Palestinian Pundit

QANA, Lebanon (Reuters) - An Israeli air strike killed at least 35 Lebanese civilians, including 21 children, in the southern village of Qana on Sunday, in the bloodiest single attack during Israel's 19-day-old war on Hizbollah.

Several houses collapsed and a three-storey building where about 100 civilians were sheltering was destroyed, witnesses and rescue workers said. Distraught people screamed in grief and anger amid the rubble of wrecked buildings.

Israel's military said it had warned residents of Qana to leave and said Hizbollah bore responsibility for using it to fire rockets at the Jewish state.

In April 1996, Israeli shelling of a base of U.N. peacekeepers in Qana killed more than 100 civilians sheltering there during Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" bombing campaign.

The deadly air strike, whose target was not immediately clear, occurred as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Jerusalem on a mission to persuade Israel and Lebanon to agree on an international force to deploy on the border.

At least 518 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 51 Israelis have been killed in the conflict that erupted after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.
As Rice made her second trip to the region in a week, Hizbollah fighters battled Israeli soldiers making a new thrust into southern Lebanon, Lebanese security sources said.

Rice said she hoped for a deal on ceasefire terms to be outlined in a U.N. Security Council resolution that could be tabled as early as Tuesday.

"We still have quite a bit of heavy lifting," an official travelling with Rice said on condition of anonymity. He declined to say what the sticking points were.

After meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Saturday evening, Rice held talks with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Sunday. She is expected to meet Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora in Beirut later during her trip.

In a further sign of intensifying diplomacy to end the war, France -- emerging as the international force's potential leader -- drafted a Security Council resolution that would call for an immediate truce and prepare for the peace mission.

DRAFT RESOLUTION

The document, distributed to the 15 Security Council members and obtained by Reuters, anticipated a draft resolution the United States was planning that would place up to 20,000 peacekeepers along Lebanon's borders with Israel and with Syria.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will preside over a meeting on Monday of possible troop contributors, including the 25-member European Union, Turkey and nations now contributing to a small U.N. peacekeeping force deployed in Lebanon since 1978.

Sunday's clashes erupted when Israeli soldiers crossed the Israeli border towards the town of Khiam. Israeli aircraft and artillery pounded the Shi'ite town while guerrillas fired rockets at northern Israel, Lebanese security sources said.

Israel's Haaretz newspaper quoted defence sources as saying the army had orders to accelerate its offensive, assuming it had another seven to 10 days before it had to stop fighting.
Israel says it had killed at least 200 Hizbollah guerrillas. Hizbollah says only 31 of its fighters have died in the war.

An estimated 750,000 people in Lebanon have fled their homes.

The United States has faced mounting criticism across the world for not calling for an immediate ceasefire and for giving Israel an apparent green light to press on with its offensive.

U.S. President George W. Bush blames the conflict on Hizbollah and its main allies, Syria and Iran.

The guerrilla group's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah accused Rice of serving only Israel's interests and threatened to order more rocket strikes in central Israel.

"There are many cities in central Israel which will come into target range ... if the barbaric aggression on our country and people continues," Nasrallah said in a televised speech.

An Israeli political source said Rice did not pressure Olmert for an immediate ceasefire but did urge Israel not to attack Lebanon's infrastructure. They agreed Hizbollah must release the two Israeli soldiers as part of any deal.

(Additional reporting by Jerusalem bureau)

Al Jazeera: At least 20 children are believed to be among more than 40 civilians killed after an Israeli raid destroyed a building in the southern Lebanese town of Qana, Aljazeera's correspondent reports.

Scenes Of Israeli Massacre In Qana 1996
This video of an Israeli Massacre of Palestinian & Lebanese civilians in April of 96 is very graphic and should only be viewed by a mature audience.

Robert Fisk's, Eyewitness Report From 1996: Massacre in Sanctuary

Seven-year-old Hayat Khaled, who was wounded in an Israeli air strike in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh, lies on her hospital bed in Beirut.

Protesters gather outside Downing Street in London, July 29, to protest over the continuing Israel-Lebanon conflict targeting their protest at Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush.

Simple plywood coffins containing bodies of Lebanese victims are laid in a mass grave in the port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Saturday July 29, 2006. With a few mourners at hand, 31 victims of Israel forces' attacks on the southern city were buried.

Protestors gathered on Parnell Square in Dublin, Ireland at a rally organised by the anti war coalition against the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, Saturday July 29, 2006.

A Lebanese evacuee who has injured during an Israeli air strike, looks on while living at a camp in a school, in the city of Magdel Anjar, some 60 km (37 miles) north of Beirut, July 29, 2006.

Some 1,000 persons take part in a demonstration against Israeli attacks in Lebanon in Bern, Switzerland, Saturday, July 29, 2006.

M'Hamed Haourani consoles his daughter Alae at the Heram hospital in the port-city of Tyre (Soure), in south Lebanon, after they were injured in an Israeli air raid in Bint Jebil July 29, 2006.

Thousands of Arab-Americans march to protest against Israeli military action against Lebanon and Gaza.

A displaced Lebanese woman washes her son out doors at a park where people who have fled the fighting are staying outside in Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, July 29, 2006.

Princess and King Evil ham it up for the cameras after discussing the latest civilian casualties in Lebanon and Palestine.

Lebanese Adnan Haraki cries after his wife and five children were killed when an Israeli warplane hit their house in the village of Nmairieh, next to the market town of Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon. Associated Press photo by Mohammed Zaatari

Lebanese soldiers use heavy machinery to look for survivors after an Israeli warplane targeted a building in the village of Nmairieh, next to the market town of Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon. Associated Press photo by Mohammed Zaatari

Just hot air? Bush and Blair refuse to call for ceasefire : Cabinet ministers warned that Mr Blair's refusal to stand up to Mr Bush would hasten his own exit from power.

War pimp alert: Bush and Blair lay out Lebanon plan but warn Tehran : As they set out a vague plan for bringing a cessation of violence in the Israel-Lebanon conflict at a joint press conference in the White House, they repeatedly referred to the threat posed by Iran and Syria, and their links with Hizbullah.

Blair Gets Payoff: Murdoch set to back Blair - for a place in his boardroom : Fox TV owner and media magnate Rupert Murdoch is expected to offer Tony Blair a senior role in his News Corporation empire when he stands down as Prime Minister.

US must abolish secret detention facilities: UN rights panel: The UN Human Rights Committee has called on the United States to immediately abolish all secret detention facilities, in a report raising deep concerns about the conduct of the "war on terror".

Big brother on campus: U.S. wants to track students' every step: Does the federal government need to know your family's financial profile, how much aid you received and whether you took off a semester to help out at home?

Israel Kills Woman And 6 Children: Sources said the woman was the mother of five of the children. The other victim was the child of neighbours.

Israeli warplanes attack Beirut-Damascus road near crossing gate : Israeli warplanes on Saturday attacked the Masnaa area, the main road leading to the border region with Damascus, a Lebanese security sources said.

UN soldiers injured in Israeli strikes: Two Indian soldiers with the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon have been wounded and their observation post damaged by an Israeli air strike.

Israel says, no humanitarian aid : Rejects truce: Israel, backed by the United States, has refused to set a date for ending its war on the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah that has killed more than 450 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians.

Aid workers lament no safe access to south Lebanon: Aid workers are finding it impossible to get medical supplies and food safely to isolated villages in southern Lebanon due to the Israeli bombardment, aid agencies said on Friday.

MSF: Aid corridors 'an illusion': An international medical charity has said that Israel's promised humanitarian aid corridors in south Lebanon are an illusion and that rockets have landed close to its teams two days in a row.

Lebanon: One In Five Homeless: With one in five of Lebanon's 3.8 million population homeless and hostilities continuing, WFP has launched a three-month US$8.9 million emergency operation to feed over 300,000 people, including 50,000 in Syria.

Hizbullah men await the Israelis: - Inside a well-furnished apartment in a village on the outskirts of Tyre, with shelves of books piled from floor to ceiling, a black turbaned cleric and three men sit sipping bitter coffee. By the door is a pile of Kalashnikovs and ammunition boxes; handguns are tucked into the men's trousers. The four are Hizbullah fighters, waiting for the Israelis.

Nasrallah says Rice mission to serve Israel: "Rice is returning to the region to try to impose her conditions on Lebanon again to serve her new Middle East project and to serve Israel," Nasrallah said in a televised speech.

Israel Retreats: Expert: Hizbullah announced earlier in the day that it forced Israeli soldiers to withdraw from the two strategic towns of Bint Jbeil and Maroon Al-Ras.

Lebanon’s Berri lambastes Arab leaders over war : Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri lashed out at US-allied Arab governments on Friday for not doing enough to stop Israel’s war on his country.

People of character: Lebanese wounded turn cold shoulder on Jordan aid: Lebanese casualties are rejecting aid from Jordan in protest at what they view as its failure to press for an end to Israeli air strikes in the 17-day-old war against Hizbollah.

Hezbollah: Halt Israeli aggression: Hezbollah pledged on Saturday to deny the United States and Israel any political gains from the war in Lebanon as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Jerusalem to discuss ways to end the 18-day-old conflict.

Lebanon to Israel: Return Shebaa Farms: Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has said that if Israel wants secure borders it must withdraw from the disputed Shebaa Farms area that it has occupied since 1967.

Israel 'to destroy homes in Gaza: The YNet news website quoted an unnamed senior officer in the army's southern command as saying the aim was to "clean" a 1km wide strip of land.

Video: What's it like to have your home demolished

Bahraini women, professionals rally for Lebanon, Palestinians

OCHA: 22 Palestinians killed in Gaza in past 36 hours

Weekly Report on Human Rights Violations

Iraq: At least 16 killed in continuing U.S. occupation: Anti occupation forces killed four U.S. Marines in action in Iraq's restive Anbar province on Thursday, the U.S. military said. They gave no further details.

Shiite cleric condemns Iraqi leader for U.S. visit : In a sermon rich with bloody imagery and religious struggle, an influential Shiite cleric yesterday condemned Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s trip to Washington this week as a betrayal of Islam and a humiliation to his people at the hands of U.S. and Israeli aggressors.

Congresswoman Woolsey Calls for Repeal of President’s Iraq War Powers : Says Congress never authorized an occupation of Iraq

Ghettoisation creeping into Iraq

Sunni mosques attacked in Baghdad

Shia shrine destroyed in Iraq

Audio of Sayyed Nasrallah's speech on July 29, televized by Al-Jazeera and Al-Manar.

The latest news is that intensive Israeli bombardment of the main crossing point between Lebanon and Syria and the main highway between the two countries has stopped all crossing. Israel wants to turn Lebanon into a large Gaza Strip and wants European puppet troops to control the crossing points just as they do at the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza.

Equally important, Israel will get Syria involved, the old-fashioned way. Moshe Dayan, the former Israeli Defense Minister, stated that Israel would send its bulldozers inside Syrian territory and wait. If the Syrians did not fire on them, they would be told to go deeper, until the Syrians finally fire on them in self-defense. Then Israel would attack with overwhelming force, because, you guessed it, "Israel has the right to defend itself."

Folks, it is going to be the same way; it is deja vu, all over again.

In addition, an "explosives specialist" with the Israeli police said that the "unknown" missile fired by Hezbollah at the Israeli town of Afula on Friday was supposedly Syrian-made. So, the setup is complete.

Tony Sayegh
-----
Air raid hits Syria border

It is a war of containment and control that has turned the besieged Strip into a prison with no way in or out, and no protection from an fearsome battery of drones, precision missiles, tank shells and artillery rounds.

As of last night, 29 people had been killed in the most concentrated 48 hours of violence since an Israeli soldier was abducted by Palestinian militants just more than a month ago.

The operation is codenamed "Samson's Pillars", a collective punishment of the 1.4 million Gazans, subjecting them to a Lebanese-style offensive that has targeted the civilian infrastructure by destroying water mains, the main power station and bridges.

The similarities with Israel's blitz on Lebanon are striking, raising suspicions that the Gaza offensive has been the testing ground for the military strategy now unfolding on the second front in the north.

Says U.S. insists on continued fighting in Lebanon; claims Israel suffered 'serious defeat' in Bint Jbail. Continued.

WASHINGTON - Hopes by the George W Bush administration for the emergence of an implicit Sunni-Israel alliance against an Iranian-led "Shi'ite crescent" have faded over the past week as Arab public opinion has become increasingly united by outrage over the Jewish state's continuing military campaign in Lebanon and Washington's refusal to stop it, according to Middle East experts.

Fueled by saturation television coverage of the destruction and suffering wrought by Israel's attacks, popular sentiment in both Shi'ite and Sunni communities has moved strongly behind Shi'ite Hezbollah, whose leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has become a symbol of resistance to Israeli and US power, these analysts agree.

"Resistance rises above sectarianism," said Graham Fuller, a former top Middle East analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency and the Rand Corporation. "Sunni masses by and large are not concerned whether Iran, Syria's rulers, or Hezbollah are Shi'ites; they applaud them for their steadfastness and willingness to fight and even die."

The growing Sunni-Shi'ite unity in support of Hezbollah defies hopes by Bush administration officials and their Israel-centered neo-conservative supporters in Washington that fears of an Iranian-led Shi'ite axis stretching from Lebanon across Syria to the new Shi'ite-dominated government in Iraq would provoke Sunni-led states to form a de facto alliance with Israel.

Those hopes were bolstered when, in a break with traditional Arab solidarity over any confrontation with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt denounced Hezbollah for "adventurism" in abducting two Israeli soldiers along the Israel-Lebanon border, the incident that precipitated the current violence and destruction.

Their statements, which were welcomed by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as evidence of the emergence of a "new Middle East", were also cited as evidence, particularly by neo-conservatives, that Iran, believed to be Hezbollah's most important source of arms and external funding, had displaced Israel as the Sunnis' greatest threat.

The theory was most eloquently expressed by Michael Rubin, a hardline neo-conservative at the American Enterprise Institute. "Across Lebanon and the region, Arab leaders see Hezbollah for what it is: an arm of Iranian influence waging a sectarian battle in the heart of the Middle East," he wrote in a July 19 column in the Wall Street Journal titled "Iran against the Arabs".

"An old Arab proverb goes, 'Me against my brother; me and my brother against our cousin; and me, my brother and my cousin against the stranger,'" he went on. "Forced to make a choice, Sunni Arabs are deciding: the Jews are cousins; the Shi'ites, strangers."

But most regional specialists now dismiss this analysis, at least at the popular level. If anything, they say, the impact of Israel's military campaign in Lebanon has confirmed its status as the "stranger", while Hezbollah's resistance has elevated it and those who support it to "cousin", if not "brother", to Sunni Arabs.

"In fact ... there is more of a rapprochement between the Sunni and Shi'ite," said Jean Francois Seznec, a specialist on the Persian Gulf region at Columbia University, who noted that Shi'ite Hezbollah and Iran both support Sunni Hamas in the Palestinian territories and that Sunnis in Syria could be expected to rally behind the Alawi Assad regime if Damascus, which also supports Hezbollah, is drawn into the current conflict.

"The real split here is between the Sunni autocrats and their very own citizens," wrote Fuller in an article for Global Viewpoint. "These Sunni regimes are terrified that Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and even Sunni Hamas are all creating inspirational models of independent mass resistance against reigning US and Israeli power in the region."

That Sunni leaders now feel compelled to follow public opinion was made evident by several developments this past week, beginning with Egypt's rejection of Washington's proposal to hold Wednesday's emergency international conference on Lebanon at Sharm el-Sheikh. As a result, the conference, at which Rice found herself completely isolated in rejecting calls for an immediate ceasefire, was held in Rome instead.

Tuesday's angry and unusually harsh denunciation by Saudi Arabia of what it called "unremitting Israeli aggression", which also warned Washington in particular of unpredictable "repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one" if a ceasefire is not quickly achieved, was also taken as a major reversal of its previous views.

"The Saudis thought they could get a ceasefire and be the heroes," said Marc Lynch, a Middle East specialist at Williams College who follows the Arab media closely. "When it became clear that that wasn't going to happen and public opinion was getting really mobilized, then they did a 180-degree turn. That is very significant."

Finally, Thursday's appearance on Al-Jazeera of a new video by al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, in which he implicitly called for unity between Sunnis and Shi'ites against the "Zionist-Crusader alliance", suggested that the most radical Sunni jihadis were not only eager to identify themselves with Hezbollah's resistance, but also see the current crisis as an opportunity for broadening their base.

