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Signs Editorials
Editorial: Blair Government Concocts Terror Threat - Scares British People Into Silence
Joe Quinn
Signs of the Times
10/08/2006
Yawn! Even if I wasn't actually tired, that would still be my response to
the latest "terror alert" from the UK government office of Machiavellian
nonsense. I mean, seriously, at what point do people start to smell a rat?
Is the mass mind of the British public destined to be forever child-like and
easily scared, or does the threat of the boogeyman eventually wear off? I mean,
how many times can you arrest a group of patsies and claim that they were planning
to attack the British public before people begin to wonder if you are just
making it up?
Allegedly, the plot involved using carry on luggage to blow up 10 planes on
routes from the UK to the US. Exactly how the "terrorists" were going
to disguise bombs in hand luggage in such a way that they would not be seen
by x-ray machines that are used as standard at all UK airports remains a mystery.
Overnight, 21
homegrown British Muslims were rounded up and flung into a cell for
being Muslim and therefore likely patsy candidates for MI5's most recent "terrorism" stitch
up. There, they will wait for British securocrats to put the final touches
to the made-up "evidence" against them, which will then be presented
by British securocrats to themselves and later selectively released to the
fawning mainstream media.
Referring to the alleged plot Deputy police Commissioner Paul Stephenson followed
the script, like all good little Police Commissioners should, saying:
"This
was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale."
Strangely enough
however, over the past 3 weeks, the whole world (minus Deputy Commissioner
Paul Stephenson apparently) has not only been imagining but watching in almost
real time the mass murder of at least 1,000 Lebanese civilians by Israel. Then
again, Lebanese are all terrorists anyway according to Israel and its UK and
US partners in crime.
It is, of course, a massive and uncanny coincidence (to which you should
pay not attention whatsoever) that this "terror
alert" comes just a week after UK home secretary John Reid's anti-terror
campaign was dealt
a serious blow when Britain's three most senior judges ruled
that Reid's "virtual house arrest" powers were incompatible with
human rights law. Why was the Blair government attempting to give itself powers
that violated human rights laws? Well, because the Blair government seems to
enjoy violating human rights laws and scaring the British people
into believing they will benefit from draconian legislation that will
ultimately be used against them.
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| Feel the fear and know WHY you need us. |
Interestingly, it was just yesterday that Reid, speaking to the London Think
Tank Demos, stated in response to the ruling that "traditional concepts of individual rights and freedom are outmoded in the face of the 21st century terror threat." Reid failed to mention however that the terror threat was entirely fabricated by members of the American British and Israeli intelligence services and other unnamed government back room boys.
Reid further stated that Britain might have to modify its freedoms in order to fight an "unconstrained enemy" which posed the "most severe and sustained threat since the end of World War II".
Hitler killed the Jews, Osama wants to kill everyone. See? It's the same thing.
Reid continued: "It is up to each and all of us to ask the questions – what
price security? At what cost preservation of freedom?"
Off the record, Reid continued: "At what cost the preservation of freedom?
Freedom itself? If we we need to remove freedom in order to
preserve it, is that not the best thing to do to secure it? Think about it.
You need to give up your freedoms to retain your freedom. What's so difficult
to understand about that? When challenged
that he was simply parroting the nonsensical rhetoric of the Bush regime
Reid countered:
"Terrorism Terrorists, Terrorists Terrorism. Islamic
Terrorism, Kill Death Bombs Attacks, Terrorism Terrorists, Terrorists Terrorism.
Islamic Terrorism. Hate us because of our Freedom, Take Freedom away. Fear,
Obey government, Freedom Secured, Take Away Freedom, Terrorism, Freedom Safe.
Terrorism Terrorists, Terrorists Terrorism. Islamic Terrorism, Bomb Bomb
Bomb Kill Death Fear."
We should remember that, on the anniversary of the July 7 suicide bombings,
London's police chief Ian Blair (who ordered and then covered up the murder
of innocent Brazilian electrician Charles de Menezes last year) said the threat
had "palpably increased" in the year following the attacks on the capital and
that "further atrocities" were being planned. Self-fulfilling prophecy? Blair
did not, however, say who was planning the atrocities, leaving open
the very real possibility (supported by the many inconsistencies in the official
report on the July 7th train bombings in London) that Blair himself is part
of the cabal plotting fake terror attacks on the British public. Hey, wouldn't
be the first time.
As for the passengers stranded at UK airports; MI5's psyops manual dictates
that, whenever possible, humiliation should be used to aid the process of melding
the minds of the masses towards a strong belief in the reality of fantasy.
To this end, any sheeple foolish enough to attempt to fly from a UK airport
today are being forbidden from taking any hand luggage onboard and are being
given clear plastic bags for things like their wallets and keys, essential
medication unboxed sanitary items etc.
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| Clear plastic - soon to be the new citizens uniform in the UK? |
It may yet be suggested that, on boarding, each
passenger should hold up his little clear plastic bag and loudly declare "look,
it's only my wallet and keys, I am not a terrorist." At which point the
cabin crew should ask: "Are you sure you are not a terrorist?" To
which each passenger in turn will have to respond: "Yes, I am sure I
am not a terrorist because I am not Muslim." Female passengers would be
required to make a statement to the effect that tampons, clearly visible in
their little plastic bags, are not sticks of dynamite.
Muslim passengers however, are a different kettle of fish altogether, as we
all already know. They will be required to leave open the possibility that
they are indeed terrorists by affirming:
"While I believe I am not a terrorist, and the clearly observable contents
of my little clear plastic bag would seem to suggest as much, since I am a
Muslim, I may be harboring terroristic tendencies of which I am not consciously
aware. As such, I would ask all non-Muslim passengers to please view me
and may actions with extreme suspicion. Thank you, and god bless the Queen
and Tony Blair."
For his part, the sniveling, whiny nerd that is Tony Blair, in true colonial
style, is currently enjoying the hospitality of the natives in Barbados on
his annual holiday, while also "keeping in touch" with developments
and being regularly informed of national scareometer levels. Blair also took
the step of briefing Bush on the situation, and is reported to have told him
that he knows jack squat about the situation since it was all made up anyway,
but that the British public have once again been successfully cowed by a non-existent
government-promoted "terror threat".
Director of US Homeland Buffoonery Michael Chertoff seemed
to know more however, stating that the London Plot was "sophisticated,
it had a lot of members and it was international in scope, it was in some respects
suggestive of an al-Qaida plot."
The "respects" in which the plot was "suggestive of al-Qaeda" appear
to be the fact that ordinary Muslims were involved because, as you and I know,
all 1 billion Muslims are terrorists. Chertoff however, understands this fact
better than anyone.
The son of a Rabbi and himself an ardent Zionist, Chertoff holds dual Israeli-American
nationality and, despite this, was unanimously approved by the US Senate for
the post of "Homeland Security Chief" on February 15th 2005. Indeed,
it is this background that makes Chertoff eminently capable of distinguishing
a terrorist from someone who poses no threat to the American people. For example,
Chertoff's previous post was as head of the criminal division at the Department
of Justice where he "helped trace the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the al-Qaida
network." And what a fine job he did! In late 2001, Chertoff wasted no
time in concluding that the 5 Israeli Mossad agents who were detained after
being spotted filming, laughing and cheering the collapse of the twin towers
on 9/11 should be released and sent back to Israel. Chertoff was also responsible
for freeing the over 100 members of an exposed
Israeli spy ring in the US in
the months before the 9/11 attacks.
So take it from me, there are good people on the job;
people in the know; people with their fingers on the pulse, or rather up
the back of, the Islamic terrorism puppet show. Your job is to simply consent to the
abolition of your civil freedoms. Of course, your government could just take
those freedoms away from you, but it's nicer all round and helps to maintain
the charade of Democracy - "the worship of Jackals by Jackasses" - if you can
be scared into asking for it.
Comment on this Editorial
Editorial: Flashback: Did Israel Attack The United States With Chertoff's Aid?
Phillip Yardley
Portland Indymedia
11/02/2005
It is a little known, but historical fact that Israel has attacked the United States several times. Yet, we now know that our New Homeland Security Chief helped Israel to do so.
In 1954, Israeli agents working in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including a United States diplomatic facility, and left evidence behind implicating Arabs as the culprits. The ruse would have worked, had not one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to capture and identify one of the bombers, which in turn led to the round up of an Israeli spy ring.
Some of the spies were from Israel, while others were recruited from the local Jewish population. Israel responded to the scandal with claims in the media that there was no spy ring, that it was all a hoax perpetrated by "anti-Semites". But as the public trial progressed, it was evident that Israel had indeed been behind the bombing. Eventually, Israeli's Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon was brought down by the scandal, although it appears that he was himself the victim of a frame-up by the real authors of the bombing project, code named "Operation Susannah."
On June 8, 1967, thirty-four fine young American boys died while defending the U.S.S. Liberty against a sustained air and sea attack by the armed forces of the State of Israel. Yes, during the Six Day War between Israel and the Arab States, the American intelligence ship USS Liberty was attacked for 75 minutes in international waters by Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats. Thirty-four men died and 172 were wounded.
The U.S.S. Liberty was damaged beyond repair and scrapped.
Survivors and many key government officials including Secretary of State Dean Rusk and former Joint Chief of Staffs Chairman, Admiral Thomas Moorer say it was a deliberate act of war.
On June 15, 1986, The United States attacked Muammar Khadaffi. But according to Victor Ostrovsky, a Mossad defector now living in Canada, Ronald Reagan was tricked into bombing Libya by means of a radio transmitter smuggled into Tripoli by the Mossad, which broadcast messages designed to fool the United States into thinking Libya was about to launch a massive terror attack on the west. On the basis of this fake evidence, the US bombed Libya, killing Khadaffi's daughter. Is Victor Ostrovsky correct?
More recently, the FBI, CIA, Secret Service and DEA found the most significant foreign espionage ring ever discovered in the history of the United States. It was a huge spy ring of hundreds of Israelis who penetrated the highest echelons of American intelligence agencies and the American military as reported by Carl Cameron on Fox News Network's Brit Hume Show, December 12, 2002. In a corresponding broadcast on MSNBC, titled U.S. Busts Israeli Spy Ring, March 5, 2002, it was reported that approximately 200 Israeli agents were apprehended for attempting to penetrate the Justice Department, the U.S. judiciary system, several military bases, the FBI, the DEA, the INS and the CIA.
And it was our new Homeland Security Chief, Michael Chertoff, hand-picked by President Bush, who set them free without being charged. Why? Was it because Michael Chertoff's American patriotisms are subordinate to Zionist sympathies?
It is true, if I may respectfully say so, that many Jews appear to hold such ancient allegiances. And, it is also true that Jews salute the Israeli flag; I've discovered this upon conducting secondary research (writings found in the library) and primary research (in-person interviews with Jews who are American citizens who regularly salute the Israeli flag).
Does Micheal Chertoff salute the Israeli flag?
