War Without End

Alpha · Last edited by Alpha on Wed Mar 14, 2007 9:55 am; edited 17 times in total

Olmert's leaked testimony reveals real goal of summer war

By Jonathan Cook, Electronic Lebanon, 13 March 2007

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6660.shtml

Israel's supposedly "defensive" assault on Hizbullah last
summer, in which more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians were
killed in a massive aerial bombardment that ended with
Israel littering the country's south with cluster bombs,
was cast in a definitively different light last week by
Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert.

His leaked testimony to the Winograd Committee --
investigating the government's failures during the
month-long attack -- suggests that he had been preparing
for such a war at least four months before the official
casus belli: the capture by Hizbullah of two Israeli
soldiers from a border post on 12 July 2006. Lebanon's
devastation was apparently designed to teach both
Hizbullah and the country's wider public a lesson.

Olmert's new account clarifies the confusing series of
official justifications for the war from the time.

First, we were told that the seizure of the soldiers was
"an act of war" by Lebanon and that a "shock and awe"
campaign was needed to secure their release. Or, as then
Chief of Staff Dan Halutz -- taking time out from
disposing of his shares before market prices fell --
explained, his pilots were going to "turn the clock back
20 years" in Lebanon.

Then the army claimed that it was trying to stop
Hizbullah's rocket strikes. However, the bombing campaign
targeted not only the rocket launchers but much of
Lebanon, including Beirut. (It was, of course,
conveniently overlooked that Hizbullah's rockets fell as a
response to the Israeli bombardment and not the other way
around.)

And finally we were offered variations on the theme that
ended the fighting: the need to push Hizbullah (and,
incidentally, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians)
away from the northern border with Israel.

That was the thrust of UN Resolution 1701 that brought
about the official end of hostilities in mid-August. It
also looked suspiciously like the reason why Israel chose
at the last-minute to dump up to a million tiny bomblets
-- old US stocks of cluster munitions with a very high
failure rate -- that are lying in south Lebanon's fields,
playgrounds and back yards waiting to explode.

What had been notable before Olmert's latest revelation
was the clamour of the military command to distance itself
from Israel's failed attack on Hizbullah. After his
resignation, Halutz blamed the political echelon (meaning
primarily Olmert), while his subordinates blamed both
Olmert and Halutz. The former Chief of Staff was rounded
on mainly because, it was claimed, being from the air
force, he had over-estimated the likely effectiveness of
his pilots in "neutralising" Hizbullah's rockets.

Given this background, Olmert has been obliging in his
testimony to Winograd. He has not only shouldered
responsibility for the war to the Committee, but, if
Israeli media reports are to be believed, he has also
publicised the fact by leaking the details.

Olmert told Winograd that, far from making war on the hoof
in response to the capture of the two soldiers (the main
mitigating factor for Israel's show of aggression), he had
been planning the attack on Lebanon since at least March
2006.

His testimony is more than plausible. Allusions to
pre-existing plans for a ground invasion of Lebanon can be
found in Israeli reporting from the time. On the first day
of the war, for example, the Jersualem Post reported:
"Only weeks ago, an entire reserve division was drafted in
order to train for an operation such as the one the IDF is
planning in response to Wednesday morning's Hizbullah
attacks on IDF forces along the northern border."

Olmert defended the preparations to the Committee on the
grounds that Israel expected Hizbullah to seize soldiers
at some point and wanted to be ready with a harsh
response. The destruction of Lebanon would deter Hizbullah
from considering another such operation in the future.

There was an alternative route that Olmert and his
commanders could have followed: they could have sought to
lessen the threat of attacks on the northern border by
damping down the main inciting causes of Israel's conflict
with Hizbullah.

According to Olmert's testimony, he was seeking just such
a solution to the main problem: a small corridor of land
known as the Shebaa Farms claimed by Lebanon but occupied
by Israel since 1967. As a result of the Farms area's
occupation, Hizbullah has argued that Israel's withdrawal
from south Lebanon in 2000 was incomplete and that the
territory still needed liberating.

Olmert's claim, however, does not stand up to scrutiny.

The Israeli media revealed in January that for much of the
past two years Syria's leader, Bashir Assad, has been all
but prostrating himself before Israel in back-channel
negotiations over the return of Syrian territory, the
Golan, currently occupied by Israel. Although those talks
offered Israel the most favourable terms it could have
hoped for (including declaring the Golan a peace park open
to Israelis), Sharon and then Olmert -- backed by the US
-- refused to engage Damascus.

A deal on the Golan with Syria would almost certainly have
ensured that the Shebaa Farms were returned to Lebanon.
Had Israel or the US wanted it, they could have made
considerable progress on this front.

The other major tension was Israel's repeated
transgressions of the northern border, complemented by
Hizbullah's own, though less frequent, violations. After
the army's withdrawal in 2000, United Nations monitors
recorded Israeli warplanes violating Lebanese airspace
almost daily. Regular overflights were made to Beirut,
where pilots used sonic booms to terrify the local
population, and drones spied on much of the country.
Again, had Israel halted these violations of Lebanese
sovereignty, Hizbullah's own breach of Israeli sovereignty
in attacking the border post would have been hard to
justify.

And finally, when Hizbullah did capture the soldiers,
there was a chance for Israel to negotiate over their
return. Hizbullah made clear from the outset that it
wanted to exchange the soldiers for a handful of Lebanese
prisoners still in Israeli jails. But, of course, as
Olmert's testimony implies, Israel was not interested in
talks or in halting its bombing campaign. That was not
part of the plan.

We can now start to piece together why.

According to the leaks, Olmert first discussed the
preparations for a war against Lebanon in January and then
asked for detailed plans in March.

Understandably given the implications, Olmert's account
has been decried by leading Israeli politicians. Effi
Eitam has pointed out that Olmert's version echoes that of
Hizbullah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who claims his group
knew that Israel wanted to attack Lebanon.

And Yuval Steinitz argues that, if a war was expected,
Olmert should not have approved a large cut to the defence
budget only weeks earlier. The explanation for that,
however, can probably be found in the forecasts about the
war's outcome expressed in cabinet by Halutz and
government ministers. Halutz reportedly believed that an
air campaign would defeat Hizbullah in two to three days,
after which Lebanon's infrastructure could be wrecked
unimpeded. Some ministers apparently thought the war would
be over even sooner.

In addition, a red herring has been offered by the General
Staff, whose commanders are claiming to the Israeli media
that they were kept out of the loop by the prime minister.
If Olmert was planning a war against Lebanon, they argue,
he should not have left them so unprepared.

It is an intriguing, and unconvincing, proposition: who
was Olmert discussing war preparations with, if not with
the General Staff? And how was he planning to carry out
that war if the General Staff was not intimately involved?

More interesting are the dates mentioned by Olmert. His
first discussion of a war against Lebanon was held on 8
January 2006, four days after he became acting prime
minister following Ariel Sharon's brain haemorrhage and
coma. Olmert held his next meeting on the subject in
March, presumably immediately after his victory in the
elections. There were apparently more talks in April, May
and July.

Rather than the impression that has been created by Olmert
of a rookie prime minister and military novice "going it
alone" in planning a major military offensive against a
neighbouring state, a more likely scenario starts to take
shape. It suggests that from the moment that Olmert took
up the reins of power, he was slowly brought into the
army's confidence, first tentatively in January and then
more fully after his election. He was allowed to know of
the senior command's secret and well-advanced plans for
war -- plans, we can assume, his predecessor, Ariel
Sharon, a former general, had been deeply involved in
advancing.

But why would Olmert now want to shoulder responsibility
for the unsuccessful war if he only approved, rather than
formulated, it? Possibly because Olmert, who has appeared
militarily weak and inexperienced to the Israeli public,
does not want to prove his critics right. And also
because, with most of his political capital exhausted, he
would be unlikely to survive a battle for Israeli hearts
and minds against the army (according to all polls, the
most revered institution in Israeli society) should he try
to blame them for last summer's fiasco. With Halutz gone,
Olmert has little choice but to say "mea cupla".

What is the evidence that Israel's generals had already
established the protocols for a war?

First, an article in the San Franscisco Chronicle,
published soon after the outbreak of war, revealed that
the Israeli army had been readying for a wide-ranging
assault on Lebanon for years, and had a specific plan for
a "Three-Week War" that they had shared with Washington
think-tanks and US officials.

"More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began
giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record
basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and think
tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in
revealing detail," wrote reporter Matthew Kalman.

That view was confimed this week by an anonymous senior
officer who told the Israeli Haaretz newspaper that the
army had a well-established plan for an extensive ground
invasion of Lebanon, but that Olmert had shied away from
putting it into action. "I don't know if he [Olmert] was
familiar with the details of the plan, but everyone knew
that the IDF [army] had a ground operation ready for
implementation."

And second, we have an interview in the Israeli media with
Meyrav Wurmser, the wife of one of the highest officials
in the Bush Administration, David Wurmser, Vice-President
Dick Cheney's adviser on the Middle East. Meyrav Wurmser,
an Israeli citizen, is herself closely associated with
MEMRI, a group translating (and mistranslating) speeches
by Arab leaders and officials that is known for its ties
to the Israeli secret services.

She told the website of Israel's leading newspaper, Yediot
Aharonot, that the US stalled over imposing a ceasefire
during Israel's assault on Lebanon because the Bush
Administration was expecting the war to be expanded to
Syria.

"The anger [in the White House] is over the fact that
Israel did not fight against the Syrians. The neocons are
responsible for the fact that Israel got a lot of time and
space. They believed that Israel should be allowed to win.
A great part of it was the thought that Israel should
fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hizbullah.
It was obvious that it is impossible to fight directly
against Iran, but the thought was that its [Iran's]
strategic and important ally [Syria] should be hit."

In other words, the picture that emerges is of a
long-standing plan by the Israeli army, approved by senior
US officials, for a rapid war against Lebanon -- followed
by possible intimidatory strikes against Syria -- using
the pretext of a cross-border incident involving
Hizbullah. The real purpose, we can surmise, was to weaken
what are seen by Israel and the US to be Tehran's allies
before an attack on Iran itself.

That was why neither the Americans nor Israel wanted, or
appear still to want, to negotiate with Assad over the
Golan and seek a peace agreement that could -- for once --
change the map of the Middle East for the better.

Despite signs of a slight thawing in Washington's
relations with Iran and Syria in the past few days, driven
by the desperate US need to stop sinking deeper into the
mire of Iraq, Damascus is understandably wary.

The continuing aggressive Israeli and US postures have
provoked a predictable reaction from Syria: it has started
building up its defences along the border with Israel. But
in the Alice Through the Looking Glass world of Israeli
military intelligence, that response is being interpreted
-- or spun -- as a sign of an imminent attack by Syria.

Such, for example, is the opinion of Martin Van Creveld,
an Israeli professor of military history, usually
described as eminent and doubtless with impeccable
contacts in the Israeli military establishment, who
recently penned an article in the American Jewish weekly,
the Forward.

He suggests that Syria, rather than wanting to negotiate
over the Golan -- as all the evidence suggests -- is
planning to launch an attack on Israel, possibly using
chemical weapons, in October 2008 under cover of fog and
rain. The goal of the attack? Apparently, says the
professor, Syria wants to "inflict casualties" and ensure
Jerusalem "throws in the towel".

What's the professor's evidence for these Syrian designs?
That its military has been on an armaments shopping spree
in Russia, and has been studying the lessons of the
Lebanon war.

He predicts (of Syria, not Israel) the following: "Some
incident will be generated and used as an excuse for
opening rocket fire on the Golan Heights and the Galilee."
And he concludes: "Overall the emerging Syrian plan is a
good one with a reasonable chance of success."

And what can stop the Syrians? Not peace talks, argues Van
Creveld. "Obviously, much will depend on what happens in
Iraq and Iran. A short, successful American offensive in
Iran may persuade Assad that the Israelis, much of whose
hardware is either American or American-derived, cannot be
countered, especially in the air. Conversely, an American
withdrawal from Iraq, combined with an American-Iranian
stalemate in the Persian Gulf, will go a long way toward
untying Assad's hands."

It all sounds familiar. Iran wants the nuclear destruction
of Israel, and Syria wants Jersualem to "throw in the
towel" -- or so the neocons and the useful idiots of "the
clash of civilisations" would have us believe. The fear
must be that they get their way and push Israel and the US
towards another pre-emptive war -- or maybe two.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel. His book, Blood and Religion: The
Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State, is published
by Pluto Press.

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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/02/15/israel_despair/print.html

Israel's surge of despair
Top Israeli officials admit last summer's war against Hezbollah was a failure -- and denounce President Bush's actions in the Middle East.
By Gregory Levey

Feb. 15, 2007 | Hezbollah operatives plant explosives along the disputed border area between Lebanon and Israel. The Israeli military moves in and destroys them. Israeli and Lebanese forces engage in sporadic gun battles.

It may sound like the prelude to the war waged last summer between the Israeli military and Hezbollah, but it happened just last week. Tensions are running high along the Israel-Lebanon border again, and political and intelligence analysts are predicting another major flare-up of hostilities this spring or summer, or perhaps even sooner. According to Israeli military intelligence, Hezbollah remains firmly rooted in Lebanon and has successfully rearmed -- the Iranian-backed Shiite militia now has even more missiles than it had before last summer's war. To many Israelis, it seems as if that war, and the destruction it brought, were all for nothing.

For many, it is a thoroughly depressing realization. And this sense of depression is not only permeating the Israeli public. A series of recent interviews with current and former Israeli government officials revealed a level of pessimism across the Israeli government that is unprecedented in recent decades. Several senior officials acknowledged unequivocally that Israel lost the war against Hezbollah, and confirmed that this is a widely held view inside the Israeli government -- despite many public pronouncements to the contrary by Israeli leaders.

In light of Israel's close strategic ties with the United States, and particularly with the Bush administration, it has been all but taboo in the past for Israeli officials to openly criticize U.S. policy. But some officials I spoke with also voiced rising fears -- and disapproval -- over the Bush administration's handling of Iraq and Iran. Those officials include octogenarian Rafi Eitan, currently an Israeli cabinet minister, who told me that in the wake of Israel's failed efforts to crush Hezbollah, and with the deepening crisis in Iraq, Israel is in one of the most precarious situations he has ever seen in his seven decades of military and government service. Regarding President Bush's handing of Iraq, Eitan said, "Unless the policy changes, it is hopeless."

The level of gloom inside the Israeli government is accompanied by a creeping sense of paralysis -- one that could be dangerous not just for Israel, but for U.S. interests in the region, and for the Middle East as a whole. A recent conversation with a senior member of Israel's diplomatic corps -- someone with extensive experience in Israel's foreign policy establishment -- left me stunned by the degree of negativity. I have known him personally for several years and have never seen him so down on the country's prospects. "We lost the war," he told me, regarding last summer's conflict. "We all know that," he continued, adding that the failure against Hezbollah is the "core reason" for the deepening pessimism inside the government. This contrasts sharply, of course, with the official government line. As recently as Feb. 1, speaking to an Israeli commission investigating the war effort, Prime Minister Olmert, according to his aides, insisted once again that "Israel won the war."

The senior Israeli diplomat in part blamed Olmert's politics. "Do you know why we lost? Because soldiers don't want to die for these leaders. Who wants to die for Amir Peretz?" he said, referring to the Israeli defense minister, whose qualifications for the job have been called into question. Peretz, the leader of the Labor Party, but who had no real security or defense credentials, was appointed by Olmert last year to ensure the Labor Party's involvement in Olmert's coalition government.

The senior Israeli diplomat's grievances went beyond the Defense Ministry. He lamented the wave of cronyism, corruption and sexual harassment scandals that have plagued the government in recent times. "We live in a corrupt society, where those with merit don't get anywhere," he said. "It's a very sad time for the Jewish state."

I raised this striking level of gloom with another high-ranking diplomat, who told me he was not surprised to hear of it. "There is a lot of frustration right now," he nodded, "and it's not just felt in the Foreign Ministry." He agreed that it was caused by "all the corruption in the political layers, and the perception in Israel that the war was a failure."

Yet, the roots of the seemingly ubiquitous sense of despair may stem more from the goings-on in the corridors of power in Washington than those in Jerusalem.