"Just as Iraq served al-Qaeda's strategy by supplying an endless stream of images of 'heroic mujahideen' fighting against 'brutal Americans' - and became less useful as images of dead Iraqi civilians began to complicate the picture - the Lebanon war offers an unending supply of images and actions which powerfully support al-Qaeda's narrative and world view ... without the complications posed by [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi's controversial anti-Shi'ite strategy in Iraq," wrote Lynch on his blog.

"In that regard, al-Qaeda's open support for Hezbollah might even help to heal the Sunni-Shi'ite breach which Zarqawi worked hard to open [in Iraq] against [Osama] bin Laden's and Zawahiri's advice," he said.

Even before the current Israel-Lebanon crisis, al-Qaeda had been trying to undo the damage caused by Zarqawi's anti-Shi'ite campaign. In his most recent audio message released on July 1, several weeks after Zarqawi's death, bin Laden referred to Shi'ites as "cousins" and called for al-Qaeda of Mesopotamia, as Zarqawi's group is known, to make US forces and their collaborators - rather than the general Shi'ite population - its primary target.

"The Sunni-Shi'ite divide is real, and it's not just being invented by the neo-cons, but if you look at mainstream public opinion, a lot of the Sunni-Shi'ite stuff that the neo-cons and the press are picking up on is the invention of the [Sunni-led] regimes, especially in the Gulf, where Sunni leaders really are afraid of Iran and their Shi'ite populations inconveniently happen to live on the oilfields," Lynch told Inter Press Service.

"For the Arab regimes, playing on Sunni-Shi'ite differences is really a divide-and-conquer [strategy] to prevent the rise of a unified movement against them. But the fact is you're now seeing even very Sunni movements like the Muslim Brotherhood rallying to Hezbollah as the fighter against Israel, while these corrupt, impotent, pro-American governments aren't doing a thing."

By William Lind

"Welcome to my parlor, says the Hezbollah spider to the Israeli fly. The Israeli high command continues to express its faith in the foxfire of air power to destroy Hezbollah, but, as always, it's not working. Lebanon is taking a pounding, to be sure, but Lebanon is not Hezbollah. Slowly, reluctantly, Israel is edging toward a ground invasion of Lebanon, for which Hezbollah devoutly prays. When air power fails, what other choice will Israel have?

'They're not fighting like we thought they would,' one soldier said. 'They're fighting harder. They're good on their own ground….'
"'It will take the summer to beat them,' said [Israeli soldier] Michael Sidorenko….
"'They're guerrillas. They're very smart.'"

Operationally, Hezbollah's rocket attacks on Israel are the matador's cape. That too is working. What of the strategic level? The Arab street is cheering for Hezbollah, often across the Sunni-Shi'ite divide, while the governments of states such as Egypt hide under the bed. The goal of Islamic fourth generation forces is the destruction of most, if not all, Arab state governments, so Hezbollah is winning strategically as well. One can almost watch the legitimacy drain away from the region's decrepit states, with incalculable consequences for American interests."

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, President Bush called the conflict in the Mideast "painful and tragic" but also "a moment of opportunity for broader change in the region."


--Who should I despise more? Him? Or the idiots that voted for him T W I C E ? ?

ما الحاجة إلى هذا العدد وبهذه السرعة؟

تثير شحنة الأسلحة التي بدأت الولايات المتحدة بارسالها إلى إسرائيل على جناح السرعة في نهاية الأسبوع الماضي، جملة من الأسئلة الجدية التي تتجاوز الطريقة شبه السرية التي تتم بها العملية لتطاول السبب الفعلي حول حاجة إسرائيل إلى هذه الكمية من الصواريخ ذات القدرة التدميرية الهائلة والتي لا يمكن أن يكون الغرض من ارسالها هو لبنان وحده.

By James Bamford
Rolling Stone

Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior
Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country.
Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence
and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran.

Triumph for the NEOCONs and the Israel Lobby Approaches"The only way we are going to win this war is to bring down those regimes in Tehran and Damascus, and they are not going to fall as a result of fighting between their terrorist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon on the one hand, and Israel on the other. Only the United States can accomplish it. There is no other way."- Michael Ledeen, 13 July 2006, National ReviewMER - MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 28 July 2006: The Israelis are mobilizing tens of thousands of additional troops. The Americans are rushing still more high-tech weapons to Israel, including satellite-guided bunker-busting super bombs. President Bush and Condi Rice miss no opportunity to publicly implicate Syria and Iran in 'arming' Hezbollah, promoting terrorism, and building weapons of mass destruction. The Zionist Neocons who dominate Washington affairs in coordination with The Israel Lobby are working feverishly to create the conditions for the expansion of the war to Syria and Iran. The huge AIPAC conference in March at the Washington Convention Center has one giant theme - GET IRAN! This most insightful article from the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone Magazine makes for exceedingly important weekend reading now.

The mother of 12 year-old Anas Zumlut mourns during his funeral in Jabalya north Gaza Strip July 28, 2006.
Palestinians carry the body of twelve-year-old old Anas Zumlut during his funeral in Jabalya in the northern Gaza Strip July 28, 2006. Zumlut was killed by Israeli gunfire near his house in the east of Jabalya.

ICH BIN EIN TERRORIST:
Demonstrators with an Israeli and an American flag hold signs reading 'I am a terrorist' and 'Yes, right me too', from left, during a protest to call on Israel to stop its military strikes against Palestinians and Lebanon, Friday, July 28, 2006, in central Vienna.

MUST BE A HIZBULLAH FIGHTER!
A Lebanese boy who was injured in an Israeli bombing in the south of Lebanon lies in his hospital bed at the Hammoud University Medical Center in Saida, July 28, 2006.

THANK YOU CONDOLEEZZA:
Two Lebanese women recover some of their belongings from the rubble of their destroyed southern Beirut neighbourhood.

HOME, SWEET HOME:
A car remains parked in a garage demolished to rubble in Israeli airstrikes in Shoukine outside Nabatiyeh. Israeli planes have blasted south Lebanon for the 17th day.

NEW REFUGEES: WELCOME TO THE NEW MIDDLE EAST
A displaced Lebanese family sits in the back of a truck after fleeing and arriving in the port city of Sidon, southern Lebanon, Friday, July 28, 2006.

A displaced Lebanese man sits in his wheelchair as a displaced young girl looks up while holding a placard with writing in Arabic reading: 'Even if you kill our children we will remain steadfast' at a school in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, July 28, 2006, where citizens who fled their houses in different Lebanese towns and villages have been staying since shortly after the beginning of the Israeli offensive on Lebanon.

ISRAEL: DARKNESS UNTO NATIONS
A Palestinian boy stands next to a candle inside his family's house during a power cut in Gaza City July 28, 2006. An Israeli military air strike destroyed the main power plant in the Gaza Strip four weeks ago.

Orthodox Jews participate in an anti-Israel rally in front of the Israeli consulate, Friday, July 28, 2006 in New York.

NO THIS IS NOT DRESDEN, IT IS BEIRUT:
Smoke billows from a southern Beirut neighborhood, three days after the last Israeli bombardments in the area.

US STOOGES NEED EACH OTHER:
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, right, meets with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, Saturday, July 29, 2006, at a palace in Alexandria, Egypt.

HIZBULLAH WEAPONS DESTROYED:
A Lebanese citizen picks up a book from the rubble of destroyed apartment buildings in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, July 29, 2006.

MESSAGE OF RESISTANCE IS SPREADING:
A Palestinian man sells audio CDs of Hizbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in the West Bank city of Ramallah July 29, 2006.

NOT EVEN KAREN HUGHES CAN FIX THIS:
An anti-US sign and Lebanese flags are placed amid the rubble of buildings attacked by Israeli air strikes in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Lawmakers form pro-Israel caucus : The U.S. caucus plans to join with the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus and caucuses in other legislatures to “support Israel’s right to live in peace within safe and secure borders.” (They should ask the people that voted for them if this is what they voted for them to do.)


Antiwar Candidate Backs Israeli Strikes: Ned Lamont, a Greenwich, Conn., businessman who holds a slight lead in the polls over Lieberman, told the Forward that he supports Israel's current operations in Gaza and Lebanon, and that he disagreed with the European Union's declaration that criticized Israel's actions as a "disproportionate" response. (Proof that the Democrats (except for my man Pete Stark) are all pigs at the trough with no scruples or principles at all.)


Nancy Pelosi and Israel: This was written in May of 2005. I think it is a good reminder of how the Democrats are complicit in Israel's crimes.

Israeli sniper kills a 13-year-old boy: An Israeli sniper shot and killed Anas Zomlot, from the "Block 2" area in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, early on Friday morning as he was standing on his family's balcony.

Gaza Strip Situation Report: 22 Palestinians are killed and 67 injured in the last 36 hours

Israel claims it's justified in bombing civilians because Hezbollah mingles with them. In fact, the militant group doesn't trust its civilians and stays as far away from them as possible.

By Mitch Prothero
7/28/06 "Salon"

The bombs came just as night fell, around 7 p.m. The locals knew that the 10-story apartment building had been the office, and possibly the residence, of Sheik Tawouk, the Hezbollah commander for the south, so they had moved their families out at the start of the war. The landlord had refused to rent to Hezbollah when they requested the top floors of the building. No matter, the locals said, the Hezb guys just moved in anyway in the name of the "resistance."

Everyone knew that the building would be hit eventually. Its location in downtown Tyre, which had yet to be hit by Israeli airstrikes, was not going to protect it forever. And "everyone" apparently included Sheik Tawouk, because he wasn't anywhere near it when it was finally hit.

Two guided bombs struck it in a huge flash bang of fire and concrete dust followed by the roar of 10 stories pancaking on top of each other, local residents said. Jihad Husseini, 46, runs the driving school a block away and was sitting in his office when the bombs struck. He said his life was saved because he had drawn the heavy cloth curtains shut on the windows facing the street, preventing him from being hit by a wave of shattered glass. But even so, a chunk of smoldering steel flew through the air, broke through the window and the curtain, and shot past his head and through the wall before coming to rest in his neighbor's home.

But Jihad still refuses to leave.

"Everything is broken, but I can make it better," he says, surrounded by his sons Raed, 20, and Mohammed, 12. "I will not leave. This place is not military, it is not Hezbollah; it was an empty apartment."

Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around their targets, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths -- the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far -- on "terrorists" who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.

But this claim is almost always false. My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters -- as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers -- avoid civilians. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators -- as so many Palestinian militants have been.

For their part, the Israelis seem to think that if they keep pounding civilians, they'll get some fighters, too. The almost nightly airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut could be seen as making some sense, as the Israelis appear convinced there are command and control bunkers underneath the continually smoldering rubble. There were some civilian casualties the first few nights in places like Haret Hreik, but people quickly left the area to the Hezbollah fighters with their radios and motorbikes.

But other attacks seem gratuitous, fishing expeditions, or simply intended to punish anything and anyone even vaguely connected to Hezbollah. Lighthouses, grain elevators, milk factories, bridges in the north used by refugees, apartment buildings partially occupied by members of Hezbollah's political wing -- all have been reduced to rubble.

In the south, where Shiites dominate, just about everyone supports Hezbollah. Does mere support for Hezbollah, or even participation in Hezbollah activities, mean your house and family are fair game? Do you need to fire rockets from your front yard? Or is it enough to be a political activist?

The Israelis are consistent: They bomb everyone and everything remotely associated with Hezbollah, including noncombatants. In effect, that means punishing Lebanon. The nation is 40 percent Shiite, and of that 40 percent, tens of thousands are employed by Hezbollah's social services, political operations, schools, and other nonmilitary functions. The "terrorist" organization Hezbollah is Lebanon's second-biggest employer.

People throw the phrase "ghost town" around a lot, but Nabatiya, a bombed-out town about 15 miles from the Lebanon-Israel border, deserves it. One expects the spirits of the town's dead, or its refugees, to silently glide out onto its abandoned streets from the ruined buildings that make up much of the town.

Not all of the buildings show bomb damage, but those that don't have metal shutters blown out as if by a terrible wind. And there are no people at all, except for the occasional Hezbollah scout on a motorbike armed only with a two-way radio, keeping an eye on things as Israeli jets and unmanned drones circle overhead.

Overlooking the outskirts of this town, which has a peacetime population of 100,000 or so -- mostly Shiite supporters of Hezbollah and its more secular rival Amal -- is the Ragheh Hareb Hospital, a facility that makes quite clear what side the residents of Nabatiya are on in this conflict.

The hospital's carefully sculpted and trimmed front lawn contains the giant Red Crescent that denotes the Muslim version of the Red Cross. As we approach it, an Israeli missile streaks by, smashing into a school on the opposite hilltop. As we crouch and then run for the shelter of the hospital awning, that giant crescent reassures me until I look at the flagpole. The Lebanese flag and its cedar tree is there -- right next to the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It's safe to say that Ragheh Hareb Hospital has an association with Hezbollah. And the staff sports the trimmed beards and polite, if somewhat ominous, manner of the group. After young men demand press IDs and do some quick questioning, they allow us to enter.

Dr. Ahmed Tahir recognizes me from a funeral in the nearby village of Dweir. An Israeli bomb dropped on their house killed a Hezbollah cleric and 11 members of his immediate family, mostly children. People in Lebanon are calling it a war crime. Tahir looks exhausted, and our talk is even more tense than the last time.

"Maybe it would be best if the Israelis bombed your car on the road here," he said, with a sharp edge. "If you were killed, maybe the public outcry would be so bad in America that the Jews would be forced to stop these attacks."

When I volunteered that the Bush administration cared little for journalists, let alone ones who reported from Hezbollah territory, he shrugged. "Maybe if it was an American bomb used by the Israelis that killed an American journalist, they would stop this horror," he said.

The handful of people in the town include some from Hezbollah's political wing, as well as volunteers keeping an eye on things while the residents are gone. Off to the side, as we watch the Israelis pummel ridgelines on the outskirts of town, one of the political operatives explains that the fighters never come near the town, reinforcing what other Hezbollah people have told me over the years.

Although Israel targets apartments and offices because they are considered "Hezbollah" installations, the group has a clear policy of keeping its fighters away from civilians as much as possible. This is not for humanitarian reasons -- they did, after all, take over an apartment building against the protests of the landlord, knowing full well it would be bombed -- but for military ones.

"You can be a member of Hezbollah your entire life and never see a military wing fighter with a weapon," a Lebanese military intelligence official, now retired, once told me. "They do not come out with their masks off and never operate around people if they can avoid it. They're completely afraid of collaborators. They know this is what breaks the Palestinians -- no discipline and too much showing off."

Perhaps once a year, Hezbollah will hold a military parade in the south, in which its weapons and fighters appear. Media access to these parades is tightly limited and controlled. Unlike the fighters in the half dozen other countries where I have covered insurgencies, Hezbollah fighters do not like to show off for the cameras. In Iraq, with some risk taking, you can meet with and even watch the resistance guys in action. (At least you could during my last time there.) In Afghanistan, you can lunch with Taliban fighters if you're willing to walk a day or so in the mountains. In Gaza and the West Bank, the Fatah or Hamas fighter is almost ubiquitous with his mask, gun and sloganeering to convince the Western journalist of the justice of his cause.

The Hezbollah guys, on the other hand, know that letting their fighters near outsiders of any kind -- journalists or Lebanese, even Hezbollah supporters -- is stupid. In three trips over the last week to the south, where I came near enough to the fighting to hear Israeli artillery, and not just airstrikes, I saw exactly no fighters. Guys with radios with the look of Hezbollah always found me. But no fighters on corners, no invitations to watch them shoot rockets at the Zionist enemy, nothing that can be used to track them.

Even before the war, on many of my trips to the south, the Lebanese army, or the ubiquitous guy on a motorbike with a radio, would halt my trip and send me over to Tyre to get permission from a Hezbollah official before I could proceed, usually with strict limits on where I could go.

Every other journalist I know who has covered Hezbollah has had the same experience. A fellow journalist, a Lebanese who has covered them for two decades, knows only one military guy who will admit it, and he never talks or grants interviews. All he will say is, "I'll be gone for a few months for training. I'll call when I'm back." Presumably his friends and neighbors may suspect something, but no one says anything.

Hezbollah's political members say they have little or no access to the workings of the fighters. This seems to be largely true: While they obviously hear and know more than the outside world, the firewall is strong.

Israel, however, has chosen to treat the political members of Hezbollah as if they were fighters. And by targeting the civilian wing of the group, which supplies much of the humanitarian aid and social protection for the poorest people in the south, they are targeting civilians.

Earlier in the week, I stood next to a giant crater that had smashed through the highway between Tyre and Sidon -- the only route of escape for most of the people in the far south. Overhead, Israeli fighters and drones circled above the city and its outlying areas and regular blasts of bombs and naval artillery could be heard.