Nevertheless, for many months, members of this Israeli spy ring shadowed half of the September 11th hijackers as well as their leader, Mohammed Atta. In fact, five of these Israeli spies were so carefully watching Mohammed Atta that they actually resided on the same street where he lived in Hollywood, Florida. It is also known that Israeli intelligence penetrated the entire telephone network of the United States. And, in a brazen act of treason, an Israeli company was given the contract to conduct official wiretaps of all U.S. Government surveillance. Yes, as amazing as it seems, an Israeli company directly funded by the Israeli government and with ties to Mossad, Israel's spy agency the motto of which is "Winning Wars Through Deception", was given the contract to provide all the surveillance and wiretaps conducted by the United States Government. This gave Israel the technical ability to wiretap virtually any telephone in the United States including phone lines of U.S. law enforcement officers. Indeed, records reveal that a powerful Israeli drug organization in the United States escaped prosecution because of this Israeli control of our phone systems because the Israelis tapped the telephone conversations of the law enforcement personnel who were investigating them. This was also reported by Carl Cameron on the Fox News Network during the Brit Hume Show that aired December12, 1002.
What is more, during the September 11th attack, five men were caught standing on their van with binoculars focused on the World Trade Center while their companions videoed and enthusiastically celebrated the tragedy. They were apprehended by the FBI, discovered to be Israeli agents in possession of false passports, large sums of cash and a number of box cutters. The FBI held them for months during which time each and every one failed lie detector tests. After their release by Michael Chertoff, our new Homeland Security Chief, they fled to Israel.
Now, what would cause these Israeli spies to cheer upon seeing what was a nightmare for others? To hear about the attack of September 11th or to see it televised put most of us in mild shock. But they saw it in person and from only a few miles. Yet, for them, it caused glee. Why? Why would government agents of our closest ally to whom we have freely given $90 billion, far more than any other country, along with unqualified friendship and unqualified protection find joy in our darkest hour?
There can be no question that their behavior was inspired by specific and pertinent knowledge attached to the event. To be sure, they must have known who was responsible and who would benefit. They certainly appeared to be celebrating a victory. Apparently, they believed that the September 11th attack would be good for Israel, for it would make their enemies our enemies; we would become allies to them in their war against the Arab world, particularly, their greatest threat, Iraq; and as a byproduct of our war mentality, it would be easier for Israel to prosecute its war against Palestine. I feel it is fatuously obvious this was the cause of their celebration atop that van.
It is also more than a little peculiar that no Israelis died in the World Trade Center attack. Although the President, in his State of the Union Address shortly after September 11th, stated that 130 Israelis died in the attack, he was incorrect. For not a single Israeli citizen died in the World Trade Center. This in spite of the fact that, on the morning after the attack, the Jerusalem Post reported 4,000 Israelis were believed to be in the area of the World Trade Center. Please see the September 11, 2001 Jerusalem Post article titled, Thousands of Israelis Missing Near WTC, Pentagon. Then on September 22, 2002, The New York Times later reduced the 130 casualties to one single casualty in an article by Eric Lipton titled, Estimates of Toll May Be Too High. Presently, most reports state that no Israelis, whatsoever, died on that awful day.
No Israeli casualties in the World Trade Center would be simply impossible, it seems, unless the Israeli Government received prior warning of the attack and, in turn, relayed the warning to some of the Israelis at the World Trade Center. Ten days after Bush's State of the Union Speech, the FBI confirmed that warning messages of the impending attack were, in fact, received by an Israeli firm, Odigo, at its offices located in both Israel and in the World Trade Center. The article titled, Odigo Says Workers Were Warned of Attack, written by Yuval Dror was published in the September 29th, 2001 edition of Ha'aretz, one of Israel's most prominent newspapers.
The evidence appears to be unambiguous. Israel must have known of the World Trade Center attack well in advance, and then in a startlingly act of murderous betrayal warned its nationals while letting Americans die horrific deaths. Yes, apparently Israel cold-heartedly stood by as Americans died while it could have easily warned them. But then, evidently, that is what Israel wanted. As mentioned before, Israel wanted the September11th tragedy for it would garner American support for Ariel Sharon's agenda against Islamic nations, especially Palestine, Iraq and Iran. That is why the Israeli spies were rejoicing at our countrymen's death on September 11th.
Is this a formula? Is September 11th related to the Iraqi War as is the Lusitania to World War I and Pearl Harbor to World War II? To be sure, many historians now believe the sinking of the Lusitania and the attack of Pearl Harbor were staged with Roosevelt's and Churchill's knowledge.
Was September 11th another case of an Israeli terror attack upon the United States like the Lavon Affiar and the attack of the U.S.S. Liberty?
Of course, the Israelis are using our money, our weapons and the lives of our young men to achieve their agenda. Ten thousand of our finest people have been maimed for life and well over one thousand have died in Iraq. Yet, unlike Israel, Iraq has, paradoxically, never committed an act of war or terror against the United States.
And, Michael Chertoff is keeping watch over us. Or is he just watching us?
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Editorial: God's chosen people
Jostein Gaarder
Aftenposten
05.08.06
There is no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize the state of Israel. We could not recognize the South African apartheid regime, nor did we recognize the Afghan Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein's Iraq or the Serbs' ethnic cleansing. We must now get used to the idea: The state of Israel in its current form is history.
We do not believe in the notion of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's fancies and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.
Limits to tolerance
There are limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance. We do not believe in divine promises as justification for occupation and apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind. We laugh uneasily at those who still believe that the God of flora, fauna, and galaxies has selected one people in particular as his favorite and given it funny stone tablets, burning bushes, and a license to kill.
We call child murderers 'child murderers' and will never accept that such have a divine or historic mandate excusing their outrages. We say but this: Shame on all apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on every terrorist strike against civilians, be it carried out by Hamas, Hizballah, or the state of Israel!
Unscrupulous art of war
We acknowledge and pay heed to Europe's deep responsibility for the plight of the Jews, for the disgraceful harassment, the pogroms, and the Holocaust. It was historically and morally necessary for Jews to get their own home. However, the state of Israel, with its unscrupulous art of war and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically flaunted International Law, international conventions, and countless UN resolutions, and it can no longer expect protection from same. It has carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The time of trouble shall soon be over. The state of Israel has seen its Soweto.
We are now at the watershed. There is no turning back. The state of Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until it lays down its arms.
Without defense, without skin
May spirit and word sweep away the apartheid walls of Israel. The state of Israel does not exist. It is now without defense, without skin. May the world therefore have mercy on the civilian population. For it is not civilian individuals at whom our doomsaying is directed.
We wish the people of Israel well, nothing but well, but we reserve the right not to eat Jaffa oranges as long as they taste foul and are poisonous. It was endurable to live some years without the blue grapes of apartheid.
They celebrate their triumphs
We do not believe that Israel mourns forty killed Lebanese children more than it for over three thousand years has lamented forty years in the desert. We note that many Israelis celebrate such triumphs like they once cheered the scourges of the Lord as "fitting punishment" for the people of Egypt. (In that tale, the Lord, God of Israel, appears as an insatiable sadist.) We query whether most Israelis think that one Israeli life is worth more than forty Palestinian or Lebanese lives.
For we have seen pictures of little Israeli girls writing hateful greetings on the bombs to be dropped on the civilian population of Lebanon and Palestine. Little Israeli girls are not cute when they strut with glee at death and torment across the fronts.
The retribution of blood vengeance
We do not recognize the rhetoric of the state of Israel. We do not recognize the spiral of retribution of the blood vengeance with "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." We do not recognize the principle of one or a thousand Arab eyes for one Israeli eye. We do not recognize collective punishment or population-wide diets as political weapons. Two thousand years have passed since a Jewish rabbi criticized the ancient doctrine of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
He said: "Do to others as you would have them do to you." We do not recognize a state founded on antihumanistic principles and on the ruins of an archaic national and war religion. Or as Albert Schweitzer expressed it: "Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose."
Compassion and forgiveness
We do not recognize the old Kingdom of David as a model for the 21st century map of the Middle East. The Jewish rabbi claimed two thousand years ago that the Kingdom of God is not a martial restoration of the Kingdom of David, but that the Kingdom of God is within us and among us. The Kingdom of God is compassion and forgiveness.
Two thousand years have passed since the Jewish rabbi disarmed and humanized the old rhetoric of war. Even in his time, the first Zionist terrorists were operating.
Israel does not listen
For two thousand years, we have rehearsed the syllabus of humanism, but Israel does not listen. It was not the Pharisee that helped the man who lay by the wayside, having fallen prey to robbers. It was a Samaritan; today we would say, a Palestinian. For we are human first of all -- then Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. Or as the Jewish rabbi said: "And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others?" We do not accept the abduction of soldiers. But nor do we accept the deportation of whole populations or the abduction of legally elected parliamentarians and government ministers.
We recognize the state of Israel of 1948, but not the one of 1967. It is the state of Israel that fails to recognize, respect, or defer to the internationally lawful Israeli state of 1948. Israel wants more; more water and more villages. To obtain this, there are those who want, with God's assistance, a final solution to the Palestinian problem. The Palestinians have so many other countries, certain Israeli politicians have argued; we have only one.
The USA or the world?
Or as the highest protector of the state of Israel puts it: "May God continue to bless America." A little child took note of that. She turned to her mother, saying: "Why does the President always end his speeches with 'God bless America'? Why not, 'God bless the world'?"
Then there was a Norwegian poet who let out this childlike sigh of the heart: "Why doth Humanity so slowly progress?" It was he that wrote so beautifully of the Jew and the Jewess. But he rejected the notion of God's chosen people. He personally liked to call himself a Muhammedan.
Calm and mercy
We do not recognize the state of Israel. Not today, not as of this writing, not in the hour of grief and wrath. If the entire Israeli nation should fall to its own devices and parts of the population have to flee the occupied areas into another diaspora, then we say: May the surroundings stay calm and show them mercy. It is forever a crime without mitigation to lay hand on refugees and stateless people.
Peace and free passage for the evacuating civilian population no longer protected by a state. Fire not at the fugitives! Take not aim at them! They are vulnerable now like snails without shells, vulnerable like slow caravans of Palestinian and Lebanese refugees, defenseless like women and children and the old in Qana, Gaza, Sabra, and Chatilla. Give the Israeli refugees shelter, give them milk and honey!
Let not one Israeli child be deprived of life. Far too many children and civilians have already been murdered.
Translated from the Norwegian by Sirocco
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Editorial: We Are Untouchable
Tanya Cariina Hsu
10/08/2006
We are the Israeli Government. We are untouchable. No matter what we do, the international community will not act against us. Oh, there will be talks at the United Nations but we know that the United States will intervene on our behalf. There will be Arab League discussions but we know that no state will take action against us. There will be mass protests and demonstrations; there will be activists and advocates begging for peace; there will be rallies and fund-raisers to help the targets of our bombs. And we know that nothing will make a difference because we are Zionists - Jews were victims of the holocaust. Jews have suffered such that we have the right to use their suffering to make the rest of the world pay (even though organized Zionism officially declared war on Germany in 1933, long before Hitler's Final Solution and then aided the Nazis in their death camps). Because we are victims.
Yes, we know that peoples all over the world have suffered worse crimes than ours, but they were not the Chosen People. We know that over 22 million Russians were killed under Stalin, 15 million Chinese were killed by the Japanese, millions elsewhere in the world suffered the same fate in the bloodiest 20th century.
