Israel has reactivated a radio station to broadcast messages urging residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate the region. [...]
According to an unconfirmed report by Egypt's Middle East News Agency, Israel managed on Sunday "to intercept the satellite transmissions of Hezbollah's al-Manar TV channel for the third successive day, replacing it with Israeli transmissions that reportedly showed Hezbollah command sites and rocket launching pads which Israel claimed it has raided".
Some reports have named the station as the Voice of the South.
The South Lebanon Army, a Christian militia backed by Israel, operated a radio station called Voice of the South from Kfar Killa in southern Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s.
The station closed down in May 2000 when Israeli forces withdrew from southern Lebanon.
Cash for tip-offs
The Israeli newspaper Maariv on Sunday reported the appearance of a website called All 4 Lebanon which offered payment for tip-offs from Lebanese citizens "that could help Israel in the fight against Hezbollah".
Whoever is able and willing to help Lebanon eradicate Hezbollah's evil and get back its independence, freedom and prosperity is hereby invited to contact us
All 4 Lebanon website
According to Maariv, the site, with content in Arabic, English and French, had been set up by Israeli intelligence.
"We appeal to everyone who has the ability and the desire to uproot the sore called Hezbollah from your heart and from the heart of Lebanon," the paper quoted the website as saying in Arabic.
On its English-language page, the site says: "Whoever is able and willing to help Lebanon eradicate Hezbollah's evil and get back its independence, freedom and prosperity is hereby invited to contact us."
It adds: "For your own safety, please contact us from places where no-one knows you."
The Arabic wording is identical to that on leaflets which Israeli aircraft have been dropping over Beirut and the south of Lebanon.
The leaflets called on people to "remove the sore known as Hezbollah from the heart of Lebanon".
The rewards "could be a range of things, such as cash or a house", according to an Israel Defence Forces spokeswoman quoted by Reuters news agency.
It was not clear how such items would be delivered or exactly what information Israel wanted, Reuters noted.
Mobile aggression
On Friday, residents of southern Lebanon reported receiving recorded messages on their mobile phones from an unknown caller.
The speaker identified himself as an Israeli and warned people in the area to leave their homes and head north.
Dubai-based news channel al-Arabiya TV reported that the recorded messages also said they "held the Lebanese government responsible for the abduction of the two Israeli soldiers, and called on Lebanon to set them free".
Inquiries by Lebanon's communications ministry revealed that the calls had come from exchanges in Italy and Canada, but had originated in Israel.
According to US magazine Time, Israel has been targeting SMS text messages at local officials in southern Lebanon, urging them to move north of the Litani river before Israeli military operations intensified.
The UK's Guardian newspaper said mobile phone users in Lebanon were regularly receiving messages to their phones which purported to be news updates, attempting to discredit Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah or his party.
Satellite warfare next?
As Israel broadens its psyops activities, it also continues to attack media targets using conventional military means.
Air raids on Saturday hit transmission stations used by Hezbollah's al-Manar TV, Future TV and the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC). A technician working for LBC was reported to have been killed.
The next day, a convoy of journalists from Lebanese and pan-Arab TV channels was attacked by Israeli planes while on a tour of southern Lebanon; no injuries were reported.
According to an unconfirmed report by Egypt's Middle East News Agency, Israel managed on Sunday "to intercept the satellite transmissions of Hezbollah's al-Manar TV channel for the third successive day, replacing it with Israeli transmissions that reportedly showed Hezbollah command sites and rocket launching pads which Israel claimed it has raided".
Replacing a TV station's picture with output you want the audience to see is more difficult to achieve than jamming.
Al-Manar TV has three satellite signals, one on ArabSat 2B at 30.5 degrees east, one on Badr 3 at 26 degrees east and one on NileSat 102 at 7 degrees west.
On Badr 3 and NileSat, al-Manar is broadcast alongside other TV stations in a multiplexed or combined digital signal.
While it would be technically feasible to replace one station's output, all the other stations in the multiplex would be taken off the air too. The technical parameters of the original station would need to be exactly duplicated by the interloper.
Comment: Note the fact that Israel has transposed its own broadcast over Hizb'allah broadcasts. Didn't know this was possible? Wake up! And imagine all the possibilities...
Now more Israeli soldiers are on the way, including an armored unit being transferred from Gaza to Lebanon. They have been told civilians have left the region where they will fight.
