Lebanon: Israel is f-ing up big-time (how about bombing those 4 UN officials to hamburger?) and the US is right behind 'em, f-ing up even bigger time

It strikes me that there are amazing parallels between Israel's Lebanon adventure and America's Iraq adventure:

1. Both started with a "shock and awe" bombing campaign.

2. Both started with a tissue of lies about why they're attacking another country. Both planned their wars long before they started them, and were looking for an excuse to start.

3. Both created terrorists instead of getting rid of them. In fact, Hezbollah was created by Israel when they invaded Lebanon the first time and occupied it, just like the Bush/Cheney war created terrorists in Iraq that were never there before.

4. Both found it very easy to bomb away like crazy, but once they sent in troops on the ground, they got bogged down.

5. Both created more enmity for their nations by these incursions than they ever knew before. Today America has to deal with anti-Americanism everywhere, and Israel has to deal with renewed anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere.

6. Both got themselves in a mess neither of them can get out of with any dignity.

7. Neither of them will learn one damn thing from the huge mistakes they made. They may think of themselves as proud triumphantilists, but they're actually moronic victims of unintended consequences they had plenty of warning about. A human being is supposed to live-and-learn, but these two idiot governments are of the kill-and-stay-dumb school.

Anyway, here's today's best writing about Israel's humongous f-up. The first piece is somewhat over-the-top in tone, but it's bizarre to find such a screech of outrage shat out from the sputtering bowels of a diehard conservative who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. If this guy is ashamed of being an American, who among us can still be proud?

1. The Shame of Being an American -- by Paul Craig Roberts

Gentle reader, do you know that Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing in southern Lebanon? Israel has ordered all the villagers to clear out. Israel then destroys their homes and murders the fleeing villagers. That way there is no one to come back and nothing to which to return, making it easier for Israel to grab the territory, just as Israel has been stealing Palestine from the Palestinians.

Do you know that one-third of the Lebanese civilians murdered by Israel's attacks on civilian residential districts are children? That is the report from Jan Egeland, the emergency relief coordinator for the UN. He says it is impossible for help to reach the wounded and those buried in rubble, because Israeli air strikes have blown up all the bridges and roads. Considering how often (almost always) Israel misses Hezbollah targets and hits civilian ones, one might think that Israeli fire is being guided by US satellites and US military GPS. Don't be surprised at US complicity. Why would the puppet be any less evil than the puppet master?

Of course, you don't know these things, because the US print and TV media do not report them.

Because Bush is so proud of himself, you do know that he has blocked every effort to stop the Israeli slaughter of Lebanese civilians. Bush has told the UN "NO." Bush has told the European Union "NO." Bush has told the pro-American Lebanese prime minister "NO." Twice. Bush is very proud of his firmness. He is enjoying Israel's rampage and wishes he could do the same thing in Iraq.

Does it make you a Proud American that "your" president gave Israel the green light to drop bombs on convoys of villagers fleeing from Israeli shelling, on residential neighborhoods in the capital of Beirut and throughout Lebanon, on hospitals, on power plants, on food production and storage, on ports, on civilian airports, on bridges, on roads, on every piece of infrastructure on which civilized life depends? Are you a Proud American? Or are you an Israeli puppet?

On July 20, "your" House of Representatives voted 410-8 in favor of Israel's massive war crimes in Lebanon. Not content with making every American complicit in war crimes, "your" House of Representatives, according to the Associated Press, also "condemns enemies of the Jewish state."

Who are the "enemies of the Jewish state"?

They are the Palestinians whose land has been stolen by the Jewish state, whose homes and olive groves have been destroyed by the Jewish state, whose children have been shot down in the streets by the Jewish state, whose women have been abused by the Jewish state. They are Palestinians who have been walled off into ghettos, who cannot reach their farm lands or medical care or schools, who cannot drive on roads through Palestine that have been constructed for Israelis only. They are Palestinians whose ancient towns have been invaded by militant Zionist "settlers" under the protection of the Israeli army who beat and persecute the Palestinians and drive them out of their towns. They are Palestinians who cannot allow their children outside their homes because they will be murdered by Israeli "settlers."

The Palestinians who confront Israeli evil are called "terrorists." When Bush forced free elections on Palestine, the people voted for Hamas. Hamas is the organization that has stood up to Israel. This means, of course, that Hamas is evil, anti-Semitic, un-American and terrorist. The US and Israel responded by cutting off all funds to the new government. Democracy is permitted only if it produces the results Bush and Israel want.

Israelis never practice terror. Only those who are in Israel's way are terrorists.

Another enemy of the Jewish state is Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a militia of Shi'ite Muslims created in 1982 when Israel first invaded Lebanon. During this invasion the great moral Jewish state arranged for the murder of refugees in refugee camps. The result of Israel's atrocities was Hezbollah, which fought the Israeli Army, defeated it, and drove it out of Lebanon. Today Hezbollah not only defends southern Lebanon but also provides social services such as orphanages and medical care.

To cut to the chase, the enemies of the Jewish state are any Muslim country not ruled by an American puppet friendly to Israel. Egypt, Jordan ,Saudi Arabia , and the oil emirates have sided with Israel against their own kind, because they are dependent either on American money or on American protection from their own people. Sooner or later these totally corrupt governments that do not represent the people they rule will be overthrown. It is only a matter of time.

Indeed Bush and Israel may be hastening the process in their frantic effort to overthrow the governments of Syria and Iran. Both governments have more popular support than Bush has, but the White House Moron doesn't know this. The Moron thinks Syria and Iran will be "cakewalks" like Iraq, where ten proud divisions of the US military are tied down by a few lightly armed insurgents.

If you are still a Proud American, consider that your pride is doing nothing good for Israel or for America.

On July 20 when "your" House of Representatives, following "your" US Senate, passed the resolution in support of Israel's war crimes , the most powerful lobby in Washington, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), quickly got out a press release proclaiming "The American people overwhelming support Israel's war on terrorism and understand that we must stand by our closest ally in this time of crisis."

The truth is that Israel created the crisis by invading a country with a pro-American government. The truth is that the American people do not support Israel's war crimes, as the CNN quick poll results make clear and as was made clear by callers into C-Span.

Despite the Israeli spin on news provided by US "reporting," a majority of Americans do not approve of Israeli atrocities against Lebanese civilians. Hezbollah is located in southern Lebanon. If Israel is targeting Hezbollah, why are Israeli bombs falling on northern Lebanon? Why are they falling on Beirut? Why are they falling on civilian airports? On schools and hospitals?