We know that Zionism is an atheist Marxist creation using Judaism and the Jewish people as its weapon; that we were founded upon terrorism and our terrorist leaders became Israel's prime ministers and Nobel Peace Prize winners; that less than 10 percent of Jews worldwide supported the Zionist cause and few do today. We know that the crimes committed by Hitler equally affected Communists, gypsies, the handicapped, and political prisoners. That does not matter - we claim that Jews are special and we shall use that claim to achieve our selfish and psychopathic aims. The rest of the world will not touch us because they are terrified of the label that we have created: "anti-Semite". World leaders are terrified of this ad hominem even though we, the leaders of the Jewish people, are mostly not Semitic people. Jews of Israel, the Sephardim Jews, were almost nonexistent when we arrived from Russia, Poland, Austria-Hungary and elsewhere in the 20th century and demanded Arab land. They had spread out and moved on. We did not come from Yemen, Ethiopia or Iraq, but who cares? We use the fact that the Jewish people were victims (with out help) and that is all that counts.
Time and again we wonder at how far American gullibility will take us. We push it to the limits on cable television and get away with it repeatedly. We know that the majority of the world is aware we blatantly lie when we express our "deepest regrets" because "terrorists" were hiding in the villages we destroyed. We even have the gall to pick the same targets as a decade ago, ignoring the cries of outrage from America and the West. We'll just repeat the mantra "a tragic mistake".
Honestly, we too are rather surprised to see that America patiently sits back and buys our words each time. We have trained our diplomats well, not only in the art of deception to the media, but by using powerful strong-arm, behind-the-scenes tactics to mold the views of US Congressmen and women in our favor.
We have worked on this for decades and it has been perfected for the one place it counts: Our bank America. We rely upon those weapons; we need to create constant conflict so as to receive a perpetual $13 billion annual aid package from the US, including unsecured loans that we have never been, nor ever will be, required to pay back. We are living a dream: What we want is given to us on a silver patter because we are the Zionist leaders of the Jews, and we have their holocaust to use and abuse as we see fit.
The above is only daring in that it is never voiced publicly in the West. The world is watching as Israel incinerates the Lebanese, next the Syrians and Palestinians, then Iran. Diplomats call for peace, a cease-fire, and negotiations. They speak the language of noncommittance. It takes a few brave men and women in leadership positions to dare to speak the truth. The leaders of the Israeli governmetn are in the position of dominating the US government to an extent never before seen in history, creating a regime who will fully fund a "new Middle East" which in reality means Eretz Israel consisting of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia and even Cyprus by some accounts.
There is nothing speculative about these plans for hegemony - everything has been laid out, written down, and presented for years. Academics who dare write the facts know that their tenured careers are over. This war will not end with a cease-fire next week. This war will not end with a security zone controlled by the UN. This war will not end if Hezbollah and Hamas disappeared tomorrow. This war will not end as long as leaders and diplomats continue to fear the trump card charge of anti-Semitism by Israel.
This war will end when the Middle East is ablaze and Jews and Muslims alike are all dead.
So when hundreds of children are torn apart by uranium-tipped missiles provided courtesy of the US government, look in the mirror. Have you dared to offend Israel? Have you risked? Have you dared to speak out against the psychopaths in power? Ask yourself what role you may have played in contributing to this global disaster. Nothing will change until you do.
Tanya Cariina Hsu is a British Saudi-US Political analyst
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Editorial: This is Zionism
Angry Arab News Service
10 August 2006
This is Zionism. Raja' Abu Sha'ban, 4, was killed by Israeli missiles in Gaza yesterday. She was caught launching missiles on Israel. Don't feel sorry for her.
Original
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Editorial: World to end on August 22
UK Guardian
Brian Whitaker
09/08/2006
While the Middle East smoulders, commentators of an apocalyptic bent are lining up for a date with Armageddon.
Better cancel those holidays. We now have a date for Armageddon, and it's a week on Tuesday - August 22.
This information comes from no lesser source than the Wall Street Journal, where Bernard Lewis, President Bush's favourite historian, provides the details.
"In Islam, as in Judaism and Christianity," the professor writes, "there are certain beliefs concerning the cosmic struggle at the end of time - Gog and Magog, anti-Christ, Armageddon, and for Shiite Muslims, the long-awaited return of the Hidden Imam, ending in the final victory of the forces of good over evil, however these may be defined.
"Mr Ahmadinejad [the Iranian president] and his followers clearly believe that this time is now, and that the terminal struggle has already begun and is indeed well advanced. It may even have a date, indicated by several references by the Iranian president to giving his final answer to the US about nuclear development by August 22. This was at first reported as 'by the end of August', but Mr Ahmadinejad's statement was more precise."
Lewis continues: "What is the significance of August 22? This year, August 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to 'the farthest mosque', usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (cf, Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and, if necessary, of the world."
This sort of quasi-religious scaremongering always finds a receptive audience in the United States, especially among Christians of the jihadist persuasion. At 90 years old, Professor Lewis may have completely lost his marbles, but he is still feted by the White House (vice-president Dick Cheney was guest of honour at his birthday party in April), and the Wall Street Journal describes him as "a sage". He is credited with coining the phrase "clash of civilisations" back in 1990 and now seems intent on making it a reality.
Nevertheless, Prof Lewis does manage to spot a few drawbacks in his alleged Iranian attempt to obliterate Israel. "An attack that wipes out Israel would almost certainly wipe out the Palestinians too," he writes.
This "might well be of concern to the Palestinians", he says, "but not apparently to their fanatical champions in the Iranian government." (He seems to be assuming here that Iran already has a fully primed nuclear arsenal, which is plainly not the case, despite what many Americans imagine.)
He then suddenly demolishes his own argument with this caveat: "It is far from certain that Mr Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for August 22."
So why, exactly, did the Iranians choose August 22 as the date for giving their answer to the US about nuclear development? Probably for bureaucratic convenience. When they promised a reply "by the end of August", they didn't actually use the word "August", but the Iranian equivalent. If you look up the Persian calendar, you'll see that August 22 just happens to be the end of the month known as Mordad.
I don't suppose this will discourage the neocons from continuing to write such loopy, prophetic nonsense. Here's another of them, Michael Ledeen, formerly a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal, and the Iraq-Niger yellowcake affair, predicting an Iranian nuclear test by November 5:
"The Iranians believe they now have all the necessary components for a nuclear bomb. The only question is how long it will take them to assemble and test it. Khamenei had hoped to be able to test an atomic bomb by the third week in October, but his scientific advisers recently told him they could not make that deadline. They are now aiming for November 4 or 5, the anniversary of the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran during the revolution.
"There is another November date our leaders should take seriously: the 25th, the anniversary of the disappearance of the twelfth imam, and thus the most significant date in the Shiite calendar. Reports from Tehran suggest that the mullahs would like to celebrate that anniversary with a big-time terrorist attack against America."
Utter tosh. Don't believe a word of it. Ledeen was not talking about this coming November, but November 2003. His original article is here.
Original
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Editorial: Neocons' Middle East Scheme Is Backfiring
by William Hughes
09 Aug 2006
"Do you represent Israel before you represent America?" - U.S. Senate Candidate Kevin Zeese's query to Rep. Ben Cardin (1)
The Neocons' scheme to destabilize the Middle East, aka "The Clean Break Document," and to create a "safer Israel" is backfiring. (2) Instead, residents of Haifa, Israel, are running for cover from the rocket attacks of Hezbollah. Hey, that wasn't in the plan! The Arabs aren't suppose to fight back. They are only suppose to serve as target practice for the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF), like in Gaza, and/or kill each other in that scripted Civil War in Iraq. Israel's unjust invasion, and attempt to seize parts of Lebanon up to the Litani River, has to date, also resulted in 118 Israeli fatalities, including the deaths of 82 of its soldiers. Yanks and Brits dying in combat in Iraq, along with tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, means little to the Neocons. Lebanon being destroyed is also inconsequential to these Wire Pullers. But, Israeli citizens and soldiers being killed, and their northern cities being damaged, well, that's something different, indeed. None of the latter was suppose to be on the "Clean Break" agenda prepared by the Neocon wise guys years ago. (2)
Enter Hezbollah! The IOF has confessed that Hezbollah is a tenacious foe. One IOF member told a Washington Post reporter: "They are the masters of the field. They know the area better than us. They know where to hide and when to move. They always know where we are." (3) Those remarks standing alone are a classic definition of a formidable guerrilla force, who are fighting on their own land, for their own country, and against a foreign enemy. The ultra-Rightist Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, responded to the strong defense being put up by Hezbollah by declaring that there will be "no limitations" on the IOF. Since Israel doesn't give a hoot about International law anyway, "El Supremo's" latest ominous threat means the IOF will stop pretending that it isn't open season on civilians. To date, the IOF has killed about 1,000 innocent Lebanese and displaced a million people from their homes with its terror air strike bombing campaign of over 8,700 sorties.
Meanwhile, our fearless leader, President George W. Bush, is hiding out at his farm in Crawford, TX. He's afraid to come out of his compound, since Cindy Sheehan, the "Gold Star Mother for Peace," is lodged down the road from him at "Camp Casey." (4) Bush's illegal war in Iraq was hatched by the cunning Neocon, Paul Wolfowitz, among others. (5) It has sent 2,598 American military personnel to their early graves and has cost the treasury $306 billion. Bush is another one who doesn't have the guts to take on Israel or its Lobby. (6) It's another sign that our Republic is on life support.
Then, there is Richard Perle! (7) He's a congenital War Hawk and one of the architects of the "Clean Break" policy statement, finalized in 1996, for the then Israeli Hard Right regime of Benjamin Netanyahu. Perle used to serve as one of the directors of the Jerusalem Post newspaper. He was also an ex-member, and chair, too, for many years, of the influential Pentagon Defense Policy Board. I have to ask, looking at just how "safe" Israel is today, thanks to the demented "Clean Break" policy: Will Perle, the Mother of All Neocons, ever be welcomed back to Israel? He has recently been pushing, probably from his villa in Southern France, for a U.S. war with Iran. This is the same repulsive character, with no conscience, who once boasted that if the Bush-Cheney Gang waged a "total war" against Iraq that "our children will sing great songs about us." (8) Every time I read that insane line I think: Doesn't this guy belong in a white coat, with a straight jacket on, and in a padded cell next to someone like - Hannibal Lecter? (9)
Closer to home, the people of Connecticut have had enough of that pious hypocrite, Joe Lieberman, another Neocon clone. He went down in flames in a Democratic Party primary on Aug. 8, 2006. Lieberman was to the Right of our soulless president on the Iraqi War. At times, he even made another Neocon, William Kristol, look like a Peacenik. Lieberman also pushed the USA Patriot Act into law, without a public hearing. At one of the first anti-Iraq War rallies that I went to in Washington, D.C., I noticed a poster sitting up against a tree, near the Potomac River. It read: "Sen. Joe Lieberman is an embarrassment to the good people of Connecticut." Truer words have never been written. If he decides to run as an independent in the general election, I hope they make him register as a member of the Likud Party. Lieberman sure knew how to represent the interests of Israel in the U.S. Congress.