In December, Daniel Levy, who served as a special advisor to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and is now a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, told me that the Bush administration's Middle East policies are "just so out of sync with what are good politics for the U.S. and Israel." Those policies, he said, "have led Israel into the most dangerous situation anyone remembers it being in." Levy also pointed out that despite the American president's avowed staunch support for Israel, "Bush has never stepped foot in Israel or the Palestinian territories."

Every year, an influential assessment of the security situation in the Middle East is published by Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center, one of Israel's premier think tanks. This year's assessment, published in January, was not only bleak, but also openly critical of U.S. policy. "The threats to Middle East security and stability worsened in 2006," the assessment announced, because "the American failure in Iraq has hurt the standing of the U.S. in the Middle East." It went on to state essentially that American actions in the Middle East over the past few years have harmed Israeli security. It also argued that the United States should withdraw from Iraq in the near term, rather than add more troops, as Bush's surge plan is now doing. As one of its authors, Mark A. Heller, explained after the report was published, "There is no Israeli interest being served by a continued American presence in Iraq."

These sobering conclusions might provide a jolt to those in the United States -- whether American Jews or conservative evangelicals -- who have supported the Bush administration's policies in part because they were supposedly intended to help Israel.

While the U.S. and Israel clearly are united in the goal of stopping Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, some Israeli leaders have lost confidence in Bush's leadership when it comes to that crucial concern. In the aftermath of the release of the assessment, Uzi Arad, the former director of intelligence at the Mossad, added, "With American attention so much focused on Iraq, it comes at the expense of its ability to blunt the slow Iranian progression toward nuclear capability." Last week, I raised these assessments with Eitan, himself a former spymaster who led the Israeli capture of Adolf Eichmann in 1960, and who was the handler of the infamous spy Jonathan Pollard in the 1980s. "Sooner or later, a year or two, America will go out from Iraq," Eitan said. "Iran will unite with the Shiites of Iraq -- with or without force -- and then with the Shiites of Syria. Is this good for Israel? No, it is bad for Israel."

Against the backdrop of deepening turmoil in the region, the paralyzing depression within the Israeli government has clearly weakened it. This could play out badly in two different ways with regard to Iran. From a hawkish perspective, it could create a situation where, even if all diplomatic options fail and the United States does not step in, Israel might need to act militarily on its own against Iran -- but the government might be so paralyzed that it might not have the confidence or political capital to launch the incredibly risky military strikes deemed necessary. Perhaps even more dangerously, from a more dovish point of view, government leaders may choose to overcompensate for Israel's -- or their own -- perceived weakness by engaging in a potentially disastrous bombing campaign, without thoroughly weighing the huge risks involved or first exploring all the alternatives.

Several Israeli journalists have written articles recently discussing how Ariel Sharon -- who was plunged into his coma just over a year ago, at a much more optimistic time in the country's history -- would react if he were to awaken today. "We cannot bring ourselves to admit that we are lost without him," wrote Bradley Burston, a left-leaning columnist for the Israeli daily Haaretz. "But, for a year now, we have proven just that ... we have lost the ability to avoid wars, just as we have lost the ability to win them."

Indeed, Sharon would have been aghast to observe the current state of affairs: no substantive progress on a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Gaza in the grips of a Hamas government; Sharon's personal choice for army chief having resigned in dishonor after leading a disastrous war; a still-powerful Hezbollah bragging about victory in Lebanon; a demoralized Israeli military -- and, perhaps worst of all, a powerful and emboldened Iran on the rise.

The grim status quo seems to have left many at the top levels of the Israeli government turning their fears and anger inward. They have remained largely preoccupied with political infighting and back stabbing, and with the various allegations of criminal wrongdoing being leveled against many of them, instead of focusing on moving the country forward during deeply challenging times. Prime Minister Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have spent much of this past year engaged in an unproductive turf war over which direction Israeli diplomatic efforts toward restarting the Middle East peace process should go. And, according to many reports, Olmert and Peretz, the defense minister, are barely on speaking terms. Meanwhile, President Moshe Katsav is being investigated because of rape allegations, there are at least two corruption investigations in progress against Olmert -- and a former justice minister, Haim Ramon, was convicted in January of sexual harassment. With the government weighed down by all of this, it is unsurprising that very little seems to be happening in the way of diplomatic progress with Israel's neighbors.

In January, I told a personal aide to one of Israel's most high-profile public figures that I was considering attending the Herzliya Conference, Israel's most important policy conference, where important new diplomatic plans have in the past been floated for the first time. The aide waved her hand dismissively. "This year there's no point going," she said. "There's no substance -- everything is all show right now."

Many Israelis seem to agree with her evaluation of their leadership. In poll results released on Feb. 8, 78 percent of Israelis said they were "unhappy" with their leaders, citing corruption, inexperience and self-centeredness as their main reasons. And 68 percent of them said that their current leaders were worse than those of the past.

In fact, one of the senior government officials I spoke to recently -- usually silent on domestic political matters -- was despondent not only about the current "leadership vacuum," as he called it, but about the prospects for better leadership in the future. When I asked him about the chances that Livni, a skilled diplomat and relatively popular foreign minister, might one day be elected prime minister, he said, "She has no chance. The next prime minister will be a general."

Yet, he was equally pessimistic about the prospects of Dan Halutz, the architect of the Lebanon War. Halutz, who was once widely considered Ariel Sharon's presumptive heir and a future prime minister, recently stepped down from his position as army chief of staff. "He's finished," the senior government official said. And his view was no different regarding the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu, who remains highly popular with the Israeli public and is considered strong on national security. "The Israeli people are not stupid," he said. "He had his chance and he failed."

When I asked him who could step in as the next prime minister and change course for the country, he just shook his head and stared into the distance.

To many in or involved with the Israeli government, George W. Bush's presence in the Oval Office was once reassuring. Now, it is increasingly worrying. Back in early 2004, when I started working in the Israeli Mission to the U.N. -- during the first year of the U.S. occupation of Iraq -- one of the senior diplomats there had an autographed photograph of Bush hanging behind his desk. But by the summer of 2005, as Iraq spiraled into chaos, I noticed that he had replaced it, without explanation, with a photo of U2's Bono.

For several years earlier this decade, many in Israeli society and government were avid fans of the Bush administration (to the dismay and even embarrassment of some on the Israeli left). Because of Bush's hard-line Middle East policies and staunch support for Israel's own often hard-line policies under Sharon, approval ratings for the president were often much higher in Israel than anywhere else in the world -- even the United States itself. Recently, though, as the recognition that the last six years may have actually made the situation in the Middle East considerably more unstable and dangerous for Israel, reverence for Bush is quickly diminishing in many quarters.

It might only add to the sense of pessimism and paralysis, then, that there may be little Israel's leaders can do to influence Bush -- who hasn't been swayed on Middle East policy even by many in the U.S. Congress. My former supervisor in the prime minister's office, Ra'anan Gissin, who was Prime Minister Sharon's longtime advisor, used to tell a story that illustrates this current predicament. In the days leading up to the Iraq war, Ra'anan sat in on a meeting between Prime Minister Sharon and President Bush. As always, Ra'anan explained, Prime Minister Sharon was very careful not to directly counsel any particular action to President Bush -- because of the rightful fear that it would be unwise for Israel to be seen in any way as pushing U.S. policy.

Sharon did, however, make one of his beliefs very clear. Whatever the United States did or didn't do in the Middle East, he said, it would eventually leave -- and Israel would be left behind, forced to deal with the consequences.

-- By Gregory Levey

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Israel's military chief resigns

The head of Israel's armed forces, Lt Gen Dan Halutz, has resigned amid inquiries into last year's conflict with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Gen Halutz said he wanted to assume his "responsibilities" after a war which has been widely criticised for failing to crush the anti-Israel militia.

A military inquiry is now over, but the government's handling of the 34-day conflict is still being investigated.

The resignation is the latest in a series of setbacks for PM Ehud Olmert.

Hours before Gen Halutz made his announcement, the justice ministry ordered a criminal investigation into Mr Olmert's role in the privatisation of the country's second largest bank in 2005.

The BBC's Rachel Harvey in Jerusalem says now that the military chief has fallen on his sword, the spotlight is likely to shift back to the civilian leadership.

Under pressure

The military leadership has been criticised for poor planning, poor strategy and poor execution during the war.

WAR IN LEBANON
Began on 12 July 2006 and lasted 34 days
Israeli deaths: 116 soldiers and 43 civilians
About 1,000 Lebanese killed, mostly civilians
Extensive damage to infrastructure, thousands of homes destroyed

In particular, Gen Halutz is accused of relying too heavily on air power and waiting too long to send in ground troops.
When they were sent in, many soldiers complained of being poorly equipped.

Gen Halutz said he had decided to step down now because military inquiries into the conduct of the war had been completed.

"With the echoes of battle having faded, I have decided to act on my responsibility," he is quoted as saying in his resignation letter.

State radio said Mr Olmert had tried in vain to convince him to stay until the results of all the investigations were known.

Not freed

Israel attacked the Lebanon-based Hezbollah after the group captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid last July.

But it failed to free the soldiers or destroy Hezbollah before a ceasefire ended the fighting in August, with Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah claiming a strategic victory over Israel.

About 1,000 Lebanese were killed in the conflict, mostly civilians in Israel's vast bombardment of the county and land invasion in the south. Lebanon's infrastructure also suffered extensive damage.
The Israeli army lost 116 soldiers. Forty-three Israeli civilians were also killed by more than 4,000 Hezbollah rocket attacks.

A former air force head, Gen Halutz became chief of the armed forces in June 2005.

Several other senior army commanders have already resigned over the handling of the war.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6269353.stm

Published: 2007/01/17 07:43:13 GMT

Ynet news: How US Paid for Israel's War on Lebanon:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/12/18/ynet-news-how-us-paid-for-israel-s-war-on-lebanon.php

In Pro-Israel Circles, Doubts Grow Over US Policy

http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=9630

Amnesty International: Israeli War Crimes in Lebanon:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/23/amnesty-international-israeli-war-crimes-in-lebanon.php

The Lobby and the Israeli Invasion of Lebanon:
Their Facts and Ours
by James Petras
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 29, 2006

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug06/Petras29.htm

US extends loan guarantees to Israel until 2011 :

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/21/us-extends-loan-guarantees-to-israel-until-2011.php

US Support of Israel PRIMARY MOTIVATION for tragic attacks on World Trade Center in 1993 and on 9/11:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/08/05/the-gorilla-in-the-room-is-us-support-for-israel.php

AIPAC Congratulates Itself on the Slaughter in Lebanon:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/17/aipac-congratulates-itself-on-the-slaughter-in-lebanon.php

Why They Hate US

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14069.htm

Bamford discusses 'A Clean Break'/war for Israel agenda on MSNBC's 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann':

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/07/bamford-discusses-a-clean-break-on-msnbc-s-countdown.php

The following article is right in accordance with the 'A Clean Break' agenda as 'A Clean Break' was written for Netanyahu who is apparently going to replace Olmert soon:

“Honor First”; the liberation of Lebanon:

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article14620.htm

See the following as well (anyone who wants the truth should subscribe to this Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine via www.wrmea.com as the latest issue includes an excellent article on why the US press/media won't cover the Mearsheimer/Walt paper to the extent that it should be):

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September/October 2006, page 11
Media Watch

http://wrmea.com/archives/Sept_Oct_2006/0609011.html

Pass for Israel From Mainstream American Media and Congress

By Robert D. Novak
Reports of Israeli air attacks on Qana in Lebanon, killing at least 28 people including 19 children July 30, threatened Israel with an American public relations calamity. But this soon was eclipsed on cable television and front pages of many newspapers by actor Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-Semitic rant.
The attention by much of the news media turned from Lebanon to Gibson attempting an apology sufficiently abject to satisfy the Anti-Defamation League. Only a conspiracy theorist might claim this was an intentional escape route for American politicians to avoid a possible Israeli atrocity, but it certainly served that purpose. Washington remains largely a bipartisan, criticism-free zone for Israel.
While Republican Chuck Hagel is a lone senior senator who does not echo the Israeli position, he has been ignored. The Israeli government can disregard with impunity President Bush’s call for restraint. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has failed to destroy Hezbollah militarily but has had the effect of strengthening it politically. Meanwhile, U.S. prestige is in a free fall throughout Islam.
The Israeli government’s effort to clean Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon was carefully planned by the IDF (Israeli Defense Force). U.S. officials informed me 24 days ago they would give the IDF a week to liquidate the terrorists before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could pursue a cease-fire. But the long-planned Israeli operation in southern Lebanon found no quick success as Hezbollah proved itself a formidable fighting machine.
The U.S. government has scant ability to influence what Israel does or even says, as shown by a startling exchange July 28 that received surprisingly little attention. When a Rome summit did not call for a cease-fire, Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon exulted that amounted to a “green light” to crush Hezbollah. The official U.S. reaction came from a relatively low-level State Department official. Adam Ereli, Rice’s spokesman, said: “Any such statement is outrageous.” But Israel understandably has treated Rome as a green light.
On the day of the green light exchange, Hagel delivered a thoughtful address to the Brookings Institution in Washington. While avowing support for Israel to retaliate against Hezbollah and Hamas (in the Gaza Strip), Hagel declared “military action alone will not destroy Hezbollah or Hamas.”
Hagel was blunt in predicting consequences: “Extended military action will tear apart Lebanon, destroy its economy and infrastructure, create a humanitarian disaster, further weaken Lebanon’s fragile democratic government, strengthen popular Muslim and Arab support for Hezbollah, and deepen hatred of Israel across the Middle East....The war against Hezbollah and Hamas will not be won on the battle field.”
Such a departure by the second-ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would seem newsworthy. But it attracted little attention outside Hagel’s home state of Nebraska. He went to the Senate floor July 31 to deliver an abbreviated version of his Brookings speech. It generated neither approval nor dissent from Senate colleagues—only silence.
His bold intervention will not abet 2008 presidential ambitions. There is no political upside in criticizing Israel. Other members of Congress who have said anything at all critical of Israel are few in number. Republican Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire, whose family has roots in Lebanon, deplored Israel’s attack on Lebanese power plants and other government infrastructure. Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen, in a July 30 letter to the secretary of state, declared that “a continuation of the bombing campaign, as it is being carried out, is against the interests of Israel and the United States.”
Such critics of Israel inevitably are taken to task, sooner or later—usually sooner. When 28 left-wing Democratic House members signed a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Lebanon, Rep. Bob Filner of California was the only Jewish co-signer. The ink was hardly dry before he was contacted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the lobbying organization that keeps an eye on every member of Congress.
In his speech, Hagel pointed to the 2002 Saudi-sponsored Beirut declaration recognizing the state of Israel as a starting point for Middle East negotiations. In his letter to Rice, Van Hollen said resolution of the Israel-Palestine dispute is essential for Middle Eastern peace. It is hard to send that message to Israel when Congress cheers on a military situation and the Bush administration acquiesces.
Robert D. Novak is a nationally syndicated columnist. This column first appeared Aug. 7, 2006. Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc. Reprinted with permission.
SIDEBAR
CNN’s Howard Kurtz is Shocked! Shocked! to Learn That Israel May Have “Deliberately Allowed Hezbollah to Retain Some of Its Fire Power”
From the Aug. 6, 2006 edition of CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” hosted by Howard Kurtz, media reporter for The Washington Post:
HOWARD KURTZ: Joining us now here in Washington is…Thomas Ricks, Pentagon reporter for The Washington Post and author of the new book, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. Tom Ricks, you’ve covered a number of military conflicts, including Iraq, as I just mentioned. Is civilian casualties increasingly going to be a major media issue? In conflicts where you don’t have two standing armies shooting at each other?
THOMAS RICKS: I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some U.S. military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they’re being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.
KURTZ: Hold on, you’re suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of its fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?
RICKS: Yes, that’s what military analysts have told me.
KURTZ: That’s an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here.
RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.

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From: "Jeffrey Blankfort" <jablankfort@earthlink.net>

Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2006 22:09:44 -0800
Subject: [IntelligentMinds] Guardian: Israel ups the stakes in the propaganda war "One particular target has been the respected French TV correspondent, Charles Enderlin, whose Palestinian cameraman filmed 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura being shot and killed, as his father tried to shield him at the start of the second intifada. Enderlin accused Israeli troops of shooting and killing the boy. French supporters of Israel went online to claim the report was a distortion based on faked footage. His network, France 2, responded with legal action and, last month, in the first of four individual cases, a French court found the organiser of a self-styled media watchdog website guilty of libel.