Now we arrive at the main point. When the US Senate and House of Representatives pass resolutions in support of Israeli war crimes and condemn those who resist Israeli aggression, the Senate and House confirm Osama bin Laden's propaganda that America stands with Israel against the Arab and Muslim world.

Indeed, Israel, which has one of the world's largest per capita incomes, is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. Many believe that much of this "aid" comes back to AIPAC, which uses it to elect "our" representatives in Congress.

This perception is no favor to Israel, whose population is declining, as the smart ones have seen the writing on the wall and have been leaving. Israel is surrounded by hundreds of millions of Muslims who are being turned into enemies of Israel by Israel's actions and inhumane policies.

The hope in the Muslim world has always been that the United States would intervene in behalf of compromise and make Israel realize that Israel cannot steal Palestine and turn every Palestinian into a refugee.

This has been the hope of the Arab world. This is the reason our puppets have not been overthrown. This hope is the reason America still had some prestige in the Arab world.

The House of Representatives resolution, bought and paid for by AIPAC money, is the final nail in the coffin of American prestige in the Middle East. It shows that America is, indeed, Israel's puppet, just as Osama bin Laden says, and as a majority of Muslims believe.

With hope and diplomacy dead, henceforth America and Israel have only tooth and claw. The vaunted Israeli army could not defeat a rag tag militia in southern Lebanon. The vaunted US military cannot defeat a rag tag, lightly armed insurgency drawn from a minority of the population in Iraq, insurgents, moreover, who are mainly engaged in civil war against the Shi'ite majority.

What will the US and its puppet master do? Both are too full of hubris and paranoia to admit their terrible mistakes. Israel and the US will either destroy from the air the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Iran so that civilized life becomes impossible for Muslims, or the US and Israel will use nuclear weapons to intimidate Muslims into acquiescence to Israel's desires.

Muslim genocide in one form or another is the professed goal of the neoconservatives who have total control over the Bush administration. Neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz has called for World War IV (in neocon thinking WW III was the Cold War) to overthrow Islam in the Middle East, deracinate the Islamic religion and turn it into a formalized, secular ritual.

Rumsfeld's neocon Pentagon has drafted new US war doctrine that permits pre-emptive nuclear attack on non-nuclear states.

Neocon David Horowitz says that by slaughtering Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, "Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world," thus equating war criminals with civilized men.

Neocon Larry Kudlow says that " Israel is doing the Lord's work " by murdering Lebanese, a claim that should give pause to Israel's Christian evangelical supporters. Where does the Lord Jesus say, "go forth and murder your neighbors so that you may steal their lands"?

The complicity of the American public in these heinous crimes will damn America for all time in history.


2. Blasted by a Missile on the Road to Safety
Family ordered to flee were targeted because they were driving minivan -- by Suzanne Goldenberg

The ambulanceman gave Ali the job of keeping his mother alive. The 12-year-old did what he could. "Mama, mama, don't go to sleep," he sobbed, gently patting her face beneath her chin. Behind her black veil, her eyelids were slowly sinking. "I'm going to die," she sighed. "Don't say that, mama," Ali begged, and then slid to the ground in tears.

On the pavement around mother and son were the other members of the Sha'ita family, their faces spattered with each other's blood. All were in varying shades of shock and injury. A tourniquet was tied on Ali's mother's arm. A few metres away, his aunt lay motionless, the white T-shirt beneath her abaya stained red. Two sisters hugged each other and wept, oblivious to the medics tending their wounds. "Let them take me, let them take me," one screamed.

Their mother was placed on a stretcher, and lifted into the ambulance. "God is with you, mama," Ali said. She reached up with her good arm to caress his face.

The Sha'itas had thought they were on the road to safety when they set out yesterday, leaving behind a village which because of an accident of geography - it is five miles from the Israeli border - had seemed to make their home a killing ground. They had been ordered to evacuate by the Israelis.

But they were a little too slow and became separated from the other vehicles fleeing the Israeli air offensive in south Lebanon. Minutes before the Guardian's car arrived, trailing a Red Cross ambulance on its way to other civilian wounded in another town, an Israeli missile pierced the roof of the Sha'itas' white van. Three passengers sitting in the third row were killed instantly, including Ali's grandmother. Sixteen other passengers were wounded. In recent days, families like the Sha'itas are bearing the brunt of Israel's air campaign and its efforts to rid the area of civilians before ground operations. A day after Israel's deadline for people to leave their homes and flee north of the Litani river, roads which in ordinary times wind lazily through tobacco fields and banana groves have been turned into highways of death.

Plumes of smoke rise in the distance, and the road in front of us offers up signs of closer peril: car wrecks, still smoking after Israeli strikes, and abandoned vehicles with shattered rear windows. Some were direct hits by Israeli aircraft. Others were drivers who had lost control. Overhead is the menacing roar of Israeli warplanes and the buzz of drones tracking every movement.

With bridges on the main coastal roads severed by Israeli air strikes, and secondary mountain routes scarred by craters, the means of escape for Lebanese trying to follow Israel's orders are limited. "All the smaller roads leading to the coastal roads are destroyed," said a spokesman for the UN in the border town of Naqoura. "In some areas you have people pushing cars by hand through obstacles made by a rocket or a bomb." By yesterday afternoon, for many villagers, there was truly no way out.

Death came crashing into the Sha'ita family soon after 10am, in the form of an Israeli anti-tank missile, seemingly fired from an Israeli helicopter high overhead, in Kafra, about nine miles from their home. Those passengers who were not killed or injured by shards of burning metal were hurt when the van plunged into the side of a hill.

In their village of et-Tiri, the Sha'itas were an extended clan of 54 people. Between them they had three cars. When the Israeli evacuation order came, in leaflets shot out of aircraft, the family planned at first to stay. "We were at home living our lives," said Musbah Sha'ita, Ali's uncle.

By 7pm on Saturday night, the deadline set by Israel for people in about a dozen villages in south Lebanon to leave, the Sha'itas were close to panic. "Whoever could run was running," said Mr Sha'ita. "I pushed them to go."

One of their fleeing neighbours said he would send transport for them, and the next morning all 54 of the Sha'itas set out in a convoy of three white minivans. That choice of transport proved a fatal mistake.

In their leaflet campaign, the Israelis have warned repeatedly they would consider minivans, trucks and motorcyles as targets. "The minivans are a target for Israel because they can take Katyusha rockets for Hizbullah, so they do not contemplate too long," the UN official said. "They just shoot it."

Dozens of others have met a similar fate as Israeli F-16 jet fighters and attack helicopters intensify a campaign meant to cut off the supply of Hizbullah rockets, and the movement of its fighters.