Back to the Middle East. What if Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Jordan and/ or Egypt get trigger happy, like the Israelis have been over the capture of three of their soldiers? What if Russia decides to back Iran, if it is attacked by Israel or the U.S.? How far is humanity, thanks to Israel's militancy, closer to WWIII? Israel's "Clean Break" plan doesn't look so "clean" at the moment. Why would any European country want to send its troops into Southern Lebanon to serve in that so-called "buffer zone?" Do you think their citizens have forgotten what the IOF did recently to those four unarmed UN observers? And why would Hezbollah agree to disarm with a thuggish neighbor next door, like Israel? And, if the Bush-Cheney Gang attempts to use our soldiers in that role, I suspect that even our mostly cowardly U.S. Congress, perennial lapdogs for the Israel Lobby, will say "no." (When will the citizens of Maryland begin to boo U.S. Senator, Barbara A. Mikulski? She has been nearly invisible on War/Peace issues.) As for the American people, growing numbers are appalled by what Israel's Terror, Death & Mayhem Machine is doing in Gaza and Lebanon. I suggest that their feelings of outrage may soon reach a tipping point.
In fact, as a result of the gross barbarism of the IOF in Gaza and Lebanon, a Holocaust survivor, Silvia Tennenbaum, was moved to speak out in an insightful Op Ed piece for Newsday. She wrote: "Would the author of 'Survival in Auschwitz,' Primo Levi, or the poet Paul Celan demand that we slaughter the innocents in a land far from snow-clad forests of Poland? Is it a heroic act to murder a child, even the child of an enemy? Are my brethren glad of it and proud?...I am heartsick, and still I see a glimmer of hope...If Israel had worked for peace as hard as it has worked for war, might it not all be settled now?...The time is long overdue for Jews to return to their role as the world's conscience, who come to the aid of the dispossessed, the wretched of the earth. Once again, we must join those who demand the end to unjust wars-in Iraq, as well as Lebanon- and an unjust occupation in Gaza..." (10)
On the media front, windbag Bill O'Reilly got a surprise when he recently invited Noura Erakat, an eloquent advocate for Palestinian human rights on his show. She told him: "I don't think that our viewers know that Israel actually occupied Lebanon for 18 years and that in the past six years alone it has launched 11,782 missiles over the Lebanese border...Did Americans know that? Did they know?" (11) Erakat, who spoke passionately at a demonstration in front of the State Department, in response to the Qana Massacre, on July 31, 2006, in Washington, D.C., is emerging as the Bernadette Devlin of Arab- America. (12)
Finally, as you pay $3-plus for a gallon of gas, remember the U.S. didn't have any enemies in the Middle East, until Israel was created in 1948. (13) Also, its right of self-defense isn't a license for it to slaughter people indiscriminately, Baltimore's Mayor Martin O'Malley's opinion to the contrary. (14) George Galloway, British MP, and a magnificent Celt, has said that most people in the world see "Israel as a terrorist state." (15) The last question is this: What are you, relying on your own conscience as a guide, going to do about this Neocon-Israeli-instigated horror story? (16)
Notes:
- http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/ 2006/08/04/kevin_zeese_challenges_rep_cardin_on_isr
- http://irmep.org/Policy_Briefs/3_27_2003_Clean_Break_or_Dirty_War.html
- "Israeli Soldiers Find a Tenacious Foe in Hezbollah," Jonathan Finer, Washington Post, 08/08/06.
- http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/13598
- http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp? articleID=7970
- http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011/% 24File/rwp_06_011_walt.pdf
- http://batr.net/neoconwatch/archives/ 2004_12_01_neoconswatch_archive.html
- Perle's Interview on PBS's "Wide Angle," on 07/11/02.
- http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/editorials/
signs20060807_Hope.php
- "Why Doesn't Israel Work for Peace?," Silvia Tennenbaum, 08/04/06, Newsday.
- http://wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/2006/08/did-you-know- that-israel.html
- http://boston.indymedia.org/newswire/display/186739/index.phph 1
- http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/32357
- Check out the George Galloway interview video, here: http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0%2C%2C31200-galloway_060806%2C00.html
- http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/13250/index.php 16. http://informationclearinghouse.info/article14273.htm
© William Hughes 2006.
William Hughes is the author of "Saying 'No' to the War Party" (IUniverse, Inc.). He can be reached at liamhughes@comcast.net.
ORIGINA
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Editorial: It is Lebanon, not Israel, that faces a threat to its existence in this war
Ahmad Samih Khalidi
Thursday August 10, 2006
The Guardian
The Franco-US resolution is an absurdity: it would give Israel immunity while denying Lebanon the right to defend itself
As Lebanon is brought to its knees, and Israeli leaders promise yet more of the same, there is something truly extraordinary about the manner in which the war on Lebanon is being portrayed as a war for Israel's survival, as if it were the existence of the Jewish state that were at risk.
Whatever else it may be, this is a war between palpable unequals: a giant nuclear-armed power with the most advanced western military hardware and a potential ground force of up to 650,000 trained men, against a tiny third-world guerrilla force of around 5,000 fighters, armed largely with second-hand former eastern bloc hardware (the first Katyusha rockets were developed in the early 1940s) and castoffs from Iran and Syria.
The idea that the latter can pose an existential threat to the former, under any foreseeable circumstances, is risible at best and disingenuous at worst. While it can hardly be comfortable for northern Israel's civilian population to be forced into shelters for four weeks, the physical safety of the overwhelming majority - unlike that of their counterparts in much of Lebanon - has never been seriously at stake. And while Hizbullah's supposed targeting of Israeli civilians has yielded relatively few victims, Israel's repeated "mistakes" in Lebanon have maintained a civilian death rate of about 100 Lebanese to every three Israelis. The opposite side of this coin is that while Israel's hi-tech "surgical strikes" have killed hundreds more civilians than Hizbullah fighters, the Lebanese resistance's low-tech weapons have killed about three times as many Israeli soldiers as civilians.
After yesterday's decision to expand the ground war all the way up to the Litani river and beyond, Israel's constantly shifting war plan is now moving away from its initial relatively cautious phase and has plunged headlong into grand-scale politico-strategic engineering. What Israel now seeks is less of a secure border, and more of a major rearrangement of the Lebanese domestic scene that will crush resistance not only in Lebanon, but by extension in Palestine as well, and wherever else it may exist across the seething Arab Muslim world.
If Hizbullah, as many have argued, is indeed the people of south Lebanon and the voice of Shia Lebanese empowerment, then the Israelis seem to believe that the best means of defeating them is to disperse them, uproot the communities in which they thrive, and destroy the infrastructure that sustains them and provides them with their means of livelihood.
That is why Israel has been pounding away at the Shia areas of south Beirut that Hizbullah evacuated even before the bombing began. That is why it is attacking Shia population centres in the Beka'a valley in the east of the country. And that is why it is deliberately depopulating south Lebanon, driving almost a million civilians northwards in the hope of destroying what remains of the area's infrastructure, so as to make it impossible for its residents to return home any time in the near future. As in Gaza - which has been hit by 12,000 artillery shells over the past six weeks - Israel is creating a system of free fire and buffer zones, where it will be free to act in response to any "provocation".
Sadly, there is really not much new here. Depopulation is a longstanding Israeli expedient, used sometimes for grand strategic purposes, as in the 1948 war in Palestine, and at other times for less grandiose aims, but no less painfully, as in Lebanon in the 1978, 1982 and 1996 invasions.
The difference this time is in the purposeful destruction of the social and economic structure of the south, and the rest of the country. With no popular sea to swim in, Hizbullah's fighters will have been denied a secure social base for a long time to come. And now there seems to be the additional goal of creating a new socio-demographic reality in Lebanon, one that will make an impact on the already fragile domestic confessional and sectarian balance. After "cleansing" the south, Israel expects the rest of Lebanon, with support from the international community, to continue the elimination of Hizbullah - politically if possible, but by force of arms if necessary.
The fact is that it is now Lebanon that faces an existential threat. And with that comes the threat of a serious meltdown in the Levant that will have inevitable repercussions, from Syria to Iraq with its disaffected Shia masses. And it is precisely because of these grave dangers that the initial Franco-US draft security council resolution is so outrageous.
The draft effectively gives immunity to Israel's occupying forces, denies Hizbullah, or any other Lebanese party, the right to resist the continued violation of Lebanese sovereignty and soil, says not a word about an Israeli withdrawal, and does nothing to bring the population back to their homes and thus safeguard Lebanon's domestic balance and political future.
How any of this could be expected to appeal to the Lebanese, how an undefeated Hizbullah is meant to concur, and how this could have been seen as "a step in the right direction" as suggested by prime minister Blair, beggars belief. And why the strongest military power in the region needs another layer of defence via an international force, to secure it from the weakest and least powerful party in the area, is simply beyond argument or reason.
The only conclusion must be that the real purpose of the British-backed Franco-US manoeuvre is a deliberate and calculated western attempt to rescue Israel's ill-conceived war from the jaws of political and moral defeat. It is also meant to threaten the Lebanese with dire consequences for refusing to rise up against the party that is defending their very soil and homes. And it is further intended to send a message to Tehran and Damascus that those who act with such violence in Lebanon, as well as Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, are ready to do the same in Iran and Syria as well.
The UN may yet come to its senses, and stitch together a resolution that has a minimum chance of success. Its initial, absurd draft may have been intended to produce a second modified draft that the Arabs, Lebanese and Hizbullah would find very hard to refuse.
But even if Lebanon survives intact, the hatred of its battered and bloodied population for those on the other side of the border will have intensified, and a whole new generation of Lebanese will have grown up knowing nothing of Israel but its pitiless aerial bombardment and indiscriminate destruction. Far from being a war for its survival, Israel has by its actions over the past month only increased the long-term threat to its own security.
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No News Is Good News For Israel
Israel says BBC not reporting war fairly
Jerusalem Post
By Gill Hoffman
10/08/06
The Foreign Ministry is under pressure from Israeli citizens to resume its boycott of the BBC and to withdraw credentials from its reporters due to "one-sided" reports on the war in Lebanon, Israeli diplomatic officials said Wednesday.
For seven months during a wave of Palestinian violence in 2003, Israeli officials boycotted BBC news programs, declining interviews and excluding BBC reporters from briefings. The boycott was ended after the BBC appointed a panel to oversee its Middle East coverage and to ensure it would be unbiased.
The diplomatic officials said the network had not been reporting the war fairly. Senior diplomatic officials in Jerusalem went as far as saying that "the reports we see give the impression that the BBC is working on behalf of Hizbullah instead of doing fair journalism."
Foreign Ministry Deputy Director-General for Media and Public Affairs Gideon Meir, who declined to comment for this article, spoke on Channel 1 about a column that appeared in The Times of London on July 24 in which Stephen Pollard wrote that a BBC program appeared to have been written by Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
"The BBC's coverage has been overwhelmingly one-sided, with presenters and reporters editorializing against what they universally refer to as 'Israeli attacks on Lebanon,'" Pollard wrote.
Col. (res.) Miri Eisen, who is set to take over as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokeswoman on August 20, called the BBC "the only international English-speaking news outlet that is downright hostile to Israel on every level." Eisen told an audience from the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey on Wednesday that the BBC's coverage was fair during the first week of the war, but then the network moved its anchors from Haifa to Beirut, and since then it has been similar to Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya.