"Another online target has been the TV footage of bloodshed on a Gaza beach earlier this year. A Palestinian girl was seen screaming as she saw the bodies of dead family members killed by what Palestinians allege was Israeli shellfire. When I mentioned the impact of these pictures at last week's conference, members of the audience shouted "staged".

http://www.guardian .co.uk/print/ 0,,329636899- 103552,00. html

Israel ups the stakes in the propaganda war

Following its invasion of Lebanon this summer, Israel was said to have largely lost the PR battle to Hizbullah, but armed with a major web offensive, it's fighting back

Stewart Purvis
Monday November 20, 2006

Guardian

Amir Gissin runs what he calls '"Israel's Explanation Department". Which is why it is surprising to hear him admit that many Israelis think "the whole problem is that we don't explain ourselves correctly".
Last week, as al-Jazeera launched an Arab view of the world into English-speaking homes worldwide, Gissin was a man under pressure. At the David Bar Ilan conference on the media and Middle East, he faced an audience of Israelis who were unhappy about the way the propaganda battle with Hizbullah was fought and lost during the war in the Lebanon. They wanted to know how it could be done better next time, because most people in Israel seem to think there will be a next time with Hizbullah soon.

Gissin said the words of his English-speaking spokespeople could not compete with the power of the pictures of civilians killed in the Israeli attack on Lebanese towns like Qana. And the Israeli parliament will not spend the money on an Israeli counterpart to al-Jazeera.

But Gissin was not down-hearted. He declared there to be a "war on the web" in which Israel had a new weapon, a piece of computer software called the "internet megaphone".

"During the war we had the opportunity to do some very nice things with the megaphone community," he revealed at the conference. Among them, he claimed, was a role in getting an admission from Reuters that a photograph of damage to Beirut had been doctored by a Lebanese photographer to increase the amount of smoke in the picture. This was first spotted by American blogger Charles Johnson, who has won an award for "promoting Israel and Zionism".

To check out the power of the megaphone, I logged onto a website called GIYUS (Give Israel Your United Support) last Wednesday afternoon. More than 25,000 registered users of www.giyus.org have downloaded the megaphone software, which enables them to receive alerts asking them to get active online.

It did not take long for an alert to come through. A Foreign Office minister, Kim Howells, had issued a press statement condemning that day's Palestinian rocket attack which killed an elderly Israeli and wounded other civilians. GIYUS wanted site users to "show your appreciation of the UK's response".

One click took me to a pre-prepared email addressed to Dr Howells, and a slot for me to personalise my comment. A test confirmed that the email would arrive at his office, as if I had spotted his comments on a news website, in this case Yahoo, and sent it to him with a supporting message. In the emails, there would be no indication of the involvement of GIYUS, although Howells may have been suspicious that so many people around the world had read the same Yahoo story about him and decided to email him. The Foreign Office confirms that emails were received last Wednesday but will not go into any more detail.

The most popular target of the online activists is the foreign media, especially the BBC, the news organisation which they love to hate. Earlier this year I was a member of the independent panel set up by the BBC governors to review the BBC's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We reported on the high number of emails we had received from abroad, mostly from North America, and the evidence of pressure group involvement. A majority of email correspondents thought that the BBC was anti-Israel, however if the emails that could be identified as coming from abroad were excluded, the opposite was true - more people thought the BBC anti-Palestinian or pro-Israel.

The BBC has already had one encounter with GIYUS - an attempt to influence the outcome of an online poll. BBC History magazine noticed an upsurge in voting on whether holocaust denial should be a criminal offence in Britain. But the closing date had already passed and the result had already been published, so the votes were invalid anyway. GIYUS supporters claim success elsewhere in "balancing" an opinion poll on an Arabic website by turning a vote condemning Israel's attack in the Lebanon into an endorsement.

For some of Israel's supporters, a primary aim of their war on the web is an attempt to discredit what they see as hostile foreign media reports, especially those containing iconic visual images.

One particular target has been the respected French TV correspondent, Charles Enderlin, whose Palestinian cameraman filmed 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura being shot and killed, as his father tried to shield him at the start of the second intifada. Enderlin accused Israeli troops of shooting and killing the boy. French supporters of Israel went online to claim the report was a distortion based on faked footage. His network, France 2, responded with legal action and, last month, in the first of four individual cases, a French court found the organiser of a self-styled media watchdog website guilty of libel.

Another online target has been the TV footage of bloodshed on a Gaza beach earlier this year. A Palestinian girl was seen screaming as she saw the bodies of dead family members killed by what Palestinians allege was Israeli shellfire. When I mentioned the impact of these pictures at last week's conference, members of the audience shouted "staged".

One person came up to me afterwards to suggest that the family had somehow died somewhere else and that their bodies had been moved to the beach to be filmed. Where, for instance, was all the blood? I pointed out that I had seen everything that the cameraman had shot and that some pictures were too gruesome to be shown.

It is clear that the government of Israel wants to fight back against the impact of foreign media pictures like these. Amir Gissin talked last week of plans to get Israeli video onto sites like YouTube which he said were viewed by opinion "shapers". And his cousin Dr Ra'anan Gissin, formerly Ariel Sharon's media adviser, has endorsed the idea of having picture power at the country's disposal ready for future conflicts. Referring to Israel's opponents, he put it in his usual direct way: "You need to shoot a picture before you shoot them." Stewart Purvis is professor of Television Journalism at City University in London. He is a former chief executive and editor-in-chief of ITN.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006

Fwd: CAIR-NET: 'Israel Lobby' Authors to Speak at DC Press Club Forum:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/19/fwd-cair-net-israel-lobby-authors-to-speak-at-dc-press-c.php

Monday, July 17, 2006
Israel's action threatens to reopen moral vacuum of war years

http://dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&article_id=74000&categ_id=17

Editorial
In response to Israel's relentless attacks in Lebanon, Hizbullah's leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, on Sunday showed only cool nerve, determined commitment and unwavering resolve. This only goes to show that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's handling of what could have been a confined crisis is doing nothing to deter Hizbullah, and has only succeeded in pushing the entire region closer to an all-out war. Instead of addressing the root causes of the regional conflict, the Israeli premier is responding to a crisis with unprecedented escalation. Olmert's - and Washington's - line is that Israel is defending itself in Gaza and in Lebanon, but we have seen that each disproportionate act of "self-defense" amounts to a provocation that only puts more and more Arab - and Israeli - lives at risk.
The people of the region have been glued to their television screens, watching the horror of Israel's bombs and missiles raining down on Gaza and Lebanon, destroying our infrastructure, our homes and our civilians' lives and livelihoods. Although these American-made weapons do nothing to diminish the resolve of militants, they steadily chip away our entire region's sense of compassion and morality. The moral vacuum left behind is filled with a palpable hatred, rage and desire for limitless revenge. Lest we forget, it was during Israel's bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982 that a young Osama bin Laden watched the destruction of high-rises in Beirut and first resolved to take down the towers of the World Trade Center.
Israel's actions in Gaza and Lebanon are now creating a new generation of militants who will stop at nothing to wreak revenge against America and Israel. If the current pattern holds, this next generation of militants will outdo their predecessors, just as Hizbullah, Hamas and Al-Qaeda have surpassed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestine Liberation Organization. They will take the current global conflict to even more uncompromising and terrifying levels.
The Israelis do have a right to "defend themselves," but defense cannot be achieved through indiscriminate warfare. Surely, there must be a more effective way to protect the lives of Israeli citizens, one that will guarantee a long-term peace instead of a short-term victory. The best way would be to cut this region's Gordian Knot and conclude Arab-Israeli conflicts through comprehensive peace deals. But instead of doing that, the Israelis are drawing the knot even tighter through escalation. In doing so, they are leaving the entire world entangled in a cyclical pattern of violence in which no city - from Gaza and Beirut to Haifa, Washington, New York and beyond- will be safe from retribution.

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Robert Fisk: Slaughter in Qana

In his weekly dispatch from the front line, our veteran war reporter witnesses the aftermath of a massacre

Published: 06 August 2006

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1215967.ece

Sunday, 30 July

Qana again. AGAIN! I write in my notebook. Ten years ago, I was in the little hill village in southern Lebanon when the Israeli army fired artillery shells into the UN compound and killed 106 Lebanese, more than half of them children. Most died of amputation wounds - the shells exploded in the air - and now today I am heading south again to look at the latest Qana massacre.
Fifty-nine dead? Thirty-seven? Twenty-eight? An air strike this time, and the usual lies follow. Ten years ago, Hizbollah were "hiding" in the UN compound. Untrue. Now, we are supposed to believe that the dead of Qana - today's slaughter - were living in a house which was a storage base for Hizbollah missiles. Another lie - because the dead were all killed in the basement, where they would never be if rockets were piled floor-to-ceiling. Even Israel later abandons this nonsense. I watch Lebanese soldiers stuffing the children's corpses into plastic bags - then I see them pushing the little bodies into carpets because the bags have run out.
But the roads, my God, the roads of southern Lebanon. Windows open, listen for the howl of jets. I am astonished that only one journalist - a young Lebanese woman - has died so far. I watch the little silver fish as they filter through the sky.
On my way back to Beirut, I find the traffic snarled up by a bomb-smashed bridge, where the Lebanese army is trying to tow a vegetable-laden truck out of a river. I go down to them and slosh through the water to tell the army sergeant that he is out of his mind. He's got almost 50 civilian cars backed up in a queue, just waiting for another Israeli air attack. Leave the lorry till later, I tell him.
Other soldiers arrive, and there is a 10-minute debate about the wisdom of my advice, while I am watching the skies and pointing out a diving Israeli F-16. Then the sergeant decides that Fisk is not as stupid as he looks, cuts the tow-rope and lets the traffic through. I am caked in dust, and Katya Jahjoura, a Lebanese photographer colleague, catches sight of me and bursts into uncontrollable laughter. "You look as if you have been living in rubble!" she cries, and I shoot her a desperate look. Better get out of this place, in case we get turned into rubble, I reply.
Monday, 31 July
Benjamin Netanyahu tries another lie, an old one reheated from 1982, when Menachem Begin used to claim that the civilian casualties of Israel's air raids were no different from the civilians killed in Denmark in an RAF raid in the Second World War. Ho hum, nice try, Benjamin, but not good enough.
First, the story. RAF aircraft staged an air raid on the Nazi Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, but massacred more than 80 children when their bombs went astray. The Israelis are slaughtering the innocent of southern Lebanon from high altitude - high enough to avoid Hizbollah missiles. The reason the RAF killed 83 children, 20 nuns and three firemen on 21 March 1945 was that their Mosquitoes were flying so low to avoid civilian casualties that one of the British aircraft clipped its wing on a railroad tower outside Copenhagen central station, and crashed into the school. The other aircraft assumed the smoke from its high-octane fuel was the target.
Interesting, though, the way Israel's leaders are ready to manipulate the history of the Second World War. No Israeli aircraft has been lost over Lebanon in this war and the civilians of Lebanon are dying by the score, repeatedly and bombed from a great height.
Tuesday, 1 August
Electricity off, my fridge flooded over the floor again, my landlord Mustafa at the front door with a plastic plate of figs from the tree in his front garden. The papers are getting thinner. However, Paul's restaurant has reopened in East Beirut where I lunch with Marwan Iskander, one of murdered ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri's senior financial advisers.
Marwan and his wife Mona are a source of joy, full of jokes and outrageous (and accurate) comments about the politicians of the Middle East. I pay for the meal, and Marwan produces - as I knew he would - a huge Cuban cigar for me. I gave up smoking years ago. But I think the war allows me to smoke again, just a little.
Wednesday, 2 August
Huge explosions in the southern suburbs of Beirut shake the walls of my home. A cauldron of fire ascends into the sky. What is there left to destroy in the slums which scribes still call a "Hizbollah stronghold"?
The Israelis are now bombing all roads leading to Syria, especially at the border crossing at Masna (very clever, as if the Hizbollah is bringing its missiles into Lebanon in convoys on the international highway). Then the guerrilla army, which started this whole bloody fiasco, fires off dozens more rockets into Israel.
I put my nose into the suburbs and get a call from a colleague in south Lebanon who describes the village of Srifa as "like Dresden". World War Two again. But the suburbs do look like a scene from that conflict. My grocer laments that he has no milk, no yoghurt, which - as a milkoholic myself - I lament.
Thursday, 3 August
More friends wanting to know if it's safe to return to Lebanon. An old acquaintance tells me that when she insisted on coming back to Beirut, a relative threw a shoe and a book at her. What was the book, I asked? A volume of poetry, it seems.
Electricity back, and I torture myself by watching CNN, which is reporting this slaughterhouse as if it is a football match. Score so far: a few dozen Israelis, hundreds of Lebanese, thousands of missiles, and even more thousands of Israeli bombs. The missiles come from Iran - as CNN reminds us. The Israeli bombs come from the United States - as CNN does not remind us.
Friday, 4 August
The day of the bridges. Abed and I are up the highway north of Beirut with Ed Cody of The Washington Post (he who reads Verlaine) and we manage to drive on side roads through the Christian Metn district, which has inexplicably been attacked (since the Christian Maronites of Lebanon are supposed to be Israel's best friends here). "You cannot believe how angry we are," a woman says to me, surveying her smashed car and smashed home and shattered windows and the rubble all over the road. A viaduct has fallen into a valley, all 200 metres of it, though another side road is left completely undamaged, and we cruise along it to the next destroyed bridge. So what was the point of bombing the bridges?
We drive back to Beirut on empty roads, windows open and the whisper of jets still in the sky. I go to the Associated Press office, where my old mate Samir Ghattas is the bureau chief. "So how were the bridges?" he asks. "I guess you were driving fast." He can say that again.
I do an interview with CBC in Toronto and talk openly of Israeli war crimes, and no one in the Canadian studio feels this is impolitic or frightening or any of the other usual fears of television producers, who think they will be faced with the usual slurs about "anti-Semitic" reporters who dare to criticise Israel.
I turn on the television, and there is Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's boss, threatening Israel with deeper missile penetrations if Israel bombs Beirut. I listen to Israel's Prime Minister, saying much the same thing in reverse.
I call these people the "roarers", but I leaf through my tatty copy of King Lear to see what they remind me of. Bingo. "I shall do such things I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth." Shakespeare should be reporting this war.
Saturday, 5 August
Lots of stories about a massive Israeli ground offensive, which turn out to be untrue. The UN in southern Lebanon suspects that Israel is manufacturing non-existent raids to pacify public opinion as Hizbollah missiles continue to fly across the frontier. But a friend calls to tell me that Hizbollah might be running out of rockets. Possibly true, I reflect, and think of all the bridges which haven't yet been blown to pieces.
More gruesome photographs of the dead in the Lebanese papers. We in the pure "West" spare our readers these terrible pictures - we "respect" the dead too much to print them, though we didn't respect them very much when they were alive - and we forget the ferocious anger which Arabs feel when these images are placed in front of them. What are we storing up for ourselves? I wrote about another 9/11 in the paper this morning. And I fear I'm right.