But Israel's offensive is being felt across a much wider swath of south Lebanon. The Lebanese Red Cross in Tyre said 10 cars carrying civilians and three or four motorcycles had been hit by Israeli missiles yesterday. Red Cross ambulances were no safer; a spokesman said an ambulance had narrowly escaped a missile near the village of el-Qlaile, south of the city. A number of the dead, including the three members of the Sha'ita family, remained trapped in their cars because it was too dangerous to retrieve their bodies.

In Tyre, south Lebanon's main town and a stopping point on the flight to the north, the hospital received a steady flow of injured. By late afternoon there were three dead and 41 injured, two critically."They are bombing them all in their cars," said Ahmed Mrowe, the director of Jabal al-Amal hospital.

Those who choose not to flee - the UN estimates that 35%-40% of villagers are too poor or too frail to make the journey - are being left stranded.

That was the predicament facing the Sha'itas when Musbah Sha'ita urged them to flee. In a car on the way to the hospital, his ear was welded to his phone, trying to find out where his wounded relatives were, and he could not stop blaming himself.

"We put a white flag. We were doing what Israel told us to do," he says. "What more do they want of us?"


3. Morality Is Not On Our Side -- by Ze'ev Maoz (from Haaretz)

There's practically a holy consensus right now that the war in the North is a just war and that morality is on our side. The bitter truth must be said: this holy consensus is based on short-range selective memory, an introverted worldview, and double standards.

This war is not a just war. Israel is using excessive force without distinguishing between civilian population and enemy, whose sole purpose is extortion. That is not to say that morality and justice are on Hezbollah's side. Most certainly not. But the fact that Hezbollah "started it" when it kidnapped soldiers from across an international border does not even begin to tilt the scales of justice toward our side.

Let's start with a few facts. We invaded a sovereign state, and occupied its capital in 1982. In the process of this occupation, we dropped several tons of bombs from the air, ground, and sea, while wounding and killing thousands of civilians. Approximately 14,000 civilians were killed between June and September of 1982, according to a conservative estimate. The majority of these civilians had nothing to do with the PLO, which provided the official pretext for the war.

In Operations Accountability and Grapes of Wrath, we caused the mass flight of about 500,000 refugees from southern Lebanon on each occasion. There are no exact data on the number of casualties in these operations, but one can recall that in Operation Grapes of Wrath, we bombed a shelter in the village of Kafr Kana which killed 103 civilians. The bombing may have been accidental, but that did not make the operation any more moral.

On July 28, 1989, we kidnapped Sheikh Obeid, and on May 12, 1994, we kidnapped Mustafa Dirani, who had captured Ron Arad. Israel held these two people and another 20-odd Lebanese detainees without trial, as "negotiating chips." That which is permissible to us is, of course, forbidden to Hezbollah.

Hezbollah crossed a border that is recognized by the international community. That is true. What we are forgetting is that ever since our withdrawal from Lebanon, the Israel Air Force has conducted photo-surveillance sorties on a daily basis in Lebanese airspace. While these flights caused no casualties, border violations are border violations. Here too, morality is not on our side.

So much for the history of morality. Now, let's consider current affairs. What exactly is the difference between launching Katyushas into civilian population centers in Israel and the Israel Air Force bombing population centers in south Beirut, Tyre, Sidon and Tripoli? The IDF has fired thousands of shells into south Lebanon villages, alleging that Hezbollah men are concealed among the civilian population. Approximately 25 Israeli civilians have been killed as a result of Katyusha missiles to date. The number of dead in Lebanon, the vast majority comprised of civilians who have nothing to do with Hezbollah, is more than 300.

Worse yet, bombing infrastructure targets such as power stations, bridges and other civil facilities turns the entire Lebanese civilian population into a victim and hostage, even if we are not physically harming civilians. The use of bombings to achieve a diplomatic goal - namely, coercing the Lebanese government into implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1559 - is an attempt at political blackmail, and no less than the kidnapping of IDF soldiers by Hezbollah is the aim of bringing about a prisoner exchange.

There is a propaganda aspect to this war, and it involves a competition as to who is more miserable. Each side tries to persuade the world that it is more miserable. As in every propaganda campaign, the use of information is selective, distorted and self-righteous. If we want to base our information (or shall we call it propaganda?) policy on the assumption that the international environment is going to buy the dubious merchandise that we are selling, be it out of ignorance or hypocrisy, then fine. But in terms of our own national soul searching, we owe ourselves to confront the bitter truth - maybe we will win this conflict on the military field, maybe we will make some diplomatic gains, but on the moral plane, we have no advantage, and we have no special status.

(Ze'ev Maoz is a professor of political science at Tel Aviv university.)


4. Israelis Bomb Fleeing Villagers -- by ROBERT FISK

They are in the schools, in empty hospitals, in halls and mosques and in the streets. The Shia Muslim refugees of southern Lebanon, driven from their homes by the Israelis, are arriving in Sidon by the thousand, cared for by Sunni Muslims and then sent north to join the 600,000 displaced Lebanese in Beirut. More than 34,000 have passed through here in the past four days alone, a tide of misery and anger. It will take years to heal their wounds, and billions of dollars to repair their damaged property.

And who can blame them for their flight? For the second time in eight days, the Israelis committed a war crime yesterday. They ordered the villagers of Taire, near the border, to leave their homes and then - as their convoy of cars and minibuses obediently trailed northwards - the Israeli air force fired a missile into the rear minibus, killing three refugees and seriously wounding 13 other civilians. The rocket that killed them is believed to have been a Hellfire missile made by Lockheed Martin in Florida.

Nine days ago, the Israeli army ordered the inhabitants of a neighboring village, Marwaheen, to leave their homes and then fired rockets into one of their evacuation trucks, blasting the women and children inside to their deaths. And this is the same Israeli air force which was praised last week by one of Israel's greatest defenders - Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz - because it "takes extraordinary steps to minimize civilian casualties".

Nor have the Israelis spared Sidon. A heap of rubble and pancaked walls is all that is left of the Fatima Zahra mosque, a Hizbollah institution in the centre of the city, its minaret crumbled and its dome now sitting on the concrete, a black flag still flying from its top. When Israeli warplanes came early yesterday morning, the 75-year-old caretaker had no time to run from the building; he died of his wounds hours later. His overturned white plastic chair still lies by the gate. The mosque is unlikely to have been used for military purposes; a school belonging to the Hariris, Sidon's all-powerful Sunni family, stands next door; they would never have allowed weapons into the building.

Not that Hizbollah - which killed two more Israeli civilians with their rockets in Haifa yesterday - have respected Sidon, whose population is 95 per cent Sunni. They tried to fire Iranian-made missiles at Israel from the seafront Corniche and from beside the city slaughterhouse last week. On both occasions, residents physically prevented them from opening fire.