A Foreign Ministry official said the ministry had compiled a dossier of reports from Lebanon by BBC senior correspondent Jeremy Bowen that officials consider biased.
The BBC press office issued a statement in response.
"Our duty is to provide independent reporting and analysis of all perspectives of a story, so our audiences can make sense of what's going on in the world," the press office said.
"There can be times when this is misread by one or other side of a debate. However, this is not to suggest that we do not take complaints extremely seriously; we do. It is also worth noting that the recent independent panel set up by the (BBC) Board of Governors found no deliberate or systematic bias in the BBC's coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict."
Comment: Ahhh... the poor Israeli government! Is the already pro-Israel BBC showing too many pictures of dead Lebanese children? Coverage not 100% biased towards Israel? What a shame! Only thing to do is boycott them until they come up to the mark.
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ADL: Annan one-sided
Ynet
Itzhak Benhorin
10/08/06
WASHINGTON - The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is expected to publish an ad in the New York Times in which it harshly slams UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The organization accuses Annan of being blatantly one-sided against Israel and of the human tragedies taking place in Israel and Lebanon.
The American organization directly appealed to the UN secretary-general, asking: "How many more Israeli civilians must die before you condemn Hizbullah? And when will you extend condolences to Israeli victims?"
ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman accused Annan of being one-sided in terms of the Israel-Hizbullah conflict. In a letter to the UN secretary-general, ADL expressed its fury over the fact that the UN Human Rights Council had scheduled a special meeting, following a request made by Arab states and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, aimed at condemning Israel.
"While you clearly are not at a loss for words when it comes to criticizing and denouncing Israel, a member state of the United Nations, you seen unable to muster an equally strong voice to denounce the daily firing by the terrorist organization Hizbullah of hundreds of rockets into Israel specifically aimed at and intended to kill and maim civilians," ADL leaders said in the letter to Annan.
Annan: Israeli violations of international law
ADL has been following Annan's remarks and decided to publish the ad following a statement he issued on Tuesday, in which he accused Israel of "a pattern of violations of international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law, committed during the course of the current hostilities."
Since the onset of the fighting between Hizbullah and Israel, Annan has been reportedly one-sided in his reactions. After the Israel Defense Forces accidentally killed four UNIFIL observers, Annan accused Israel of intentionally killing the four, before the incident was event inquired.
When reports on the Qana village killing began pouring in, the UN secretary-general decided to convene a special Security Council meeting. Eventually it turned out that Hizbullah's claims that 60 civilians were killed in the strike were false, and only 26 bodies were found in the area.
Israeli sources noted that throughout the war Annan chose not to issue a statement on the harm caused to Israel. The secretary-general failed to address the heavy rocket barrage that hit Haifa or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call to destroy Israel .
Annan's term as UN secretary-general is expected to end in January.
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Flashback: Israeli Censor Wielding Great Power
Thursday July 20, 2006
Associated Press Writer
JERUSALEM (AP) - Here's some news you may never hear about Israel's war against Hezbollah: a missile falls into the sea, a strategic military installation is hit, a Cabinet minister plans to visit the front lines.
All these topics are subject to review by Israel's chief military censor, who has - in her own words - "extraordinary power." She can silence a broadcaster, block information and put journalists in jail.
"I can, for example, publish an order that no material can be published. I can close a newspaper or shut down a station. I can do almost anything," Col. Sima Vaknin said Wednesday.
Israel believes that as a small country in a near constant state of conflict, having a say over what information gets out to the world is vital to its security. Critics say the policy is a slippery slope not fit for a democracy.
The range of issues subject to censorship in the latest conflict with Lebanese guerrillas are all related to the goal of preventing Hezbollah from using the media to help it better aim rockets at Israel.
The Associated Press has agreed, like other organizations, to abide by the rules of the censor, which is a condition for receiving permission to operate as a media organization in Israel.
Reporters are expected to censor themselves and not report any of the forbidden material. This story was not submitted to a censor. When in doubt, they can submit a story to the censor who will hand it back, possibly with deletions. The AP will note in a story if any deletions have been made. If a reporter violates the rules, he or she suffers the consequences.
The rules include no real-time reports giving the exact locations of guerrilla missile hits; no reports of missile hits - or misses - on strategic targets; and no reports telling when citizens are allowed to leave their bunkers for supplies.
Journalists are also not allowed to give details about senior Israeli officials going to the north, where Hezbollah's rockets are falling, until the officials have left the area. They also cannot report places where there aren't enough shelters or where public defense is weak.
So far in this conflict, about one rocket in 100 fired by Hezbollah has killed an Israeli. The rest usually explode in empty fields, tear concrete from abandoned streets or plunk into the Mediterranean. Fired blind, Hezbollah's thousands of mostly short-range, inaccurate munitions simply pose a random peril to Israeli citizens.
For obvious reasons, Israel would like to keep it that way. But live media feedback, the censor says, changes everything.
If a news outlet reports immediately that a missile splashed into the sea, for example, any guerrilla with an Internet connection knows to aim left. Report that an oil refinery in Haifa went up in flames, and Hezbollah will surely celebrate and reload. Report that a senior official is headed north, and rockets will be raining down in no time.
Or so goes the logic of censorship.
But in an era when mobile phones have cameras and the terrorists' weapons include laptops and video crews, even the chief censor acknowledges that a complete blockade of news is in many cases not possible.
"Not in 2006,'' she says.
Restrictions on the media are not unique to Israel. The United States military makes journalists embedded with troops in Iraq sign a document agreeing not to report specifics of troop movements and attacks in real time, for reasons similar to Israel's.
Critics say the censorship system is worse than ineffective - it's undemocratic, often counterproductive and a violation of freedom of speech.
"People are entitled to get as much information as they can about what's happening in a conflict,'' says Rohan Jahasekera, associate editor of the London-based magazine, the Index of Censorship.
Israel's censorship rules are not unusual, he adds, but "it's unusual in that they're enforced.''
Jahasekera also disputed arguments that reporting missile landings helped Hezbollah, since the rockets the Islamic militants use are "spectacularly inaccurate.''
Bob Steele, Nelson Scholar for Journalism Values at the Poynter Institute, a media studies organization, says editors should bear the responsibility for decisions to publish or not.
"These are decisions that the news organizations and journalists should make with the input of government and military officials,'' he said. "They should not be decisions that are made by default.''
"We should always push back on censorship,'' Steele adds, even if it's a losing fight.
Comment: She can also deny Israeli Jews the FACT that their government has manipulated the current crisis and that it is engaged in ethnic cleansing of the Lebanese.
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Israel renews bombardment on southern Lebanon - TV
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-10 05:42:26
CAIRO, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- Israel renewed its bombardment against southern Lebanon Wednesday night, the pan-Arab al-Jazeera satellite channel reported.
Explosions were heard in southern Lebanon in the footage of al-Jazeera.
Meanwhile, Israel's newspaper Ha'aretz reported that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began operation against eastern section of Lebanon security zone.
The fresh raid came about two hours after Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech that its group's ability to fire rockets against Israeli cities was not harmed by an over-four-week-long Israeli offensive.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Israeli security cabinet approved expanding the army's ground operations in south Lebanon, under which Israeli troops are to push to the Litani River, about 20 km from the Israel-Lebanon border, local media reported.
Over 100 Israelis and about 1,000 Lebanese have been killed in the 29 days of violence so far since Israel-Hezbollah violence was erupted on July 12 when the Shiite group kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others.
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Israeli jets strike Beirut and Bekaa
Thursday 10 August 2006, 13:43 Makka Time, 10:43 GMT
Israeli warplanes have continued their raids on Lebanon, hitting a historic lighthouse in densely populated west Beirut and killing one man in the eastern Bekaa Valley.
A disused lighthouse in the heart of the Lebanese capital was hit by Israeli strikes on Thursday, damaging the top of the French colonial-era structure.
Local television showed live video of the damage, with part of the tower's roof blown off.
The strike was the first on Beirut proper since Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary-general of Hezbollah, issued a warning to Israel on August 4, saying that his fighters would fire rockets at Tel Aviv if Israel hit the Lebanese capital.
An Israeli drone also fired a missile into a minibus driving in the eastern Bekaa Valley, killing one person and wounding 12, residents said.
The attack occurred near the town of Rayak, about 5km east of the provincial capital of Zahle.
Another air strike targeted a road linking the city of Baalbek, traditionally a Hezbollah stronghold, with the Syrian city of Homs, witnesses said.
Leaflets
Israeli warplanes also dropped leaflets over northern Lebanon for the first time on Thursday, warning trucks off a coastal road linking Lebanon to Syria, residents said.
The single page document read: "Any pick-up or truck of any kind moving on the coastal road as of 8pm. (1700GMT) will be attacked because it is suspected of carrying rockets, military hardware and saboteurs.
"You must know that anyone who moves in a pick-up or truck is endangering his life."
The leaflets fell north of Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city, about 25km from the Syrian border. The area that was leafleted includes the Palestinian refugee camp of Beddawi.
It was unclear whether the curfew would be 24-hours a day, starting on Thursday night, or whether it was only a night time ban on traffic.
The leaflets were signed:"The State of Israel."
Missiles
Meanwhile, a rocket fired by Hezbollah hit a house in northern Israel on Thursday, killing two people, including a toddler.
Emergency services said that the rocket, among at least 50 launched into Israel from Lebanon before noon, struck the Israeli Arab village of Deir al-Assad in the Galilee region.
News reports said the child killed in the attack was two years old. No details on the second fatality were immediately available.
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Israel to put Lebanon offensive on hold
By KARIN LAUB
Associated Press
August 10, 2006
JERUSALEM - Israel will hold back a new ground offensive in Lebanon until the weekend to give cease-fire efforts another chance, senior government officials said Thursday, a day after Israel's Security Cabinet approved a major expansion of the month-long war.
But prospects for a quick cease-fire resolution by the
U.N. Security Council were uncertain, with the United States and France still divided over a timetable for an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
France wants Israel to pull out once hostilities end, while the United States backs Israel's insistence on staying in southern Lebanon until a strong international force is deployed, which could take weeks or months.
In fighting Thursday, Hezbollah claimed it destroyed 13 Israel tanks in south Lebanon. The Israeli military declined comment. On Wednesday, 15 Israeli soldiers were killed in Lebanon, the deadliest day for Israeli soldiers in the war.
Israeli missiles, meanwhile, hit Beirut proper for the first time, damaging a historic lighthouse Thursday. Warplanes also dropped leaflets over northern Lebanon, also a first, warning trucks off a coastal road linking Lebanon to
Syria.
In Israel, Hezbollah rockets killed two Israeli Arabs, including an infant, medics said.
The deeper push into Lebanon was approved by Israel's Security Cabinet. During the tense six-hour meeting, ministers received constant updates on the rising Israeli military casualties in Lebanon.
A senior government official said Thursday that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has decided to hold off on the offensive until the weekend. The campaign could begin earlier if Hezbollah launches a major attack on Israel, the official said on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the issue with reporters.
Cabinet minister Rafi Eitan confirmed the government's decision to wait.