"Over here, everybody is the army," one soldier said. "Everybody is Hezbollah. There's no kids, women, nothing."
Another [Israeli] soldier put it plainly: "We're going to shoot anything we see."
On the Israeli border today diplomacy meant very little as troops prepared to expand the war into southern Lebanon.
On one road in the north, we counted 20 tanks lining up and more on the way.
Israeli officials said they plan to form a security zone running the length of the border with Lebanon, while sending more forces along more crossing points.
They won't say how far into Lebanese territory they'll go, but some of the troops will remain until an international force is deployed and Hezbollah positions are destroyed.
"They really cannot be destroyed from the air," said Maj. Michael Oren of the Israeli Defense Forces. "There's really no alternative but to send in ground forces."
Soldiers Comment on Battle
There was jarring evidence of Hezbollah's tactics today when more than 80 rockets struck Israel, wounding dozens and killing a 15-year-old Israeli Arab girl. [Ed: an Israeli Arab? Doesn't matter then]
For Israeli troops deployed inside Lebanon, the fight is difficult and dangerous.
We spoke with a group of soldiers returning from 48 hours of intense fighting, including the rescue of soldiers from a tank destroyed in the fighting.
"They are attacking us in a very organized position," one soldier said. "They know where we are coming from. They know everything. They shoot us wherever they like. It's their country."
He added they are "very well armed."
Now more Israeli soldiers are on the way, including an armored unit being transferred from Gaza to Lebanon. They have been told civilians have left the region where they will fight.
"Over here, everybody is the army," one soldier said. "Everybody is Hezbollah. There's no kids, women, nothing."
Another soldier put it plainly: "We're going to shoot anything we see."
BOSTON - Israel's war with Hizbullah shows no sign of relenting, despite the extraordinary human and economic costs on both sides of the border.
More than 400 Lebanese have been killed, at least 17 Israeli civilians have been felled by rockets that threaten the northern third of Israel, Lebanon's infrastructure has been decimated, and many poor Lebanese (mostly Shiite Muslims) are now homeless. Both belligerents are attacking indiscriminately. Hizbullah's weapons are notoriously inaccurate and more likely to kill innocent civilians than soldiers. And Israel has targeted noncombatants in southern Lebanon as though the area were a free-fire zone. Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz as much as admitted his contempt for noncombatant immunity when, according to Israeli army radio on July 24, he ordered the destruction of 10 multistory buildings in the Shiite-inhabited suburbs of Beirut for every rocket hitting Haifa.
With the Bush administration providing diplomatic cover, Israel is playing for time. Israel's premise is that the longer its war continues, the more it will wear down Hizbullah. The Israeli military is fighting intense battles to capture border villages with a view to re-creating a buffer zone. Hizbullah fighters, honed by two decades of Israeli occupation, are defending their soil fiercely.
Despite international demands for a cease-fire, and the anguished pleas of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insists that conditions need to be "right" before the US will endorse one. But the idea that time favors Israel's goal of disarming Hizbullah is dubious for five reasons:
- Hizbullah is wellprovisioned with weapons, and it is unlikely that the group could be completely disarmed. Southern Lebanon is filled with hills, valleys, and caves, not to mention villages where weapons can easily be cached. Moreover, Hizbullah enjoys widespread support in the south. The Shiite Muslims who predominate there revere Hizbullah for pressuring Israel to withdraw in 2000.
- Hizbullah precipitated the war by crossing into Israel to capture two soldiers, and many Lebanese are furious that Hizbullah provoked Israel. Israel has hoped to reinforce Lebanese alienation from Hizbullah, but Israel's prolonged and vengeful response is fostering new hatred for Israel and its US protector. Recently, an-Nahar, the respected Beirut paper and no fan of Hizbullah, featured a cartoon showing Dr. Rice trying to quell Lebanon's war fires with an eye dropper.
- An international force is no magic solution whether it deploys independently or in conjunction with the Lebanese army. Many soldiers in the army are Shiites, and they are more likely to applaud Hizbullah than to disarm it. As for the international soldiers, what will happen when Israel, with a robust record for recidivism, raids Lebanon, kidnaps or kills Lebanese, or attempts to prevent Lebanese from returning to their homes in a unilaterally imposed buffer zone? Hizbullah draws many of its members from the south. Will they be excluded from their own villages? The record of intervention in Lebanon reveals that even the well-intentioned may become part of the problem.