The multimillion-dollar Hariri Foundation - created by the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated last year - has helped 24,000 Shia refugees out of the south and on to Beirut but its generosity has not always been happily received. One group of refugees sheltering in a technical school in Meheniyeh punched and taunted Hariri workers. Elsewhere, the foundation's staff have been cursed by fleeing families. "They are telling us that we are working for the Americans and that this is why we are taking them out," said Ghena Hariri - Rafik's niece and a Georgetown graduate. "It is something that drains our energy. We are working 24 hours a day and at the end of the day they curse us. But I feel so sorry for them. Now they are being told by the Israelis to leave their villages on foot and they have to walk dozens of kilometres in this heat."

It's not difficult to see how this war can damage the delicate sectarian framework that exists in Lebanon. One group of Shia families - housed in a school in the Druze mountains of the Chouf - tried to put Hizbollah's yellow banners on the roof and members of Walid Jumblatt's Druze Popular Socialist Party had to tear them down. Their act may have saved the refugees' lives.

Yet many of the Shia in this beautiful Crusader port have learnt how kind their Sunni neighbors can be. "We are here - where else can we go?" Nazek Kadnah asked as she sat in the corner of a mosque which Rafik Hariri built and dedicated to his father, Haj Baha'udin Hariri. "But they look after us here as their brothers and sisters and now we are safe."

These sentiments provoke some dark questions. Why, for example, can't these poor people be shown the same compassion from Tony Blair as he supposedly felt for the Muslims of Kosovo when they were being driven from their homes by the Serbs? These thousands are as terrified and homeless as the Kosovo Albanians who fled to Macedonia in 1998 and for whom Mr Blair claimed he was waging a moral war. But for the Shia Muslims sleeping homeless in Sidon there is to be no such moral posturing - and no ceasefire suggestions from Mr Blair, who has aligned himself with the Israelis and the Americans.

And what exactly is the purpose of driving more than half a million people from their homes? Many of these poor people sit clutching their front-door keys, just as the Palestinians of Galilee did when they arrived in Lebanon 58 years ago to spend the rest of their lives as refugees. Yes, the Shia Muslims of Lebanon probably will go home. But to what? A war between the Hizbollah and a Western intervention force? Or further bombardment by the Israelis?

The Sidon refugees now have 36 schools in which they can shelter - but they are the lucky ones. Across southern Lebanon, the innocent continued to die. One was an eight-year-old boy who was killed in an Israeli air raid on a village close to Tyre. Eight more civilians were wounded when an Israeli missile hit a vehicle outside the Najem hospital in Tyre. And during the morning, one of Lebanon's journalists, Layal Nejib, a photographer for the magazine Al-Jaras whose pictures were also transmitted by Agence France Press, was killed in her taxi by an Israeli air strike near Qana, the same village in which 106 civilians were massacred in a UN base by Israeli artillery shells in 1996. She was only 23.

In her marble-walled home above Sidon, Bahia Hariri - Ghena's mother, the sister of the murdered former prime minister and a local member of parliament - sat grim-faced, scarcely controlling her fury. "We are in this terrible situation but we haven't any window to resolve this situation," she said. "Rafik Hariri is no longer with us. The international community is not with us. Who is with us? God. And the old Lebanese. And the Arab world, we hope, will help us. The only resistance we can show is to be a united Lebanon. But we have only a small margin in which to dream."

7. Stop Now, Immediately -- by Gideon Levy (from Haaretz Daily)

This war must be stopped now and immediately. From the start it was unnecessary, even if its excuse was justified, and now is the time to end it. Every day raises its price for no reason, taking a toll in blood that gives Israel nothing tangible in return. This is a good time to stop the war because both sides can claim they won: Israel harmed Hezbollah and Hezbollah harmed Israel. History shows that no situation is better for reaching an arrangement. Remember the lessons of the Yom Kippur War.

Israel went into the campaign on justified grounds and with foul means. It claims it has declared war on Hezbollah but, in practice, it is destroying Lebanon. It has gotten most of what it could have out of this war. The aerial "target bank" has mostly been covered. The air force could continue to sow destruction in the residential neighborhoods and empty offices and could also continue dropping dozens of tons of bombs on real or imagined bunkers and kill innocent Lebanese, but nothing good will come of it.

Those who want to restore Israel's deterrent capabilities have succeeded. Hezbollah and the rest of its enemies know that Israel reacts with enormous force to any provocation. South Lebanon is cleaner now of a Hezbollah presence. In any case, the organization is likely to return there, just as it is likely to rearm. An international agreement could be achieved now, and it won't be possible to achieve a better deal at a reasonable price in the future.

Israel's other goals - returning the captured soldiers and the elimination of Hassan Nasrallah - will anyway be more difficult to achieve even if the war goes on for weeks and months. The IDF is now asking for "two more weeks" and in another two weeks it will ask for "another two weeks." A decisive victory is not in the offing.

On the other hand, the price is skyrocketing. Every day increases international criticism of Israel and hatred of it. That is also an element in "national security." As opposed to the choir in Israel that makes a false presentation as if the world is cheering Israel, the images from Beirut are causing Israel enormous damage, and rightly so. Not only in the streets of the Arab world is more and more hatred being sown, but also in the West. Not only hundreds of thousands of Lebanese but tens of thousands of Westerners fleeing from Lebanon are contributing to the depiction of Israel as a violent, crude and destructive state.

The fact that George Bush and Tony Blair are cheering Israel might be consolation for Ehud Olmert and the media in Israel, but it is not enough to persuade millions of TV viewers who see the images of destruction and devastation, most of which are not shown to Israeli audiences. The world sees entire neighborhoods that have been destroyed, hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing in panic, homeless, and hundreds of civilians dead and wounded including many children who have nothing to do with Hezbollah.

The continuation of the war therefore is neither moral nor worthwhile. The economic blow the war caused to Israel will even remain limited if the war ends now. A lethal summer will exact a much greater economic price.

The Israeli rear, which has so far displayed impressive resilience, will not remain indifferent in the shelters for much longer. Slowly, the cracks will open and citizens will begin to ask why we are dying and what we are killing for. That's just the way of war. At first, nobody asks why, but the more entangled they become, the more difficult the questions become.

We've been here before, more than once. Wars began with broad national approval and ended with a great crisis. Those who bask now in the consensus should know that nothing lasts forever. The war will become an imbroglio. When it becomes apparent that the air force is not enough, the ground invasion that has already begun will intensify. The cliche about the Lebanese quagmire will be revalidated, and when the soldiers are killed, as is already happening daily, in house to house hunting, the protests will rise and divide society.