"There are diplomatic considerations," he told Israel Radio, when asked about a planned delay. "There is still a chance that an international force will arrive in the area. We have no interest in being in south Lebanon. We have an interest in peace on our borders."
The government's running of the war was coming under growing criticism at home.
The army has failed to make a dent in Hezbollah's ability to fire rockets at Israel - the guerrillas fired 170 on Wednesday, for a war total of more than 3,500 - and critics said pushing deeper into Lebanon would not stop such attacks since longer-range rockets can still reach Israel.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported an angry exchange between Defense Minister Amir Peretz and his predecessor, Shaul Mofaz, in the Security Cabinet meeting. When Mofaz criticized the planned new offensive, Peretz reportedly shot back: "Where were you when Hezbollah built up this array (of weapons)?"
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called during the meeting, officials said, and Olmert told ministers after his half-hour conversation with Rice that the offensive would be accompanied by a new diplomatic push.
Under the army plan, Israeli forces would move to the Litani River, some 20 miles from the Israel-Lebanon border. At the moment, more than 10,000 troops are engaged in house-to-house battles against Hezbollah fighters in a strip less than half that size.
Even in the current war zone, Israeli troops have had trouble taking control of towns and villages. Security officials say the guerrillas' bunkers, well equipped with food, weapons and electricity, are a reason for Hezbollah's stamina. During lulls in the fighting, gunmen emerge and set up new ambushes for troops.
On Thursday, troops backed by tanks and armored vehicles took up positions on the outskirts of the Christian town of Marjayoun in south Lebanon, about six miles from the border. Troops met no resistance. Soldiers also moved to a nearby hill overlooking the Litani River Valley, witnesses said. Heavy battles were reported in south Lebanese villages across from Israel's Galilee panhandle, hard hit by rockets.
Israel hopes an expanded offensive will force Hezbollah guerrillas out of their strongholds across southern Lebanon. The offensive is expected to last a month and eliminate 70 percent to 80 percent of Hezbollah's short-range rocket launchers, but not its long-range launchers, senior military officials said.
However, Trade Minister Eli Yishai, who abstained in Wednesday's vote, said the assessment is too optimistic. "I think it will take a lot longer," he said.
Danny Yatom, a senior member of Peretz' Labor Party and a general in the reserves, said moving deeper into Lebanon was pointless.
"We are banging our head against the wall," he told Israel TV's Channel One. "And even if we reach the Litani, the Katyushas (rockets) won't stop.
So far, the fighting has killed 711 people on the Lebanese side and 120 Israelis, including 38 civilians and 82 soldiers.
The economic price was also going up. Finance Minister Avraham Hirchson said the war has cost Israel some $1.6 billion so far. He said he will ask the government to cut $650 million from the 2006 state budget to help pay for the war. Israel's total budget for 2006 is $56 billion.
The prospect of a wider war would put tremendous pressure on the United Nations to rapidly agree on a cease-fire. The fighting has caused widespread destruction across southern Lebanon and forced hundreds of thousands of Israelis to flee or take refuge in bomb shelters.
However, France and the U.S. remained divided over a proposed truce resolution, particularly at whether Israeli troops would be able to stay in south Lebanon until they can hand over to a multinational force.
French President Jacques Chirac appealed for rapid agreement.
"The most immoral of solutions would be to accept the current situation and give up on an immediate cease-fire," he said.
In a televised speech Wednesday night, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah chief, rejected as "unfair and unjust" a draft U.N. resolution that would temporarily let Israeli troops remain in south Lebanon and take defensive action.
"It has given Israel more than it wanted and more than it was looking for," he said.
The Israeli government's decision came two days after Lebanon offered to send 15,000 soldiers to patrol the border region, a key Israeli demand intended to prevent future attacks on Israel. The current fighting began when Hezbollah fighters raided Israel July 12, killed three soldiers and captured two others.
In a major shift, Nasrallah said Hezbollah supported an army deployment, after a cease-fire is declared and Israel leaves.
Israeli officials remained skeptical of the Lebanese offer and were not convinced Lebanon's army would take concrete action to stop future Hezbollah attacks.
"It is important that the Lebanese army will be accompanied by an international force that will enable it to reach the south in an organized manner, and to leave the place clean of Hezbollah," Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said.
Comment: Well, let's see: the last "cease-fire" was supposed to last 48 hours, and Israel broke it after only 12 hours...
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New and unkown deadly weapons used by Israeli forces
by Professor Paola Manduca
August 7, 2006
GlobalResearch.ca
New and unkown deadly weapons used by Israeli forces
'direct energy' weapons, chemical and/or biological agents, in a macabre experiment of future warfare
By now there are countless reports, from hospitals, witnesses, armament experts and journalists that strongly suggest that in the present offensive of Israeli forces against Lebanon and Gaza 'new weapons' are being used.
New and strange symptoms are reported amongst the wounded and the dead.
Bodies with dead tissues and no apparent wounds; 'shrunken' corpses; civilians with heavy damage to lower limbs that require amputation, which is nevertheless followed by unstoppable necrosis and death; descriptions of extensive internal wounds with no trace of shrapnel, corpses blackened but not burnt, and others heavily wounded that did not bleed.
Many of these descriptions suggest the possibility that the new weapons used include 'direct energy' weapons, and chemical and/or biological agents, in a sort of macabre experiment of future warfare, where there is no respect for anything: International rules (from the Geneva Convention to the treaties on biological and chemical weapons), refugees, hospitals and the Red Cross, not to mention the people, their future, their children, the environment, which is poisoned through dissemination of Depleted Uranium and toxic substances released after oil and chemical depots are bombed.
Right now, the Lebanese and Palestinian people have many urgent and impellent problems, yet many people believe that these episodes cannot and must not pass ignored. In fact several appeals have been launched to scientists and experts with a view to investigating the issue.
With the intent of responding to such appeals, we have set up a team to investigate the testimonies, the images, and possibly the material evidence that delegations and NGOs will be able to bring from the affected areas. We want to offer support to the health institutions of Lebanon and Palestine, which ask constantly for help and external verification and monitoring, and we are examining all available materials in order to formulate hypotheses which can be verified or disproved.
We ask for the active participation of our (Italian) scientific institutions, and, following the request from medical personnel in the conflict area, we are requesting that the UN set up an international independent verification and investigation committee, with a view to facilitating entry into the conflict zone, as well as collecting material and testimonies directly in the field, and undertaking inquries and verifications concerning the various claims regarding these new kinds of weapons of mass destruction being used by Israeli forces in Lebanon. We request that such investigating teams be set up immediately, and that procedures be defined and implemented with a view to supporting future investigations. Of particular concern is the issue of how to collect and store samples from the different theatres, with a view to preserving important information regarding the various impacts of these weapons.
We ask that the international committee have access to all sources of information, that it be fully operational, while abiding by relevant investigative procedures, including cross-checking of information between different laboratories. The international committee is to report to the competent authorities, including the Human Rights tribunals and international courts, if appropriate..
As people and as scientists, we are offering our time and expertise in order to reach an understanding of the underlying facts, in the belief that a perspective of justice, equity and peace among people can be reached only with the respect of the rules defined up to now within the international community of nations. The issue pertains to the behavior of the parties in an armed conflict.
We ask that the respect of these rules be verified in the context of the present conflict.
We invite scientists to contribute to this effort by offering their specific competences. In particular we seek collaboration of toxicology experts, pharmacologists, anatomy pathologists, doctors with an expertise in trauma and burns, chemists.
They can reach the working group at the E-mail address: nuovearmi@gmail.com Paola Manduca, Professor of.Genetics, University of Genova, Italy
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30 Israeli casualties in battle with Hezbollah
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-10 14:00:23
BEIRUT, Aug.9 (Xinhua) -- Israel suffered up to 30 casualties in a battle between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli force in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah announced here on Wednesday.
Hezbollah said its fighters had also launched seven rounds of anti-tank rockets against northern Israel on the same day.
The Israeli military confirmed 15 soldiers had been killed in the battle. But Doha-based al-Jazeera TV channel reported 11 Israelis had lost their lives.
The violent fighting occurred in Dibel, southern Lebanon, which caused the highest casualties in a single day since the Israel-Hezbollah violence erupted on July 12, when Hezbollah guerrillas abducted two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others during cross-border attacks.
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IDF's new weapon: Snipers who fought in Cechnya
08/09/06
Ynet
Golani fighters joined by snipers hailing from states that fought in Chechnya, Afghanistan
Fighters of the 51st Battalion of Golani received aid from an unusual source Tuesday.
A group of snipers hailing from states that had fought in battles in Chechnya and Afghanistan the joined the battalion as it entered Bint Jbeil for the second time after it suffered a serious blow two weeks ago when eight of its soldiers, including the deputy battalion commander, were killed. The snipers were called up in an emergency draft to the war.
The snipers, between 35 and 40 years old, immigrated to Israel at the beginning of the 90s and in the past few years have been considered excellent fighters. They were active in the past in operational activity in the Gaza division, but at a certain point finished their service in the division once the impression was created that they were "trigger happy."
The snipers were stationed Tuesday at one of the entrance points to Lebanon alongside Golani fighters. They displayed high motivation. They are soon expected to join the operations of the brigade inside Lebanon.
Comment: Trigger happy in Gaza? Yes indeed, these are the guys who shoot Palestinian children in the head from a few hundred yards. These are the guys who, even for the brutal IDF, were too brutal. So what does the Israeli government do? Bring 'em back of course! There's nothing like a few hired mercenary psychopaths in the Israeli army to stir things up.
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Israel - Pariah State
Propaganda Alert! Iranians said among Hizbollah combat dead
Reuters
By Dan Williams
10/08/06
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard have been found among Hizbollah guerrillas slain by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, Israel's Channel 10 television reported on Wednesday citing diplomatic sources (who made up the claim).
It said the Iranians were identified by documents found on their bodies, but gave no further details on how many were discovered or when. Neither the Israeli military nor Hizbollah representatives in Beirut had immediate comment on the report.
Iran, like fellow Hizbollah patron Syria, insists its support for the Shi'ite guerrilla group is purely moral.
Israel says many of the rockets being fired against its civilian and military targets are Iranian made, and that Hizbollah fighters taking on its forces trained in Iran. Washington also accuses Tehran of actively funding Hizbollah.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards are traditionally very close to fellow Shi'ite Muslims in Hizbollah and were deployed in south Lebanon in the 1980s.
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Nasrallah vows to continue fight
Wednesday 09 August 2006, 22:56 Makka Time, 19:56 GMT
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, says his movement backs the Lebanese army's deployment to the south but that Washington is trying to impose Israeli demands on Lebanon through a draft UN resolution.
In a televised speech on Wednesday, Nasrallah said that a seven-point plan presented by the Lebanese government was the least the country should accept as part of a draft resolution to end the fighting.
He also gave a deeply negative assessment of the plan, saying "the least we can describe this [draft resolution] is as unfair and unjust.
"It has given Israel more than it wanted and more than it was looking for."
Nasrallah said Israeli attacks had not weakened its rocket capabilities and its fighters would turn south Lebanon into a "graveyard" for invading Israeli troops.