The crater served as a nice place to check up on the refugees, who were forced by the crater to slow down long enough to be asked questions. They barely stopped, their faces wrenched in near panic. The main wave of refugees out of the south had come the previous two days, so these were the hard-luck cases, the people who had been really close to the fighting and who needed two days just to get to Tyre, or who had had to make the tough decision whether to flee or stay put, with neither choice looking good.

The roads in the south are full of the cars of people who chose wrong -- burned-out chassis, broken glass, some cars driven straight into posts or ditches. Other seem to have broken down or run out of gas on the long dirt detours around the blown-out highway and bridge network the Israeli air force had spent days methodically destroying even as it warned people to flee.

One man, slowing his car around the crater, almost screams, "There is nothing left. This country is not for us." His brief pause immediately draws horns and impatient yells from the people in the cars behind him. They pass the crater but within two minutes a large explosion behind us, north, in the direction of Sidon, rocks us.

As we drive south toward Tyre, we soon pass a new series of scars on the highway: shrapnel, hubcaps and broken glass. A car that had been maybe five minutes ahead of us was hit by an Israeli shell. Three of its passengers were wounded, and it was heading north to the Hammound hospital at Sidon. We turned around because of the attack and followed the car to Sidon. Those unhurt staked out the parking lot of the hospital, looking for the Western journalists they were convinced had called in the strike. Luckily my Iraqi fixer smelled trouble and we got out of there. Probably nothing would have happened -- mostly they were just freaked-out country people who didn't like the coincidence of an Israeli attack and a car full of journalists driving past.

So the analysts talking on cable news about Hezbollah "hiding within the civilian population" clearly have spent little time if any in the south Lebanon war zone and don't know what they're talking about. Hezbollah doesn't trust the civilian population and has worked very hard to evacuate as much of it as possible from the battlefield. And this is why they fight so well -- with no one to spy on them, they have lots of chances to take the Israel Defense Forces by surprise, as they have by continuing to fire rockets and punish every Israeli ground incursion.

And the civilians? They see themselves as targeted regardless of their affiliation. They are enraged at Israel and at the United States, the only two countries on earth not calling for an immediate cease-fire. Lebanese of all persuasions think the United States and Israel believe that Lebanese lives are cheaper than Israeli ones. And many are now saying that they want to fight.

Copyright ©2006 Salon Media Group, Inc

Iraqi Shiite leader rejects role for US reinforcement: Iraq's most influential Shiite leaders have rejected the use of US forces to stabilize Iraq's security situation, as the Pentagon announced an increase in troops numbers.

Iraq: At least 46 killed in ongoing U.S. occupation: The Iraqi army killed nine "insurgents" and detained another 16 in different parts of Iraq during the last 24 hours, Iraqi army said in a statement.

Dozens killed as more troops head to Baghdad : It is unlikely, however, that some 10,000 US troops will succeed in restoring civil order, something that 50,000 Iraqi forces in the city have failed to do. Sunni now shoot at police and police commando detachments, regarding them as officially sanctioned "death squads".

Blair and Bush: Killing To Go On Until We Find A Plan

Israel's secret war: the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Palestine
By Anne Penketh in Gaza City
Published: 29 July 2006

A 12-year-old boy dead on a stretcher. A mother in shock and disbelief after her son was shot dead for standing on their roof. A phone rings and a voice in broken Arabic orders residents to abandon their home on pain of death.

Those are snapshots of a day in Gaza where Israel is waging a hidden war, as the world looks the other way, focusing on Lebanon.

It is a war of containment and control that has turned the besieged Strip into a prison with no way in or out, and no protection from an fearsome battery of drones, precision missiles, tank shells and artillery rounds.

As of last night, 29 people had been killed in the most concentrated 48 hours of violence since an Israeli soldier was abducted by Palestinian militants just more than a month ago.

The operation is codenamed "Samson's Pillars", a collective punishment of the 1.4 million Gazans, subjecting them to a Lebanese-style offensive that has targeted the civilian infrastructure by destroying water mains, the main power station and bridges.

The similarities with Israel's blitz on Lebanon are striking, raising suspicions that the Gaza offensive has been the testing ground for the military strategy now unfolding on the second front in the north.

In Gaza, following the victory of the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas in January, Israel, with the help of the US, initiated an immediate boycott and ensured the rest of the world fell into line after months of hand-wringing. Israel has secured the same flashing green light from the Bush administration over Lebanon, while the rest of the world appeals in vain for an immediate ceasefire.

The Israelis, who launched their Lebanon offensive on 12 July after the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbollah fighters, intend to create a "sterile" zone devoid of militants in a mile-wide stretch inside Lebanon.

In Gaza, Palestinian land has already been bulldozed to form a 300-metre open area along the border with Israel proper. And in both cases, the crisis will doubtless end up being defused by a prisoner exchange. With Lebanon dominating the headlines, Israel has "rearranged the occupation" in Gaza, in the words of the Palestinian academic and MP, Hanan Ashrawi. But unlike the Lebanese, the desperate Gazans have nowhere to flee from their humanitarian crisis.
Before Israeli tanks moved into northern Gaza, yesterday, 12-year-old Anas Zumlut joined the ranks of dead Palestinians, numbering more than 100. His body was wrapped in a funeral shroud, just like those of the two sisters, a three-year-old and an eight-month-old baby, who were killed three days ago in the same area of Jablaya.

In the past three weeks, the foreign ministry and the interior ministry in Gaza city have been smashed, prompting speculation that Israel's offensive is not only aimed at securing the release of Cpl Gilad Shalit, or bringing an end to the Qassam rocket attacks that have wounded one person in the past month and jarred the nerves of the residents of the nearest Israeli town of Sderot.

"At first we thought they were bombing the Hamas leaders by targeting Haniyeh and Zahar," a Palestinian official said, referring to the Palestinian Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister. "But when they targeted the economy ministry we decided they wanted to completely destroy the entire government."

The only functioning crossing, Erez, is closed to Palestinians who are almost hermetically sealed inside the Strip. As the local economy has been strangled by donor countries, Gaza City's 1,800 municipal employees have not been paid since the beginning of April. Families are borrowing to the hilt, selling their jewellery, ignoring electricity bills and tax demands and throwing themselves on the mercy of shopkeepers.

Western officials say they hope the pressure will coerce Hamas into recognising Israel but the Palestinians believe the real goal is the collapse of the Hamas government - six of whose cabinet members have been arrested, the rest are in hiding.

The signs on the ground are that Israel's military pressure is proving counter-productive. There is the risk of a total breakdown of the fabric of society at a time when the main political parties, Fatah and Hamas, are at each other's throats. "The popularity of Hamas is increasing," says the Palestinian deputy foreign minister, Ahmed Soboh, from the comparative safety of his West Bank office in Ramallah.

The situation has become unbearable for Gazans, says Nabil Shaath, a veteran Fatah official who is a former foreign and planning minister. Through the window, small fishing boats are anchored uselessly in the harbour, penned in by Israeli sea patrols.

All mechanisms for coping are being exhausted.

Mr Shaath, who had a daughter, Mimi, late in life, says that he tried "laughter therapy" with his five-year-old at home in northern Gaza. "Every time there was a shell, I would burst out laughing and she would laugh with me. But then the Israelis occupied everything around us, and there were tanks, and shrapnel in the garden, and she saw where the shells were coming from, and she was terrified. So Mimi now gets angry when I laugh."

Only a few miles away, on the other side of the border, the Israeli army says it is taking pains to minimise civilian casualties. Hila, a 21-year old paratrooper who is not allowed to give her last name, says the Hamas fighters in Gaza - like Hizbollah in Lebanon - deliberately mingle with the civilian population as a tactic. Weapons are stored in the upper storeys of houses where families live downstairs, she says. "The terrorists deliberately choose places where we can't retaliate."
But these places are being hit. And Mr Shaath is scornful of the disproportionate Israeli reaction to the Palestinian rockets. Five Israelis have been killed by the 10km range Qassams since 2000.

Mrs Ashrawi believes Samson's Pillars are no closer to falling. "Israelis think they are searing the consciousness of the Palestinians and the Lebanese with a branding iron. But if people have a cause they will never be defeated."

Day 17
* Israeli aircraft kill 12 in southern Lebanon, with hill villages near Tyre among the targets.

* Hizbollah fires a new long-range missile, the Khaibar-1, at Afula south of Haifa, the furthest a Hizbollah rocket has landed inside Israel.

* At least six people are wounded in rocket attacks on northern Israel. One rocket hits a hospital in Nahariya.

* US State Department describes Israel's remarks that the Rome conference gave it a ''green light'' to continue its attack on Lebanon as ''outrageous''.

* Emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland asks Israel and Hizbollah for a 72-hour ceasefire to allow evacuation of the elderly.

* Israeli aircraft attack homes owned by Palestinian militants and a metal workshop in the Gaza Strip, wounding seven, doctors say.

* Death toll:
At least 459 people, mostly civilians, in Lebanon

* 51 Israelis, including 18 civilians, according to Reuters' tally.

* Israeli military says 200 Hizbollah fighters killed, Hizbollah has said 31 of its fighters killed.
A 12-year-old boy dead on a stretcher. A mother in shock and disbelief after her son was shot dead for standing on their roof. A phone rings and a voice in broken Arabic orders residents to abandon their home on pain of death.

TRYING TO STOP A RABID ATTACK DOG

WE FEEL YOUR PAIN!

URGENT: LEBANON PALESTINE EMERGENCY FUND
For Immediate Release
July 27, 2006

The ongoing invasion of Lebanon by Israel has left hundreds of itsresidents either dead or injured. Meanwhile, the 58-year Zionistoccupation of Palestine has escalated, bringing with it more death anddestruction for the Palestinian people.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians have been renderedhomeless and unable to meet their most basicneeds by Israel's deliberate and conscious effort to destroy Lebanon's civilian infrastructure. Entire neighborhoods in the south of Lebanon andBeirut have been literally wiped out using US-supplied weapons.

Since the siege of Gaza one month ago, the Palestinian death toll includesmore than 31 children, killed by the hand of the "Israeli" occupier.

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, calls on all people ofconscience to donate to its Lebanon Palestine Emergency Relief Fund. Alldonations will be used to help Palestinian and Lebanese victims of thelatest Israeli aggression.

Please make your tax-deductible donation payable to "Al-Awda, PRRC".Indicate "Lebanon Palestine Emergency Fund" in the memo section.

Checks or money orders should be mailed to:
Al-Awda, PRRC
PO Box 131352
Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA

To make a secure online donation using your credit card, go to www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the instructions. Please email us at info@al-awda.org to let us know that your online donation is intended for the 'Lebanon Palestine Emergency Fund.

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
PO Box 131352
Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA
Tel: 760-685-3243
Fax: 360-933-3568
E-mail: info@al-awda.org
al-awda.org

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC), is a not for profit tax-exempt educational and charitable 501(c)(3) organization as defined by\nthe Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the United States of America. Under RS guidelines, your donations to PRRC are tax-deductible.

At least the Republicans are honest, they don't try to pretend that they aren't fascists. They wear their fascist label with pride. Pride. But the Democrats, they try to pretend that they aren't and that really bothers me. *But all props to my representative Pete Stark who is very moral and very ethical and OK he is the only Democrat that I will vote for.

Battle Over Bolton Could Be Decided by Jewish Support: "I believe almost every Republican will be supporting" Bolton in the Senate, and "you're going to have a surprising number of Democrats supporting him because of his record" of "courage, intelligence and eloquence," said Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America

For liberating them from their heads, their limbs, their lives, their freedom, their dignity, their electricity, their children, etc.,

Iraq's Valley of Peace helps overflowing morgues: "Most of the bodies were bound by chains so we always have to keep a cutter nearby to cut them. Most bodies were beheaded and they have a lot of holes in the head and face," said cemetery worker Riad Ahmed.

Israeli Justice Minister: IDF Entitled to Kill Everyone in South Lebanon: Ramon made these comments on Israeli Army radio. He was apparently not asked about the IDF’s practice of blowing up the cars full of civilians fleeing south Lebanon.

Criminalizing Civilians: Look at this logic: since Israel has asked civilians to leave, any that disobeyed have forfeited their status as civilians.

100,000 Whiners for War Crimes: Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called for 100,000 apologists for Israel to spam web sites reporting the Israeli Death Forces' horrors in Lebanon. (I knew that when that Gallup poll came out indicating that only half of Americans support what Israel is doing and that something like 70% did not believe Israeli claims that Hezbollah *started it* that we would be inundated with Zionist apologists. I think that 90% of the Zionists on As'ad's blog are being paid or are volunteering their time for Israel)

"Exclusive: In conversation in Damascus, senior Syrian journalist tells about sentiments in Syria ('as if there will be war any moment'); talks about military preparations in his country ('identifying your reinforcements in Golan Heights'); and estimates that Israeli pounding in Lebanon to intensify grassroots support of Nasrallah and his organization. Also in Syria, he says, Nasrallah more popular than ever "

Israeli strikes may boost Hizbullah base Hizbullah support tops 80 percent among Lebanese factions.
By Nicholas Blanford
TYRE, LEBANON

The ferocity of Israel's onslaught in southern Lebanon and Hizbullah's stubborn battles against Israeli ground forces may be working in the militant group's favor.

"They want to shatter the myth of Israeli invincibility," says Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a leading Lebanese expert on Hizbullah. "Being victorious means not allowing Israel to achieve their aims, and so far that is the case."

Still, the intensity of the Israeli bombing campaign appears to have taken Hizbullah aback. Mahmoud Komati, the deputy head of Hizbullah's politburo told the Associated Press, "the truth is - let me say this clearly - we didn't even expect [this] response ... that [Israel] would exploit this operation for this big war against us."

When Hizbullah guerrillas snatched two Israeli soldiers from across the border, it appeared to be a serious miscalculation. In the days that followed the July 12 capture, Israel unleashed its biggest offensive against Lebanon since its 1982 invasion, smashing the country's infrastructure, creating 500,000 refugees, and so far killing more than 400 civilians.

Thursday, Israeli air and artillery strikes continued in southern Lebanon and the International Committee of the Red Cross said bodies were laying in the streets of some Lebanese border villages where fighting has trapped civilians. Also Thursday Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman Zawahiri, called in a televised video for Muslims to join fighting in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon in a holy war against Israel. While al-Qaeda is a Sunni Muslim group which in general views Shiites, who make up Hizbullah's ranks, with disgust and not even as Muslims, they share a common hatred of Israel and the US.

In a televised address Tuesday, Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's secretary general, said the Israeli onslaught was an attempt by the US and Israel to "impose a new Middle East" in which Lebanon would be under US hegemony.

"Our fate is to confront this plan ... we are waging a war for the liberation of the remaining occupied lands and the liberation of our detainees," Mr. Nasrallah said.

Ms. Saad-Ghorayeb says that Hizbullah's goals have changed, "assuming a wider strategic importance" in which the party is at the forefront of opposition to the Bush administration's agenda of transforming the Middle East into a series of pro-Western democracies.

"Hizbullah is in a unique position to confront the US agenda which if successful will be, by extension, a victory for Syria, Iran and Hamas," she says.

Hizbullah's top guerrilla fighters are mounting a stubborn campaign against the region's most powerful army in and around Bint Jbail, the largest Shiite town in the border district where support for the party runs high.

Hizbullah has had six years - ever since Israel withdrew from south Lebanon - to prepare for this climactic showdown. Instead of storing weapons and ammunition in vulnerable stockpiles, they are scattered throughout the south in natural caves, tunnels, and homes. Hizbullah officials say they have sufficient ammunition and high morale tofight for months.

Hizbullah's frontline fighters are battle-hardened veterans after fighting Israeli forces in the 1990s. They are armed with advanced Russian antitank missiles, which have proved deadly against Israel's vaunted Merkava tanks and use classic hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.

"Hizbullah is doing what it does best, harassing the enemy," says Timur Goksel, who served 24 years with the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon.

Indeed, Nasrallah has announced the launch of the "second phase of our struggle" in which his long-range rockets would "go beyond Haifa," Israel's third-largest city. Israeli officials have been bracing for possible rocket attacks on Tel Aviv, which would mark a major escalation in the conflict.

"If Hizbullah hits Tel Aviv, I think that Israel will totally wipe off the map Bint Jbail, Khiam, Tyre and Nabatieh," says Nizar Abdel-Kader, a columnist for Ad-Diyar newspaper and a retired Lebanese army general.

The stakes are high for Hizbullah, but it seems it can count on an unprecedented swell of public support that cuts across sectarian lines.According to a poll released by the Beirut Center for Research and Information, 87 percent of Lebanese support Hizbullah's fight with Israel, a rise of 29 percent on a similar poll conducted in February. More striking, however, is the level of support for Hizbullah's resistance from non-Shiite communities. Eighty percent of Christians polled supported Hizbullah along with 80 percent of Druze and 89 percent of Sunnis.