Now Israel is hoping for the elimination of Nasrallah. That's an atavistic impulse, even if understandable, which seeks the head of the enemy in order to prove our victory over him. There's no wisdom or practicality in it. Once again it is worth reminding ourselves of the dozens of people Israel assassinated in Lebanon and the territories, from Sheikh Abbas Mussawi to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, each replaced by someone new, usually more talented and dangerous than the predecessor. The goals of the war should not be dictated by dark impulses, even if they come in response to the wishes and demands of the mob. The only advantage that would benefit Israel from the elimination of Nasrallah would be that maybe it would bring about an end to the warring. But it can be halted even without that. The other desired goal, the return of the prisoners, will anyway only be achieved through negotiations to release prisoners. Israel could have done that before the war.

It is still too early to weigh out the balance of achievements and failures of this war. The day will come when it will become clear that it was purposeless, as are all wars of choice. Ceasing it now guarantees a limited achievement at a limited price. Continuing it guarantees a heavy price without any guarantee of a suitable reward. Therefore, Israel must cease and desist. The president of the United States can push us to continue the war all he wants, the prime minister of Britain can cheer us in parliament, but in Israel and Lebanon, the blood is being spilled, the horror is intensifying, the price is rising and it is all for naught.

(Email to: levy@haaretz.co.il)


5. Israel set war plan more than a year ago
Strategy was put in motion as Hezbollah began gaining military strength in Lebanon – by Matthew Kalman, SF Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- Israel's military response by air, land and sea to what it considered a provocation last week by Hezbollah militants is unfolding according to a plan finalized more than a year ago.

In the six years since Israel ended its military occupation of southern Lebanon, it watched warily as Hezbollah built up its military presence in the region. When Hezbollah militants kidnapped two Israeli soldiers last week, the Israeli military was ready to react almost instantly.

"Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared," said Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University. "In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal, when it became clear the international community was not going to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking Israel. By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board."

More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail. Under the ground rules of the briefings, the officer could not be identified.

In his talks, the officer described a three-week campaign: The first week concentrated on destroying Hezbollah's heavier long-range missiles, bombing its command-and-control centers, and disrupting transportation and communication arteries. In the second week, the focus shifted to attacks on individual sites of rocket launchers or weapons stores. In the third week, ground forces in large numbers would be introduced, but only in order to knock out targets discovered during reconnaissance missions as the campaign unfolded. There was no plan, according to this scenario, to reoccupy southern Lebanon on a long-term basis.

Israeli officials say their pinpoint commando raids should not be confused with a ground invasion. Nor, they say, do they herald another occupation of southern Lebanon, which Israel maintained from 1982 to 2000 -- in order, it said, to thwart Hezbollah attacks on Israel. Planners anticipated the likelihood of civilian deaths on both sides. Israel says Hezbollah intentionally bases some of its operations in residential areas. And Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has bragged publicly that the group's arsenal included rockets capable of bombing Haifa, as occurred last week.

Like all plans, the one now unfolding also has been shaped by changing circumstances, said Eran Lerman, a former colonel in Israeli military intelligence who is now director of the Jerusalem office of the American Jewish Committee.

"There are two radical views of how to deal with this challenge, a serious professional debate within the military community over which way to go," said Lerman. "One is the air power school of thought, the other is the land-borne option. They create different dynamics and different timetables. The crucial factor is that the air force concept is very methodical and almost by definition is slower to get results. A ground invasion that sweeps Hezbollah in front of you is quicker, but at a much higher cost in human life and requiring the creation of a presence on the ground."

The advance scenario is now in its second week, and its success or failure is still unfolding. Whether Israel's aerial strikes will be enough to achieve the threefold aim of the campaign -- to remove the Hezbollah military threat; to evict Hezbollah from the border area, allowing the deployment of Lebanese government troops; and to ensure the safe return of the two Israeli soldiers abducted last week -- remains an open question. Israelis are opposed to the thought of reoccupying Lebanon.

"I have the feeling that the end is not clear here. I have no idea how this movie is going to end," said Daniel Ben-Simon, a military analyst for the daily Haaretz newspaper.

Thursday's clashes in southern Lebanon occurred near an outpost abandoned more than six years ago by the retreating Israeli army. The place was identified using satellite photographs of a Hezbollah bunker, but only from the ground was Israel able to discover that it served as the entrance to a previously unknown underground network of caves and bunkers stuffed with missiles aimed at northern Israel, said Israeli army spokesman Miri Regev.

"We knew about the network, but it was fully revealed (Wednesday) by the ground operation of our forces," said Regev. "This is one of the purposes of the pinpoint ground operations -- to locate and try to destroy the terrorist infrastructure from where they can fire at Israeli citizens."

Israeli military officials say as much as 50 percent of Hezbollah's missile capability has been destroyed, mainly by aerial attacks on targets identified from intelligence reports. But missiles continue to be fired at towns and cities across northern Israel.

"We were not surprised that the firing has continued," said Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. "Hezbollah separated its leadership command-and-control system from its field organization. It created a network of tiny cells in each village that had no operational mission except to wait for the moment when they should activate the Katyusha rocket launchers hidden in local houses, using coordinates programmed long ago to hit Nahariya or Kiryat Shemona, or the kibbutzim and villages."

"From the start of this operation, we have also been active on the ground across the width of Lebanon," said Brig. Gen. Ron Friedman, head of Northern Command headquarters. "These missions are designed to support our current actions. Unfortunately, one of the many missions which we have carried out in recent days met with slightly fiercer resistance."

Israel didn't need sophisticated intelligence to discover the huge buildup of Iranian weapons supplies to Hezbollah by way of Syria, because Hezbollah's patrons boasted about it openly in the pages of the Arabic press. As recently as June 16, less than four weeks before the Hezbollah border raid that sparked the current crisis, the Syrian defense minister publicly announced the extension of existing agreements allowing the passage of trucks shipping Iranian weapons into Lebanon.

But to destroy them, Israel needed to map the location of each missile.

"We need a lot of patience," said Hanegbi. "The (Israeli Defense Forces) action at the moment is incapable of finding the very last Katyusha, or the last rocket launcher primed for use hidden inside a house in some village."

Moshe Marzuk, a former head of the Lebanon desk for Israeli Military Intelligence who now is a researcher at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, said Israel had learned from past conflicts in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza -- as well as the recent U.S. experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq -- that a traditional military campaign would be counter-effective.

"A big invasion is not suitable here," said Marzuk. "We are not fighting an army, but guerrillas. It would be a mistake to enter and expose ourselves to fighters who will hide, fire off a missile and run away. If we are to be on the ground at all, we need to use commandos and special forces."
Since fighting started

-- Israeli air strikes on Lebanon have hit more than 1,255 targets, including 200 rocket-launching sites.