"The enemy has failed to weaken our rocket-launching capacity and our guerrillas are still fighting on the frontlines," he said.
Nasrallah further called on the Arab residents of Haifa to quit the Israeli city so as to avoid being hurt by Hezbollah rocket fire.
"I have a special message to the Arabs of Haifa, to your martyrs and to your wounded. I call you to leave this city. I hope you do this. ... Please leave so we don't shed your blood, which is our blood."
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Nasrallah urges Arabs to leave Haifa
By JOSEPH PANOSSIAN
Associated Press
Wed Aug 9, 2006
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday warned all Israeli Arabs to leave the port city of Haifa so the militant group could step up attacks without fear of shedding the blood of fellow Muslims.
Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, has been the frequent target of Hezbollah's rocket attacks.
"I have a special message to the Arabs of Haifa, to your martyrs and to your wounded. I call on you to leave this city. I hope you do this. ... Please leave so we don't shed your blood, which is our blood," Nasrallah said.
The Shiite cleric also gave a deeply negative assessment of the proposal to halt fighting between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon in his first comments on a draft U.N. cease-fire resolution.
"The least we can describe this (draft resolution) is as unfair and unjust. It has given Israel more than it wanted and more than it was looking for," he said in a televised speech.
But in a policy shift, Nasrallah said the guerrilla organization was solidly behind a Lebanese government plan to deploy 15,000 soldiers in south Lebanon if a cease-fire is reached and Israel pulls out its forces.
"In the past we used to oppose or not agree on deployment of the army at the borders," the Hezbollah leader said. Now, he said, "we agree on deployment of the army."
Lebanon has been pushing to amend the U.S.-French proposal to require that Israeli withdraw its troops from the south immediately after a cease-fire is agreed. But U.S. envoy David Welch told Prime Minister Fuad Saniora that Israel had rejected the demand.
Nasrallah heaped criticism on the assistant U.S. secretary of state for visiting Beirut Wednesday as the Israel's Security Cabinet decided to expand the ground offensive in southern Lebanon.
"We will be waiting for you at every village, at every valley. Thousands of courageous holy warriors are waiting for you," he warned the Israelis.
Welch's visit to the Lebanese capital, he said, was designed "to terrify the government and the Lebanese to pressure them to accept old-new conditions."
He said the Americans were trying to undermine any attempt at a solution that takes into consideration Lebanese demands and he urged Beirut not to buckle under U.S. pressure.
"I call for political will and steadfastness," he said.
He also said the guerrillas would not falter, promising "We'll keep fighting to the last shot."
Nasrallah said his fighters already had won the conflict by putting up such a fierce fight through the monthlong Israeli onslaught that began after guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers July 12 in a cross-border mission.
"On the battlefield, we remain steadfast and that in itself is a victory for the resistance, and defeat for the enemy," he said.
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What do you say to a man whose family is buried under the rubble?
By Robert Fisk
08/09/06
The Independent
There were bulldozers turning over the tons of rubble, a cloud of dust and smoke a mile high over the smashed slums of Beirut's southern suburbs and a tall man in a grey T-shirt - a Brooklyn taxi driver, no less - standing on the verge of tears, staring at what may well be the grave of his grandfather, his uncle and aunt. Half the family home had been torn away and the entire block of civilian apartments next door had been smashed to the ground a few hours earlier by the two missiles that exploded in Asaad al-Assad Street.
What do you say to a man whose family is buried under the rubble? The last corpse had been a man whose face appeared etched in dust before the muck was removed and he turned out to be paper-thin - so perfectly had the falling concrete crushed him. Mohamed al-Husseini had left New York for a holiday with his young wife and infant child - they were safe in the centre of Beirut - because he wanted to see his family home and talk to the relatives he grew up with.
"Just look what the Israelis have done," he said, not taking his eyes off the floors of the apartments, now scarcely an inch between them. "I am confused. You know? I don't know what to do. I could go back to my wife and kid but the rest of my family is in there. They used to live in the south and they survived there. Then they come to Beirut and die here."
Mohamed al-Husseini's grandfather, Mohamed Yassin, is - let us not say "was" yet - 75. His uncle is Hussein Yassin, his aunt is called Hila. By last night, nothing had been found of them. And of those in the building next door?
At least 17 civilians were killed, many of them children. A 12-year-old boy called Hussein Ahmed Mohsen lay dead in the mortuary of the Mount Lebanon Hospital, along with a woman who died just after being rescued when the missiles collapsed her home just after 7.30 on Monday night. Almost all the occupants of this doomed building were members of the Rmeiti family - again, they were from the dangerous south - and 15 of the dead were from the same village.
It was a scene to provoke fury. One Hizbollah "watcher" demanded my press card and lost interest when he read it. But a Lebanese youth in a yellow shirt at the scene was grabbed by the same man, hauled away by his collar and handed over to a clutch of beefy, tall individuals who forced him into a car. Everyone now searches for spies, for the men - and women - who are reputed to "paint" the apartment blocks of Beirut for Israel's missile technology to lock on to their targets.
A sad, grim meeting in the same Mount Lebanon Hospital suggested that the house had not been "fingered" by anyone. I found Ali Rmeiti, an employee at Beirut airport, covered in bloody wounds, his face distorted, shaking his head in disbelief. "I was on the balcony with my wife, Huda, and three of our children ... I heard nothing - nothing. I didn't realise what happened. It was black. Then came the second blast and we were all blown into the street with the balcony."
Huda Rmeiti is lying next to her husband on a drip-feed, covered with even more bloody wounds than Ali. I know - and they do not - that three of their four children were killed.
And why was the building struck? The Israelis have slaughtered hundreds of civilians, attacking convoys of refugees they themselves ordered to leave. But Saadieh, Ali Rmeiti's sister-in-law, has a story which matches those of two other survivors. Before the missiles exploded, she said, an Israeli drone flew over the Shiyyah district, a pilotless reconnaissance aircraft which sends live pictures back to Tel Aviv. "Um Kamel", as the Lebanese call them, whined around for a time and then, without warning, someone drove down Assaad al-Assad street on a motorcycle and fired into the sky with a rifle opposite the Rmeiti home.
Then he left, some youth who wanted to prove his foolish manhood. You can't destroy drones with a rifle, as any Hizbollah member knows. But not long afterwards, the two missiles came streaking down on the homes of the innocent.
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Flashback: Thirty-one Gaza children killed in Israeli offensive in thirty-one days
Relief Web
31/07/2006
As Israel's siege on the Gaza Strip passes the one month milestone, Defence for Children International - Palestine Section (DCI/PS) would like to draw attention to the 31 Palestinian children whose deaths expose anew the degradation of the principles of international humanitarian law. The death of these children implicates both the parties to the conflict as well as those States not directly involved, but who, as third parties, are legally bound to enforce these principles.
Recalling that the Gaza Strip has been under belligerent occupation by Israel since 1967, and that it remains under occupation despite the 12 September 2005 'disengagement' of Israeli troops, the attacks by both the Israeli army and Palestinian armed groups in the past month have been characterized by their lack of respect for the customary international law principle of distinction. This principle requires combatants at all times to distinguish between civilians and civilian objects, and military objectives. The Israeli tactics in Gaza have also been condemned as disproportionate by the EU and the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator in that the incidental loss of Palestinian lives, injury of Palestinians and damage to Palestinian civilian infrastructure has been excessive in relation to the military advantage understood to be gained by Israel . Israeli air, sea and ground troops have opened fire in civilian areas in the dense population centers of Gaza cities and refugee camps, including near hospitals, schools, and in crowded residential housing complexes on numerous occasions.
The following children have been killed by Israeli military actions in Gaza since 26 June 2006:
1. Anwar Isma'el Atallah, 12 years old
2. Saleh Sleman Al Jemasi, 16 years old
3. Ruwan Fareed Hajjaj, 5 years old
4. Khalid Nidal Abed Al Karim Wahbeh, 1 year old
5. Mahfouth Farid Nasseer, 15 years old
6. Ahmad Ghaleb Abu Amshah, 16 years old
7. Ahmed Fathi Odah Shabat, 16 years old
8. Waleed Mahmoud Al Zinati, 12 years old
9. Salah Adeen Hammad Abu Maktuma, 17 years old
10. Ibrahim Ali Khatoush, 15 years old
11. Mahmoud Muhammad Al Asar, 15 years old
12. Ibrahim Ali Al Nabaheen, 15 years old
13. Ahmad Abdil Mina'm Abu Hajaj, 16 years old
14. Nasrallah Nabil Abu Selmieh, 5 years old
15. Aya Nabil Abu Selmieh, 7 years old
16. Iman Nabil Abu Selmieh, 11 years old
17. Yahya Nabil Abu Selmieh, 9 years old
18. Huda Nabil Abu Selmieh, 13 years old
19. Basma Nabil Abu Selmieh, 15 years old
20. Sumaia Nabil Abu Selmieh, 16 years old
21. Raji Omar Deif Alla, 16 years old
22. Muhanna Sa'ed Mesleh, 16 years old
23. Ahmad Rawhee Abdo, 13 years old
24. Ali Kamil Al Najar, 13 years old
25. Fadwa Faisel al 'Urouqi, 13 years old
26. Mohammad Awad Muhra, 17 years old
27. Khitam Muhammad Tayeh, 11 years old
28. Nadee Habib Al Ataar, 11 years old
29. Saleh Ibrahim Nasser, 13 years old
30. Ashraf Abdullah Awad Abu Thaher, 14 years old
31. Bara' Naser Habib, 2 years old
DCI/PS recalls that one of the predominant reasons for restrictions enshrined in the ius in bello (the law governing the conduct of warfare, or international humanitarian law) is to regulate combatant behavior such that acts will not be taken which are so grave as to prevent the return to peace. At a time when international political actors are calling for a return to the logic of 'durable solutions' to stop the current escalation in violence, DCI/PS asserts that nations at war remember no injuries as acutely as they remember the death of their children. Thus, DCI/PS believes that any effective solutions to the current crisis and the crisis of the future must include a reiterated commitment to the principles of international humanitarian law, and particularly those principles relating to the protection of the civilian population and civilian infrastructure.
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Robert Fisk: Israel's promise of humanitarian corridors is exposed as a sham
08/09/06
The Independent
So much for Ehud Olmert's "humanitarian corridors". Two weeks after the Israeli Prime Minister's comforting assertion - which no one in Lebanon believed - the Israeli air force has blown up the last bridge across the Litani river, in effect ending all humanitarian convoys between Beirut and southern Lebanon. Requests from humanitarian organisations for clearance from the Israelis are now being refused. Even the Red Cross admits there is now, in effect, a blockade on a vast area along the Lebanese border where thousands of civilians are still cowering in their homes.
David Shearer, the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator in Lebanon, has pleaded with the Israelis to end their attacks against the country's infrastructure and end all activities which threaten the transport of humanitarian aid to the displaced. But convoys since have been cancelled or forced to make long detours across the country and along the edge of the Lebanese-Syrian border. Truck drivers are frightened to risk their lives under Israeli air attack. I myself was on a Red Cross field trip from Qlaya to Jezzine when, close to the village of Arab Selim, an Israeli jet dropped a bomb on the road 80 metres in front of us. On the Litani river, north of Tyre, the main road bridge had been blasted away but the Lebanese army had constructed a temporary bridge over the water to the west. Now that, too, has been ripped to pieces by Israeli bombs.