Lebanese no longer blame Hizbullah for sparking the war by kidnapping the Israeli soldiers, but Israel and the US instead.

The latest poll by the Beirut Center found that 8 percent of Lebanese feel the US supports Lebanon, down from 38 percent in January.

"This support for Hizbullah is by default. It's due to US and Israeli actions," says Saad-Ghorayeb, whose father, Abdo, conducted the poll.

The most favorable outcome for Hizbullah, analysts say, is to keep harassing Israel until there is a cease-fire agreement that essentially leaves Hizbullah intact. If Israel establishes an occupation zone along the border to police the area, Hizbullah will likely continue fighting, unhindered by a weakened Lebanese government and backed by a radicalized Shiite community. That growing radicalization is palpable in this laid-back coastal town where support for Hizbullah traditionally has been arbitrary.

Ghassan Farran, a doctor and head of a local cultural organization, gazes in disbelief at the pile of smoking ruins which was once his home. Minutes earlier, an Israeli jet dropped two guided missiles into the six-story apartment block in the centre of Tyre.

"Look what America gives us, bombs and missiles," says this educated, middle-class professional. "I was never a political person and never with Hizbullah but now after this I am with Hizbullah."

For more than a month after the killings, Sgt. Lemuel Lemus stuck to his story.

“Proper escalation of force was used,” he told an investigator, describing how members of his unit shot and killed three Iraqi prisoners who had lashed out at their captors and tried to escape after a raid northwest of Baghdad on May 9.

Then, on June 15, Sergeant Lemus offered a new and much darker account.

In a lengthy sworn statement, he said he had witnessed a deliberate plot by his fellow soldiers to kill the three handcuffed Iraqis and a cover-up in which one soldier cut another to bolster their story. The squad leader threatened to kill anyone who talked. Later, one guilt-stricken soldier complained of nightmares and “couldn’t stop talking” about what happened, Sergeant Lemus said.

As with similar cases being investigated in Iraq, Sergeant Lemus’s narrative has raised questions about the rules under which American troops operate and the possible culpability of commanders. Four soldiers have been charged with premeditated murder in the case. Lawyers for two of them, who dispute Sergeant Lemus’s account, say the soldiers were given an order by a decorated colonel on the day in question to “kill all military-age men” they encountered.

Continued

The United Nations will remove unarmed observers from their posts along the Israel-Lebanon border, moving them in with the peacekeeping force in the area, a spokesman said Friday. UNTSO has about 50 observers in four posts along the border, two of which have already been abandoned - the one that was destroyed at Khiam and a second near the village of Maroun al-Ras, which was abandoned after one of the observers was seriously wounded by Hezbollah gunfire on July 23, said Milos Struger, spokesman for the UNIFIL peacekeepers. Israel's ambassador to the UN ruled out Thursday major UN involvement in any potential international force in Lebanon, saying more professional and better-trained troops were needed for such a volatile situation. Dan Gillerman also said Israel would not allow the United Nations to join in an investigation of an Israeli air strike that demolished a post belonging to the current UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. Four UN observers were killed in the Tuesday strike.

By Dahr Jamail

07/28/06

"I am in Hezbollah because I care," the fighter, who agreed to the interview on condition of anonymity, told me. "I care about my people, my country, and defending them from the Zionist aggression." I jotted furiously in my note pad while sitting in the back seat of his car. We were parked not far from Dahaya, the district in southern Beirut which is being bombed by Israeli warplanes as we talk.

The sounds of bombs echoed off the buildings of the capital city of Lebanon yesterday afternoon. Out the window, I watched several people run into the entrance of a business center, as if that would provide them any safety.

The member of Hezbollah I was interviewing-let's call him Ahmed-has been shot three times during previous battles against Israeli forces on the southern Lebanese border. His brother was killed in one of these battles. It's been several years since his father was killed by an air strike in a refugee camp."

My home now in Dahaya is pulverized, so Hezbollah gave me a place to stay while this war is happening," he said, "When this war ends, where am I to go? What am I to do? Everything in my life is destroyed now, so I will fight them."

That explains why earlier in the day, when driving me around, he'd stopped at an apartment to change into black clothing-a black t-shirt and black combat pants, along with black combat boots.

A tall, stocky man, Ahmed seemed always exhausted and angry."I didn't have a future," he continued while the concussions of bombs continued, "But now, Hassan Nasrallah is the leader of this country and her people. My family has lived in Lebanon for 1,500 years, and now we are all with him. He has given us belief and hope that we can push the Zionists out of Lebanon, and keep them out forever. He has given me purpose."

"Do you think this is why so many people now, probably over two million here in Lebanon alone, follow Nasrallah?" I asked.

"Hezbollah gives you dignity, it returns your dignity to you," he replied, "Israel has put all of the Arab so-called leaders under her foot, but Nasrallah says 'No more.'

"He paused to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The summer heat in Beirut drips with humidity. During the afternoon, my primary impulse is to find a fan and curl up for a nap under its gracious movement of the thick air here.

Earlier he'd driven me to one of the larger hospitals in Beirut where I photographed civilian casualties. All of them were tragic cases but one really grabbed me-that of a little 8 year-old girl, lying in a large bed. She was on her side, with a huge gash down the right side of her face and her right arm wrapped in gauze. She was hiding in the basement of her home with 12 family members when they were bombed by an Israeli fighter jet.Her father was in a room downstairs with both of his legs blown off. Her other family members were all seriously wounded. She lay there whimpering, with tears streaming down her face.

I think I won Ahmed's trust after that. I walked out the car, got in and sat down. He asked me where I wanted to go now.

Ahmed put his hand on my shoulder and said, "This is what I've been seeing for my entire life. Nothing but pain and suffering."

A photographer from Holland who was working with me was able to respond to Ahmed that maybe we could go have a look at Dahaya.

Ahmed had told me that it was currently extremely dangerous for a journalist to try to go into Dahaya. Before, Hezbollah had run tours for people to come see the wreckage generated by Israeli air strikes.

All you had to do was meet under a particular bridge at 11 a.m., and you had a guided tour from "party guys" (members of Hezbollah) into what has become a post-apocalyptic ghost town.

A couple of days ago I went there, without the "party guy" tour. A friend and I were driven in by a man we hired for the day to take us around. I was shocked at the level of destruction-in some places entire city blocks lay in rubble. At one point we came upon the touring journalists, all scurrying to their vehicles. Everyone was in a panic."What's going on?," I asked our driver. "A party guy who is a spotter said he saw Israeli jets coming," he responded, while spinning the van around and punching the gas as we sped past the journalists lugging their cameras while running back to their drivers.

While driving we were passed by several Hezbollah fighters riding scooters. Each had his M-16 assault rifle slung across his back and wore green ammunition pouches across his chest.

Ahmed told me he'd captured two Israeli spies himself. "One of them is a Lebanese Jewish woman, and she had a ring she could talk into," he explained as new sweat beads began to form on his forehead, "Others are posing as journalists and using this type of paint to mark buildings to be bombed."

I doubt the ring part, and also wonder about the feasibility of paint used for targeting, but there are no doubt spies crawling all over Beirut. In Iraq, mercenaries often pose as journalists, making it even more dangerous than it already was for us to work there.

Nevertheless, war always fosters paranoia. Whom can you trust? What if they are a spy? What are their motives? Why do they want to ask me this question at this time? These types of questions become constant I my mind, and so many others in this situation where normal life is now a thing of the past. I think they are some sort of twisted survival mechanism.

We drove back near my hotel and parked again. People strolled by on the sidewalks. Ahmed said, "I will never be a slave to the United States or Israel."

(c)2006 Dahr Jamail.

By Robert Fisk
The Indepedent
07/28/06

It was supposed to be a routine trip across the Lebanese killing fields for the brave men and women of the International Red Cross.

Sylvie Thoral was the "team leader" of our two vehicles, a 38-year-old Frenchwoman with dark brown hair and eyes like steel. The Israelis had been informed and had given what the ICRC likes to call its "green light" to the route. And, of course, we almost died. Trusting the Israeli army and air force, which are breaking the Geneva Conventions almost every day, is a dodgy business.

Their planes have already attacked - against all the conventions - the civil defence headquarters in Tyre, killing 20 refugees. They have twice attacked truckloads of refugees whom they themselves had ordered from their villages.

They have already attacked two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances in Qana, killing two of the three wounded patients inside and injuring all the crew - a clear and apparently deliberate breach of Chapter IV, Article 24 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

Continued

THANK YOU CONDOLEEZZA!

A Lebanese couple carrying some of their belongings walk amidst ruins of their destroyed southern Beirut neighbourhood.

Detainee Abuse Charges Feared
Shield Sought From '96 War Crimes Act
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 28, 2006; A01

An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.

Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment.

In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the international Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees in the terrorism fight, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need for such "protections," according to someone who heard his remarks last week.

Continued

VACATION WITH US, COME AND VISIT THE NEW MIDDLE EAST:

A Lebanese man runs for cover as Israeli jets fly above a destroyed southern Beirut neighbourhood. Israeli planes have blasted south Lebanon overnight and for a 17th day.

It must be hard to constantly struggle to fit in with those deranged, violent, racist white men in the White House.

So really, what is up with her feet? And legs?

BIRTH PANG?
Palestinian relatives carry the body of Anas Zoumlot, 12, during his funeral at the Jebaliya refugee camp, next to Gaza City Friday July 28, 2006. Zounlot was killed, according to Palestinian witnesses and officials, by Israeli troops during an army operation Thursday in Jebaliya. Despite a high death toll in Gaza, with 23 people killed on Wednesday alone, the world's attention has been focused on Lebanon.

Air Marshals say people added to watchlists to fill quotas

The American Civil Liberties Union has asked the Chief Privacy Officer of the Department of Homeland Security to investigate a recent news report that federal air marshals are labeling innocent Americans as "suspicious" after being directed to fill a monthly watchlist quotas, RAW STORY has learned.

The Air Marshals Service responded to earlier complaints by indicating that the complaints came from disgruntled Denver employees. However, Denver's KMGH-TV contacted 17 employees in 4 different states, who confirmed the story.

KMGH quotes one Air Marshal as saying, "Our job is to prevent another Sept. 11 from happening. We can't do that. Not under these circumstances, not under these conditions."

Continued

CONDOLEEZZA'S GIFT:
A building is damaged in Nabatiyeh village after it was hit by Israeli warplanes in south Lebanon July 28, 2006.

MORE OF THE "NEW MIDDLE EAST":
Palestinians gather around a building destroyed early morning by an Israeli air strike in Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Friday, July 28, 2006.

Shi'ite Muslims hold placards as they march in an anti-Israel protest rally in Islamabad July 28, 2006. Imamia Students Organisation organised the rally, as part of country-wide protests, to condemn Israel's air strikes on Lebanon.

Members of the South African Muslim community protest in solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese people outside the Israeli Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, July 28, 2006.

Is there a relationship between the bombing of Lebanon and the inauguration of the World's largest strategic pipeline, which will channel more than a million barrels of oil a day to Western markets?

Virtually unnoticed, the inauguration of the Ceyhan-Tblisi-Baku (BTC) oil pipeline, which links the Caspian sea to the Eastern Mediterranean, took place on the 13th of July, at the very outset of the Israeli sponsored bombings of Lebanon.

One day before the Israeli air strikes, the main partners and shareholders of the BTC pipeline project, including several heads of State and oil company executives were in attendance at the port of Ceyhan. They were then rushed off for an inauguration reception in Istanbul, hosted by Turkey's President Ahmet Necdet Sezer in the plush surroundings of the Çýraðan Palace.

Also in attendance was British Petroleum's (BP) CEO, Lord Browne together with senior government officials from Britain, the US and Israel. BP leads the BTC pipeline consortium. Other major Western shareholders include Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, France's Total and Italy's ENI. (see Annex)

Israel's Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Binyamin Ben-Eliezer was present at the venue together with a delegation of top Israeli oil officials.

Read the rest

Iraqi Shiites gather in protest to denounce Israeli attacks on Lebanon following prayers, Friday, July 28, 2006, in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, southern Iraq.

WHAT THE "NEW MIDDLE EAST" LOOKS LIKE:
A toppled apartment building lies in the rubble next to other destroyed buildings, after an Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, July 28, 2006.

Turkish demonstrators set fire to effigies of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the U.S. President George W. Bush, during a protest following the Friday prayers in Istanbul, Turkey, Friday, July 28, 2006.

Palestinians carry Islamic green flags, Lebanese flags and the Hezbollah flags during a protest against the ongoing Israeli military campaign in Lebanon, in the West Bank town of Ramallah Friday July 28, 2006.

A Turkish demonstrator wearing a mask symbolizing the angel of death during a protest following the Friday prayers in Istanbul, Turkey, Friday, July 28, 2006.

A Palestinian man holds a portrait of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah while carrying a child on his shoulders as various Islamic flags fly, during a protest against the ongoing Israeli military campaign in Lebanon, in the West Bank town of Ramallah Friday July 28, 2006. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

Jordanian protestors shout slogans against Israel and the U.S. during a rally after Friday prayer, to show their solidarity with the Palestinians and Lebanon, in Zarqa July 28, 2006.

A Palestinian man covers his face with a Hizbollah flag and Hamas head band at a protest rally against Israel's military attacks in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip in the West Bank city of Ramallah July 28, 2006.

A Palestinian boy holds up a photo of Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah during a protest against Israel's military attacks in Lebanon and Gaza, in the West Bank city of Ramallah July 28, 2006.

[This spring 2000 interview, originally written at the time of the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, provides useful background for understanding current events. It was first published in May 2000 in News from Within, a publication of the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem, and subsequently appeared as a chapter in Achcar's collection, Eastern Cauldron (Monthly Review Press). It has not previously appeared on the web.]

Q: Hizbollah's victory gives a broad blueprint of a comprehensive strategy (military, political) in defeating Israeli occupation. Can you evaluate the possibility of its reproduction elsewhere?

Achcar: In order to do so, one has to separate the various elements of this "broad blueprint" as you call it. Let us start with the military aspect, since you mention it: I would say that the peculiarities of the Lebanese terrain should be as obvious to anyone in the Arab world as the peculiarities of the Iraqi terrain are now to anyone in Washington who took the 1991 Gulf War as a "broad blueprint" for further US interventions. I mean that, just as the desert is the ideal terrain for taking full advantage of the superiority in air power (as proven by the great contrast between the six weeks of carpet-bombing of the Iraqi troops in 1991 and the poor results of NATO's air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999), the mountainous and populous character of southern Lebanon should be taken into consideration before generalizing its experience into a "broad blueprint".

This being said, what should be emphasized in the first place is that the victory in southern Lebanon was not a "military" victory. The Israeli army has not been defeated militarily: it was much less exhausted than the US forces in Vietnam, and even in the latter case it would be quite improper to talk of a "military defeat." In both cases, the defeat is primarily a political defeat of the governments, against a background of an increasingly reluctant population in the invader country. In that regard, the military action finds its value in its political impact, and not primarily in its direct military impact. The guerrilla actions of the Lebanese Resistance against the occupation -- which was very far, even proportionally, from matching the scale of the Vietnamese Resistance -- were mainly effective through their impact on the Israeli population, just as the coffins of GI's landing back in the US were during the Vietnam War. In both cases, the population of the invader country became more and more opposed to a war effort that was clearly devoid of any moral justification.

This had already been experienced by Israel since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The withdrawal from Beirut in 1982, and later on from most of the occupied Lebanese territory in 1985, were mainly motivated by the fact that the Israeli population could not endorse a situation in which Israeli soldiers were facing death every day for the sake of an occupation which could hardly be justified, even from a mainstream Zionist view. So the key issue is that of the balance between the cost and benefits of an occupation: whereas in the Golan the benefits for Israel exceed the present costs, in southern Lebanon the reverse was very obviously true.

Let us now extrapolate to the Palestinian occupied territories: during twenty years the benefits clearly exceeded the costs from the viewpoint of Israeli "security." The desperate "guerrilla" operations of the Palestinian Resistance could not counterbalance the feeling of enhanced security stemming from the extension of the border to the Jordan River. The situation began to change dramatically with the mass mobilization of the Intifada. This made the cost nearly intolerable for the morale of the Israeli army and for the reputation of Israel in its backer countries. The pressure mounted within the Israeli army, up to its highest ranks, in favor of a withdrawal of the troops from the populated areas, and their redeployment in those strategic parts of the West Bank where no Palestinians are concentrated.