Alpha · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 7:19 am Post subject:

This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060731/un_mideast_mission

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The UN's Mideast Mission

by IAN WILLIAMS
[posted online on July 20, 2006]
April marked the tenth anniversary of the massacre at Qana, when Israeli Defense Forces poured shells onto a UN peacekeepers' base where more than 800 Lebanese civilians had taken shelter. The shells killed 106 people and, according to some accounts, resulted in the sacking of UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali for releasing a report that showed that the IDF shelling was no accident.
A decade later, the Qana massacre all seems forgotten. But Israel's attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon and on Hamas in Gaza appear to be a replay of the 1996 military campaign known as Operation Grapes of Wrath. Then as now, civilians are caught in the crossfire between Israel and its enemies. Then as now, the attacks seem designed to demonstrate Israel's toughness for a domestic audience. Then as now, there are calls to the United Nations for an international force to quell the conflict.
Israeli leaders have become accustomed to the impunity that superpower support has given them. To use bombs supplied by Washington to destroy the Gaza power station that US taxpayers have insured to the tune of almost $50 million is the very definition of chutzpah.
There have been some changes in the world since 1996, one of them being the International Criminal Court. Ironically, if it were not for the baleful influence of Damascus, Lebanon would probably have signed and ratified the ICC treaty--which would have considerably disrupted the vacation plans of the Israeli Cabinet and military commanders now engaged in making thousands of Lebanese homeless--and a considerable number lifeless. They would have been subject to international arrest warrants and a quick trip to The Hague.
It is true that Hezbollah and the Hamas factions that are rocketing civilians are also breaking international law, but no more so than the rockets and bombs from Israeli helicopters eviscerating families on the beaches of Gaza and in the apartments of Beirut.
Only the most meager special pleading could describe Israel's counter-blast at Lebanese civilians, not to mention the ongoing attacks in Gaza, as a legitimate or proportionate response. Since the invocation of Israel guarantees a free pass in much of the Western world, it may be useful to substitute different terms.
Imagine if the British had been buzzing Dublin Castle to show their displeasure with the Irish Republican Army, whose political wing is, after all, represented in the Irish Dail. The IRA kidnap some British soldiers. In return, London blockades Ireland, shells and strafes the area closest to the Northern Ireland border, bombs Shannon and Dublin airports, knocks out roads, power stations and gas stations, in between sending in snatch squads to kill and kidnap Irish citizens and politicians it considers connected to the IRA. And in between London threatens Rome, because after all the IRA are Roman Catholics, and Boston and New York, because after all that is where the IRA were getting their money.
Meanwhile, George W. Bush and the European Union would have supported such a measured response to "terror." Like hell they would.
Luckily for all, the British finally bit the bullet and sat down with the "terrorists"; both parts of Ireland are much more peaceful for it. And by the way, London did not insist that the IRA recognize that it was right that Northern Ireland was established, nor that it should forever be a safe homeland for Irish Protestants. Almost as bad as the illegality of the Israeli assaults is their irrationality. To begin with, a massively indiscriminate attack like this is hardly the best way to persuade Gilad Shalit's captors to show mercy.
On the contrary, from the days of Likud's origins in the Stern Gang, on through the FLN in Algeria, one of the most successful tactics of terrorism has been to provoke massive collective reprisals by the authorities. And Israel's actions only create more sympathy for Hezbollah and Hamas.
If, as many observers suspect, Israel does invade Lebanon, it will show that it is still being ruled by the essentially brain-dead Ariel Sharon, with no foresight for the lethal consequences. Either the IDF stays, and suffers the type of continuous bloodletting that drove them out last time, or they ransack the place and evacuate, leaving an even more embittered and hardened Hezbollah-supporting populace.
Sadly, it would appear that George W. Bush's brain is in no better working order than Sharon's. In Iraq, he has 150,000 potential hostages to Iran, Syria and the Shiites. He has oil prices just waiting to shoot through his bubble economy. Someone should really sit down and tell him about the unintended consequences of the extrajudicial execution of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914.
And the best Bush can do is to tell Kofi Annan to get on the phone to Damascus "to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit."
The neocons who gave us Iraq seem to have persuaded Bush that if you are up to your neck in a cesspool, the only way out is down. The idea that Hezbollah is a tool of Tehran is about as substantive as the idea that Israel is a puppet of Washington. But the canard that Damascus and Tehran may be behind it all is hypnotically attractive to those who want the United States to attack them. One notes with worry that American media are accepting the Administration's simplistic fictions almost as readily as they swallowed Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
While it is almost reflexive to appeal to the United Nations, sadly, there is little or nothing that Annan or the international body can do about this. Annan's idea for an international force has been tried before--and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was regularly targeted by the Israelis and ignored by both the Palestinians and Hezbollah. Any force there would have to be prepared to take on Israeli incursions as well as controlling Lebanese militia or it would have no legitimacy. It would likely end up being disarmed by Hezbollah rather than vice versa. The United Nations can be a useful tool in settling the crisis, but only with US support, and that support has to include pressure on Israel and some declared support for international law. Only Bush can balance that equation by getting on the phone to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and telling him to stop.
It would help if the other member states of the UN--and the Secretary General--stopped accommodating Bush's simplistic view of the world. It would also help if they had the courage to put first things first: Resolution 242, telling Israel to quit the occupied territories has been waiting for UN action long before Resolution 1559, which calls for disarming Hezbollah. If the UN could succeed in doing that, who knows--Bush might even take notice--and if he emulated his father's refusal to support settlements, even Israel might reconsider.

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With regard to what Israel is currently doing in Lebanon, take a look at the following (pages 141-144 from Bamford's 'A Pretext for War' book):

...About the same time, beginning on April 11, 1996, a series of shock waves rumbled through the Muslim world as a result of Israel's massive bombardment of Beirut and southern Lebanon, which Israel had by then been occupying for fourteen years. Known as "Operation of Grapes of Wrath," it was the first time Israel had attacked Beirut since Ariel Sharon's ill-fated 1982 invasion of Lebanon. According to Israeli writer Israel Shahak, the real purpose of the attack was to capture as much Lebanese territory as possible.

"It is quite obvious," wrote Shahak, "that the first and most important Israeli aim to be established in the 'Grapes of Wrath' is to establish its sovereignty over Lebanon -- to be exercised in a comparable manner to its control over the Gaza Strip."

Two days after it began, on April 13, ambulance driver Abbas Jiha from the village of Mansouri was busy rushing patients wounded in the fighting to a hospital in the town of Sidon. On his return to Mansouri, panic had broken out and explosions were taking place. People began pleading for him to take them to Sidon. Jiha quickly squeezed four of his children into his ambulance along with ten other people, including a family, and began driving toward Sidon.

Suddenly, an Israeli helicopter began chasing his ambulance. Minutes later, two missiles were fired, one of which exploded through the rear door, engulfing the vehicle in fire and smoke and hurling it sixty feet through the air. Thrown clear, Abbas Jiha began running toward the flaming heap of twisted metal. "My God, my God," he screamed, shaking his fist at the sky, "my family has gone." In all, six people were killed, including Jiha's nine year-old daughter and his wife.

Israeli officials later admitted the ambulance had been targeted but claimed, falsely, that the vehicle was owned by Hezbollah and was transporting one of the group's fighters. Jiha had no connection with terrorist groups, and the thought that Israel could target an ambulance packed with innocent people, including many children, outraged Muslims throughout the Middle East.

On April 18, one week into Operation Grapes of Wrath, a reporter for London's newspaper The Independent was traveling in southern Lebanon with a United Nations convoy. Robert Fisk, Britain's most highly decorated foreign correspondent, spent a quarter of a century covering the Middle East and was the recipient of the British International Journalist of the Year Award seven times, including for 1996. As the vehicles were approaching the small village of Qana, Fisk could hear the sound of artillery, he recalled.

The convoy had stopped at Qana that morning and noticed it was crowded with about eight hundred refugees. They had been transported there for their safety by armored UN vehicles from nearby villages that had come under Israeli bombardment. When the convoy finally arrived in Qana shortly after two in the afternoon, fire was everywhere and proximity shells were bursting in the air. Antipersonnel weapons designed to explode about two dozen feet above ground, they would shower down razor-sharp shrapnel, butchering anyone beneath.

"It was a massacre," wrote Fisk in a front-page story. "Israel's slaughter of civilians in this terrible 10-day offensive -- 206 by last night --- has been so cavalier, so ferocious, that not a Lebanese will forgive this massacre. There had been the ambulance attacked on Saturday, the sisters killed in Yohmor the day before, the 2-year old girl decapitated by an Israeli missile four days ago. And earlier yesterday, the Israelis had slaughtered a family of 12 -- the youngest was a four-day-old baby -- when Israeli helicopter pilots fired missiles into their home."

The Israeli government later claimed the attack on the UN refugee camp at Qana was a mistake. But a formal, top-level United Nations investigation came to a different conclusion. "It is unlikely" that Israeli gunners simply erred, said the report, and demanded that Israel pay $1.7 million in damages. "Contrary to repeated denials," said the report, "two Israeli helicopters and a remotely piloted vehicle were present in the Qana area at the time of the shelling." Amnesty International also conducted an investigation of the massacre, and they concluded "that the IDF [Israeli Defense Force} intentionally attacked the UN compound."

Arieh Shavit, a columnist for the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz, noted: "How easily we killed them [in Qana] without shedding a tear. We did not denounce the crime, did not arrange for a legal clarification, because this time we tried to deny the abominable horror and move on." And the international edition of Time magazine noted, "Around the Middle East... Qana is already a byword for martydom. The southern Lebanese village figures as a shrine drawing up to 1,000 pilgrims a day: busloads of schoolchildren, Cabinet ministers from Beirut, even a daughter of Iran's President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Black banners overlooking rows of graves decry the 'barbarity' of Israel."

While largely ignored by the American press, the massacre at Qana was front-page news in London, much of Europe, and throughout the Middle East, where the story continued for days. Already burning with hatred for America and Israel, the pictures of headless Arab babies and other grisly photographs that appeared throughout the media were likely the final shove, pushing bin Laden over the edge and leading him to dedicating his life to war against what he would call the Israeli - United States alliance. From then on, he would often use the massacre at Qana as a battle cry, and it would become the match lighting the fuse that would eventually lead to the World Trade Center on a Tuesday morning five years later....

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Scenes Of Israeli Massacre At UN Compound in Lebanon - 1996

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article14194.htm

Alpha · Last edited by Alpha on Thu Jul 27, 2006 10:07 am; edited 1 time in total

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

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Is Beirut Burning?

By Uri Avnery
07/26/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Tel Aviv - "IT SEEMS that Nasrallah survived," Israeli newspapers announced, after 23 tons of bombs were dropped on a site in Beirut, where the Hizbullah leader was supposedly hiding in a bunker.

An interesting formulation. A few hours after the bombing, Nazrallah had given an interview to Aljazeera television. Not only did he look alive, but even composed and confident. He spoke about the bombardment - proof that the interview was recorded on the same day.

So what does "it seems that" mean? Very simple: Nasrallah pretends to be alive, but you can't believe an Arab. Everyone knows that Arabs always lie. That's in their very nature, as Ehud Barak once pronounced.

The killing of the man is a national aim, almost the main aim of the war. This is, perhaps, the first war in history waged by a state in order to kill one person. Until now, only the Mafia thought along those lines. Even the British in World War II did not proclaim that their aim was to kill Hitler. On the contrary, they wanted to catch him alive, in order to put him on trial. Probably that's what the Americans wanted, too, in their war against Saddam Hussein.

But our ministers have officially decided that that is the aim. There is not much novelty in that: successive Israeli governments have adopted a policy of killing the leaders of opposing groups. Our army has killed, among others, Hizbullah leader Abbas Mussawi, PLO no. 2 Abu Jihad, as well as Sheik Ahmad Yassin and other Hamas leaders. Almost all Palestinians, and not only they, are convinced that Yassir Arafat was also murdered.

And the results? The place of Mussawi was filled by Nasrallah, who is far more able. Sheik Yassin was succeeded by far more radical leaders. Instead of Arafat we got Hamas.

As in other political matters, a primitive military mindset governs this reasoning too.

A person returning here after a long absence and seeing our TV screens might get the impression that a military junta is governing Israel, in the (former) South American manner.

On all TV channels, every evening, one sees a parade of military brass in uniform. They explain not only the day's military actions, but also comment on political matters and lay down the political and propaganda line.

During all the other hours of broadcasting time, a dozen or so have-been generals repeat again and again the message of the army commanders. (Some of them don't look particularly intelligent - not to say downright stupid. It is frightening to think that these people were once in a position to decide who would live and who would die.)

True, we are a democracy. The army is completely subject to the civilian establishment. According to the law, the cabinet is the "supreme commander" of the army (which in Israel includes the navy and air force). But in practice, today it is the top brass who decide all political and military matters. When Dan Halutz tells the ministers that the military command has decided on this or that operation, no minister dares to express opposition. Certainly not the hapless Labor Party ministers.

Ehud Olmert presents himself as the heir to Churchill ("blood, sweat and tears"). That's quite pathetic enough. Then Amir Peretz puffs up his chest and shoots threats in all directions, and that's even more pathetic, if that's possible. He resembles nothing so much as a fly standing on the ear of an ox and proclaiming: "we are ploughing!"

The Chief-of-Staff announced last week with satisfaction: "The army enjoys the full backing of the government!" That is also an interesting formulation. It implies that the army decides what to do, and the government provides "backing". And that's how it is, of course.

Now it is not a secret anymore: this war has been planned for a long time. The military correspondents proudly reported this week that the army has been exercising for this war in all its details for several years. Only a month ago, there was a large war game to rehearse the entrance of land forces into South Lebanon - at a time when both the politicians and the generals were declaring that "we shall never again get into the Lebanon quagmire. We shall never again introduce land forces there." Now we are in the quagmire, and large land forces are operating in the area.

The other side, too, has been preparing this war for years. Not only did they build caches of thousands of missiles, but they have also prepared an elaborate system of Vietnam-style bunkers, tunnels and caves. Our soldiers are now encountering this system and paying a high price. As always, our army has treated "the Arabs" with disdain and discounted their military capabilities.

That is one of the problems of the military mentality. Talleyrand was not wrong when he said that "war is much too serious a thing to be left to military men." The mentality of the generals, resulting from their education and profession, is by nature force-oriented, simplistic, one-dimensional, not to say primitive. It is based on the belief that all problems can be solved by force, and if that does not work - then by more force.

That is well illustrated by the planning and execution of the current war. This was based on the assumption that if we cause terrible suffering to the population, they will rise up and demand the removal of Hizbullah. A minimal understanding of mass psychology would suggest the opposite. The killing of hundreds of Lebanese civilians, belonging to all the ethno-religious communities, the turning of the lives of the others into hell, and the destruction of the life-supporting infrastructure of Lebanese society will arouse a groundswell of fury and hatred - against Israel, and not against the heroes, as they see them, who sacrifice their lives in their defense.

The result will be a strengthening of Hizbullah, not only today, but for years to come. Perhaps that will be the main outcome of the war, more important than all the military achievements, if any. And not only in Lebanon, but throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

Faced with the horrors that are shown on all television and many computer screens, world opinion is also changing. What was seen at the beginning as a justified response to the capture of the two soldiers now looks like the barbaric actions of a brutal war-machine. The elephant in a china shop.

Thousands of e-mail distribution lists have circulated a horrible series of photos of mutilated babies and children. At the end, there is a macabre photo: jolly Israeli children writing "greetings" on the artillery shells that are about to be fired. Then there appears a message: "Thanks to the children of Israel for this nice gift. Thanks to the world that does nothing. Signed: the children of Lebanon and Palestine."

The woman who heads the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has already defined these acts as war crimes - something that may in future mean trouble for Israeli army officers.

In general, when army officers are determining the policy of a nation, serious moral problems arise.

In war, a commander is obliged to take hard decisions. He sends soldiers into battle, knowing that many will not return and others will be maimed for life. He hardens his heart. As General Amos Yaron told his officers after the Sabra and Shatila massacre: "Our senses have been blunted!"

Years of the occupation regime in the Palestinian territories have caused a terrible callousness as far as human lives are concerned. The killing of ten to twenty Palestinians every day, including women and children, as happens now in Gaza, does not agitate anyone. It doesn't even make the headlines. Gradually, even routine expressions like "We regret…we had no intention…the most moral army in the world…" and all the other trite phrases are not heard anymore.

Now this numbness is revealing itself in Lebanon. Air Force officers, calm and comfortable, sit in front of the cameras and speak about "bundles of targets", as if they were talking about a technical problem, and not about living human beings. They speak about driving hundreds of thousands of human beings from their homes as an imposing military achievement, and do not hide their satisfaction in face of human beings whose whole life has been destroyed. The word that is most popular with the generals at this time is "pulverize" - we pulverize, they are being pulverized, neighborhoods are pulverized, buildings are pulverized, people are pulverized.

Even the launching of rockets at our towns and villages does not justify this ignoring of moral considerations in fighting the war. There were other ways of responding to the Hizbullah provocation, without turning Lebanon into rubble. The moral numbness will be transformed into grievous political damage, both immediate and long term. Only a fool or worse ignores moral values - in the end, they always take revenge.

IT IS almost banal to say that it is easier to start a war than to finish it. One knows how it starts, it is impossible to know how it will end.

Wars take place in the realm of uncertainty. Unforeseen things happen. Even the greatest captains in history could not control the wars they started. War has its own laws.

We started a war of days. It turned into a war of weeks. Now they are speaking of a war of months. Our army started a "surgical" action of the Air Force, afterwards it sent small units into Lebanon, now whole brigades are fighting there, and reservists are being called up in large numbers for a wholesale 1982-style invasion. Some people already foresee that the war may roll towards a confrontation with Syria.