Mr Shearer warned of a "serious humanitarian crisis" if convoys were not allowed to move south. A Red Cross spokesman, Richard Huguenin, said his organisation had been denied permission by the Israelis to move humanitarian aid to the border. Without guarantees of safe passage, the organisation cannot leave Tyre for dozens of villages whose inhabitants are trapped. "At night, we ask for permission and in the morning we get either a red light or a green light, and for the past 48 hours it has been red," he said.
A Greek ship carrying Red Cross supplies was supposed to have docked in Tyre on Monday, but was refused permission to land and diverted to Sidon, north of the Litani. The French are still bringing boatloads of supplies into Beirut, accompanied - wisely, it has to be said - by a French warship equipped with anti-aircraft missiles.
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Derry Anti War Protesters Send Signal To Raytheon, US, Israel
BBC News
09/08/2006
Nine anti-war protesters who have been occupying the Derry (N. Ireland) offices of the defence company, Raytheon have been arrested by police.
They have been taken to police stations in the city and in Coleraine.
The Derry Anti-War Coalition had been throwing computer equipment and documents out of first floor windows.
The protesters claimed "weapons manufactured by Raytheon were being used by Israel to bomb Lebanon".
The company is a leading weapons manufacturer, although it has said its Derry operation is involved in software for air traffic control systems.
The facility was previously occupied by people demonstrating against the use of Raytheon weapons in Iraq.
Raytheon, a US firm, makes the Patriot, Tomahawk, Cruise and Sidewinder missiles.
Nine people occupied the offices on Wednesday morning, with about 20 protesting outside with placards.
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Chavez likely to cut Venezuela ties with Israel
Reuters
08/09/06
CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday Venezuela would likely sever relations with Israel in protest over Israel's military campaign against Lebanon.
Chavez, a harsh critic of the United States who frequently expresses sympathy for the Palestine people, announced last week he had ordered the withdrawal of Venezuela's ambassador in Israel.
Israel withdrew its chief diplomat in Caracas in response.
"We have withdrawn our diplomatic representation from the state of Israel and they have also withdrawn their ambassador," Chavez said during an evening speech. "The most likely next step will be for us to break diplomatic relations, because I have no interest in maintaining diplomatic relations, or offices, or businesses, or anything with a state like Israel."
Chavez has openly criticized Israeli incursions into Gaza and Lebanon, and has blamed the Middle East conflict on an "Israeli elite" and U.S. influence in the region.
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The Homeland Is Mentally Ill
Western values 'are causing mental illness'
The Times
By Leo Lewis
THE rapid spread of Western business practices in Japan has caused widespread mental illness and is responsible for a deepening demographic crisis, government officials say.
Statistics indicate that 60 per cent of workers suffer from "high anxiety" and that 65 per cent of companies report soaring levels of mental illness.
Meanwhile, the size of the Japanese population is shrinking, and for the first time the Government has acknowledged that the falling birth rate is linked to job-related factors. Directors of the Japanese Mental Health Institute blame the same factors for rising levels of depression among workers and the country's suicide rate, which remains the highest among rich nations.
Merit-based pay and promotion are of particular concern because they are at odds with the traditional system, built on seniority, that has reigned supreme in corporate Japan. In the harsh new atmosphere of cut-throat rivalry between workers, the Institute for Population and Social Security argues, young people do not feel financially stable enough to start families.
The trend is put down to Japanese companies' attempts to globalise by adopting working practices more closely in line with US and British models. Larger numbers of temporary staff, a greater willingness to sack people and greater pay disparities are the downside.
A spokesman for the Mental Health Institute said that the emphasis on individual performance was driving Japanese workers - particularly those in their thirties - to mental turmoil. "People tend to be individualised under the new working patterns," he said. "When people worked in teams they were happier."
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Bush in bid to place himself and top staff beyond the law
10/08/2006
The Bush administration has drafted changes to the War Crimes Act that would protect US policymakers from possible retrospective criminal charges for authorising humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal.
The Bush administration has drafted changes to the War Crimes Act that would protect US policymakers from possible retrospective criminal charges for authorising humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal.
The move marks the administration's latest effort to deal with how the US should treat people taken into custody in President George Bush's campaign against terror.
At issue are interrogations carried out by the CIA and the degree to which harsh tactics such as waterboarding were authorised by administration officials. A separate law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, applies to the military.
The Washington Post first reported on the War Crimes Act amendments yesterday.
One section of the draft would outlaw torture and inhuman or cruel treatment, but it does not contain prohibitions from Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment".
A copy of the section of the draft was obtained by The Associated Press.
Another section would apply the legislation retrospectively, according to two lawyers who have seen the contents of the section.
One of them said the draft was in the revision stage, but the administration seems intent on pushing forward the draft's major points in congress after it returns from its recess in early September.
"I think what this bill can do is in effect immunise past crimes. That's why it's so dangerous," said a third lawyer, Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.
Fidell said the initiative was "not just protection of political appointees, but also CIA personnel who led interrogations".
Interrogation practices "follow from policies that were formed at the highest levels of the administration", said a fourth lawyer, Scott Horton, who has followed detainee issues closely. "The administration is trying to insulate policymakers under the War Crimes Act."
The administration argues that Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions includes vague terms that are susceptible to different interpretations. The refurbished War Crimes Act is supposed to rectify that.
Extreme interrogation practices have been a flashpoint for criticism of the administration.
When interrogators engage in waterboarding, a prisoner is strapped to a plank and dunked in water until he fears he is drowning.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a former military lawyer, said congress "is aware of the dilemma we face, how to make sure the CIA and others are not unfairly prosecuted".
He said that at the same time, however, that congress "will not allow political appointees to waive the law".
Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA's executive director, said: "President Bush is looking to limit the War Crimes Act through legislation" now that the supreme court had embraced Article Three of the Geneva Conventions.
In June, the court ruled that Bush's plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals broke Common Article Three.
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For some evangelicals, Mideast war stirs hope
BY ALEXANDRA ALTER
aalter@MiamiHerald.com
Tuesday, August 8, 2006
The Rapture Index -- a popular evangelical Christian Web posting that calculates a global rise in natural disasters, war and inflation -- bills itself as "a Dow Jones industrial average of end-time activity.''
An index below 85 signifies a week of ''slow prophetic activity.'' Anything above 145 signals the apocalypse is near.
The Rapture Index this week: 158. The spike reflects many U.S. evangelicals' view that growing conflict in the Middle East signals the start of a global struggle leading to Christ's return.
''We believe 100 percent what the Scripture has to say about this,'' said Jack Heintz, a South Florida businessman and president of the Christian group Peace for Israel, who recruited 23 evangelical Christians to join a July telephone fundraising event for Israel. "There's going to be a total battle, the battle of Armageddon, and I believe that's very close to happening.''
Some have ratcheted up support for Israel in its current battle in Lebanon with Hezbollah out of belief that a raging war -- perhaps even a nuclear confrontation -- marks a prelude to the apocalypse. Christian groups are sending millions of dollars to Israeli communities and shelters, hosting pro-Israel rallies and urging U.S. politicians to back Israeli military action.
Evangelicals have issued dire warnings about a conflagration in the Middle East for decades, said Clyde Wilcox, a professor of government at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who studies evangelicals and politics. Many evangelicals regard such calls with skepticism, he said.
''Every time there's been a war in the Middle East, this comes up,'' Wilcox said. "Most evangelicals would not interpret this as saying that Christ is coming back in the next couple of years.''
RAISED INTEREST
Since the current crisis erupted July 12, interest in the Rapture Index has mushroomed, said Todd Strandberg, a Christian from Nebraska who updates the index on his website, raptureready.com. The site had a quarter-million unique visitors in July, up from 180,000 the previous month, Strandberg said.
''The Scripture bears witness to these events being part of the end-times prophecy,'' said Gary Cristofaro, pastor of First Assembly of God in Melbourne. "Israel is so important in God's eyes.''
Cristofaro's church is one of a handful of Florida congregations that tithes a monthly donation to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a practice that stems from a belief that Israel must control the Palestinian territories in order to fulfill biblical prophecy. The congregation has donated more than $100,000 to support Israeli settlements in the past decade, Cristofaro said. On Saturday, church members plan to hold a ''Bless Israel'' fundraising event for 2,000 people.
Evangelicals' financial support for Israel has increasingly been supplemented by political action, Christian and Jewish leaders say.
At a July 18-19 pro-Israel rally in Washington, Christians from Florida and other states lobbied politicians to back Israel's military campaign in Lebanon. The Rev. John Hagee, pastor of a mega-church in San Antonio and founder of Christians United for Israel, organized the convention in hopes of launching a pro-Israel political network in 50 states.
Hagee has issued dire predictions about instability in the region leading to apocalypse. In his 2006 book Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World, Hagee warns: "The coming nuclear showdown with Iran is a certainty. The war of Ezekiel 38-39 could begin before this book gets published.''
Other high-profile Christian leaders have espoused similar views. In a July 22 commentary, the Rev. Jerry Falwell predicted present-day conflict in the Middle East will ''serve as a prelude or forerunner to the future Battle of Armageddon and the glorious return of Jesus Christ.'' Pat Robertson has shied away from declaring Armageddon but has warned ''God himself'' will fight for Israel.
WARY OF SOME EFFORTS
While a number of Jewish leaders have courted evangelicals' support for the Jewish homeland, others are troubled by its theological underpinnings, said Rabbi James Rudin, senior interreligious advisor at the America Jewish Committee in New York. Jewish leaders have long been wary of evangelicals' effort to convert Jews to Christianity through messianic groups such as Jews for Jesus and the Chosen People Ministries.
''Is the motivation to stand up for Israel, or convert the Jewish people and bring on the end of days?'' said Rabbi Solomon Schiff, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Association of Greater Miami.
Other Jewish leaders say evangelicals have toned down the religious aspects of their pro-Israel mission in recent years, particularly their insistence that Jews convert.
Avi Mizrachi, executive director of the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach, said he was overwhelmed by fervor for Israel at the Washington rally for Christians United for Israel.
''I saw more Israeli flags there than on Israeli independence day,'' he said. 'In the past, there was concern about them trying to convert us. It doesn't even come up anymore.''
Christian Zionism -- the belief that Israel will set the stage for prophetic events such as the rise of the Antichrist, the Battle of Armageddon and Christ's 1,000-year reign -- has steadily gained popularity since the rise of the Christian right in the 1970s and '80s, said Timothy Weber, author of On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel's Best Friend.
In the most gruesome scenario, evangelicals envision a global battle breaking out when a 200-million-man army invades from the east and Jesus returns to take on the Antichrist. Jews and other non-Christians will face conversion or death.
In the past, some Christians predicted the armies would come from Russia or China, and today, many foresee an Islamic army led by Iran, Weber said.
Hagee and others caution that while Christians may have stepped up preparations for the end times, most believe the fate of the world remains in God's hands.
''No Christian or groups of Christians can do anything to hasten the return of Jesus Christ,'' Hagee said.
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