Unconditional Cease-Fire Now
U.S. Guilty of Qana Massacre, Guarantees More Crimes
Israel’s Terror
Human Shields: Shielding the Truth
The Logic of Israel’s War on Civilians
Hizbollah Is a Resistance Organization, Not a Militia


Unconditional Cease-Fire Now

U.S. Guilty of Qana Massacre, Guarantees More Crimes

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice traveled to the Middle East and Rome during the last week of July. At her press conference announcing the trip, she said “We do seek an end to the current violence and we seek it urgently.” During her trip however, she repeatedly rejected an immediate ceasefire, demanded by the Lebanese government and agreed to by Hizbollah. Repeated U.S. actions showed that a main aim of the trip was to block any ceasefire while attempting to impose U.S. conditions of dictate, in the region and the world.

President George W. Bush, speaking in Miami July 31 after Rice’s return, again presented the U.S. demands: “To achieve the peace that we want we must achieve certain clear objectives: Lebanon’s democratic government must be empowered to exercise sole authority over its territory. A multinational force must be dispatched to Lebanon quickly so we can help speed the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Lebanese people. Iran must end its financial support and supply of weapons to terrorist groups like Hizbollah. Syria must end its support for terror and respect the sovereignty of Lebanon.”

The U.S. demands do not require Israel to respect the sovereignty of Lebanon. Instead Bush said there would only be “the eventual withdrawal of Israeli forces.” Reiterating that Israel is “exercising its right to defend itself,” he made clear that Israel would continue its aggression.

The statement by Bush was made a day after the crime of the Qana massacre in Lebanon, where Israel bombed a building sheltering refugees, killing 95 civilians, mostly women and children. This followed numerous crimes against the peoples in Lebanon and Palestine. The U.S. response was to send emergency supplies of jet fuel and more bombs to Israel to guarantee the bombing and massacres would continue. In this past week Israel has unleashed even more bombing raids, artillery shelling, and ground troops in Lebanon, all targeting civilians. The U.S. has continued to block a ceasefire in ongoing negotiations at the United Nation Security Council and insist on its demands for repression of the resistance and an occupation force in Lebanon that is to its liking.

The U.S. does not want an end to the violence. It wants an end to the resistance. This is what Bush means by “the peace that we want.” It is using Israel to try and impose the forcible removal of the Lebanese and Palestinians from the region so as to eliminate the resistance.

Rice, in a television interview August 3, reiterated this aim: “We have to be very clear that Israel has a right to defend itself. And we have to be clear that when these hostilities end, we’re going to put in place a framework where this [the resistance by Hizbollah and the Lebanese people] can’t happen again.”

The U.S. is just as guilty of the Qana massacre and all the crimes being carried out by Israel. It is the U.S that guarantees that the violence and crimes against the peace, war crimes, the genocide and other crimes against humanity continue. The U.S. and Israel do not have the right to unleash state terrorism. That is a crime. Their claim to self defense is a claim to act with impunity against the peoples. Impunity is the crime, resistance the solution.

The resistance in Lebanon and Palestine and worldwide is standing as a block to the destructive path of U.S. imperialism. It is the resistance that is acting to defend the rights of the people and open a path to the new world the peoples seek, where the rights of all, are guaranteed.

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Israel’s Terror

“Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.” – Moshe Dayan

Moshe Dayan was one of the founding fathers of the state of Israel. His political and military successors are certainly living up to his frightening advice. In retaliation for the capture of an Israeli soldier, a policy of collective punishment has deprived Gazans of food, medicine, electricity and their lives. Israel has invaded a sovereign nation, Lebanon, bombed the Beirut airport and cut the nation off from the rest of the world. “Nothing is safe in Lebanon, simple as that,” said Israeli General Dan Halutz.

Not only are the Lebanese being killed by Israeli bombs, but CNN won’t even mention it to their viewers. Anyone watching CNN or the other networks would think that Israel’s arms magically avoid hitting human beings. The rest of the corporate media join in reporting the party line, that Israel is threatened, endangered and entitled to keep killing Arabs.

Not only is the media guilty of sins of omission, but they are once again assisting the administration and Israel in spreading outright lies. It was inexcusable when the press spread the falsehood that Iran was involved in capturing soldiers at the Lebanese border. More inexcusable was the lie that the soldiers would be sent to Iran. No stone is ever left unturned in the effort to drum up support for war against Iran.