All this time, the United States has been using all its might in order to prevent the cessation of hostilities. All signs indicate that it is pushing Israel towards a war with Syria - a country that has ballistic missiles with chemical and biological warheads.

Only one thing is already certain on the 11th day of the war: Nothing good will come of it. Whatever happens - Hizbullah will emerge strengthened. If there had been hopes in the past that Lebanon would slowly become a normal country, where Hizbullah would be deprived of a pretext for maintaining a military force of its own, we have now provided the organization with the perfect justification: Israel is destroying Lebanon, only Hizbullah is fighting to defend the country.

As for deterrence: a war in which our huge military machine cannot overcome a small guerilla organization in 11 days of total war certainly has not rehabilitated its deterrent power. In this respect, it is not important how long this war will last and what will be its results - the fact that a few thousand fighters have withstood the Israeli army for 11 days and more, has already been imprinted in the consciousness of hundred of millions of Arabs and Muslims.

From this war nothing good will come - not for Israel, not for Lebanon and not for Palestine. The "New Middle East" that will be its result will be a worse place to live in.
Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist, writer and peace activist

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The Night After
The Easier the Victory, the Harder the Peace
By URI AVNERY
It is now fashionable to talk about "the day after". Let's talk about the night after.
After the end of hostilities in Iraq, the world will be faced with two decisive facts:
First, the immense superiority of American arms can beat any people in the world, valiant as it may be.
Second, the small group that initiated this war--an alliance of Christian fundamentalists and Jewish neo-conservatives--has won big, and from now on it will control Washington almost without limits.
The combination of these two facts constitutes a danger to the world, and especially to the Middle East, the Arab peoples and the future of Israel. Because this alliance is the enemy of peaceful solutions, the enemy of the Arab governments, the enemy of the Palestinian people and especially the enemy of the Israeli peace camp.
It does not dream only about an American empire, in the style of the Roman one, but also of an Israeli mini-empire, under the control of the extreme right and the settlers. It wants to change the regimes in all Arab countries. It will cause permanent chaos in the region, the consequences of which it is impossible to foresee.
Its mental world consists of a mixture of ideological fervor and crass material interests, an exaggerated American patriotism and right-wing Zionism.
That is a dangerous mixture. There is in it something of the spirit of Ariel Sharon, a man who has always had grandiose plans for changing the region, consisting of a mixture of creative imagination, unbridled chauvinism and a primitive faith in brute force.
Who are the winners?
They are the so-called neo-cons, or neo-conservatives. A compact group, almost all of whose members are Jewish. They hold the key positions in the Bush administration, as well as in the think-tanks that play an important role in formulating American policy and the ed-op pages of the influential newspapers.
For many years, this was a marginal group that fostered a right-wing agenda in all fields. They fought against abortion, homosexuality, pornography and drugs. When Binyamin Netanyahu assumed power in Israel, they offered him advise on how to fight the Arabs.
Their big moment arrived with the collapse of the Twin Towers. The American public and politicians were in a state of shock, completely disoriented, unable to understand a world that had changed overnight. The neo-cons were the only group with a ready explanation and a solution. Only nine days after the outrage, William Kristol (the son of the group's founder, Irving Kristol) published an Open Letter to President Bush, asserting that it was not enough to annihilate the network of Osama bin Laden, but that it was also imperative to "remove Saddam Hussein from power" and to "retaliate" against Syria and Iran for supporting Hizbullah.
Following is a short list of the main characters. (If it bores you, skip to the next section).
The Open Letter was published in the Weekly Standard, founded by Kristol with the money of ultra-right press mogul Rupert Murdoch, who donated $ 10 million to the cause. It was signed by 41 leading neo-cons, including Norman Podhoretz, a Jewish former leftist who has become an extreme right-wing icon, editor of the prestigious Encounter magazine, and his wife, Midge Decter, also a writer, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Studies, Robert Kagan, also of the Weekly Standard, Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, and, of course, Richard Perle.
Perle is a central character in this play. Until recently he was the chairman of the Defense Policy Board of the Defense Department, which also includes Eliot Cohen and Devon Cross. Perle is a director of the Jerusalem Post, now owned by extreme right-wing Zionists. In the past he was an aide to Senator Henry Jackson, who led the fight against the Soviet Union on behalf of the Jews who wanted to leave. He is a leading member of the influential right-wing American Enterprise Institute. Lately he was obliged to resign from his Defense Department position, when it became known that a private corporation had promised to pay him almost a million dollars for he benefit of his influence in the administration.
That Open Letter was, in effect, the beginning of the Iraq war. It was eagerly received by the Bush administration, with members of the group already firmly established in some of its leading positions. Paul Wolfowitz, the father of the war, is No. 2 in the Defense Department, where another friend of Perle's, Douglas Feith, heads the Pentagon Planning Board. John Bolton is State Department Undersecretary. Eliot Abrams, responsible for the Middle East in the National Security Council, was connected with the Iran-Contra-Israel scandal. The main hero of the scandal, Oliver North, sits in the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, together with Michael Ledeen, another hero of the scandal. Headvocates total war not only against Iraq, but also against Israel's other enemies, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority. Dov Zakheim is comptroller for the Defense Department.

Most of these people , together with Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, are associated with the "Project for the New American Century", which published a White Paper in 2002, with the aim 'to preserve and enhance this 'American peace'"--meaning American control of the world.
Meyrav Wurmser (Meyrav is a chic new Israeli first name) is Director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute. She also writes for the Jerusalem Post and is co-founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute that is, according to the London Guardian, connected with Israeli Army Intelligence. MEMRI feeds the media and politicians with highly selective quotations from extreme Arab publications. Meyrav's husband, Davis Wurmser, is at Perle's American Enterprise Institute, heading Middle East Studies. Mention should also be made of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy of our old acquaintance, Dennis Ross, who for years was in charge of the "peace process" in the Middle East.
In all the important papers there are people close to the group, such as William Safire, a man hypnotized by Sharon, in the New York Times and Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post. Another Perle friend, Robert Bartley, is the editor of the Wall Street Journal.
If the speeches of Bush and Cheney often sound as if they came from the lips of Sharon, one of the reasons may be that their speechwriters, Joseph Shattan, Mathew Scully and John McConnell, are neo-cons, as is Cheneys Chief-of-Staff, Lewis Libby.
The immense influence of this largely Jewish group stems from its close alliance with the extreme right-wing Christian fundamentalists, who nowadays control Bush's Republican party. The founding fathers were Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority, who once got a jet plane as a present from Menachem Begin, and Pat Robertson of the Christian Coalition and the Christian Broadcasting Network, which help to finance the Christian Embassy in Jerusalem of J.W. van der Hoeven, an outfit that supports the settlers and their right-wing allies.
Common to both groups is their adherence to the fanatical ideology of the extreme right in Israel. They see the Iraq war as a struggle between the Children of Light (America and Israel) and the Children of Darkness (the Arabs and Muslims).
By the way, none of these facts are secret. They have been published lately in dozens of articles, both in American and world media. The members of the group are proud of them.
The Zionist general.
The man who symbolizes this victory is General Jay Garner, who has just been appointed chief of the civilian administration in Iraq.
He is no anonymous general who has been picked accidentally. Garner is the ideological partner of Paul Wolfowitz and the neo-cons.
Two years ago he signed, together with 26 other officers, a petition organized by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, lauding the Israeli Army for "remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of the Palestinian Authority," which is certainly news to the Israeli peace forces. He also stated that "a strong Israel is an asset that American military planners and political leaders can rely on."
In the first Gulf War he praised the performance of the Patriot missiles, which had failed miserably. After leaving the army in 1997, he became, not surprisingly, a defense contractor specializing in missiles. It was alleged that he landed non-competitive Pentagon contracts. This year he obtained a defense contract for $ 1.5 billion, as well as a contract for building Patriot systems in Israel.
Therefore, there can be no better candidate for the job of chief of the civilian administration in Iraq, especially at a time when contracts for billions of dollars for reconstruction have to be handed out, to be paid for by Iraqi oil.
A new Balfour declaration.
The ideology of this group, that calls for an American world-empire as well as for a Greater Israel, reminds one of bygone days.
The Balfour declaration of 1917, that promised the Jews a homeland in Palestine, had two parents. The mother was Christian Zionism (among whose adherents were illustrious statesmen like Lord Palmerston and Lord Shaftesbury, long before the foundation of the Zionist movement), the father was British imperialism. The Zionist idea allowed the British to crowd out their French competitors and take possession of Palestine, which was needed to safeguard the Suez Canal and the shorter sea route to India.
Now the same thing is happening again. Last year Richard Perle organized a briefing in which a speaker proposed war not only on Iraq, but on Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well, in order to secure the world's oil heartland. Iraq, he asserted, was only the pivot. One of the justifications for this design is the need to defend Israel.
To bet on our life?
Seemingly, all this is good for Israel. America controls the world, we control America. Never before have Jews exerted such an immense influence on the center of world power.
But this tendency troubles me. We are like a gambler, who bets all his money and his future on one horse. A good horse, a horse with no current competitor, but still one horse.
The neo-cons will cause a long period of chaos in the Arab and Muslim world. The Iraqi war has already shown that their understanding of Arab realities is shaky. Their political assumptions did not stand the test, only brute force saved their undertaking.
Some day the Americans will go home, but we shall remain here. We have to live with the Arab peoples. Chaos in the Arab world endangers our future.
Wolfowitz and Co. may dream about a democratic, liberal, Zionist and America-loving Middle East, but the result of their adventures may well turn out to be a fanatical and fundamentalist region that will threaten our very existence.
The partnership of the neo-cons and the Christian fundamentalists may engender counter-forces in Washington. And if Bush is defeated in the next election, like his father after his victory in the first Gulf War, this whole gang will be thrown out.
The Bible tells us about the kings of Judea, who relied on the then world power, Egypt. They did not appreciate the rise of forces in the east, Assyria and Babylon. An Assyrian general told the king of Judea: "Behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, upon Egypt, on which if a man lean, it will go into his hand and pierce it." (II kings 18, 21).
Bush and his gang of neo-cons is not a bruised reed. Far from it, he is now a very strong reed. But should we bet our whole future on this?
Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist. His essays are included in The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent.

US Support of Israel PRIMARY MOTIVATION for the tragic attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and on 9/11:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/08/05/the-gorilla-in-the-room-is-us-support-for-israel.php

Alpha

'If our Prime Minister is crying, what are we to do?'

By Robert Fisk in Beirut:

07/17/06 "The Independent" -- -- You could see the Israeli missiles coming through the clouds of smoke, hurtling like thunderbolts into the apartment blocks of Ghobeiri, the crack of the explosions so loud that my ears are still singing hours later as I write this report.

Yes, I suppose you could call this a "terrorist" target, for here in these mean, fearful streets is - or rather was - the Hizbollah headquarters. Even the movement's propaganda television station, Al-Manar, lay a pancaked ruin in the street, its broadcasts still being transmitted from the station's bunker beneath the rubble. But what of the tens of thousands of people who live here?

The few who were not lying in their basements ran shrieking through the streets - not gunmen, but women with screaming children, families holding suitcases, desperate to leave the heaps of broken buildings, entire apartment blocks smashed to bits, the roadways covered in smashed balconies and torn electrical wires. "You don't have to help the resistance," Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, told the Lebanese on television last night. "The resistance is on the front line and the Lebanese are behind them."

Untrue, of course. It is the Lebanese - and their 140 dead, almost all civilians - who are also on the front line. In Israel, 24 have been killed, 15 of them civilians. So the exchange rate for death in this filthy war is now approximately one Israeli to five Lebanese. So many Lebanese have now fled Beirut for Tripoli in the north of Lebanon, or for the Bekaa Valley in the east - or to Syria - that Beirut, where one and a half million people live, is a ghost city, its remaining residents sitting in their homes amid the hopelessness of all those who believed that this country was at last emerging from the shadows of its 15-year civil war. It was Nasrallah who said that there are "more surprises to come", and the Lebanese fear that the Israelis, too, have some more surprises for them.

I watched one of these from my sea-front balcony at dusk on Saturday, an American-made Apache helicopter turning three times over the Mediterranean before firing a single missile - perfectly visible, with smoke pouring from the tail - that smacked into Beirut's brand new lighthouse on the Corniche in a cloud of brown muck. So what was this for? Another "terrorist" target, I suppose. Like the gas stations bombed in the Bekaa Valley. Like the convoy of 20 civilians incinerated in an Israeli air-raid on Saturday after being ordered - by the Israelis themselves - to leave their home village on the border.

Last night, Hizbollah's missiles - after killing 10 Israelis in Haifa - were falling on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, setting the forests alight, and on the Israeli city of Acre. The Syrians warned of an "unlimited" response if Israel attacked them - the Israelis have been saying, untruthfully, that Syrian troops and Iranians are present in Lebanon, helping Hizbollah in their battle - and the preposterous response of the G8 summit was greeted with despair. Tony Blair, who is now also, it seems, the Minister of Root Causes, believes Syria and Iran are behind the original Hizbollah attack. He is right. But it is to Damascus that the West will have to go to switch this dirty war off.

Certainly, the powerless Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, cannot do so. With his government accused by Israel of responsibility for Wednesday's capture of two Israeli soldiers - a claim as preposterous as it is wrong - he went on television in tears to appeal to the United Nations to arrange a ceasefire for his "disaster-stricken nation". The Lebanese appreciated the tears, but those tears are unlikely to have had President Bush shaking in his boots. Churchill in 1940, Siniora - a sincere and good man, uncorrupted by Lebanese politics - is not. "If our Prime Minister is crying," one Lebanese woman astutely pointed out to me yesterday, " what is the civilian population of our country supposed to do?"

But where are the other supposed political titans of Lebanon? What is Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri - who rebuilt the Lebanon which Israel is now destroying - doing in Kuwait, chatting to the Kuwaitis about his country's predicament? The Kuwaiti army is scarcely going to come to defend Lebanon. Why isn't Hariri the son on his private jet to the G8 summit in St Petersburg to demand of President Bush that he protect the democratically-elected government and the nation he praised for its "cedar revolution" last year? Or doesn't democracy matter when Israel is smashing Lebanon? Answer: no, it doesn't.

UN Security Council Resolution 1559 demanded a Syrian retreat from Lebanon - which was accomplished - but it also demanded the disarming of Hizbollah, which was definitely not accomplished. Many here suspected that 1559, designed by the French and the Americans, was intended to weaken Lebanon and prepare it for a peace treaty with Israel. Well, not any more. It was the Lebanese President, Emile Lahoud, who still cravenly follows Syria's line - he is, after all, Syria's man - who said yesterday that Lebanon "will never surrender". Lahoud as Churchill. There is something obscene here.

Nasrallah, meanwhile, told the Israelis that: "If you do not want to play by rules, we can do the same." It was a grim little threat that was obviously meant to counter Ehud Olmert's equally grim little threat that there would be "far-reaching consequences" for the missile attack on Haifa. Nasrallah's televised argument - that Hizbollah originally wished to confine all casualties to the military - will not wash with Israel, but may encourage those many Lebanese who were originally outraged by Hizbollah's attack across the border on Wednesday, only to be silenced by the cruelty of Israel's response.

"This is the last struggle of the 'umma'," Nasrallah said, the " umma" being the Arab "homeland". Alas, that is what the Arab leaders said when they joined Lawrence of Arabia's battle against the Ottoman empire in the First World War. It is always the "last struggle" .

The weapons of war

Fajr-3 missile

An Iranian-built rocket with range of 45km which can carry a 45kg warhead. Israel accused Hizbollah of firing 240mm Fajr-3 missiles against Haifa. Iran denies supplying the missiles to Hizbollah

Fajr-5 rocket

Longer-range version of Fajr-3 that can strike targets up to 72km away

Raad missile

Iranian-built missile with range of 120km. Could reach central Israel. Israelis accused Hizbollah of firing Raad ("Thunder") missiles yesterday. Hizbollah said last week it had fired Raad for the first time

Katyusha

Previously the Hizbollah missile of choice, the Russian-designed Katyushas have a range of 22km and variable accuracy. Israel accused Syria of supplying Hizbollah with a longer-range model

Kassem

Rockets with range of up to 10km, used by Hamas guerrillas in Palestinian-ruled Gaza. Israeli town of Sderot has been a frequent target of the notoriously inaccurate missiles

F-16 fighter

The US-made "fighting Falcon" is a multi-role fighter which has been dropping quarter-ton bombs on targets in Lebanon

Alpha · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 10:22 am Post subject:

American mainstream media was silent

http://representativepress.blogspot.com/2006/07/to-those-supporting-massive.html

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

'Thou Shalt Not Criticize
The State Of Israel'
The Zionist 'Prime Directive' For Obedient Americans.
Commentary
By Dick Fojut
7-15-6
http://www.rense.com/general72/thou.htm

The "PRIME DIRECTIVE" has been slavishly obeyed over many decades by America's Major "News" Media, Congresses (Democrats AND Republicans), White Houses - and "Christian"-Zionist zealots (who outwardly claim to be followers of the "Prince of Peace" - but support ANY warfare and slaughter they naively think might BENEFIT their cherished "State of Israel"). With members of America's major media is the real threat that: "Those who foolishly dare criticize Israel swiftly lose their jobs."