It is precisely to this pressure from the military that Rabin was responding when he entered the Oslo negotiations. He tried to get the highest possible price for the implementation of this withdrawal from a PLO leadership that had been accumulating concessions and capitulations for many years. And he got what he wanted, to a degree that he could not have even imagined when he started the talks with the Arafat leadership! Instead of building on the impetus of the Intifada, and doing everything possible to sustain it until they got the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the entire populated areas -- without betraying anything of what they stood for previously and with very minimal accommodations, negotiated not by the PLO but by the leadership of the Intifada within the territories -- the Arafat leadership went into what even some Zionist commentators described as an ignominious surrender, leading to the execrable situation prevailing now.

Hizbollah acted differently: they kept up the pressure uncompromisingly. And they forced the unconditional and total withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Lebanese territories occupied since 1978 (the remnant goes back to the 1967 War). A tremendous victory, indeed! And surely a feat that the Palestinian population will ponder and from which they will draw some inspiration.

Q: To what extent is the Hizbollah victory a slap in the face for the imperialist agenda in the region? What might we expect from it in the future?

Achcar: The Lebanese victory is certainly a defeat for the US agenda which, like that of its Israeli ally, foresaw the insertion of this withdrawal into an overall peace agreement with Syria including all sorts of conditions, concessions and guarantees obtained for Israel. Besides, Israel is the "most brilliant" proxy of the US armed forces, the one always quoted as an example to follow. And here is a withdrawal, taking the shape of a debacle, evoking irresistibly the images of the US debacle in Vietnam, in1975 -- incidentally just at the time of the 25th anniversary of the latter! This is a new vindication of the famous "dare to struggle, dare to win" that inspired so bravely the Vietnamese Resistance. And it can be expected that it will contribute to reversing the winds of defeatism that have swept through such a big part of those who once used to fight imperialist domination.

However with regard to the US agenda in the Middle East, I think that the main change in the Israeli agenda -- which will certainly be integrated in the agenda of the next US administration -- is that the prospect of a peace treaty with Syria is pushed back indefinitely. The Zionist establishment is definitely not eager to relinquish the Golan for the sake of just establishing relations with Syria, relations that will never be "normal" anyhow. And they are all the less eager to do so in that the Syrian dictator Hafiz Al-Assad is on the verge of death [he died in June 2000] and the political future of the country is highly uncertain.

Q: Why has the Lebanese victory been claimed by Hizbollah alone? Were not other forces -- Palestinians, Lebanese Left -- involved in the resistance movement? If not, why not?

Achcar: The reason Hizbollah appeared as the only father of victory (as the saying goes, victory usually has several fathers, whereas defeat is an orphan) is that they did everything they could to monopolize the prestige of the resistance movement. After the 1982 Israeli invasion, you had an uneasy coexistence and competition between two tendencies in the fight against the occupier: the Lebanese National Resistance, dominated by the Lebanese Communist Party, and the Islamic Resistance, dominated by Hizbollah. The Palestinian forces had been wiped out from southern Lebanon by the invaders; those remaining in the refugee camps were not really a match for Hizbollah, especially since some Lebanese forces like the Shiite communalist militias of Amal were keen on preventing them from spreading again out of the camps. Amal are still there -- they are among those who recuperated the stretch of land abandoned by Israel and its local proxy. But they were never a key force in the Resistance movement: they lost their impetus long ago to the benefit of Hizbollah, and turned into a purely conservative and patronage-based party.

Hizbollah conducted all sorts of operations to establish their monopoly over the resistance movement, up to repeated onslaughts against the Communists, murdering some of their key Shiite cadres in particular. The CP behaved in a most servile manner, not daring to retaliate and instead calling on the "brothers" in the Islamic Resistance to behave in a brotherly manner -- a call which has no real chance of being heard if it is not backed by decisive action to show the damage that could result, precisely, from the alternative behavior! Such an attitude contributed greatly to the progressive shift in the balance of forces to the advantage of Hizbollah. Many of the most militant members of the Lebanese left among the Shiites were attracted to Hizbollah.

We should recall that at the beginning of the Lebanese civil war in 1975 there was no Hizbollah and the CP was the major militant force among the Shiite population in southern Lebanon. The party started losing ground to the advantage of Amal first, and Hizbollah later after 1982. In both cases the lesson was the same: all these movements were appealing to the same constituency, i.e. the traditionally very militant Shiite population of southern Lebanon. In such a competition, the shyest is doomed to lose inevitably, all the more so when you don't even dare to put forward your own radical program and you end up tail-ending the dominant communalist forces. Here again you need to dare to struggle and dare to win!

Hizbollah have been very effective on that score. They were definitely very "daring" in their actions, inspired by their quasi-mystical views of martyrdom. And they knew also how to win the souls and minds of the population, by making a very clever use of the significant funding they got from Iran, thus organizing all kinds of social services to the benefit of the impoverished population. To be sure, they also took advantage of the ideological winds, which blew much more in their direction than in the direction of a left that became utterly demoralized by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Q: What are the implications of the Hizbollah victory on the relation of the political forces in Lebanon? For the Palestinian refugees there? And for the entire region?

Achcar: One thing is sure. This victory will greatly enhance the appeal of Hizbollah in Lebanon, and of the Islamic fundamentalists in the whole region. In Lebanon, Hizbollah faces an objective limitation due to the religiously very composite character of the population. Hizbollah are inherently unable to win over Christians, Druzes, or even Sunni Muslims, in any significant numbers. They are no threat to the Palestinian refugees, since their Islamic universalism make them champions of the Palestinian cause. In that sense, they are actually competitors to the Palestinian forces in Lebanon, whether Arafat loyalists or left dissidents; at best they can contribute to strengthen the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist tendencies.

In that sense too, their victory is a bad omen to Arafat, obviously, as I have already explained. Among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas members are the only ones likely to be boosted by Hizbollah triumphalism. More generally, we can say that this victory will be precious for the whole Islamic fundamentalist movement in countering the negative impact of the recent events in Iran. Those who thought they could already bury Islamic fundamentalism (a French "Orientalist" recently produced a book heralding the terminal decline of this phenomenon) are blatantly refuted. As long as they have no real competitor for the embodiment of the aspirations of the downtrodden masses, and as long as the social effects of "globalization" are with us, the fundamentalists will also be part of the picture, with ups and downs naturally.


GILBERT ACHCAR grew up in Lebanon, before moving to France, where he teaches political science at the University of Paris-VIII. Among his most recent works are Eastern Cauldron (2004) and The Clash of Barbarisms (2d ed. 2006); a book of his dialogues with Noam Chomsky on the Middle East, Perilous Power, is forthcoming from Paradigm Publishers.

With the Israeli bombing of a UN camp and the killing of four UN peacekeepers, we really do seem to be in a "deja vu" all over again phase. Already Kofi Annan is under attack for condemning the "apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a UN Observer post."

It is reminiscent of the trouble his predecessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali got himself into last time the Israelis tried shock and awe on Lebanon back in 1996, when he failed to suppress a report that said pretty much the same thing about the IDF shelling of the UN post in Qana, which macerated some 106 Lebanese civilians to death.

It is worth remembering that of all UN Secretary Generals, Annan has done most to end Israel's isolation in the organization and maintained the closest relations with Israel's friends in the US. In the end, however, he is also an S-G who sets great store by protecting UN staff, and so the palpable anger of his statement is entirely understandable.

"This coordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long established and clearly marked UN post at Khiyam occurred despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that UN positions would be spared Israeli fire. Furthermore, General Alain Pellegrino, the UN Force Commander in south Lebanon, had been in repeated contact with Israeli officers throughout the day on Tuesday, stressing the need to protect that particular UN position from attack."

So to accept it was yet another accident presupposes a level of incompetence or insubordination in the Israeli army that should see result in some serious court-martials, but never does. That feeling was doubtless exacerbated when the IDF shelled the site and prevented a rescue operation.

So what could be the motive? It is clear that there are many in the IDF with a profound contempt for the UN and all it stands for, and who would not shed many tears at such an accident. It may also rankle that UNIFIL has,with the dearth of Western reporters in much of South Lebanon, provided independent corroboration of many incidents of IDF attacks on civilians. One only has to think of the fate of the USS Liberty in 1967 for being in a position to observe what the IDF was up to when the Israeli's bombed and shelled an American ship for over an hour, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 170 more.

And most sinisterly of all, there are many Israelis -- including the government only a few days ago, who do not want an international force between them and their targets in Lebanon, who would have no great scruples about bombing a UN compound "accidentally on purpose."

This time, the "collateral damage" is not just four dead UN personnel. The bombing scotches any realistic chance of a reinforced UN or multinational peacekeeping force -" which it is worth remembering that Israel itself opposed until a few days ago, and which the war party in Israel sees as a potential obstacle to their attempts to emulate Ariel Sharon's disastrous invasion in 1982. (See the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom's ad in Ha-Aretz at the end of the article).

Already, while many countries have endorsed the general idea of putting foreign troops on the Lebanese side of the border, there has been a complete lack of specific volunteers -- for the understandable reasons that the attack on Khiyam now so forcibly demonstrates.

Thirs world militaries like the Fijians and Ghanaians make lots of money out of providing peacekeepers for UNIFIL and seem to think weekly humiliation by the Israelis and Hezbollah is worth it. There are few serious military powers would tolerate sending their troops for IDF target practice, let alone Hezbollah attacks. And who knows? If any were so bold as to put in contingents, they may well stand up to Israeli incursions as well.

Some Israel supporters are already arguing that the bombing could not have been deliberate because it was a public relations disaster for Israel. Excuse me, but only an American or Israeli commentator could say that. Manifestly, for the rest of the world, the whole Israeli campaign is a PR disaster, with massive majorities even in Blair's Britain regarding the Israeli attack as a massively disproportionate reaction, let alone how Israel's assault is turning Hezbollah into the toast of the Third World. There is some added piquancy that both the Lebanese and Iraqi prime ministers (until this week at least champions of the democratic "New Middle East") are condemning Israel's assault.

Condoleezza Rice's statement that it is "too early" for a ceasefire, when only five hundred were dead and countless more dismembered, should go down with Madeleine Albright's since regretted statement that the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children as a result of sanctions was "a price worth paying."

Since Annan is already going at the end of year, which puts him beyond reach of Bolton's veto, we can but hope that he will not be browbeaten by Rice, Bolton or Bush, but will use the sacrifice of the UN observers to shame the Security Council into demanding an immediate ceasefire.

And who knows, while he is still angry, he may wish to remind them that Israel was defying Resolution 242 for many decades before 1559, and that it has to be a crucial foundation for any peace settlement for the region.

Ian Williams is the UN correspondent for the Nation and Tribune.

Tony Blair will face fresh pressure over the Middle East crisis today when he arrives in Washington to meet President George Bush. Senior Downing Street aides said the two leaders intended to show the world they were seeking an urgent end to the hostilities in Lebanon, despite the failure of the much vaunted Rome summit on Wednesday to deliver a unified call for a truce. Continued

According to the New York Times, there has been a strong surge in popular support among Arabs for Hezbollah since the onset of fighting, RAW STORY has learned.

At the start of the Lebanese crisis, neighboring governments, including Saudi Arabia, criticized Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war. The United States and Israel took this criticism as implied authorization for Israel escalating its attack.

Now, however, Hezbollah has held out against the Israeli military for 15 days, and public opinion throughout the Arab world has surged behind the organization, transforming its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah into a folk hero.

The Arab public has been electrified by the conflict and by television images of wounded children and distraught women. Newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs, and public poetry readings have showed praise on Hezbollah and on Nasrallah, who is seen as the exact opposite of Arab heads of state, while attacking American plans for a "new Middle East."

As a result, Arab governments have been forced to alter their official positions. Both the king of Jordan and the Saudi royal family are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington. The president of Egypt has proclaimed his attempts to arrange a ceasefire. Even al-Qaida, whose extremist Sunni leaders are normally hostile to Shi'ites like Hezbollah, has hastened to express its support for the Palestinians.

The Saudis have even warned that their 2002 offer of full recognition for Israel if it returns to its 1967 borders could be withdrawn, stating that "no one knows the repercussions...inclusing wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire."

Once again the Bush administration is floating on a wave of euphoria. Israel's offensive against Hizbullah in Lebanon has liberated the utopian strain of neoconservatism that had been traduced by Iraq's sectarian civil war. And the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has propelled herself forward as chief cheerleader. "What we're seeing here," she said, "are the birth pangs of a new Middle East." At every press conference she repeats the phrase "a new Middle East" as though its incantation is magical.

Her jaunt to the region is intended to lend the appearance of diplomacy in order to forestall it. As explained to me by several senior state department officials, Rice is entranced by a new "domino theory": Israel's attacks will demolish Hizbullah; the Lebanese will blame Hizbullah and destroy its influence; and the backlash will extend to Hamas, which will collapse. From the administration's point of view, this is a proxy war with Iran (and Syria) that will inexplicably help turn around Iraq. "We will prevail," Rice says.

The administration has traditionally engaged in promiscuous threat conflation - al-Qaida with Saddam Hussein, North Korea and Iran in "the axis of evil", and now implicitly the Shia Hizbullah with the Sunni Iraqi insurgency. By asserting "we" before "will prevail", Rice is engaging in national interest conflation.

Continued

This video is actually from an incident that happened a few years back, I urge others to spread it around and to expose as many people possible to the inhumanity of the Israeli Occupation Forces.

Video Israel Doesn't Want You to See

07/27/06

"Foreign Policy In Focus "

Much has been made in the US media of the Syrian- and Iranian-origin weaponry used by Hezbollah in the escalating violence in Israel and Lebanon. There has been no parallel discussion of the origin of Israel's weaponry, the vast bulk of which is from the United States.

The US is the primary source of Israel's far superior arsenal. For more than 30 years, Israel had been the largest recipient of US foreign assistance, and since 1985 Jerusalem has received aboutUS$3 billion in military and economic aid each year from Washington. US aid accounts for more than 20% of Israel's total defense budget.

Over the past decade, the US has transferred more than $17 billion in military aid to this country of just under 7 million people.

Israel is one of the United States' largest arms importers. Between 1996 and 2005 (the last year for which full data are available), Israel took delivery of $10.19 billion in US weaponry and military equipment, including more than $8.58 billion through the Foreign Military Sales Program, and another $1.61 billion in direct commercial sales.

During the administration of US President George W Bush, 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. The aid figure is larger than the arms-transfer figure because it includes financing for major arms agreements for which the equipment has yet to be fully delivered. The most prominent of these deals is a $4.5 billion sale of 102 Lockheed Martin F-16s to Israel.

Given the billions of dollars of aid it provides to Israel every year and the central role of US-supplied weaponry in the Israeli arsenal, the US has considerable leverage that it could use to promote a ceasefire in the current conflict between Israel and Hezbollah before more Israeli and Lebanese civilians are killed and displaced.

President Bush needs to go beyond vague calls for "restraint" to demands for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, bringing in other key actors in the region, including Iran and Syria.

William D Hartung is author of Tangled Web 2005: A Profile of the Missile Defense and Space Weapons Lobbies and a senior research fellow at the New School, where Frida Berrigan is a senior research associate. Both are Foreign Policy In Focus scholars. http://www.fpif.org/

********************************
Also see: Press Overlooks U.S. Role as Arms Merchant in Mideast Conflict
For better or worse, the U.S. has a special role in the current conflict as supplier of the best weapons money can buy to one side. Yet the media nearly always underplays this angle, even though it has enormous consequences, not just for those under fire in Lebanon but for Americans at home.

Here is the man that was labeled outrageously liberal by Republicans and Democrats alike when he ran against Bush...

"The Iraqi prime minister is an anti-Semite," the Democratic leader told a gathering of business leaders in Florida. "We don't need to spend $200 and $300 and $500 billion bringing democracy to Iraq to turn it over to people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to defend itself and who refuse to condemn Hezbollah." --Howard Dean

Wow.

Do I really need to explain all the reasons why this is disgusting?

Only in the U.S. do the "progressive liberals" think that the U.S. spent hundreds of billions of dollars bringing democracy to Iraq. And only in the U.S. do the "progressive liberals" demand that their puppets not dare deviate from the American script of what they are supposed to say.

What a pathetic, pathetic bastard. I will NEVER vote for a Democrat again in my life, not even if Mother Theresa herself rose from the dead and decided to run as a Democrat.