-- Hezbollah launched more than 900 rockets and missiles into northern Israel.

-- At least 330 Lebanese have been killed, including 20 soldiers and three Hezbollah guerrillas. Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora says 1,100 have been wounded; the police put the number at 657.

-- 32 Israelis have been killed, among them 17 soldiers, according to Israeli authorities. At least 12 soldiers and 344 civilians have been wounded.

-- Foreign deaths include eight Canadians, two Kuwaiti nationals, one Iraqi, one Sri Lankan and one Jordanian.


6. Israel's "Shock and Awe" Bombing of Lebanon -- by Beau Grosscup

In the midst of Israel’s bombing of Lebanon, Chris Mathews of MSNBC’s Hardball , asked his guest, a defender of Israel’s war strategy from the Democratic Party, ‘Why is Israel bombing Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure…I don’t get it.” That an obviously agitated Mathews, a very knowledgeable political pundit, even asked the question is indicative of how well the dirty little secret of nearly a century of strategic bombing, now euphemistically tagged "Shock and Awe" has been kept. As one of the family of "bombing nations," Israel, like the US, Russia, Britain, and to a lesser extent other industrial nations, has made air power its weapon of choice in prosecuting war. The strategy is to rain terror from the skies on civilians and the integrated infrastructure they depend on. The goal is to make civilian life so unbearable that they will force the political leadership to sue for peace. The assumption is that civilians, mostly women and children and working class "trash," lack the same will to resist as does the male warrior class. Thus, by "softening up" the civilian population via death and destruction from the air while avoiding loss of life among the military’s "top guns," victory can be had quickly and "cleanly."

After a century of bombing, the efficacy of this strategy remains unproven. It violates a number of Geneva Conventions that proscribe the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure. It is, as its architects acknowledged, a strategy of terrorism. In the post 9/11 climate, one would think that any strategy doing harm to civilians would be denounced as immoral, as conducting a war on terror with a war of terror. Yet, strategic bombing continues to be popular, even moral with military strategists and Western populations. This is primarily due to a labyrinth of rationalizations that has effectively soothed the conscience of the citizens of the bombing nations, allowing aerial bombing and those who propose/participate in it to dodge the terrorism label.

For decades a significant majority of Americans have accepted that aerial bombing, conducted with "smart" indeed "brilliant" precision hi-tech weapons is a "clean" way to prosecute war. For the bombing nation’s warrior class, it is clean, especially when as in Iraq 1 and 2, Kosovo, Lebanon 1982/2006, Chechnya, and Afghanistan, the bombers enjoy complete command of the air. But the purposefully hidden reality is that strategic bombing is very dirty for those on the ground. Indeed, as Americans and Europeans are evacuated from Lebanon, this dirty secret is being exposed. Many have expressed severe criticism of Israeli bombing; particularly those who managed to escape the purposeful and intentional destruction of electrical grids, bridges, roads, airports, health facilities, shopping malls, and Beirut’s neighborhoods. Yet from political and media venues the rationalizations continue, ringing familiar if not true for many. They start with the language of collateral damage, fog of war, mistakes, accidents, and "stuff" happens, to "its not our intent to kill civilians" or "the civilians were in the wrong place at the wrong time." They include claims that like all immoral enemies Hezbollah uses civilians as shields or Lebanon’s civilians, as supporters of Hezbollah, deserve their fate. Behind all these rationales is acceptance that there is a meaningful distinction between bombing to kill civilians (terrorism) and bombing knowing you will kill civilians (war). But for those seeking intellectual honesty and particularly for those being bombed or about to be bombed, this is a distinction without meaning. In fact, if pilots under the direction of a man named Milosovic, Hitler, Castro, or the command of Hamas or Hezbollah were doing what Israeli pilots are doing, this distinction would be obsolete. Indeed, it would quickly be abandoned by those who now hold it so dear.

Israel’s strategic bombing of Lebanon is state terrorism and as many Israeli political and military luminaries have openly admitted is consistent with longstanding Israeli policy. Among them is the highly decorated General Mordechai Gur, who said "we make no distinction between civilian and military targets." But Israel is not alone. Strategic bombing is a strategy of terrorism that a vast majority of Americans and a compliant media supported long before 9/11 in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, and Kosovo. It has become even more popular in the post 9/11 revenge bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq despite investigations indicating over hundreds of thousands of "other" civilians have died or been maimed directly or indirectly by the US military’s "clean" bombing. It is also the central component of the US military’s proposed exit strategy from Iraq. The idea is to make the now dirty war once again clean by removing American troops from harm’s way and supporting Iraqi forces on the ground with bombs (terror) from the sky.

That US political leaders can still invoke the memory of nearly 3,000 9/11 terrorism victims for political gain while hundreds of thousands of "other" innocent civilians die out of sight from US aerial terrorism evidences the continued strength of the rationalization scheme and the place denial and the "fear factor" play in American politics. Most troubling it also gives credence to the power of the racist and jingoist sentiment that "if the victim isn’t wrapped in an American flag" it doesn’t matter. It is also what the Israel government and Bush Administration are counting on in Lebanon… again.

(Beau Grosscup, is a professor of International Relations at California State University-Chico and author of the forthcoming (September 2006), "Strategic Terror; The Politics and Ethics Of Aerial Bombardment.”)


7. George W. Better Stop "Losing Lebanon" -- by Ralph Nader

British Kings used to be described with an epithet after their name, as with Richard-the Lion Hearted. Events on the warring grounds of the Middle East, from Iraq to Palestine to Lebanon, that Bush, by his aggressive choice, is mired in, warrant him being called "George-the War Criminal" or "George-the Patron Saint of Elected Islamic Theocracies," or "George-the Foolish." Take your pick.

Consider the little, defenseless country of Lebanon- so friendly to the United States- being "torn to shreds," in the words of its desperate Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, by Israel's American-built warplanes, missile, and artillery.

Bush's main foreign policy theme has been to spread democracy in the Middle East (while he daily weakens democracy in America), and all he has done so far is to destroy or injure hundreds of thousands of people, leaving the chaos and utter destruction that strengthens the power of grassroots Islamists and trains more stateless terrorists in Iraq. In other words, to use the CIA's phrase, "blowback" against our country's interests is breaking out all over.

But Lebanon was supposed to be the exception. With US pressure, Syrian troops - originally invited in with US support during the Lebanese civil war to provide stability - were pressured to leave last year. The "Cedar Revolution" was peaceably proclaimed in Lebanon by a US friendly government composed of the various religious denominations. Finally, independent of both Israeli and Syrian troops for the first time in twenty-three years, the Lebanese started to pull themselves and their economy together.