Apparently assured complete immunity from any American government and media criticism, the giant over-armed Jewish "ELEPHANT" (world's fourth largest conventional military with 5,000+ tanks and home-flattening bulldozers, with 40,000 Palestinian homes flattened to date) continues to crush lightly armed or unarmed middle east "mice" using Israel's decades-honed tactic of massive STATE TERRORISM attacks, collectively punishing and terrorizing entire populations.

Americans seem vaguely informed because our Israel-obedient major media have been "reporting" the increasing horror with an Israeli "spin," portraying Israel as "THE INNOCENT VICTIM, DEFENDING ITSELF." We're supposed to believe the giant "victim" Israeli military ELEPHANT is defending itself against tiny "terrifying" mice. Are America's major media (especially the TV networks) first "filtering" their daily "news" reports through Tel Aviv propagandists?

Arrogantly ignoring ALL Geneva Conventions, Zionist-ruled Israel has ACCELERATED its collective punishment with the destruction of electrical plants, water, sewage and other public infrastructure vital to the very survival of millions in Gaza - and now millions in Lebanon. This is in addition to Israel's stoppage since January of Food, Finances, Commerce and movement of Medical transportation, etc., throughout Gaza, collectively punishing Gaza's people for electing HAMAS as its government. This is not a "democratic" Israeli "War ON Terror" - but Israel's one-sided TERROR WARFARE ON its defenceless, victimized neighbors.

And yet we hear not a peep of criticism from Israel's American media sycophants. Instead of justified criticism, we hear the Zionist concocted, disproportionate excuse, mindlessly parroted repetitiously by Bush and Rice that: "ISRAEL HAS THE RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF!"

Yet the terrified populations and freely elected Governments of Gaza and Lebanon do NOT have that same "right?" Not in the fawning eyes of Americans who obey the Zionist "Prime Directive." ONLY the Israeli military ELEPHANT is permitted that "right."

Apparently, being non-Jews, Palestinians and Lebanese, Muslims and Christians alike, are somehow less than "human" and have NO "right" to defend themselves against the unceasing daily butchery of Israeli STATE TERRORISM - Israel's ONE-sided TERROR WARFARE against its defenceless Muslim neighbors.

ALSO PRETEND THAT TINY THREATENED, "WEAK" ISRAEL DESPERATELY NEEDS AMERICA'S MILITARY PROTECTION (AND MONEY)

One slavishly obeyed sub-command from the Zionist "Prime Directive" is to PRETEND "tiny" Israel's military arsenal is NOT bloated with over 400 nuclear warheads, third or fourth largest stockpile in the entire world! And PRETEND those nukes would NOT be delivered by Israel's high tech aircraft, submarines and even giant intercontinental Missiles - or nuclear warheads be fired from Israel's thousands of tanks, artillery and field missile batteries. (All exorbitantly financed by good-willed, but naive American taxpayers.)

Pretend Israel's nukes do not exist.

Fellow Americans, try to awaken from relentless Pro-Israel media brainwashing about the contrived Bush/Blair "war on terror" (really, their excuse for war on Muslim "enemies" of Israel) - and the Israeli regime's phoney initial assertion it greatly "fears" a few crazy suicide bombers and the relative pin-pricks of admittedly inaccurate and ineffectual rockets launched by dissident non-government groups in Gaza. The new annoyance of also inaccurate, but more destructive Hizbollah rockets, adds slightly to our media's pretense that Israel is the "frightened victim" of "terrorists."

By what we see now happening, Israel's heartless Zionist rulers have "welcomed" the rockets (and the exaggerated incidents of a few "kidnapped" Israeli soldiers) as "provocations" to "justify" unleashing Israel's MASSIVE MILITARY FIREPOWER upon the defenceless civilian populations and infrastructure of two neighbors. Absurdly, Israel is even now bombing individual Gas Stations. Will "terrorist" cafes be targeted next?

Not widely reported by most of our structurally pro-Israel major media, Israel has "kidnapped" and imprisoned, some ten thousand Palestinians, many without charges, including many women and children. "Terrorist" mice?

Our obedient-to-Israel, bowing and scraping President Bush seems to be imitating standard Israeli "conduct" with his own captives (uncharged "potential dangerous terrorists") at Guantanamo and other secret American prisons.

Israel's justifiably TERRIFIED middle east neighbors understand that IF Israel's ruling regime feels IMMINENTLY threatened by a nuclear competitor (not just potentially in the very DISTANT future as with Iran), the paranoid Zionists currently ruling Israel, could (and most probably would) unleash Israel's nukes and literally incinerate all neighboring countries the crazy Zionists think are immediate threats to Israel. The governments of every Muslim neighbor and their millions of citizens live daily under the very REAL THREAT of instant Israeli Nuclear annihilation.
----------------

Supporting information...

FROM MY HOME, I SAW WHAT THE 'WAR ON TERROR' MEANT
By Robert Fisk 07/14/06 "The Independent"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13978.htm
Excerpt only (Israeli Jets)...
They came first to the little village of Dweir near Nabatiya in southern Lebanon where an Israeli plane dropped a bomb on to the home of a Shia Muslim cleric. He was killed. So was his wife. So were eight of his children. One was decapitated. All they could find of a baby was its head and torso which a young villager brandished in fury in front of the cameras. Then the planes visited another home in Dweir and disposed of a family of seven.

--------------

VATICAN CONDEMNS ISRAEL FOR ATTACKS ON LEBANON
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/060714/3/2n5ti.html
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican on Friday strongly deplored Israel's strikes on Lebanon, saying they were "an attack" on a sovereign and free nation. July 14, 06

THE ISRAEL LOBBY
By John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
London Review of Books March 23, 2005
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/print/mear01_.html

THE "ISRAELI LOBBY" DEMANDED AMERICA SMASH AND OCCUPY IRAQ! WHO OBEYED?
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/04/337982.shtml

Zionist Israel's Thermonuclear Blackmail Of America
http://www.rense.com/general35/isrnuk.htm

SILENCE OF THE POODLES
By Former Rep. Paul Findley 7-6-6
(for 22 years a Conservative Republican member of the House until targeted for defeat by the Israeli Lobby)
http://www.rense.com/general72/silence.htm

Israeli Media Criticize Attack On Gaza! Jul 3,06
http://publish.indymedia.org/en/2006/07/841974.shtml

America's Media Still Too COWED to Criticize Israel? July 4, 06
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/07/342077.shtml
THE GOVERNMENT IS LOSING ITS REASON
By Haaretz Editorial June 30, 06
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13802.htm

ISRAEL'S INFRASTRUCTURE WARFARE
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13817.htm
July 2, 2006

GAZA AND THE TREASON OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/July06/Amr01.htm
------------

APATHY FOR THE LOSS OF INNOCENT PALESTINIAN LIFE IN THE US MEDIA Jun 25, 06

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=KAN20060625&articleId=2692

ISRAEL'S ACT OF WAR IS INEXCUSABLE
By Will Hutton 07/02/06 "The Observer" UK
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13822.htm

ANYTHING BUT NEGOTIATION
By Patrick Seale 07/03/06 "The Guardian" UK
Palestinian moderates are Israel's real enemies, so it deliberately drives them from the scene
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13831.htm

SHARON WAR PLAN EXPOSED: HAMAS GANG IS HIS TOOL - Jeffrey Steinberg, July 20,01 issue EIR
http://www.prisonplanet.com/news_alert_hamas5.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/STE204A.html
http://LaRouchepub.com/other/2001/2827sharon_hamas.html
SHARON 'ALLIANCE WITH HAMAS' EXPOSED - 2001
http://www.larouchepub.com/lar/2001/2848lar_bush_me.html

MOST ISRAELIS (82%) WANT HAMAS LEADERS ASSASSINATED - POLL / JERUSALEM (Reuters) - 07/07/06
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13896.htm
HAVE RUMSFELD (AND CHENEY) 'COMBATTED TERRORISM' BY CAUSING IT? - May 2006
http://www.indymedia.org/en/2006/05/839272.shtml

THE PROVOCATEUR STATE: IS THE CIA BEHIND THE IRAQI "INSURGENTS" -- AND GLOBAL TERRORISM? May 10, 2005
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MOR505A.html

PBS "FRONTLINE" ALLOWED CHENEY TO LIE!
ABOUT 9/11 - June 23, 06
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?disc=149495;article=102281;title=APFN

WE ATTACKED IRAQ FOR ISRAEL...
"(General) Zinni said it was "the worst-kept secret in Washington" that a group of neoconservative thinkers had pushed for invading Iraq in order to make the Middle East more democratic - and safer for Israel. - on CBS 60-Minutes, May 21, 2004...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/21/60minutes/printable618896.shtml
Retiring Senator Hollings also stated it when he said...

'IRAQ WAS INVADED TO SECURE ISRAEL,' says Senator Hollings, and 'Everybody Knows It.'

- July 16, 2004

http://www.ihr.org/news/040716_hollings.shtml

POWELL'S FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF (COL) LAWRENCE WILKERSON CALLS (IRAQ) PRE-WAR INTELLIGENCE A 'HOAX ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE'
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11797.htm

"DOWNING STREET MEMO" & 7 other leaked British documents provide further evidence of aggression and other serious crimes by the US - 6/8/05 (In early 2002, Bush/Blair agreed to attack Iraq in 2003)

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/070805Davies/070805davies.html

Alpha

July 17, 2006
We're Being Set Up for Wider War in the Middle East

by Paul Craig Roberts
The old adage, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" does not apply to Americans, who have shown that they can be endlessly fooled.

Neoconservatives deceived Americans into an illegal attack and debilitating war in Iraq. American neoconservatives are closely allied with Israel's Likud Party. In the past, some neocons lost their security clearances because of "mishandling" of classified information. According to Insight magazine, "the Pentagon has banned security clearance to Americans with relatives in Israel. Government sources and attorneys said the Pentagon has sought and succeeded in removing security clearance from dozens of Americans, mostly Jews, who either lived, worked, or have relatives in Israel."

Despite questions of dual loyalties, neocons hold high positions in the Bush regime. Ten years ago these architects of American foreign and military policy spelled out how they would use deception to achieve "important Israeli strategic objectives" in the Middle East. First, they would focus "on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq." This would open the door for Israel to provoke attacks from Hezbollah. The attacks would let Israel gain American sympathy and permit Israel to seize the strategic initiative by "engaging Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon."

Today, this neoconservative plan is unfolding before our eyes. Israel has used the capture of two of its soldiers in Lebanon as an excuse for an all-out air and naval bombardment against Lebanese civilian targets. However, a number of commentators have pointed out that such a massive attack requires weeks if not months of preparation that could not be done overnight in response to the capture of the soldiers.

Regardless, in the first two days of the Israeli military attack on Lebanon more than a hundred civilians, including Canadians, have been killed by Israeli bombs (gifts from U.S. taxpayers). The Beirut International Airport has been repeatedly bombed, as have residential neighborhoods, roads, bridges, ports, and power stations.

Soldiers are a legitimate military target. Civilians, civilian neighborhoods, tourists, and international airports are not. Under the Nuremberg standard used to sentence Nazi war criminals to death, the Israeli government is clearly guilty of war crimes.

Meanwhile, the Israelis are committing identical war crimes in Gaza. Again Israel's excuse is the capture of an Israeli soldier. However, the distinguished Israeli professor Ran HaCohen said that the Israeli army "had been demanding a massive attack on Gaza long before the Israeli soldier was kidnapped."

By blocking UN Security Council action against Israel for its massacre of civilians in Gaza, the Bush regime has made itself complicit in these monstrous war crimes. Just as Germans who supported Hitler were deemed to be complicit in his war crimes, Americans who support Bush are complicit in Bush's war crimes.

Hezbollah is not the Lebanese government. It does not rule Lebanon. Hezbollah is the militia organization founded in 1982 in response to Israel's invasion of Lebanon. Hezbollah defeated the Israeli army and drove out the Israeli invaders six years ago.

According to the BBC, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that the two Israeli soldiers "were captured to pressure Israel to release the thousands of Palestinian prisoners in its jails," especially the women and children.

The BBC also notes that although Hezbollah operates "from Lebanese territory and the militant group has two ministers in the Lebanese government, the central government is almost powerless to influence the militant group." (Note that the BBC applies the loaded word "militant" to Hezbollah but not to Israel.) Hezbollah, reports the BBC, "is also very popular in Lebanon and highly respected for its political activities, social services, and its military record against Israel."

The prime minister of Lebanon, who was installed with President Bush's approval when Syria, under Bush's pressure, recently withdrew its troops from Lebanon, has twice appealed to Bush to pressure Israel to stop its criminal attacks. Our great moral, democratic, Christian leader has twice rebuffed the appeal from the legal representative of the Lebanese people. Instead, Bush is willingly going along with the 1996 neocon script. Bush is laying the blame on Syria and Iran, exactly as the neocon script calls for him to do.

When Bush demands that Syria "stop Hezbollah attacks," he forgets that he was the one who forced Syria out of Lebanon (to enable Israel to attack Lebanon). If Americans were attentive, they would be ashamed to witness "their" president acting as an Israeli propagandist.

Fox "News," CNN, and the rest of the Bush propaganda ministry are echoing the lie that innocent Israel is under attack from the "terrorist states" of Syria and Iran through their surrogate, Hezbollah. Americans, who are sick of the Iraq occupation and want the troops home, are being fooled again and set up for wider war in the Middle East.

Evangelical "Christians" are part of the propaganda show. Three thousand of them, under the lead of the Rev. John C. Hagee, are heading to Washington for a "Washington/Israel summit" to demand, needlessly, that the neocon Bush regime show "stronger support for Israel."

It is difficult to see how Bush could show any stronger support without using the U.S. military to assist Israel in its attacks, which is, of course, what the "Christian" Rev. Hagee intends when he declares: "There's a new Hitler in the Middle East [he doesn't mean Bush or Olmert]. The only way he will be stopped will be by a preemptive military strike in Iran."

Present at Rev. Hagee's "Washington/Israel Summit" will be Israel's former Minister of Defense, Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, Republican Senators Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, and Gary Bauer.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful lobby in Washington, expressed its thanks to Rev. Hagee for demonstrating "the depth and breadth of American support" for Israel. Recently, AIPAC has been under investigation as a suspected nest for Israeli spies.

David Brog, former chief of staff for Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, has gone to work for Rev. Hagee. Brog, who is Jewish, says he works for Hagee's evangelical enterprise because "we're bringing into a pro-Israel camp millions of Christians who love Israel and giving them a political voice. Israel's enemies are our enemies, and this group instinctively understands that." Brog goes on to say that Hagee's evangelicals understand that they are not supposed to talk about Jesus, only about saving Israel: "Christians who work with Jews in supporting Israel realize how sensitive we are in talking about Jesus. They realize it will interfere with what they are trying to do."

Gentle reader, is this an admission that evangelicals have set aside Jesus for war? Do these bloody-minded evangelicals really believe they will be wafted to Heaven for helping Israel involve the U.S. in more war? Have evangelicals forgotten that "an eye for an eye" is Old Testament? "Turn the other cheek" is New Testament.

On July 14, Reuters reported that alone among Christians, the "Vatican condemns Israel for attacks on Lebanon."

Whose delusion is the greatest – the evangelical "rapture" delusion, the neocon delusion about American power, or the Zionist delusion? The three together mean disaster for America, Israel, and the world.