********************************************
Time to vote GREEN people!

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES

For Immediate Release:Thursday, July 20, 2006
Contacts:Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624, mclarty@greens.org
Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805, starlene@greens.org

Greens to Bush: Press Israel to stop the attacks on Lebanon. Slaughter of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians is a punishable war crime; use of U.S. weapons for such purposes violates U.S. laws

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Green Party leaders called on President Bush to demand that Israel immediately cease its invasion of Lebanon and its rain of destruction on civilian populations and infrastructure in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.Greens urged President Bush to press for an immediate ceasefire. The Green Party has repeatedly called for negotiation, a halt to violence by both sides, and adherence to international law as the only means to achieve peace and security for all Israelis, Palestinians, and people in surrounding countries."The current U.S. reaction is a bipartisan disaster, with most Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress expressing unqualified support for Israel," said Rae Vogeler, Wisconsin Green candidate for the U.S. Senate. "While President Bush is busy rattling sabers at Iran and Syria and refusing to demand a ceasefire, hundreds of innocent Lebanese and Palestinian civilians are dying."

Greens based their demand on the following:

Israel's attacks violate Fourth Geneva Convention prohibitions against "collective punishment," i.e., the retaliatory killing of civilians, "targeted" assassinations, and destruction of the infrastructure of an occupied territory.

Israel's use of U.S.-made weapons violates U.S. laws against deploying such weapons for use against civilians.

The attacks cannot be justified as a response to the capture of an Israeli soldier who was in Gaza as part of the occupation force. (The current exchange of violence began with Israeli shellings that killed eight Palestinian civilians on a Gaza beach.) Israel itself is holding thousands of Palestinian civilians, including over 400 Palestinian children and 120 women, in inhumane conditions and has reportedly subjected some detainees to torture.

Israel and the U.S. have refused to recognize Hamas as the legitimate democratically elected government of the Palestinian territories; the current attacks are clearly meant to destroy Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to punish Palestinian civilians for having elected Hamas.

The current escalation of hostilities is a result of Israel's illegal occupation (with U.S. support) of Palestinian lands and daily brutality and killing visited on Palestinians, land grabs and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, cutoff of water and electricity, destruction of homes and businesses, economic strangulation, and conversion of the Palestinian territories into heavily guarded bantustans sealed off with a 'security' wall.

The Olmert government's current actions, especially deployment of troops into Lebanon, risk a greater regional conflict that will threaten global peace as other nations become involved in the conflict, and will also hinder efforts to effect U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Aside from the U.S. and Israel itself, most of the world understands the attacks as illegal Israeli military aggression.

Greens have repeatedly called for Israel to end the occupation and fully recognize the human rights of Palestinians, in accord with international law and U.N. directives, as necessary first steps for peace in the Middle East.In November, 2005, the Green Party endorsed a resolution calling for divestment and a general boycott of Israel until it complies with international law and realizes human rights for Palestinians, including those living within Israel's borders.

Greens have also endorsed the Palestinian Right of Return, consistent with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (nonbinding, passed December 11, 1948), which states that "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date."

==> For Green campaign listings, news, photos, and web sites, visit the Green Party's candidate spotlight page www.gp.org/2006elections and the Green elections database www.greens.org/elections, which lists all 2006 candidates.

George Galloway breaks it down better than any pathetic Arab leader could ever dream of doing.

Aerial Photos Courtesy of Dr. Imad Khadduri

A GREAT POSTER:
The Top Half Shows A Picture Of Nasrallah With The Caption, "Master Of The Arab People"
The Bottom Shows A Picture Of Bush With The Caption, "Master Of Arab Leaders"

When I announced that I was entering the race for the US Senate, I began with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” I am not a professional politician whose sole goal is to accumulate power, so I have the freedom to speak my mind and I will not be silent.

The truth is that while people view talking about Israel-Palestine as the “third rail” of politics in New York, the more I think about it, the more I realize that there are a growing number of people in the Jewish community who are willing to speak up, out of love for Israel, about the dreadful occupation and the never-ending violence that is spinning out of control, in large part because the United States—and politicians like Hillary Clinton—continue to blindly pursue a one-sided policy in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a policy that is causing more death and sorrow for civilians on all sides of the conflict.

From the beginning of this race, I was committed to speaking the truth, whether about the Iraq war/occupation or abusive corporate power or the corruption coursing through our political system. People are simply fed up with the pandering, the triangulation, and the inability to speak the truth that is endangering our country’s future, our relations in the world, and our well-being at home. We need a real opposition party, a Democratic Party with a vision that has the spine to stand for something authentic and honest.

It’s worth voters in New York knowing a little about where I come from on the issue of Israel-Palestine and the raging conflict engulfing the region today. I speak about Israel out of love and pain, in the same way that I am a deeply patriotic American who is harshly critical of our government and its behavior in Iraq—and of Hillary Clinton’s vote to send our men and women to die in an illegal, immoral war.

My father was born in then-Palestine. He fought in the Haganah (the Israeli underground) in the war of independence; my father’s cousin, whose name I carry as a middle name, was killed in that war. I lived in Israel for seven years, during which I went through the 1973 war: a cousin of mine was killed in that war, leaving a young widow and two children, and his brother was wounded. My step-grandfather, an old man who was no threat to anyone, was killed by a Palestinian who took an axe to his head while he was sitting quietly on a park bench. Half my family still lives in Israel. I have seen enough bloodshed, tears, and parents burying their children to last many lifetimes.

For that reason, I believe passionately in a two-state solution, which includes a strong, independent, economically viable Palestinian state existing alongside a strong, independent, economically vibrant Israel. It is the only solution that will bring peace to the civilians who now live in fear of death raining down from above—either because of the missiles of Hezbollah or the bombs of Israeli aircraft.

So, here is what I said—and did not say—that has touched off this discussion and the press coverage (I certainly hope there is such interest when I release my economic program). I did not say that Israel is a terrorist state. I did say—and have said for a long time—that Israel has committed acts that violate international standards and the Geneva conventions. In Israel, my statement that the military has committed acts that violate the Geneva convention and international standards and has also engaged in torture (or, as it is called, “moderate pressure”) would be a subject of debate but hardly considered novel or particularly radical. Among the many sources for the truth, beyond my personal experience, is the English/Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem. If you visit the organization’s website, you will find condemnation of both Israeli and Palestinian violence against civilians of each side.

Here is what B’Tselem says about the current escalation:

“…the organization reiterates that international humanitarian law (IHL) obligates all parties taking part in hostilities to refrain from launching attacks against civilians or against civilian objects.

IHL requires that the combating sides direct their attacks only against specific military objectives, take cautionary measures to prevent injury to civilians, and refrain from disproportionate attacks, i.e. attacks directed against legitimate targets, but that are likely to cause excessive harm to civilians. Furthermore, IHL clearly forbids the intimidation and terrorising of civilians, as well as collective punishment.

Over the past week, Israel has killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians in its attacks against targets in Lebanon. There is a concern that at least some of them were disproportionate attacks, which constitute war crimes. In addition, Israel has launched deliberate attacks against civilian infrastructure throughout Lebanon, such as bridges, the Beirut international airport , the electricity supply and fuel reservoirs. There is a concern that such attacks are intended to put pressure on the Lebanese Government and not to obtain a specific military advantage. If this is the case, these attacks constitute collective punishment and a grave violation of IHL. Moreover, even if these targets constitute legitimate military objects, or civilian objectives that may be used for military purposes, Israel must respect the principle of proportionality and refrain from attacks that would cause excessive harm to civilians.”

The problem is not the debate in Israel. The problem is the debate—or lack thereof—in the United States. We should not allow the power brokers in Washington, DC to silence the voices of people who love Israel but are willing to stand up and be critical of its policies.

Senator Clinton’s spokesperson has called my comments “beyond the pale.” With all due respect, it is Senator Clinton’s behavior, lack of leadership, and failure to call for a respect for international law that should be questioned by the press, the Jewish community, and the voters of New York. At a time when the violence against people on both sides of the border has killed hundreds of innocent people (mostly Lebanese), Hillary Clinton has fanned the flames of the conflict by recognizing and condemning the violence only against Israelis and effectively encouraging military action. I, too, have stated clearly, from the outset, that Hezbollah’s actions violate international law. But, to ignore Israel’s actions is abhorrent, weak, and cowardly.

I don’t believe Senator Clinton is a true friend of Israel. A friend of Israel, not someone who simply seeks votes, would understand that employing collective punishment against people in Lebanon only embitters a population, possibly for generations, and that even a short-term military victory will be empty if it leaves behind a shattered country. As an article in the New York Times illustrated: “We’re not Hezbollah supporters, but we cannot excuse what the Israelis are doing,” said Rima Beydoun, a secular Shiite who owns an advertising agency. “We knew there would be repercussions, but no one expected they would be like this,” Mr. Salhab, the filmmaker, said of Shiite support for Hezbollah. “I am very critical of that part of my country, but I have to put it aside, because we are being destroyed. At this point, I can’t just say: Hezbollah, go to hell.”

A friend of Israel, not someone who simply seeks votes, would never have stood before the “security wall” in the West Bank, as Senator Clinton did, and praised it—even though it has been found to be illegal under international law and by the Israeli Supreme Court (which said that, if a wall needed to be built, it should not stray outside the “green line” into the occupied territories). A friend of Israel would argue strenuously that Israel’s moral fiber and its security is weakened every moment that that wall stands in its place, in violation of the law of Israel, severing families from their land, separating people and filling more people with rage and despair.

A friend of Israel, not someone who simply seeks votes, would deplore the collective punishment employed by the Israeli army in Gaza. As Rabbi Michael Lerner has suggested, in the wake of the democratic elections that brought Hamas to power in Gaza, “Instead of narrowly focusing on Hamas’s capacity to make war, the Israelis chose the path of collective punishment, a frequently ineffective counterinsurgency policy used to eliminate public support for resistance movements. In the height of the oppressive summer heat, Israel bombed the electricity grid, effectively cutting off Gaza’s water and the electricity needed to keep refrigeration working, thereby guaranteeing a dramatic decrease in food for the area’s already destitute, million-plus population. This act was yet another violation of international law that include[d] the arrests of thousands by Israelis and the shooting of Qassams at population centers by Hamas.”

I have challenged Senator Clinton to come out into the public arena, stop hiding behind her spokespeople and spinners and image consultants. Let’s debate the future of Israel and Palestine, publicly, on television, in front of the voters. Right now, in the coming days, because the violence in the Middle East is rising. Pick the time and place.

I would end with this thought: As a Jew, I have always been proud of the Jewish concept of “Tikkun Olam” or “repairing the world.” I like to think that that is what brought so many Jews into the civil rights and labor movements in the 1960s and 1970s, and into the current anti-war movement—and, personally, guided me into the world of social justice work. I feel great sorrow that Israel is an occupier of another people and I believe that Israel can never be whole and can never be at peace until that occupation is ended in a just way. And I also believe that the concept of Tikkun Olam means that we must never be silent.

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By Azmi Bishara

"Between the Greater Middle East and the ignominious, blood-drenched return to the New Middle East, the cities of Iraq and Lebanon crumble, corpses are strewn along the sides of the roads and the groans of the wounded, screams of grieving mothers and wails of orphaned children rend the air. Such are the birth pangs of the New Middle East, as explained calmly and dispassionately by a nasty lady whose pathologically sedate, hysterically cool voice contains nothing of the ear-shattering reverberations of smart bombs and dumb bombs, the bewildered screams of the living who have had their hearts ripped out and the silence of the dead beneath the rubble. The doctor of bombardment and displacement, the minister of death and destruction, the envoy of desolation and grief speaks, without a flicker of emotion on her face and lips that barely move. "

By Jonathan Schell

"For all its wealth and dreams of military domination over the past half-century, the US has misunderstood the nature of power and so has become "the fool of history". Its story is not one of success followed by crisis, but of a deep failure; nor is it a tale of a successful empire now in crisis, but of a failed empire, now in disarray. Redemption could lie in learning the limitations on the use of force"

By Tanya Reinhart

"But Israel is not sacrificing its soldiers and citizens only to please the Bush administration. The "new Middle East" has been a dream of the Israeli ruling military circles since at least 1982, when Sharon led the country to the first Lebanon war with precisely this declared goal. Hezbollah's leaders have argued for years that its real long-term role is to protect Lebanon, whose army is too weak to do this. They have said that Israel has never given up its aspirations for Lebanon and that the only reason it pulled out of Southern Lebanon in 2000 is because Hezbollah's resistance has made maintaining the occupation too costly. Lebanon's people know what every Israeli old enough to remember knows - that in the vision of Ben Gurion, Israel's founding leader, Israel's border should be "natural", that is - the Jordan river in the East, and the Litani river of Lebanon in the north. In 1967, Israel gained control over the Jordan river, in the occupied Palestinian land, but all its attempts to establish the Litani border have failed so far.

As I argued in Israel/Palestine, already when the Israeli army left Southern Lebanon in 2000, the plans to return were ready.[12] But in Israel's military vision, in the next round, the land should be first "cleaned" of its residents, as Israel did when it occupied the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967, and as it is doing now in southern Lebanon. To enable Israel's eventual realization of Ben Gurion's vision, it is necessary to establish a "friendly regime" in Lebanon, one that will collaborate in crushing any resistance. To do this, it is necessary first to destroy the country, as in the U.S. model of Iraq. These were precisely Sharon's declared aims in the first Lebanon war. Israel and the U.S. believe that now conditions have ripened enough that these aims can finally be realized. "

-Tanya Reinhart is Professor Emeritus of linguistics and media studies at Tel Aviv University

What exactly is being defended? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state?
by Oren Ben-Dor

The Independent

"What exactly is being defended by the violence in Gaza and Lebanon? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state? I suggest the latter. Israel's statehood is based on an unjust ideology which causes indignity and suffering for those who are classified as non-Jewish by either a religious or ethnic test. To hide this primordial immorality, Israel fosters an image of victimhood. Provoking violence, consciously or unconsciously, against which one must defend oneself is a key feature of the victim-mentality. By perpetuating such a tragic cycle, Israel is a terrorist state like no other.
Many who wish to hide the immorality of the Israeli state do so by restricting attention to the horrors of the post-1967 occupation and talking about a two-state solution, since endorsing a Palestinian state implicitly endorses the ideology behind a Jewish one.
The very creation of Israel required an act of terror. In 1948, most of the non-Jewish indigenous people were ethnically cleansed from the part of Palestine which became Israel. This action was carefully planned. Without it, no state with a Jewish majority and character would have been possible. Since 1948, the "Israeli Arabs," those Palestinians who avoided expulsion, have suffered continuous discrimination. Indeed, many have been internally displaced, ostensibly for "security reasons," but really to acquire their lands for Jews. "

LEBANESE NUMBERS:

So Far More Than 600 Lebanese Civilians Have Been Killed By Israel.

سليم الحص

المأساة اللبنانية وحّدت بين اللبنانيين. كان القصد من الحرب إثارة فئات لبنانية على فئات أخرى توصّلاً إلى إشعال فتنة، على غرار ما هو حاصل في العراق الشقيق، أملاً بتعميم الانقسام والفتنة على المنطقة العربية برمّتها. يسمون ذلك الفوضى البنّاءة أو الخلاقة، ويجدون فيها السبيل إلى تفتيت شعوب المشرق العربي وصولاً إلى إعادة لمّها في ما يُسمى شرق أوسط كبيراً أو جديداً يرمي إلى القضاء على رابطة العروبة نهائياً من جهة وتسليط إسرائيل على المنطقة بأسرها من جهة ثانية.
برهن الشعب اللبناني بصموده وصبره وتشبّثه بأهداب الوحدة الوطنية أنه ليس لقمة سائغة. فالمقاومة للعدوان كانت أسطورية، والتضامن الوطني في مواجهة المحنة بين شتى الفئات كان رائعاً. والوحدة الوطنية هي أقوى من قنابلهم النووية.
وكان التضامن العربي مع لبنان في محنته رائعاً على مستوى الفرد العربي والشعوب العربية. أما الحكّام العرب فبعضهم لم يكن على مستوى المسؤولية والبعض الآخر، ومنها دول لها وزنها دولياً، كانت إما متخاذلة أو متواطئة. يا للعار.

The mother(L) of Bashir Abu Daher, 14-years-old, weeps over his body during his funeral, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. Twenty-four Palestinians, including a baby and two toddlers, were killed as Israel pounded Gaza.

Taiwanese demonstrator waves a placard slamming the Israeli military action in Lebanon, Thursday, July 27, 2006 in Taipei. Taiwan.

MORE ISRAELI PEACE:
Two Lebanese men, walk in front of a destroyed building that was attacked by Israeli airstrike at the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday July 27, 2006.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, center, visits the Roman Orthodox Church of St. Perforious who have organized a strike in support of Lebanese and Palestinians under Israeli offensive in Gaza City, Thursday July 27,

AH.....THE NEW MIDDLE EAST

A Lebanese man holds some childrens toys collected from the rubble of his destroyed house that was hit during an Israeli air strike in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday July 27, 2006.