- For both the US and Israel, Hizbullah is an extension of Iranian influence. Yet, it is likely that Iran is going to be a major beneficiary of Israel's new war in Lebanon. To the extent the Shiites feel they were singled out for attacks, Iran will be seen as a stalwart coreligionist ally. And given the extraordinary destruction in the Shiite suburbs of Beirut, Iran will have a further entree by providing materiel assistance and financial aid.
- Support for Hizbullah is growing in the Arab world with every day that it confronts Israel. In Iraq, the parliament has spoken out forcefully against Israel's campaign, and last week Ayatollah Ali Sistani issued a powerful fatwa (religious opinion) condemning the attacks on Lebanese civilians and infrastructure and calling on all Shiite clerics to take action. Rice had to scratch Egypt off her itinerary because of swelling support for Hizbullah there. In Arab countries with a large Shiite community, sectarian sentiment is being fueled by the fighting in Lebanon.
Rather than continuing dawdling diplomacy it would be prudent for the US to embrace a cease-fire. Demilitarizing Hizbullah, and perhaps integrating its militia wing into the Lebanese army, is a tough challenge with a cease-fire, but impossible if the war continues. Instead of the victory promised the White House by Israel, this war is fostering the results that it was supposed to defeat.
- Augustus Richard Norton is professor of international relations and anthropology at Boston University.
Comment: More American equating of Hezbollah's rockets with the Israeli army.
Rory McCarthy in Haifa, Suzanne Goldenberg in Tyre and Ian Black in Jerusalem
Thursday July 27, 2006
The Guardian
Growing evidence that the ground battle in Lebanon will be far tougher than Israel had expected emerged yesterday after firefights against Hizbullah in two border villages left Israeli troops counting their highest death toll in a single day since the conflict began.
Up to 13 Israeli soldiers were killed and many more wounded yesterday in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil during the fiercest battle so far in the Middle East conflict. Nearby, in the village of Maroun el-Ras, which troops had entered at the weekend, an Israeli officer was reported killed.
Last night the city of Tyre was hit in a major Israeli air strike. Sixteen people, including six children, were injured when a seven-storey building that had been used as a Hizbullah community centre collapsed.
In Bint Jbeil, Israeli troops ran into large numbers of heavily armed Hizbullah fighters when they tried to sweep through the town, just two and a half miles from the Israeli border.
"We have got very intense fighting, house to house, room to room," a spokesman for the Israeli military said last night. He refused to give full casualty figures but said there were "many seriously injured Israelis". Reports put the number of dead and injured at 30.
Troops found a large cache of Hizbullah weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades, automatic assault rifles and ammunition. The spokesman said: "This indicates they were planning on holding out much longer." He said more than 200 Hizbullah fighters had been killed since the conflict began.
Israel's northern command chief said the offensive in Lebanon was still not nearing its end. "I assume it will continue for several more weeks and in a number of weeks we will be able to declare a victory," Major General Udi Adam said.
The heaviest fighting yesterday came as troops tried to capture an important hilltop at Bint Jbeil. Hizbullah said its fighters had ambushed an Israeli unit that was moving from a ridge towards the town. "Our men can hear the screams of their wounded calling for help," one Hizbullah source told Reuters.
Israeli troops had taken some areas in Bint Jbeil, but not the whole town. "The bodies of the soldiers remained on the ground amid the destroyed and burning vehicles," said an announcer on Hizbullah's television channel, al-Manar.
Many of the Israeli injured had to wait hours under heavy fire before they could be evacuated. Helicopters eventually flew them to hospital in Haifa.
"We knew well that we are entering a dangerous nest and the nest needs to be taken care of slowly," Major Tzvika Golan, an Israeli spokesman, told reporters.
Before the conflict erupted two weeks ago, Bint Jbeil was a small town of about 20,000 people but one regarded by Israeli commanders as symbolically crucial for Hizbullah. Its leader, the cleric Hassan Nasrullah, made an important speech in the town in 2000, shortly after the Israeli military withdrew from southern Lebanon. Israeli officers describe it as the "terror capital" and say it is an important logistics base for the militia.
But yesterday's fighting confirms an emerging sense within Israel that the ground battle is proving far tougher than expected. Before yesterday, 24 Israeli troops had been killed and 79 injured.
General Yiftah Ron-Tal, a former commander of Israeli land forces, told Israel Radio: "You can't fight a battle like that without taking losses. The question is whether the mission has been accomplished. We had no choice but to fight there. This kind of position can't be taken without using ground troops. The enemy is well trained and knows the terrain well."