See Lebanon, see the future in the Middle East, cried George W. Bush - the American Caeser and his advisors in the White House.

Now see Lebanon. In a matter of days, the country is in ruins, its economy shattered, roads, bridges, airports, wheat silos, trucks with medical supplies, new ambulances rushing into service, and whole families fleeing north in packed vehicles blown up.

The horrific stillness is in the civilian neighborhoods mostly populated by the innocent poor and their children. The New York Times reports "In Srifa, a neighborhood was wiped out - 15 houses flattened, 21 people killed, 30 wounded - in an Israeli air strike. The town's mayor, Afif Najdi called it a massacre." Half-a-million civilians and growing are homeless.

In the Palestinian refugee camp of Al Bourj holding 20,000 people, Israeli bombers unleashed explosives. In a frantic appeal for help to anyone on the global internet a charitable rescue organization entered the area and described a scene of "total devastation with all the buildings and roads totally smashed. There was the smell of death and destruction everywhere."

And so the rain of Israeli terror fell over this utterly defenseless country, while Bush does nothing but emit go signals to the fifth most powerful military in the world. He repeats again and again that "Israel has a right to defend itself." Of course, but not against millions of people (including tens of thousands of Arab-Americans and other US citizens living or visiting there) who had nothing whatsoever to do with the border raid by Hezbollah.

The Israeli practice of collective punishment, a war crime under the Geneva Convention, is standard against the Palestinians, who lost 78% of their land in the 1940s and want to preserve the 22% that is left to them (the 1967 boundaries). More collective punishments against the Lebanese now, just like during the unprovoked invasion of 1982.

Then, Israel broke an 11-month truce with the PLO and smashed their way to Beirut, destroying 20,000 Lebanese lives and injuring many more. The New York Times reported "indiscriminate" bombing of Beirut. Israeli planes dropped deadly cluster bombs all over the country including four clearly marked hospitals, as reported in the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Who took the brunt of these war crimes? The Shiites who make up the bulk of the population of south Lebanon. And what emerged to defend these defenseless human beings who were not part of the PLO resistance that was the alleged object of the invasion? Hezbollah. A product of Israel's collective punishment.

Since the Israelis withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 - after 18 years of oppression over the natives - the still land-mined border has been porous. Far more for the well-equipped Israelis than to Hezbollah. Israel routinely violated Lebanon's airspace and coastal waters, terrorized the area with abductions and damage, retained control over Lebanese territory called Shebaa Farms, and generally got away with it without international news coverage. Since 2000, Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters would ritually eye each other over the border and sometimes engage in skirmishes. Still, Hezbollah and Israel wisely negotiated some prisoner exchanges. Israel had 100 times more prisoners to exchange than did Hezbollah.

So on July 12, Hezbollah went for another prisoner exchange by capturing two Israeli soldiers in a firefight, and thought the result would be another such exchange. Big mistake. Even Hezbollah under-estimated the need for each new Israeli Prime Minister to demonstrate his capability for massive mayhem.

Among other towns, he is destroying the ancient coastal town of Tyre where the carpenters have run out of wood for the coffins and the fleeing inhabitants of this municipality of approximately 25,000 people wonder whether they will survive the flight to who knows where from Israeli shelling and aircraft.

So George W. Bush, who knows that Hezbollah's rockets were fired after Israel started its mass bombing and shelling of Lebanon, willfully rejects a truce, typical of his refusal for five years to overcome Israel's opposition to an adequate multinational peacekeeping force on the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Finally, did you know that Hezbollah is one of the largest employers in Lebanon - schools, clinics, stores, farming, transport? It has 14 elected members in the Lebanese Parliament. It is militantly determined to defend its nearly 2 million Shiites - the downtrodden of Lebanon - from all aggressions. It receives weapons from Iran and the international weapons markets, while Israel receives weapons from the United States within an overall annual aid program of $4 billion.

Israel has 175,000 soldiers and another 400,000 ready reservists. It controls totally the skies, the seas, and the ground forces with its advanced precision armaments. It is backed up by the United States to whose Congress it will send the bill for this war. Hezbollah has anywhere from 2,000 to 3,500 fighters, according to US press reports, with small arms and short to medium range rocket launchers.

This is a relevant comparative reality, which should replace the apoplectic exaggerations so that sane voices and powers - Israeli, Arab, American and European - can stop the battles, stabilize the border with an effective international guard and move toward a broader Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

The powerful parties and their allies can make this happen far easier than the weaker parties to the conflict. Meanwhile, George W. better stop "losing Lebanon," and fast.


8. Willful Blindness -- by Marjorie Cohn

On Friday morning, as I traveled north on Interstate 5, I passed two tractor-trailers heading south toward the 32nd Street Naval Station in downtown San Diego. Each vehicle carried about 10 unmarked bombs; each bomb was approximately 15 feet long. Two military helicopters hovered low above each tractor-trailer, providing overhead escort.

I wondered where these bombs were headed. They must have been in a big hurry because they usually ship their bombs more covertly.

Israel had just put out an S.O.S. to the United States government to rush over several more bombs. "The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration," according to the New York Times . Although always well-equipped with sophisticated US-made weapons, Israel was evidently running out of munitions to drop on the Lebanese people.

Washington loses no opportunity to scold Iran and Syria for providing weapons to Hezbollah.

Yet during the Bush administration, from 2001 to 2005, Israel received $10.5 billion in Foreign Military Financing - the Pentagon's biggest military aid program - and $6.3 billion in US arms deliveries. Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign military assistance.

It is a violation of the US Arms Export Control Act to provide weapons to foreign countries that are not used for defensive purposes or to maintain internal security. During the last major Israeli incursion into Lebanon, in 1981, the Reagan administration cut off US military aid and arms deliveries for 10 weeks while it investigated whether Israel was using weapons for "defensive purposes."

Last week, both houses of Congress, mindful of the importance of retaining Jewish votes and campaign contributions, passed resolutions stating that Israel is acting in self-defense. The vote in the Senate was unanimous; the House vote was 410 to 8.

Walking in lockstep with Bush, neither resolution calls for a ceasefire. The Senate resolution praises Israel for its "restraint" and the House resolution "welcomes Israel's continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties."

US-provided Israeli bombs have killed nearly 400 Lebanese, the overwhelming majority innocent civilians. The bombing has displaced half a million people and caused an estimated $1 billion in damage.

After Israeli orders that people in southern Lebanon evacuate their homes, several vehicles filled with evacuating Lebanese civilians were bombed by the Israeli military.