One of the great evangelical/Zionist/neocon myths is that "tiny Israel" armed with 200 nuclear weapons is threatened by Muslim Middle Eastern countries. In actual fact, Egypt and Pakistan, which have the bulk of the Middle Eastern Muslim population, are ruled by American puppets. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the oil emirates are totally dependent on U.S. protection and, thereby, are also under the American thumb. Iran is Persian, not Arab, and has no common borders with Israel. Hezbollah was created when Israel tried to seize Lebanon in 1982. Hamas is a Palestinian response to the atrocities Palestinians have suffered for a half century at Israel's hands.

Israel's land-stealing policy is the source of Middle Eastern instability. America is hated because American money and weapons are what enable Israel to steal Palestine from Palestinians.

As numerous Middle East experts have pointed out, what is decried as "Arab terrorism against Israel" is, in fact, the only tactic Muslims have for calling the world's attention to the plight of the Palestinians, about which Americans are generally ignorant.

It is absurd for Bush to condemn Syria for not behaving as an American puppet and for not fighting Israel's battles by taking on Hezbollah. Syria and Iran (and Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion) are the only Middle Eastern countries independent of American control. It is far beyond the boundaries of reason and morality to expect these two remaining independent countries to give up their independence in order to enable Israel to steal Palestine and southern Lebanon.

It is the refusal of Syria and Iran (and Saddam Hussein's Iraq) to stand with Israel against Palestine that has made them targets for American attack. Neocons have total control of U.S. foreign policy in the Bush regime, and they have morphed our strategic interests into Israel's.

As the neoconservative architects of Bush's wars revealed in 1996, their concern lies with Israeli strategic objectives.

Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts

Alpha · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:36 pm Post subject: Will We Go to War for Israel?

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=9314

July 17, 2006
Will We Go to War for Israel?
Israel says "Jump!"
Americans ask: "How high?"
by Justin Raimondo
Listening to Newt Gingrich bloviate on Meet the Press, advocating U.S. intervention on Israel's behalf against Syria and Iran – and the pathetic Joe "Me Too" Biden effectively agreeing with him – one can only wonder how or why anybody listens to these crazies. As Newt, the megalomaniacal has-been, gleefully declares that "World War III" is in progress, and weaves a conspiracy theory linking Iran, Syria, North Korea, Hezbollah, and – believe it or not! – Venezuela, old Joe just sits there nodding out. Given a chance to reply, his only objection to Gingrich's vision of war on all fronts is that, yes, we need to go to war, but we have to do it with the support of our allies. "Fighting Joe" Biden is no weenie: his voice hardens as he avers we should tell the North Koreans that we have the capacity to "annihilate" them. Gingrich smiles.
He has good reason to smile. Aside from his fondness for the concept of annihilation, he knows that the War Party's "liberal" Democratic wing is falling into line. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon – which many predict will include the de facto annexation of a southern "buffer zone" – has the fulsome support of both parties. When the Israelis tell the Americans to jump, the only question Biden and the Democratic party leadership have is: How high?
What Israel wants is what they have always wanted: to use American power, American tax dollars, and American lives to advance their own expansionist agenda. Twenty-five thousand Americans are in Lebanon at the present moment, all of them at risk from Israeli bombs – but that didn't factor into Tel Aviv's calculations, any more than Lebanese or Palestinian lives matter one whit to them. The Israelis put Israel first – and so does Washington. If all 25,000 American tourists and others have to perish in the flames of Israeli air strikes, then so be it. No sacrifice is too great – just as long as our Israel-centric foreign policy remains firmly in place.
Unleashed by the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the presence of a substantial American force in the midst of Mesopotamia, the Israelis are the tip of an American spear aimed at Syria and Iran. And Israel's amen corner in Washington and the media are doggedly pushing the talking point that these two spokes on the "axis of evil" are churning the Lebanese waters. MSNBC assures us that Iran "created" Hezbollah: knowledgeable analysts can only laugh at this agitprop – but then they aren't cited in this piece. Only a former Israeli general is.
Hezbollah, of course, was "created," not by Iran, but by the Israeli invasion of 1982. The group gained prestige and adherents as it drove the invading Israelis back over the border and set up an elaborate network of social service organizations, standing candidates for office and entering the Lebanese Parliament. The mere sight of an Arab entity successfully defying Israel, and not only living to tell the tale but also prospering, is impermissible: Russian President Vladimir Putin was not alone in saying that there was more to the Israeli agenda than merely getting back their captured – um, I mean "kidnapped" – soldiers.
Another war, a silent war, is going on in the corridors of power, and the fighting in the Middle East, in an important sense, is merely a reflection of a long, bitter internecine struggle in Washington. Those Republican "realists" we hear so much about – holdovers from the Bush I regime, "realist" policy wonks, and those Republicans who look at the polls – have their champion (or best hope, at any rate) in Condoleezza Rice. Her personal relationship with the president and her elevation to head of the State Department have led several commentators to equate this as a victory for the "realists."
The neoconservative ideologues, who have been the radical vanguard of the War Party all along, certainly believe this, which is why Richard Perle recently took her on in the Washington Post. The Condi faction temporarily gained the upper hand when they came out with a policy on Iran that had been worked on in secret and took the road of negotiation rather than outright military confrontation and "regime change."
The Israeli answer: invade Lebanon, force the issue, and go for the throat. With the Israel lobby going full-bore and the propaganda mills churning, the invasion undermines the Rice faction and puts the issue of regime-change back on the administration's agenda. While that change of regime will, initially, be limited to southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah operates a de facto independent state, it will eventually – the neocons hope – extend to the whole of the country, topple Bashar al-Assad in Syria – and, eventually, spill over into Iran.
Dan Rather said on Chris Matthews' Sunday show that the road is littered with the corpses of those who underestimated Dick Cheney, and the reassertion of the neoconservative voice within this administration – a voice that many thought had been nearly stilled by the grotesque failure of our Iraqi disaster – is a testament to the validity of his thesis.
The neocons' comeback is made possible by the Democrats' complete prostration before the Israeli offensive. Biden's babbling that our lack of allies has crippled our ability to mediate the Middle East conflict is completely wrong – and beside the point, in any case. To begin with, all the Arab killer regimes – the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the dictators, the kings, the petty tyrants and emirs – are taking the line that Hezbollah, and not Israel, is to blame. The Lebanese, they say, have brought this on themselves and now have to bear the consequences of Hassan Nasrallah's actions.
Yet a state of war still exists between Israel and Lebanon – no peace treaty was ever signed. And the border is closely watched by both parties: it's hard to imagine the Israelis failed to realize that sending in a few unguarded troops so close to Hezbollah positions would likely result in their capture. Hezbollah took the bait, and the trap snapped shut.
The question boils down to this: can the Israelis win a war with Hezbollah without American intervention? The answer, clearly, is no: look what happened last time. The Americans, lured into Beirut, suffered 241 casualties – after bombing Beirut's suburbs – and Reagan wisely withdrew. Israel, in the end, was driven out. The neocons are determined that, this time, the Americans will not only stay – they'll go for Damascus.
The call for American military intervention is bound to come up, rather shortly, and get louder as the long "precision" bombing of the Lebanese continues. The Israelis will pound Lebanon in a display of U.S.-backed military power, and the only debate in Washington will be over to what extent we ought to intervene, rather than whether we ought to get involved at all.
In the end, some combination of UN-NATO-American military intervention will do for the Israelis what they could never accomplish on their own: neutralize all opposition to their conquest of Palestine coming from the Levant. The "debate" in Washington is only over how to achieve that goal: the Democrats say we have to do it "multilaterally," and the Republicans, with Jacksonian disdain, say we don't have to answer to anybody (except the Israelis, of course).
There is no "solution" to the Middle East's many conflicts, and American attempts to formulate one are doomed to failure. Some problems are just not solvable by human efforts, and this is one of them. Our intervention only serves to exacerbate the situation and spread the conflict – with blowback that can and did have deadly consequences as far as our own interests are concerned.
American interests play little or no role in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and we all know why. What scholars John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt said in their now famous study [.pdf] of "the Lobby," as they call it, is being confirmed in spades by this latest episode:
"For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of U.S. Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only U.S. security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the U.S. been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?"
Their answer: "The unmatched power of the Israel Lobby."
That Lobby is now furiously demanding – and getting – unconditional support for the violation of Lebanon's sovereignty not only from the president, but from the leaders of both political parties and the major mandarins of the commentariat. The Mearsheimer-Walt thesis has now been confirmed. The question is: what do we do about it?
America's real interests in the Middle East are in securing two primary goals: (1) Making sure that war and political factors don't obstruct the free flow of commerce – and oil – to American markets, and (2) neutralizing the Osama bin Ladens of the Middle East ideologically, not necessarily in that order. Regarding the first goal, I merely refer you to current oil prices. On the second matter, our unconditional support for Israel's brazen invasion is now the chief recruiting tool for bin Laden and his gang.
While the War Party runs roughshod over authentic American interests, the U.S. political landscape, at this point, lacks anything remotely resembling a Peace Party. Don't look to the Democrats, as a party, to come to our rescue. They won't. "The Lobby" works both sides of the partisan fence, and, as we all know, "politics ends at the water's edge" – which is how we've been dragged into every war of modern times, despite popular opposition.
Perhaps, some day, an administration and a Congress that puts America first will regain control of Washington. That prospect, however, appears dim at the moment. As Americans wake up to World War IV on the horizon, however, it is not completely out of the question. War teases out new trends and creates new patterns in the politics of a nation, and it does so rather rapidly. In any case, we have to hope – because the alternative is so unappealing.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
I apologize for sounding a note of weariness, and even despair, in the above paragraph. It is provoked, I fear, by the sheer repetition involved in writing a column such as this. In pointing out the dangers inherent in our foreign policy, and underscoring the probable consequences of our reckless arrogance, I sometimes think I am writing the same column, over and over again, and that the real trick is in introducing some variation of language. So, rather than simply saying "I told you so!", I have compiled a few quotes from previous columns on the subject of Israel, Lebanon, and the prospect of a gathering regional war.
Note: I have left the original links in, in spite of the maddening practice of many news organizations in deleting or moving their online content.
May 7, 2003
"Will this same gang of warmongers entrap us in a war with Syria, and drag us back into Lebanon, where we are sure to confront the ghosts of our past errors? The battle-cry has already been sounded: Stay tuned as we hear news of Syria's 'weapons of mass destruction" and the inevitable question: 'Is Saddam in Syria?'
"As Yogi Berra once said: 'This is like deja-vu all over again!'"
Feb. 16, 2005
"Wars don't respect national borders, and it's only a matter of time before the Americans' ongoing battle against the Iraqi insurgency spills over into Syria. As I predicted in September 2003, 'We are a border incident away from taking the war into Syria, and beyond,' and that analysis seems borne out by events.
"All the elements of a regional conflagration are now in place, and the assassination of Hariri has set the fuse to burning. How long before the troops move out is anyone's guess, but make no mistake about it: Syria is next on the War Party's agenda.
"As I have said from the very beginning, the war in Iraq was and is just a means to the ends of finally securing Israel's 'security' – by making it the dominant power in the region. This is now being confirmed as the U.S. takes aim at Syria and moves against Hizbollah."
Dec. 12, 2005
"Syria is now girding for the imposition of economic sanctions and trying to head off the campaign to destabilize the country on two fronts: by restarting talks with Israel, and by cooperating with the request to permit Syrian officials to be questioned in the Hariri investigation. I have the funny feeling, however, that this is not going to do them a lot of good, as far as their enemies in the West are concerned. As we have seen in the case of Iraq, when the U.S. wants to manufacture a case for war, it can be done pretty easily: Congress is not likely to ask inconvenient questions until it's too late, and the American people can hardly be expected to keep up with arcane doings in faraway Lebanon, the scene of the intrigue and obscure religious-ethnic rivalries that could spark another Mideast war. Acting pretty much without either congressional or public scrutiny, this administration thinks it can get away with anything when it comes to Syria – and in that, they are probably right."
March 2, 2005
"Two years after the invasion and conquest of Iraq, and what have we gained? An Islamic state in Iraq, a looming confrontation with Syria, and the increasingly likely prospect of Lebanon reverting to a state of civil war."
Feb. 23, 2005
"We are in for a long buildup to direct intervention in Lebanon, and Syria. … It's all so predictable, and boring, that I can't even write about it for another minute, except to say: They've only just begun…"
Jan. 2, 2006 – New Year's column
"The escalation of the war against the Iraqi insurgencies – yes, I mean that to be a plural – into a regional conflict is a possibility that will increasingly present itself in 2006. The New Year had barely dawned when reports of U.S. planning for a military strike on Iran were coming from UPI and the Jerusalem Post. It is Syria, however, that represents a real opportunity for the War Party to effect some 'regime change' in the region: the process of setting up Bashar al-Assad as the latest edition of Ba'athist Evil in the Middle East is already well underway. Contrary to most of the evidence, including the most basic considerations of common sense, Syria has been tagged as the murderer of Lebanese entrepreneur-politician Rafik Hariri, who was killed in a Beirut car blast last year, and the UN 'investigation' is taking on all the appearances of a propaganda campaign directed at Damascus.
"Hillary has already signed on to the campaign to provoke a conflict with Syria, and she won't hear any argument from McCain on this matter. When the alleged Democratic 'dove' Nancy Pelosi touts her support of sanctions against Syria – in spite of the very valuable cooperation proffered by Damascus in tracking down Islamist terrorist cells – the chances of avoiding a military conflict with Damascus appear dim."
Oct. 24, 2005
"The U.S. is ratcheting up its campaign against Syria, even as the principal proponents of confronting Damascus – Libby, Hadley, Hannah, Wurmser, et al. – find themselves in Fitzgerald's sights. In effect, the prosecutor is running a race with the War Party: can they provoke a war with Syria before he brings charges? For the sake of the country, I dearly hope Fitzgerald's staff has writer's cramp by now from furiously tapping out indictments."
March 29, 2006
"The battle will not be joined all at once, however: don't expect a full-scale frontal assault on Iran any time soon. The struggle will break out between Iranian proxies – the Shi'ite party militias, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iranian-backed factions based in Syria – and the U.S. and its allies in the region, including not only the Israelis but also the Kurds and the Christian Lebanese factions."

http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com

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Alpha · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 8:15 pm Post subject: Israel's Terrorism