One armoured brigade colonel told the Jerusalem Post that the operation to capture Bint Jbeil had been expected to last between 48 and 72 hours. It has now run for four days.
Early this morning Israel reportedly attacked a Lebanese army base at Aamchit, 30 miles north of Beirut. It was not clear whether the base had been attacked from the air or the sea. Hizbullah fired about 130 rockets into Israel yesterday, injuring at least 31 people.
At least 40 people, including two journalists and six people in a critical condition, were wounded by Israeli fire.
GAZA CITY - Being locked in die-hard battles against Hizbollah resistance fighters did not prevent Israeli occupation forces from killing fifteen Palestinians, including a child, in two air raids on the east of Gaza City on Wednesday, July 26.
Six Palestinians, including a three-year-old girl, were killed in a single Israeli strike on a group of Palestinians in eastern Gaza City, hospital officials said.
At least 40 people, including two journalists and six people in a critical condition, were wounded by Israeli fire.
The Israeli strikes targeted a building in the Gaza City used by a paramilitary force set up by the Palestinian government and a house in the Gaza-Egypt border town of Rafah that had already been hit a day earlier.
Late Tuesday, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by Israeli fire while in his house. Two family members were also wounded.
At least 134 Palestinians were killed since Israel launched a wide-scale offensive on Gaza on the pretext of seeking the release of an Israeli soldier taken prisoners by Palestinian resistance groups.
Wednesday's killings bring to 5,273 the number of people killed since the start of Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, most of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count.
Incursion
Dozens of Israeli tanks backed by helicopter gunships also pushed deep into eastern Gaza, eyewitnesses told IslamOnline.net.
Israeli troops clashed with Palestinian resistance fighters on the edge of the Jabalya refugees camp.
The military wing of Hamas said it had fired rocket-propelled grenades at Israeli tanks, leaving three damaged.
It also said it had fired two rocket attacks into Israel. The Israeli military reported no casualties and said three rockets landed in Israel.
During its incursion, Israeli troops destroyed the infrastructure, crooked agricultural lands and demolished several offices of the Palestinian government, eyewitnesses said.
The latest Israeli attacks came only hours after Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas called for an "immediate ceasefire" in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories after talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"The aggression against the Gaza Strip and the West Bank must stop immediately, followed by a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks," he said.
The US top diplomat echoed a similar call.
"It is important to end the Gaza crisis. We need to be able to make progress because the Palestinian people have lived too long in violence and the daily humiliations that go along with the circumstances here."
Living conditions for the 1.4 million people in densely-packed Gaza Strip have badly deteriorated since the West suspended direct aid to the Hamas-led government, plunging the coastal territory deeper into financial crisis.
GAZA, July 26 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from Israeli air and ground operations in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday rose to 23, Palestinian medics said.
A Palestinian woman, identified as 40-year-old Amal Oukal who had been seriously wounded by an Israeli tank shell in northern Gaza earlier in the day, died of her wounds on Wednesday night, bringing to 23 the Palestinian death toll in Gaza on Wednesday, said medics.
Her two daughters-- two-year-old Shaf Oukal and nine-year-old Mary Oukal-- were also killed in the Israeli attack.
Amal's two other daughters-- 12-year-old Ibtisam and seven-year-old Sommaya, were injured.
So far, 23 people were killed across Gaza on Wednesday, including 10 militants, nine civilians and four children, according to Mouaweya Hassanein, a Palestinian Health Ministry official.
Earlier in the day, 20 Palestinians were killed and more than 50 others wounded when dozens of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles, backed by aircraft and unmanned drones, stormed northeast of Gaza City.
About 160 Palestinians have been killed and more than 500 wounded since the beginning of the massive Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip on June 28 in a bid to free a captive soldier and stop Palestinian rocket attacks.
Israeli shells killed five people and wounded several others in the Gaza Strip on Monday, including two members of the same family who were riding a donkey cart when they were hit, Palestinian witnesses said. The dead included a 60-year-old woman and her 12-year-old grandson, medics said. The three other Palestinians who were killed Monday were standing outside an apartment building in the northern Gaza neighborhood of Beit Lahiya.
By Luciana Bohne
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Jul 26, 2006
"The Israeli air force has been ordered to hit 10 [multi-storey] buildings in south Beirut - where Hezbollah has its headquarters - for every rocket the group fires at the Israeli port of Haifa" (reported by Al-Jazeera).