Members of the South African National Congress Youth League and the Muslim community protest in solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese people outside the Israel Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, Thursday, July 27, 2006.

THE RED CROSS AS A BULL'S EYE:
A hole caused by an Israeli warplane missile can be seen atop the roof of a Lebanese Red Cross ambulance, one of the ambulances that were hit by Iraeli warplane missiles Sunday, in the southern coastal city of Tyre, Lebanon, Thursday

USRAELI PEACE:

A Palestinian boy stands on the rubble of a house in Beit Lahiya destroyed ovenight by Israeli air attack.

USRAELI PEACE:
The bodies of mother and her children Asmaa, 33, and her daughters Maria, 5, and Shahd, 8 months, who were killed on Wednesday when an Israeli shell hit their house, lay on the floor before their funeral in Jebaliya, northern Gaza Strip, Thursday, July 27, 2006, leaving their father Sameer Okal alive.

USRAELI PEACE:
The bodies of passengers remain in their seats in a minibus that was hit by an Israeli attack a few days previously, on a road near Tibnin north of Bint Jbail in southern Lebanon Wednesday, July 26, 2006.

ISRAEL TARGETS AMBULANCES:
The remains of an ambulance that was apparently hit by an Israeli attack a few days previously, in the town of Qana in southern Lebanon Wednesday, July 26, 2006.

A letter from Chomsky and others on the recent events in the Middle East (July 19, 2006):

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
Russell Banks
John Berger
Noam Chomsky
Richard Falk
Eduardo Galeano
Charles Glass
Naomi Klein
W.J.T. Mitchell
Harold Pinter
Arundhati Roy
Jose Saramago
Giiuliana Sgrena
Gore Vidal
Howard Zinn

Palestinian mourners carry the bodies of Maria Okal, 5, front, and her sister Shahd, 8 months, who were killed with their mother on Wednesday when an Israeli shell hit their house, during their funeral in Jebaliya, northern Gaza Strip,

It was January 29, 2004 when Israel did a prisoner swap with Hezbollah.

According to the Guardian UK “Israel held on to three Lebanese detainees as bargaining chips and to keep the battle front with Hizbullah open.”

This, along with the continued occupation of parts of Southern Lebanon, did not sit well with the militant group as FOX news reported:

At a mass rally in Beirut that Hezbollah staged to welcome the freed Arabs, the group's leader warned it would kidnap more Israelis to use as bargaining chips if necessary to secure the release of Lebanese prisoners.

There are still some interesting controversies about the July 12 incident that have not been investigated. Hezbollah and Lebanese policies contend that Israeli soldiers crossed over to Lebanese territory, which sparked the battle. Asia Times noted this a few days after the incident:

To them, it is legitimate self-defense. They back this argument by saying that Israel still controls the Sheba Farms, which are part of Lebanon, and still has Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails. Also, they add that the Israeli tank destroyed by Hezbollah, and the soldiers captured and killed on July 12, had trespassed into Lebanon's side of the border with Israel.

However, the above Guardian article also noted that Hezbollah’s leader declared they had planned for five months to capture soldiers for their cause.

To make things more interesting, Farid Abboud, the Ambassador for Lebanon, told Jim Lehrer:

We did not declare any war. It was declared on us when our country was occupied by the Israelis, when prisoners were taken from Lebanon into Israel, and when Palestinian refugees were pushed inside Lebanon.

We did not occupy Israel; we did not declare war; we didn't do anything. We don't want any escalations.

At this juncture, if there is any solution to be found, it should be around a negotiating table. And there should be negotiations to the withdrawal of the Israelis from the Lebanese-occupied territories and to the release of Lebanese prisoners. That's the only solution that will, you know, be feasible.
…

I'm not sure where the location of the attack took place. I understand that there was another battle, also, where during which the Israelis crossed Lebanese soil and that the casualties that fell then were inside Lebanon territory.

But that's not very relevant. The issue is now that there are prisoners of Lebanon, detained by Israel, and there are Israeli prisoners in Lebanon, and there should be an exchange of prisoners.

We do not want any escalation, and I don't think we have ever attacked Israel. I mean, Israel has always occupied our territory, and we have always defended ourselves. Our position has always been very reactive, defensive.

The ambassador was later “recalled to Beirut” for his comment.

One thing is sure. Israel has no moral or legal ground to stand on. They continue to occupy parts of Lebanon in defiance of UNSC resolution 509, which clearly stated that the council:

Demands that Israel withdraw all its military forces forthwith and unconditionally to the internationally recognized boundaries of Lebanon.

So long as Israel keeps Lebanese prisoners as “bargaining chips” and continues to violate international law and Lebanese sovcreignty, we cannot expect a “feasible” solution.

I happen to strongly agree with Abboud, the two states should return to a negotiations table (along with other regional states since this conflict is not just about these two states, but more to do with Israel’s actions and policies in the region as a whole), release all their prisoners to each other and Israel should end its occupation of Southern Lebanon (and Palestine) for the assurance of an end to hostilities towards Israel.

But of course, such an idea has been offered numerous times in recent decades and Israel rejects.

So what do we want: a continued escalation of violence where militants fight to do what citizens of the “free societies” - referring to US and Israel - refuse to do or will we take non-violent - and preferably legal - measures and demand an end to injustices and a “feasible” solution to materialize into reality?

I opt for the later.

What about You?

THE UN; THE FIRST CASUALTY IN LEBANON

Wesley Clark: "As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.

Two more Palestinian children among the 25 victims who were killed in Gaza yesterday by Israeli occupation terrorist forces.

"The point that I want to leave with you in this very brief presentation is where I started, is that there is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that's the United States, when it suits our interest, and when we can get others to go along. And I think it would be a real mistake to count on the United Nations as if it is some disembodied entity out there that can function on its own." -- John Bolton

Defence for Children International – Palestine Section (DCI/PS)- July 26,
2006

DCI/PS@dci-pal.org

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. Bashir Abdullah Awad Abu Thaher, 12 years old
31. Sabrine Naser Habib, 3 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.
Back to top

By James Bamford
Rolling Stone

"Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country. Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran."

Smoke signals from the battle of Bint Jbeil send a warning to Israel By Robert Fisk 06/27/06 "The Independent"

Qlaya, Southern Lebanon -- Is it possible - is it conceivable - that Israel is losing its war in Lebanon? From this hill village in the south of the country, I am watching the clouds of brown and black smoke rising from its latest disaster in the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil: up to 13 Israeli soldiers dead, and others surrounded, after a devastating ambush by Hizbollah guerrillas in what was supposed to be a successful Israeli military advance against a "terrorist centre".

To my left smoke rises too, over the town of Khiam, where a smashed United Nations outpost remains the only memorial to the four UN soldiers - most of them decapitated by an American-made missile on Tuesday - killed by the Israeli air force.Indian soldiers of the UN army in southern Lebanon, visibly moved by the horror of bringing their Canadian, Fijian, Chinese and Austrian comrades back in at least 20 pieces from the clearly marked UN post next to Khiam prison, left their remains at Marjayoun hospital yesterday.In past years, I have spent hours with their comrades in this UN position, which is clearly marked in white and blue paint, with the UN's pale blue flag opposite the Israeli frontier. Their duty was to report on all they saw: the ruthless Hizbollah missile fire out of Khiam and the brutal Israeli response against the civilians of Lebanon.

Is this why they had to die, after being targeted by the Israelis for eight hours, their officers pleading to the Israeli Defence Forces that they cease fire? An American-made Israeli helicopter saw to that.

In Bint Jbeil, meanwhile, another bloodbath was taking place. Claiming to "control" this southern Lebanese town, the Israelis chose to walk into a Hizbollah trap. The moment they reached the deserted marketplace, they were ambushed from three sides, their soldiers falling to the ground under sustained rifle fire. The remaining Israeli troops - surrounded by the "terrorists" they were supposed to liquidate - desperately appealed for help, but an Israeli Merkava tank and other vehicles sent to help them were also attacked and set on fire. Up to 17 Israeli soldiers may have died so far in this disastrous operation. During their occupation of Lebanon in 1983 more than 50 Israeli soldiers were killed in just one suicide attack.

The battle for southern Lebanon is on an epic scale but, from the heights above Khiam, the Israelis appear to be in deep trouble. Their F-16s turn in the high bright sun - small, silver fish whose whispers gain in volume as they dive - and their bombs burst over the old prison, where the Hizbollah are still holding out; beyond the frontier, I can see livid fires burning across the Israeli hillsides and the Jewish settlement of Metullah billowing smoke.

It was not meant to be like this, 15 days into Israel's assault on Lebanon. The Katyushas still streak in pairs out of southern Lebanon, clearly visible to the naked eye, white contrails that thump into Israeli's hillsides and border towns.

So is it frustration or revenge that keeps Israel's bombs falling on the innocent? In the early hours two days ago, a tremendous explosion woke me up, rattling the windows and shaking the trees outside, and a single flash suffused the western sky over Nabatiyeh.

The lives of an entire family of seven had just been extinguished.And how come - since this now obsesses the humanitarian organisations working in Lebanon - that the Israelis bombed two ambulances in Qana, killing two of the three wounded inside. All the crews were injured - one with a piece of shrapnel in his neck - but what worried the Lebanese Red Cross was that the Israeli missiles had pierced the very centre of the red cross painted on the roof of each vehicle. Did the pious use the cross as their aiming point?

The bombardment of Khiam has set off its own brush fires on the hillsides below Qlaya, whose Maronite Christian inhabitants now stand on the high road above like spectators at a 19th century battle. Khiam is - or was - a pretty village of cut-stone doorways and tracery windows, but Israel's target, apart from the obviously marked UN position whose inhabitants they massacred, is the notorious prison in which - before its retreat from Lebanon in 2000 - hundreds of Hizbollah members and, in some cases, their families, were held and tortured with electricity by Israel's proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army.

This was the same prison complex - turned into a "museum of torture" by the Hizbollah after the Israeli retreat - that was visited by the late Edward Said shortly before his death. More important, however, is that many of the Hizbollah men originally held prisoner here were captives in cells deep underground the old French mandate fort. These same men are now fighting the Israelis, almost certainly sheltering from their fire in the same underground cells in which they languished, perhaps even storing some of their missiles there.

In Marjayoun, next to Qlaya, once the SLA's headquarters, Lebanese troops are trying to prevent Hizbollah guerrillas using the streets of the Greek Catholic town to fire yet more missiles at Israel. Seven-man Lebanese army patrols are moving through the darkened roads of both towns at night in case the Hizbollah brings yet more Israeli bombs down on our heads.In Beirut, one observes the folly of Western nations with amusement as well as horror, but, sitting in these hill villages and listening to how the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, plans to reshape Lebanon is clearly a lesson in human self-delusion. According to US correspondents accompanying Ms Rice on her visit to the Middle East, she is proposing the intervention of a Nato-led force along the Lebanese-Israeli border for between 60 and 90 days to assure that a ceasefire exists, the deployment of an enlarged Nato force throughout Lebanon to disarm Hizbollah and then the retraining of the Lebanese army before its own deployment to the border.

This plan - which, like all American proposals on Lebanon, is exactly the same as Israel's demands - carries the same depth of conceit as that of the Israeli consul general in New York, who said last week that "most Lebanese appreciate what we are doing".

Does Ms Rice think the Hizbollah want to be disarmed? By Nato? Wasn't there a Nato force in Beirut which fled Lebanon after a group close to the Hizbollah bombed the US Marine base at Beirut airport in 1983, killing 241 US servicemen and dozens more French troops a few seconds later? Does anyone believe that Shia Muslim forces will not do the same again to any Nato "intervention" force? The Americans are talking about Egyptian and Turkish troops in southern Lebanon; Sunni Muslims ruling Shia territory.

The Hizbollah has been waiting and training and dreaming of this new war for years, however ruthless we may regard the actions. They are not going to surrender the territory they liberated from the Israeli army in an 18-year guerrilla war, least of all to Nato at Israel's bidding.

Yesterday's assault on the Israeli army in Bint Jbeil proved that. The problem is that the US sees this slaughterhouse as an "opportunity" rather than a tragedy, a chance to humble Hizbollah supporters in Tehran and help to shape the "new Middle East" of which Ms Rice spoke so blithely this week.

It is Israel which is running out of time in southern Lebanon. Its attacks have for the fifth time in 30 years placed it in the dock for war crimes in Lebanon. The toll of Lebanon's civilian casualties has reached 400. And still the US will not intervene to prevent the carnage, even to call for a 24-hour ceasefire to allow the 3,000 civilians still trapped between Qlaya and Bint Jbeil - who include a number of foreign nationals - to flee.

The only civilian walking those frightening roads to Qlaya was a goatherd, guiding his animals around the huge bomb craters in the tarmac. Talking to him, it emerged that he was almost stone deaf and obviously could not hear the bombs. In this, it seemed, he has a lot in common with Condoleezza Rice.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

Wednesday
26th of July
6:45 pm
Jabalia refugee camp ,
Al Awda Hospital
Emergency Room

Shahd an 8 month baby girl
Maria a 4 years old child
Arrived the hospital dead

Somia and her remaining two daughters, arrived at the hospital suffering from their serious injuries, the 2 girls are now in the operating room , doctors are trying hard to save their lives , the mother’s injuries are very critical , she was referred to the town central hospital (AlShifa Hospital).

Samir,an extremely traumatized husband and father , was unable to believe what happened to his family.

Early this evening Israeli army tank launched one missile against this family’s home , inside Jablia refugee camp,during its raid against the camp ,as well as the eastern part of Gaza City,
This assault started in the early hours of this morning , at 4 am ,loud explosions from sea , air and land ,wakened me up as well as all the towns citizens ,I did not know what was happening ,until I switched on the little battery powered radio ,the death toll reached 19 ,a number that might increase, tens are injured , they all reached the town’s different hospitals including Alawda in Jabalia .
Many homes were demolished, many places are hazardous to reach, roads are deserted, and the general population mood is anxious and insecure,
Many children lost their parents, many parents lost their children, our news isn’t covered, people are feeling disappointed, devastated and abandoned with the world’s reaction, especially the governments
Your solidarity is highly needed at those times , please spread the truth……. The Israeli occupying force use excessive force, in Gaza and Lebanon
End occupation
End the aggression against Palestinian and Lebanon
yours in love and solidarity
Mona

Today I have posted a few articles on my blog that target US and Israeli policies in the Middle East.

I want to try and put them into perspective.

Dilip Hiro and Dahr Jamail both wrote extensively about how Israel’s and the US’s actions in Lebanon (we are financing and “rushing” Israel “precision guided” bombs to use, so our involvement is not in dispute, or at least should not be) and how that is increasing the strength of Hezbollah.

Which is bad news for us who care about what As’ad Abu Khalil called “women's rights, multiculturalism, secularism, individual liberties, and reason.”

Even the political science professor at the University of Tel Aviv, Ze’ev Maoz, has criticized the aggression against Lebanon as “unjust”:

“This war is not a just war. Israel is using excessive force without distinguishing between civilian population and enemy.

…

“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.

…

“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.”

William Blum has delivered with his monthly anti-Empire report, this time pointing out:

“I would like instead to first express what I see as two essential underlying facts of life which remain from one conflict to the next:

1. Israel's existence is not at stake and hasn't been so for decades, if it ever was. If Israel would learn to deal with its neighbors in a non-expansionist, non-military, humane, and respectful manner, engage in full prisoner exchanges, and sincerely strive for a viable two-state solution, even those who are opposed to the idea of a state based on a particular religion could accept the state of Israel, and the question of its right to exist would scarcely arise in people's minds. But as it is, Israel still uses the issue as a justification for its behavior, as Jews all over the world use the Holocaust and conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

2. In a conflict between a thousand-pound gorilla and a mouse, it's the gorilla which has to make concessions in order for the two sides to progress to the next level. What can the Palestinians offer in the way of concession? Israel would reply to that question: "No violent attacks of any kind." But that would still leave the status quo ante bellum -- a life of unmitigated misery for the Palestinian people forced upon them by Israel. Peace without justice.”

Now, on to our mess in Iraq:

Patrick Cockburn wrote another wonderful article on our failing occupation in Iraq and the disasters that are coming with it. His title for the article says it all: “Civil War Won't End Until Troops Leave Iraq.”

The available polls from Iraq uphold this view. The vast majority are opposed to our presence (between 82 –87%), in favor of us leaving and don’t feel we are helping with security (only 1% feel we have helped according to last Augusts’ poll by MoD).