Israel's Terrorism
by Gabriel Ash
www.dissidentvoice.org
July 18, 2006

The Middle East is boiling over yet again. Israel is resorting to the one strategy it has perfected since the day it was created, murdering civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure.
The Israeli defense doctrine, old as Israel itself, considers bombing of civilian targets a means for pressuring "militants" and uncooperative governments. So Israel bombs bridges and villages in South Lebanon, power plants in Gaza, orchards, fields, schools, hospitals, residential neighborhoods, beach barbecue parties, etc. Everything is a legitimate target. Israeli ministers announce publicly that their chief strategy is to cause civilian suffering. Every day sees its Guernica, and the U.N., which proudly displays a reproduction of the painting, is mum in the face of a hundred Guernicas.
To be clear, Israel's actions fit the very definition of terrorism. Doubly so now, since the bombing campaign is a response to attacks on Israeli soldiers, not civilians. The ever more morally bankrupt "international community" sees nothing, hears nothing, and says nothing. Don't take my word for it. An aide of the Israeli PM said recently: "We are acting there [in Gaza] in an unprecedented manner; we're firing hundreds of artillery shells, attacking from the air, sea and land and the world remains silent."
Having been so encouraged by the world's indifference to the bombing of Gaza, Israel is giving Lebanon the same murderous treatment. Putin and Chirac have managed to assemble some moderate testiness. The rest of the world called for "restraint." When the mission statement is to exact revenge and kill civilians, what's restraint?
According to the EU, Hamas has to renounce violence to become a "responsible government." And Hizbullah has to release the captured soldiers. The Israeli government, on the other hand, although responsible for an unending campaign of terrorism, need not renounce violence, nor release any of its political prisoners. The brotherhood of money and white skin is proving again to be thicker than blood.
Hizbullah's intervention proved again it is the only power that wouldn't stay silent in the face of Israeli barbarism. Since Israel recognizes neither international laws nor international borders, there was nothing morally wrong in Hizbullah's fighters crossing the border into Israel to raid a military patrol. Israel should not enjoy the defense of principles it doesn't respect. With its latest raid, Hizbullah consolidated its position as the leading popular voice in the Middle East, displaying tactical brilliance, solidarity, and a refusal to be bribed or cowered that is putting the rest of the world -- the Arab puppet governments as well as Europe's hypocrites -- to shame. To boot, Hizbullah is also putting to shame other Muslim radicals, most notably the Iraqi thugs and Al-Qaeda, both by successfully raiding legitimate military targets and by feeding a broad popular consensus that cuts across the Sunni-Shia divide.
However, courage and legitimacy aside, it is anybody's guess whether the leadership of Hizbullah foresaw that Israel would go postal and open a full-blown air war against Lebanon, shooting civilians in cars like ducks. If they did not, they were certainly shortsighted, and if they did, they were reckless.
Nevertheless, it is far from clear who wins when the dust settles. While guaranteed to suffer severe damage, Hizbullah still has the odds on its side. When Israel invaded Lebanon for the umpteenth time, government officials announced that Israel's goal was nothing less than the disarming of Hizbullah and the setting of "new rules of the game." That pronouncement sounds awfully reminiscent of Sharon's stated goal for invading Lebanon in 1982, to create "a new order in Lebanon." What are the chances that Olmert will have better success than Sharon? Slim. Hizbullah will nor disarm willfully. Who will disarm it? There are three candidates, and none of them looks too promising.
Israel: Israel can re-occupy Lebanon. That would certainly be a setback to Hizbullah, which would lose men, installations, and freedom of operation. But can Israel destroy Hizbullah? Note that Israel is unable to destroy Hamas, a much weaker organization, on a much smaller territory. No matter how much violence it used, Israel couldn't prevent Hamas from launching rockets and gaining popularity. Will Israel be more successful in Lebanon?
The "International Community": One could see France and the U.S. occupying Lebanon, probably under the guise of some invitation from the Christian minority, or a call for U.N. "peacekeeping" a la Haiti. Assuming Western powers are stupid (or cornered) enough to take the bait, can they achieve in Lebanon what Israel, with a lot more commitment, couldn't? A Western occupation of Lebanon is likely to turn the whole Middle East into one long crusaders vs. Muslims crescent. Does the West have the stomach for that? Does it have a reasonable chance of winning?
The "Cedar Revolution": The most promising alternative, for the West, is to empower some local stooges that would rule the new Lebanon colony for Western and Israeli interests. That is the West's favorite strategy, currently tried in many places around the globe. But Shiites are a poor, radical, bitter and armed majority in Lebanon. It would take more than a few Starbucks customers to subdue them. The anti-Hizbullah coalition is small and weak. Its unity is doubtful and its willingness to fight far from evident. Hizbullah, on the other hand, will have not only well-disciplined cadres and massive popular support, but also the support of Syria and Iran.
Israel could seek to cause as much damage as possible to Hizbullah's infrastructure with aerial assaults, then call it victory. But the blow to Hizbullah would not be enough to put an end to its operations, probably leaving Olmert in the unpleasant position of having to declare impotence. Hence the scenario of a full-blown war is extremely plausible. Such a war will eventually involve an Israeli invasion seeking to severely weakens Hizbullah, followed by an international peacekeeping force that replaces Israel and nurtures a government of Lebanese collaborators. In the rosiest scenario that government eventually gains the ability to repress the majority of the Lebanese population with only Western financial support. At that point the "peacekeepers" withdraw and Lebanon joins the dubious fraternity of Egypt and Jordan, safe Western puppet regimes.
A not-so-slight complication of this classic colonial scenario is the fact that Hizbullah is not an isolated resistance movement; rather it enjoys the international support of Iran and Syria, as well as strong ties with the Iraqi Shia militias, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Furthermore, in the context of a growing resource conflict between the superpowers, Iran could eventually receive covert support from Russia and/or China, in ways reminiscent of the support the Afghani Mujahaddin (and Bin Laden) received from the U.S. Thus, a successful repression of Hizbullah is likely to require at some point dealing a severe blow to Syria and Iran, and such a blow could require a proxy war between the U.S., Russia and China.
To put it differently, the Israel-Hizbullah war can remain contained, or it can end in a decisive manner. But it cannot both remain contained and end in a decisive manner.
(In light of this, one must read skeptically Western editorials calling on Israel to exercise caution, avoid overreaching and limit itself to targeting Hizbullah only are a miserable attempt to defend Israel while keeping up the pretense of opposing the targeting of civilians. The fact is the "collateral damage" is not a result of Israel's failure to "minimize the damage to civilian bystanders." Since Israel can only achieve its aims by widening the scope of the war and forcing other parties to get involved, "damage to civilians" is not a by-product but the core of Israel's strategy of escalation. The longer other parties fail to get involved, the more civilians will die. The New York Times is right that such indiscriminate murder strengthens Hamas and Hizbullah, but the problem is not one that Israel can rectify by changing its tactics. The problem is Israel itself and its true goals.)
The long war scenario, which is the only scenario that has a slightest chance of achieving Israel's goal of disarming Hizbullah, is similar to what the U.S. strategy in Iraq, where success is getting ever more elusive. It is also similar to the original Sharon plan for Lebanon in 1982, which failed. Why would this scenario be more successful in today's Lebanon? Odds are that it won't. But there are good reasons to believe that it will be tried. Three reasons, to be precise:
First, the post-colonial Western imagination is limited. This scenario is the well-understood way of dealing with subject populations in troubled corners of the world. It worked many times in the past, and even if its effectiveness is on a downward curve, there isn't any alternative short of giving up power and compromising.
Second, even if final success is elusive, war buys time, for Israel as well as for the U.S., for the politicians as well as for the interests they represents. For the latter, losing in a decade is still better than compromising today. Raymond Aaron called politics "the art of making things last." That holds true even when what is being made to last is misery.
Third, in international politics it is often true that "it's not the destination that counts, it's the journey." For many Israeli and American interests, war has value, in some cases hard cash value, regardless of final outcome.
One aspect of the intrinsic value of war is that both the leaders and the public in Israel truly believe that all Arabs will surrender if enough force is applied. It never worked. But that racism is too deep to be inconvenienced by facts. The second Lebanon war won't be the first war fought for the sake of maintaining illusions.
Israeli PM Olmert and DM Peretz are both lacking in the most important social capital in Israel, military rank. They therefore need to prove -- to the public was well as to themselves -- that their manhood is the longest in the Middle East; (in Israel this is called "deterrence.") Within the Macho culture Israeli leaders have cultivated for decades, justice and compromise are for sissies. Real men murder civilians. The government has therefore little choice but to escalate the military conflict or risk losing its political credibility.
The Israeli Military, which pushed for the recent escalation in both Gaza and Lebanon, taking advantage of the weakness of the political echelon, itches for war. At stake is repairing the psychological damage than "asymmetric warfare" inflicts on the Israeli military (Ilan Pappe, "What Does Israel Want") But beyond psychology, there are also crucial economic interests. Israel was in the middle of a debate over military expenditures, which the latest budget would cut significantly. The new war will certainly serve as the needed excuse for canceling or otherwise evading the cuts.
Beyond the tangible budget numbers, there is the central position of the army, and the economic interests behind it, within Israeli economy and politics. The stalemate in Gaza and the Hamas's electoral victory are revealing the hollow core of Israel's military dominance, Israel's inability to reduce Palestinians to a hopeless and obedient subject population. Escalation masks this fatal weakness because Israel is undoubtedly the more powerful party. As long as fighting goes on, Israel has the upper hand, its army looks powerful, and above all, useful. The moment the fighting ends, the limits of military power reassert themselves. Continuing military escalation therefore protects the military establishment and Israel's war economy from internal challenges.
Finally, Israel has no hope of a decisive outcome without the U.S. fully backing it against Iran. And while there are many sane voices calling for the U.S. to dissociate itself from Israel and seek a diplomatic compromise with Iran, there are also powerful U.S. interests itching for a global war. The neo-conservative argument is that a global war is necessary for the maintenance of U.S. dominance, not only in the face of rising local challenges such as Iran, but also to curb the rise of China as a global force. (as an aside, I tend to agree that war is necessary to U.S. global dominance. I doubt however that it is also sufficient.) And behind the neo-cons' arguments loom the interests of the U.S. military-industrial-complex. Incidentally, the U.S. economy seems to be moving towards a potentially dangerous recession. While this is still early, there should be no doubt that as the U.S. economy deteriorates, the economic appeal of military conflict will increase.
Given his low poll numbers and public dissatisfaction with Iraq, Bush is probably unable to initiate a war against Iran. The generals are opposed and the GOP is likely to be hammered in the mid-term elections. But if the war is initiated by Israel and the U.S. is perceived to be "dragged" into it unwillingly, Bush and the GOP would benefit again from the popular glow of patriotism that war baths leaders in; Especially given that Democrats will not criticize a war fought "to protect Israel," whose crony capitalists, like Haim Saban, pay for their election campaigns. An Israeli escalation in Lebanon can therefore serve as the necessary trigger for a global conflict that U.S. neo-cons desire.
A larger war will thus serve the short-term interests of the leadership in both Israel and the U.S. It may delay their inevitable decline, but chances are it won't restore their power. Both have reached the double climax of military power and loathsomeness, a point at which they can win any war, but can impose no peace. Since the Islamist leaders of Hamas and Hizbullah tend to take the long view of history, whereas the leaders of the U.S. and Israel are driven mostly by concern for the near future of corporate balance sheets, an escalating conflict might just give both sides the kind of victory they most crave.
One wished that saner voices prevailed; the slide towards war can be stopped by determined international pressure on Israel to accept a ceasefire. That would save many lives, but it will also be a blow to Israeli and U.S. dominance. Therefore, unfortunately, help is definitely not on its way. The people of Lebanon are now being taught a lesson many of them had wanted to forget, that their only defense against their psychopathic southern neighbor is bigger and badder weapons. Rest assured that the lesson will be learned, and that bigger and badder weapons will be used, perhaps against Israel, perhaps half a globe away. Nothing breeds murderers better than silence in the face of murder. Israel's unquenchable bloodlust was forged in the furnaces of the holocaust and galvanized by the silence of the world. Bin Laden said he was inspired to blow the Twin Towers by the sight of Beirut burning in 1982, "and the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond." Who knows whom and to what the latest mayhem will inspire. There is no real justice in this ever-unfolding sickness, but for those who are content with the poetic kind of justice, there is a plenty.
* * * *
Perhaps a liberal rephrasing of Robert Frost can sum up the stakes:
Some say world domination ends in fire, Some say in ice. From knowing Olmert's and Bush's desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But if our leaders go for ice, I think they are enough despised, so that for their destruction ice, is also great, and would suffice.
Gabriel Ash is an activist and writer who writes because the pen is sometimes mightier than the sword and sometimes not. He welcomes comments at: g.a.evildoer@gmail.com.

Alpha

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/19/1345257

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006
Robert Fisk in Beirut: Israeli Assault on Lebanon Inflicting "Mass Punishment on a Whole People"

http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com

Alpha

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14077.htm

The child lies like a rag doll - a symbol of the latest Lebanon war

By Robert Fisk in Beirut

07/20/06 "The Independent" -- -- How soon must we use the words "war crime"? How many children must be scattered in the rubble of Israeli air attacks before we reject the obscene phrase "collateral damage" and start talking about prosecution for crimes against humanity?

The child whose dead body lies like a rag doll beside the cars which were supposedly taking her and her family to safety is a symbol of the latest Lebanon war; she was hurled from the vehicle in which she and her family were traveling in southern Lebanon as they fled their village - on Israel's own instructions. Because her parents were apparently killed in the same Israeli air attack, her name is still unknown. Not an unknown warrior, but an unknown child.

The story of her death, however, is well documented. On Saturday, the inhabitants of the tiny border village of Marwaheen were ordered by Israeli troops - apparently using a bullhorn - to leave their homes by 6pm. Marwaheen lies closest to the spot where Hizbollah guerrillas broke through the frontier wire a week ago to capture two Israeli soldiers and kill three others, the attack which provoked this latest cruel war in Lebanon. The villagers obeyed the Israeli orders and initially appealed to local UN troops of the Ghanaian battalion for protection.

But the Ghanaian soldiers, obeying guidelines set down by the UN's headquarters in New York in 1996, refused to permit the Lebanese civilians to enter their base. By terrible irony, the UN's rules had been drawn up after their soldiers gave protection to civilians during an Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon in 1996 in which 106 Lebanese, more than half of them children, were slaughtered when the Israelis shelled the UN compound at Qana, in which they had been given sanctuary.

So the people of Marwaheen set off for the north in a convoy of cars which only minutes later, close to the village of Tel Harfa, were attacked by an Israeli F-16 fighter-bomber. It bombed all the cars and killed at least 20 of the civilians travelling in them, many of them women and children. Twelve people were burnt alive in their vehicles but others, including the child who lies like a rag doll near the charred civilian convoy, whose photograph was taken - at great risk - by an Associated Press photographer, Nasser Nasser, were blown clear of the cars by the blast of the bombs and fell into fields and a valley near the scene of the attack. There has been no apology or _expression of regret from Israel for these deaths.

The innocent continued to die yesterday in Israeli air attacks across Lebanon. Five civilians were killed when an Israeli missile struck a house near the town of Nabatea. Three members of the Hamed family were killed along with their Sri Lankan maid. In the village of Srifa, in the south, Israeli air strikes flattened 15 houses which were homes to at least 23 people but - with no lifting vehicles able to reach that part of the country - there was no way of rescuing anyone alive trapped in the buildings.

The Lebanese civil authorities, however, were able to give names to the dead after an Israeli air raid on the Bekaa Valley village of Nabi Chit; they included Ali Suleiman; Daoud Hazima; Khadija Moussawi and her children Bilal, Talal and Yasmine; Maouffaq Diab; Ahmed and Khairallah Mouawad; Mustafa Jroud and Bushra Shuqr. At least three of the names were female. Another four civilians were killed in an air raid on the village of Loussi in eastern Lebanon.

The Israelis constantly boast of their "pin-point" or "surgical" precision in air attacks. If this is true, then there are far too many civilians being killed in the Lebanese bloodbath to make every one of them an accident. And since Israel's target list now includes obviously civilian targets - deliberately bombed to punish the civilian population - the evidence is mounting that these air raids are intended to kill the innocent as well as the Hizbollah guerrillas whom Israel claims to be fighting.

True, the Hizbollah are killing civilians in Israel, but their missiles are inaccurate and the West, which has done no more than mildly disapprove of Israel's retaliatory onslaught, must surely expect higher standards of the Israeli armed forces than of the men whom both Israel and President George Bush describe as "terrorists".

Why, for example, did the Israelis attack and destroy the headquarters of the Liban-Lait company in the Bekaa Valley, the largest milk factory in Lebanon? Why did they bomb out the factory of the main importer for Proctor and Gamble products in Lebanon, based in Bchmoun? Why did they destroy a paper box factory outside Beirut? And why did Israeli planes attack a convoy of new ambulances being brought into Lebanon from Syria yesterday, vehicles which were the gift of the medical authorities of the United Arab Emirates? The ambulances were clearly marked as a relief aid convoy, according to an Emirates official. Were all these "terrorist" targets? Was the little girl in the field at Tel Harfa a "terrorist" target?

An example of Israel's lack of care in targeting Lebanon came yesterday morning when an Israeli plane fired four missiles into a disused parking lot in the Christian district of Ashrafieh in Beirut. Their targets turned out to be two derelict water drilling lorries which were standing tyre-deep in weeds. Were the tubes on the back of the lorries supposed to be missile launchers? And if so, who imagined that Hizbollah would ever try to conceal such weapons in a Christian area of Beirut where Hizbollah believe many of Israel's own collaborators live.

In Beirut and Nabatea, Lebanese security men claim to have arrested "collaborators" who were "painting" houses and cars with phosphorus to guide in Israeli jets to destroy them. At the same time, the Lebanese Minister of Finance, Jihad Azour, stated that 45 bridges had been destroyed across Lebanon and 60,000 families - 500,000 civilians - have been displaced.

Thousands of foreigners - many of them Lebanese holding dual citizenship - continued to leave the country by bus and ship yesterday, including hundreds of Britons who started the evacuation on Monday in HMS Gloucester. Americans were leaving by sea, although a French security company in Amman - SPO Middle East - was reported to have been hired by the US to evacuate its citizens by bus at a cost of $3,000 (£1,700) a head.

They, of course, are the lucky ones, who will finish their journeys in Damascus or Cyprus rather than beside a burnt convoy at Tel Harfa.

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What Does Israel Want?

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/07/18/what-does-israel-want.php

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