For collective punishment, that ratio has a precedent: the Nazi one. The most infamous of many such involving Nazi mass vengeance and retaliation against civilians is the massacre of 335 civilians in Rome's Fosse Ardeatine (24 March 1944) for the ambush and killing of 33 German troops (23 March 1944) -- the extra five having been thrown in the bargain "by mistake."
That military ethics have reached such a level of moral degradation in the 60 years after WW II makes you wonder who won the war: The liberal democracies or the fascist axis? That such massacres as the Nazi perpetrated against defenseless civilians in WW II should be replicated by Israel's erstwhile victims through its ersatz state proves that Nazi ideology endures and has been ironically internalized by their victims.
That the Israeli military establishment can proclaim "purity of arms" while ordering indiscriminate murder of civilians is a testament to the power of self-delusion in the pursuit of genocide and aggression. That the Israeli state continues to proclaim "never again" the subjugation and genocide of Jewish people by racist regimes while mimicking the genocidal policies of that criminal regime, which welcomed European Jews to Nazi death camps with the sneering motto that "work makes one free," is a truly astounding feat of the Israeli state's legitimization and identification with their would-be butchers.
Condoleezza Rice's claim that the savaging of Lebanon by the Israeli military is evidence of "birth pangs" of a new Middle East is likewise proof that Israel's sponsor is linked to Nazi ideology -- that death is the midwife of life.
They're murderously, certifiably crazy -- dangerous enemies of humankind. And they're right to ask if we are either with them or against them, because it's really high time that we decide whose side we're on before more innocent blood is spilled.
GAZA, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Israeli warplanes pounded a house in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on late Wednesday, Palestinian witnesses said.
Meanwhile, sources in the Israeli army said that the house was believed to be a weapons warehouse used by Palestinian militants.
Local Palestinian residents said that the Israeli army had warned them to steer clear of the area before the air raid.
There was no immediate report of any casualties.
Israel launched a massive air and ground offensive into the Gaza Strip on June 28, three days after Palestinian militants killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped a third in a cross-border attack.
The Israeli army says the operation is aimed to bring home the abducted soldier and halt Palestinian rocket attacks.
JERUSALEM, July 26 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli army lifted the full closure on the West Bank on late Wednesday night, Israel's popular newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported on its website.
The report cited Israeli political sources as saying that the closure on the West Bank was lifted as of Wednesday night, but that on the Gaza Strip would continue.
The Israeli army put the West Bank under the closure a week ago, citing intelligence that Palestinian militants there might carryout a bomb attack inside Israel.
The Gaza Strip has been sealed since Palestinian militant skilled two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped a third during a cross-border attack on June 25.
But the report said that humanitarian deliveries would be permitted to go into Gaza.
Israel has continued an almost-one-month-old massive air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip in a bid to rescue the abducted soldier and halt Palestinian rocket attacks.
A Lebanese civil defence member helps a civilian evacuating a young Lebanese girl injured in an air strike on her home in the southern port city of Tyre. Photo: AFP
Israel has launched a heavy air and artillery bombardments in Lebanon in response to the deaths of nine Israeli soldiers in the Jewish state's worst 24 hours for casualties in the 16-day-old conflict against Hezbollah.
Israeli warplanes reportedly hit a Lebanese army base and destroyed communication masts north of Beirut and attacked three trucks carrying medical and food supplies to the east, killing two drivers, security sources said.
A relay station belonging to Lebanese state radio was also reportedly bombed north of Beirut early today.It wasn't immediately apparent whether the attack was by air or sea.
The privately owned Lebanese Broadcasting Corp TV station said Israeli jets struck the army base at Aamchit, 50km along the Beirut-Tripoli highway north of the Lebanese capital near the coast and knocked down a relay tower in an adjacent field of antennas belonging to Radio Liban.
Other Israeli aircraft blasted targets in and around several villages and towns in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim south, and artillery batteries opened up from Israel's side of the border.
House-to-house fighting
Hezbollah guerrillas killed nine Israeli soldiers in house-to-house fighting in a border town and a nearby village yesterday, as senior international diplomats failed at a Rome conference to agree on calling for an immediate ceasefire.
An Israeli general said the offensive, which has killed 433 Lebanese, mostly civilians, would go on "for several more weeks". The fighting began on July 12 when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid.