With Shiites turning against us and no sign of the Sunni’s loosening up their resistance, the US is now about to get involved in more aggression against the Kurdish rebels in Turkey. The article quickly noted that the move “would upset the relatively calm northern area of war-torn Iraq” which is dominated by Kurds who support the Kurdish resistance in Turkey.

It has almost been four years since the Pentagon noted quite eloquently why Muslims “hate” us.

We don’t seem to be heading in a different direction so the future is still just as easy to predict.

People, we have solutions but the US and Israel are being obstacles to them. It is the civic and moral duty of us in “free societies” (like the US and Israel) to do something about this. We should not leave these actions up to the occupied and oppressed (whose only feasible tool is violent resistance while we have much more non-violent tools that could possibly be more effective). So long as the US utilizes its veto power to keep these crimes going and so long as Israel continues to reject peace (like it has been doing continuously for more than 30 years) we can only expect things to escalate.

The time of inaction and apathy are long over.

أعيرونا، و ظِلـّوا في مواقعكم
A POWERFUL VIDEO (Arabic)

LATEST BIRTH PANGS:
IN TYRE, LEBANON, TODAY

There are times when I think that this tired old world has gone on a few years too long. What's happening in the Middle East is so depressing. Most discussions of the eternal Israel-Palestine conflict are variations on the child's eternal defense for misbehavior -- "He started it!" Within a few minutes of discussing/arguing the latest manifestation of the conflict the participants are back to 1967, then 1948, then biblical times. I don't wish to get entangled in who started the current mess. I would like instead to first express what I see as two essential underlying facts of life which remain from one conflict to the next:

1. Israel's existence is not at stake and hasn't been so for decades, if it ever was. If Israel would learn to deal with its neighbors in a non-expansionist, non-military, humane, and respectful manner, engage in full prisoner exchanges, and sincerely strive for a viable two-state solution, even those who are opposed to the idea of a state based on a particular religion could accept the state of Israel, and the question of its right to exist would scarcely arise in people's minds. But as it is, Israel still uses the issue as a justification for its behavior, as Jews all over the world use the Holocaust and conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

2. In a conflict between a thousand-pound gorilla and a mouse, it's the gorilla which has to make concessions in order for the two sides to progress to the next level. What can the Palestinians offer in the way of concession? Israel would reply to that question: "No violent attacks of any kind." But that would still leave the status quo ante bellum -- a life of unmitigated misery for the Palestinian people forced upon them by Israel. Peace without justice.

Israel's declarations about the absolute unacceptability of one of their soldiers being held captive by the Palestinians, or two soldiers being held by Hezbollah in Lebanon, cannot be taken too seriously when Israel is holding literally thousands of captured Palestinians, many for years, typically without any due process, many tortured; as well as holding a number of prominent Hezbollah members. A few years ago, if not still now, Israel wrote numbers on some of the Palestinian prisoners' arms and foreheads, using blue markers, a practice that is of course reminiscent of the Nazis' treatment of Jews in World War II.

Israel's real aim, and that of Washington, is the overthrow of the Hamas government in Palestine, the government that came to power in January through a clearly democratic process, the democracy that the Western "democracies" never tire of celebrating, except when the result doesn't please them. Is there a stronger word than "hypocrisy"? There is now "no Hamas government," declared a senior US official a week ago, "eight cabinet ministers or 30 percent of the government is in jail [kidnapped by Israel], another 30 percent is in hiding, and the other 30 percent is doing very little.” To make the government-disappearance act even more Orwellian, we have Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in late June about Iraq: "This is the only legitimately elected government in the Middle East with a possible exception of Lebanon.” What's next, gathering in front of the Big Telescreeen for the Two Minutes Hate?

In addition to doing away with the Hamas government, the current military blitzkrieg by Israel, with full US support, may well be designed to create "incidents" to justify attacks on Iran and Syria, the next steps of Washington's work in process, a controlling stranglehold on the Middle East and its oil.

It is a wanton act of collective punishment that is depriving the Palestinians of food, electricity, water, money, access to the outside world ... and sleep. Israel has been sending jets flying over Gaza at night triggering sonic booms, traumatizing children. "I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza," declared Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert; words suitable for Israel's tombstone.

These crimes against humanity -- and I haven't mentioned the terrible special weapons reportedly used by Israel -- are what the people of Palestine get for voting for the “wrong” party. It is ironic, given the Israeli attacks against civilians in both Gaza and Lebanon, that Hamas and Hezbollah are routinely dismissed in the West as terrorist organizations. The generally accepted definition of terrorism, used by the FBI and the United Nations amongst others, is: The use of violence against a civilian population in order to intimidate or coerce a government in furtherance of a political objective.

Since 9/11 it has been a calculated US-Israeli tactic to label the fight against Israel's foes as an integral part of the war on terror. On July 19, a rally was held in Washington, featuring the governor of Maryland, several members of Israeli-occupied Congress, the Israeli ambassador, and evangelical leading light John Hagee. The Washington Post reported that "Speaker after prominent speaker characteriz[ed] current Israeli fighting as a small branch of the larger U.S.-led global war against Islamic terrorism" and "Israel's attacks against the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah were blows against those who have killed civilians from Bali to Bombay to Moscow." Said the Israeli ambassador: "This is not just about [Israel]. It's about where our world is going to be and the fate and security of our world. Israel is on the forefront. We will amputate these little arms of Iran," referring to Hezbollah.

And if the war on terror isn't enough to put Israel on the side of the angels, John Hagee has argued that "the United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West". He speaks of "a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ."

The beatification of Israel approaches being a movement. Here is David Horowitz, the eminent semi-hysterical ex-Marxist: "Israel is part of a global war, the war of radical Islam against civilization. Right now Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world by taking on the terrorists. It is not only for Israel's sake that we must get the facts out -- it is for ourselves, America, for every free country in the world, and for civilization itself."

As for the two Israeli soldiers captured and held in Lebanon for prisoner exchange, we must keep a little history in mind. In the late 1990s, before Israel was evicted from southern Lebanon by Hezbollah, it was a common practice for Israel to abduct entirely innocent Lebanese. As a 1998 Amnesty International paper declared: "By Israel's own admission, Lebanese detainees are being held as 'bargaining chips'; they are not detained for their own actions but in exchange for Israeli soldiers missing in action or killed in Lebanon. Most have now spent 10 years in secret and isolated detention."

Israel has created its worst enemies -- they helped create Hamas as a counterweight to Fatah in Palestine, and their occupation of Lebanon created Hezbollah. The current terrible bombings can be expected to keep the process going. Since its very beginning, Israel has been almost continually occupied in fighting wars and taking other people's lands. Did not any better way ever occur to the idealistic Zionist pioneers?

But while you and I get depressed by the horror and suffering, the neo-conservatives revel in it. They devour the flesh and drink the blood of the people of Afghanistan, of Iraq, of Palestine, of Lebanon, yet remain ravenous, and now call for Iran and Syria to be placed upon the feasting table. More than one of them has used the expression oderint dum metuant, a favorite phrase of Roman emperor Caligula, also used by Cicero -- "let them hate so long as they fear". Here is William Kristol, editor of the bible of neo-cons, "Weekly Standard", on Fox News Sunday, July 16:

"Look, our coddling of Iran ... over the last six to nine months has emboldened them. I mean, is Iran behaving like a timid regime that's very worried about the U.S.? Or is Iran behaving recklessly and in a foolhardy way? ... Israel is fighting four of our five enemies in the Middle East, in a sense. Iran, Syria, sponsors of terror; Hezbollah and Hamas. ... This is an opportunity to begin to reverse the unfortunate direction of the last six to nine months and get the terrorists and the jihadists back on the defensive."

Host Juan Williams replied: "Well, it just seems to me that you want ... you just want war, war, war, and you want us in more war. You wanted us in Iraq. Now you want us in Iran. Now you want us to get into the Middle East ... you're saying, why doesn't the United States take this hard, unforgiving line? Well, the hard and unforgiving line has been [tried], we don't talk to anybody. We don't talk to Hamas. We don't talk to Hezbollah. We're not going to talk to Iran. Where has it gotten us, Bill?"

Kristol, looking somewhat taken aback, simply threw up his hands.

The Fox News audience does (very) occasionally get a hint of another way of looking at the world.

Iraq will follow Bush the rest of his life
Here comes now our Glorious Leader, speaking at a news conference at the recent G8 summit in St. Petersburg, referring to Russian president Vladimir Putin. "I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same thing."

It's so very rare that Georgie W. makes one of his less-than-brilliant statements and has the nonsense immediately pointed out to him to his face -- "Putin, in a barbed reply, said: 'We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I will tell you quite honestly.' Bush's face reddened as he tried to laugh off the remark. 'Just wait'," he said.
It's too bad that Putin didn't also point out that religion was a lot more free under Saddam Hussein than under the American occupation. Amongst many charming recent incidents, in May the coach of the national tennis team and two of his players were shot dead in Baghdad by men who reportedly were religious extremists angry that the coach and his players were wearing shorts.

As to a "free press", dare I mention Iraqi newspapers closed down by the American occupation, reporters shot by American troops, and phony stories planted in the Iraqi press by Pentagon employees?

The preceding is in the same vein as last month's edition of my report in which I listed the many ways in which the people of Iraq have a much worse life now than they did under Saddam Hussein. I concluded with recounting the discussions I've had with Americans who, in the face of this, say to me: "Just tell me one thing, are you glad that Saddam Hussein is out of power?"
Now we have a British poll that reports that "More than two thirds who offered an opinion said America is essentially an imperial power seeking world domination. And 81 per cent of those who took a view said President George W. Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests." The American embassy in London was quick to reply. Said a spokesperson: "We question the judgment of anyone who asserts the world would be a better place with Saddam still terrorizing his own nation and threatening people well beyond Iraq's borders.”

They simply can't stop lying, can they? There was no evidence at all that Saddam was threatening any people outside of Iraq, whatever that's supposed to mean. It may mean arms sales. Following the Gulf War, the US sold around $100 billion of military hardware to Iraq's "threatened" neighbors: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Gulf States, and Turkey.

As to the world being a better or worse place ... only Iraq itself was and is the issue here, not the world; although if the world is a better place, why am I depressed?

The peculiar idea of tying people's health to private corporate profits
Steven Pearlstein is a financial writer with the Washington Post, with whom I've exchanged several emails in recent years. He does not ignore or gloss over the serious defects of the American economic system, but nonetheless remains a true believer in the market economy. In a recent review of a book by journalist Maggie Mahar, "Money-Driven Medicine", Pearlstein writes that the author tries to explain "why health care costs so much in the United States, with such poor results." She has focused on the right issues, he says, "the misguided financial incentives at every level, the unnecessary care that is not only wasteful but harmful, the bloated administrative costs." However, "in making the case that the health-care system suffers from too much free-market competition and too little cooperation, Mahar means to drum up support for a publicly funded national system. But in the end, she mostly makes a convincing case that no health-care system will work unless we figure out what really works and is cost effective and then get doctors, hospitals and patients to embrace it.”

"Unless we figure out what really works and is cost effective" ... hmmm ... like there haven't been repeated studies showing that national health plans in Western Europe, Australia, Canada, and elsewhere cover virtually everyone and every ailment and cost society and individuals much less than in the United States. Isn't that "working"? I spent five years in the UK with my wife and small child and all three of us can swear by the National Health Service; at those times when neither my wife nor I was employed we didn't have to pay anything into the system; doctors even made house calls; and this was under Margaret Thatcher, who was doing her best to cripple the system, a goal she and her fellow Tories, later joined by "New Labor", have continued to pursue.

And then there's Cuba -- poor, little, third-world Cuba. Countless non-rich ill Americans would think they were in heaven to have the Cuban health system reproduced here, with higher salaries for doctors et al., which we could easily afford.

It should be noted that an extensive review of previous studies recently concluded that the care provided at for-profit nursing homes and hospitals, on average, is inferior to that at nonprofits. The analysis indicates that a facility's ownership status makes a difference in cost, quality, and accessibility of care.

Sale! Western Civilization! New, Improved! $99.99, marked down from $129.99. Sale!

There's currently a call in the United States to get rid of the one-cent coin because it costs 1.2 cents to make the coin and put it into circulation and because many people find the coins a nuisance. I have another reason to get rid of the coin -- hopefully, doing so would put an end to the ridiculous and ubiquitous practice of pricing almost everything at amounts like $9.99, $99.99, or $999.99. Or $3.29 or $17.98. What is the reason for this tedious and insulting absurdity? It began as, and continues to be, a con game -- trying to induce the purchaser to think that he's getting some kind of bargain price: Less than $10! Less than $100! In my local thrift shop, catering almost exclusively to poor blacks and Hispanics, virtually all prices end in .97 or .98 or .99. Every once in a while, when the nonsense has piled up to my nose level, I ask a shop manager or corporate representative why they use such a pricing system. They scarcely have any idea what I'm talking about. Sometimes in a shop when I'm discussing with a clerk the various price options of something I'm thinking of buying, and I say, "Okay, let's see, this model is $60 and ..." S/he'll interrupt me with: "No, it's $59.99."

And let's not forget gasoline. Priced at $2.60.9 per gallon. Or $3.24.9 per gallon. That's 9/10. It's been suggested that it was the oil companies that began this whole silliness.

Is this any way for people to relate to each other? Comes the revolution, and we write a new constitution, Paragraph 99 will ban this practice.

You can't make this stuff up
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." Anatole France, 1844-1924

On April 14 a federal appeals court ruled that the Los Angeles Police Department cannot arrest people for sitting, lying or sleeping on public sidewalks on Skid Row, saying such enforcement amounts to cruel and unusual punishment because there are not enough shelter beds for the city's huge homeless population. Judge Pamela A. Rymer issued a strong dissent against the majority opinion. The Los Angeles code "does not punish people simply because they are homeless," wrote Rymer. "It targets conduct -- sitting, lying or sleeping on city sidewalks -- that can be committed by those with homes as well as those without."

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.

He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com

Syndicated columnist Richard Cohen declared in the Washington Post on Tuesday that an-eye-for-an-eye would be a hopelessly wimpy policy for the Israeli government.

"Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that proportionality is madness," he wrote. "For Israel, a small country within reach, as we are finding out, of a missile launched from any enemy's back yard, proportionality is not only inapplicable, it is suicide. The last thing it needs is a war of attrition. It is not good enough to take out this or that missile battery. It is necessary to reestablish deterrence: You slap me, I will punch out your lights."

Cohen likes to sit in front of a computer and use flip phrases like "punch out your lights" as euphemisms for burning human flesh and bones with high-tech weapons, courtesy of American taxpayers.

In mid-November 1998, when President Clinton canceled plans for air attacks on Iraq after Saddam Hussein promised full cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors, Cohen wrote:

"Something is out of balance here. The Clinton administration waited too long to act. It needed to punch out Iraq's lights, and it did not do so."

The resort to euphemism tells us a lot. So does Cohen's track record of sweeping statements on behalf of his zeal for military actions funded by the U.S. Treasury.

On February 6, 2003, the Washington Post published Richard Cohen's judgment the morning after Colin Powell made his televised presentation to the U.N. Security Council. "The evidence he presented to the United Nations -- some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail -- had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them," Cohen wrote. "Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise."

Cohen's moral certainties are on a par with his technical ones. While he condemns rockets fired into Israel, he expresses pleasure about missiles fired by the Israeli government. That the death toll of civilians is far higher from Israel's weaponry does not appear to bother him. On the contrary, he seems glad about the killing spree by the Israeli military.

In a column with bigoted overtones ("Israel is, as I have often said, unfortunately located, gentrifying a pretty bad neighborhood"), Cohen's eagerness to support additional large-scale bombing by Israel is thematic. Consider this passage: "Hezbollah, with the aid of Iran and Syria, has shown that it is no longer necessary to send a dazed suicide bomber over the border -- all that is needed is the requisite amount of thrust and a warhead. That being the case, it's either stupid or mean for anyone to call for proportionality. The only way to ensure that babies don't die in their cribs and old people in the streets is to make the Lebanese or the Palestinians understand that if they, no matter how reluctantly, host those rockets, they will pay a very, very steep price."

Such phrasing is classic evasion by keyboard cheerleaders for war: "The" Lebanese. "The" Palestinians. "They will pay a very, very steep price." Meanwhile, in the real world, the vast majority of the victims of the Israeli onslaught are civilians being subjected to collective punishment.

Cohen -- like so many others in the American punditocracy -- depicts the death of an Israeli civilian as far more tragic and important than the death of an Arab civilian.

There's something really sick about such righteous support for civilian death and destruction.

Osama bin Laden, meet Richard Cohen.

Richard, meet Osama.