An Israeli helicopter fired a missile at a white minibus carrying 19 people fleeing Tairi. Three people were killed and several wounded.

A green Mercedes with a family fleeing Mansuri was struck by an Israeli missile. Three lay dead, others severely injured. Eight-year-old Mahmoud Srour's face was burned beyond recognition.

As Zein al-Abdin Zabit evacuated with his wife and four sons, his white Nissan was hit by an Israeli missile. "It's nothing more than revenge, revenge on civilians," Zabit said as he lay in bed with broken ribs.

Human Rights Watch confirmed yesterday that Israel is using artillery-delivered cluster munitions in populated areas of Lebanon. "Cluster munitions are unacceptably inaccurate and unreliable weapons when used around civilians," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "They should never be used in populated areas."

The use of cluster munitions in populated areas in Iraq caused more civilian casualties than any other factor in the US-led coalition's major military operations in March and April 2003, killing and wounding more than 1,000 Iraqi civilians, HRW reported.

HRW photographed US-produced/US-supplied cluster bombs among the arsenal of Israel Defense Forces artillery teams stationed on the Israeli-Lebanese border during a July 23 research visit.

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail reported that the Lebanese Ministry of Interior has confirmed the Israelis have used the incendiary white phosphorous gas. This is a chemical weapon, much like napalm, that can burn right down to the bone. The US military used white phosphorous in Fallujah, Iraq.

Article 35 of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions prohibits the use of weapons "of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering." Cluster bombs and white phosphorous fall into this category.

Bilal Masri, assistant director of the Beirut Government University Hospital, told Jamail, "The Israelis are using new kinds of bombs, and these bombs can penetrate bomb shelters," Masri added. "They are bombing the refugees in the bomb shelters!"

Masri also said that 55 percent of the casualties are children under 15 years of age.

It is a violation of the laws of war to target civilians. "A fundamental rule of international humanitarian law is the obligation to distinguish between civilians and civilian property on one hand and military targets on the other," Nada Doumani, Middle East spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross told Aljazeera.net. "Under no circumstances, can civilians and public and private property be deliberately attacked. All parties in the conflict have to abide by these rules."

Doumani quoted ICRC Director of Operations Pierre Krahenbuhl, who said: "The high number of civilian casualties and the extent of damage to essential public infrastructure raise serious questions regarding respect for the principle of proportionality in the conduct of hostilities."

Nearly every report from the corporate media seeks to find symmetry in this war. When an outlet covers the massive devastation in Lebanon and increasing numbers of Lebanese civilians killed by Israeli bombs, it is careful to juxtapose reports of Hezbollah rockets fired into Israel.

Jan Egeland, the United Nations emergency relief chief, however, called the "disproportionate response" by Israel to Hezbollah's actions "a violation of international humanitarian law." Egeland, who characterized the devastated areas of Lebanon as "horrific," said Israel is denying access to relief operations.

At least 384 people have been killed in Lebanon, including 20 soldiers and 11 Hezbollah fighters. Israel's death toll is at least 40, with 17 people killed by Hezbollah rockets and 23 soldiers killed in the fighting.

On Monday, a high-ranking Israeli Air Force officer told reporters that Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz had ordered the military to destroy 10 buildings in Beirut in retaliation for every Katyusha rocket strike on Haifa by Hezbollah.

Last week, several Jewish organizations and Christian Zionists lobbied the White House to support Israel.

Bush complied, giving Israel at least another week to continue slaughtering the Lebanese people.

While Bush stood by and watched the humanitarian catastrophe Israel is wreaking in Lebanon, Condoleezza Rice traveled there and met with Fuad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister.

Rice's visit was an "important show of support for the Lebanese public and the Siniora government," a US official said Monday. The official told reporters traveling with Rice, "The fact we are going to go right into Beirut after all that has happened is a pretty dramatic signal to Lebanon and their government."

It would be much more dramatic for Bush-Rice to call a halt to the carnage. When Helen Thomas asked White House spokesman Tony Snow why the President opposed a ceasefire, he rudely thanked her for her "Hezbollah view."

Bush could stop Israel in its tracks with a snap of his fingers. But why would he? Israel is doing Bush's bidding - redrawing the map of the Middle East to facilitate US domination. Bush began that task with Iraq; Israel is following suit with Palestine and Lebanon.

Indeed, Bush is hoping Israel's next stop will be Iran or Syria. A July 21 list of talking points from the White House Office of the Press Secretary referred to a Los Angeles Times op-ed by Max Boot titled, "It's Time to Let The Israelis Take Off the Gloves."

The White House release contained this quote from Boot's piece: "Our best response is exactly what Bush has done so far - reject premature calls for a cease-fire and let Israel finish the job."

That quote was preceded by this language: "Iran may be too far away for much Israeli retaliation beyond a single strike on its nuclear weapons complex. (Now wouldn't be a bad time.) But Syria is weak and next door. To secure its borders, Israel needs to hit the Assad regime. Hard. If it does, it will be doing Washington's dirty work."

We turn a blind eye at our peril.

(Marjorie Cohn, professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, is president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.)


9. A Letter From Chomsky and Others on the Recent Events in the Middle East
Chomsky.info

The latest chapter of the conflict between Israel and Palestine began when Israeli forces abducted two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from Gaza. An incident scarcely reported anywhere, except in the Turkish press. The following day the Palestinians took an Israeli soldier prisoner - and proposed a negotiated exchange against prisoners taken by the Israelis - there are approximately 10,000 in Israeli jails.

That this "kidnapping" was considered an outrage, whereas the illegal military occupation of the West Bank and the systematic appropriation of its natural resources - most particularly that of water - by the Israeli Defence (!) Forces is considered a regrettable but realistic fact of life, is typical of the double standards repeatedly employed by the West in face of what has befallen the Palestinians, on the land alloted to them by international agreements, during the last seventy years.

Today outrage follows outrage; makeshift missiles cross sophisticated ones. The latter usually find their target situated where the disinherited and crowded poor live, waiting for what was once called Justice. Both categories of missile rip bodies apart horribly - who but field commanders can forget this for a moment?

Each provocation and counter-provocation is contested and preached over. But the subsequent arguments, accusations and vows, all serve as a distraction in order to divert world attention from a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation.

This has to be said loud and clear for the practice, only half declared and often covert, is advancing fast these days, and, in our opinion, it must be unceasingly and eternally recognised for what it is and resisted.

Tariq Ali
John Berger
Noam Chomsky
Eduardo Galeano
Naomi Klein
Harold Pinter
Arundhati Roy
Jose Saramago
Giuliana Sgrena
Howard Zinn