It is ironic that this latest bloodshed has taken place on the anniversary of Israel’s first foray into wars of aggression. On July 11, 1948 Colonel Moshe Dayan led a battalion in the attack on the town of Lydda. After a brief uprising, 250 died, nearly all Arabs. Beginning on July 12, 1948 Major Yitzhak Rabin ordered the expulsion en masse of the Arab populations in the towns of Lydda and al-Ramla.

The residents of al-Ramla had surrendered without incident. Neverthless they were driven to the front lines and ordered to start walking. For three days between 30,000 and 50,000 Arab civilians were expelled from their homes in the same manner, in 100-degree heat. The number who perished is unknown.

Those days 58 years ago were the beginning of what Palestinians call al-Nakba, “the catastrophe.” Al-Nakba continues to this day for Arabs unlucky enough to live near Israel. Al-Nakba is unknown to all but a few in this country. Most Americans still foolishly ask, “Why do they hate us?” or dismiss Arabs as crazed, violent people with no reason to be upset.

Pointing out that Israel sent thousands to die in the desert always results in an outpouring of invective peculiar to entitled groups. The charges are made as if by rote. Every critic is labeled an anti-Semite, or a terrorist sympathizer. We are endlessly told that Israel is America’s ally, and the only democracy in the Middle East.

Americans are permitted to be “anti” any nation on earth, but special scorn and punishment is heaped on anyone who dares express criticism of Israel, whose supporters are blatant in their demand that everyone either join the cheerleading or keep quiet. Israel insists on singling itself out to commit acts that are rejected by every other democracy on earth, yet mention of Israel’s killing of civilians is inevitably followed by a plaintive wail that Israel is being singled out for criticism.

The military industrial complex, neocons who publicly declared that Israel should be the only military power in the region, and right wing Christians who yearn for the rapture are the deciders. Politicians who have dared to defy Israel and its American supporters have all been targeted for political defeat. Facing an opponent financed by AIPAC is the price to pay for speaking up.

The Christian right has joined in the Israeli protection racket. They are far more right wing than they are Christian. Some believe that the rapture will come faster if Israel kills more people. Others think that Israel is anointed of God and should be allowed to do what it wants. They seem to forget the Old Testament prophets who never shrank from condemning Israel’s rulers. Doing the bidding of the powerful trumps anything they may have learned in Sunday school.

Israelis must end the occupation of Palestine. They must tear down the wall, remove settlements, free prisoners and make monetary restitution for the devastation of Palestine. Of course, the United States government would actually do that. The damage done with American permission will only be undone on our dime.

Secondly, Israel must join the Non Proliferation Treaty, as Iran has done, and submit to inspection of their arsenal containing between 100 and 300 nuclear warheads. The numbers of nukes are guesses because Israel neither denies nor confirms their existence.

If Israel will follow through on those actions it will have the support of most of the world and it will have true security instead of the security it now has. The security of a mad dog that terrorizes the neighborhood.

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Human Shields: Shielding the Truth

During Israel’s 2006 onslaught and invasion of Lebanon, Israeli spokespeople and British media figures have increasingly blamed the high number of Lebanese civilian casualties on Hizbollah using them as “human shields.” The group has stringently denied this.

Israeli commentator Amos Oz, in a July 20 opinion piece in the Evening Standard, used the term “human sandbags.” His claim was run in a front-page news story in the paper, with the huge headline “The Human Sandbags.” He was the only source in the article, and there was no attempt to ask human rights groups, journalists or Lebanese officials to verify whether this very serious allegation is true.

A day later, I was interviewed on radio with former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy, who repeated this claim, as did regular columnist Frederick Forsyth in the July 28 edition of the Daily Express, and Leo McKinstry in the Sun on July 31.

Israel and its sympathisers have been using this excuse for the killing of Lebanese civilians even more since the bombing on July 30 of a four-story residential building in Qana, killing dozens, mainly women and children.

However, reporters at the scene said they had seen no Hizbollah fighters or action at the time, none of the bodies recovered have been militants, rescue workers have found no weapons in the building that was struck, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that “Israel has not presented any evidence to show that Hizbollah was present in or around the building that was struck at the time of the attack.” This scenario has been repeated many times during Israel’s attacks.

HRW says responsibility for the “appalling” Qana attack “rests squarely with the Israeli military,” calling it “the latest product of an indiscriminate bombing campaign that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have waged in Lebanon.” Executive Director Kenneth Roth says the attack “suggests that the Israeli military is treating southern Lebanon as a free-fire zone.”[1]

“The concept of ‘free-fire’ zones is incompatible with international humanitarian law,” says Irene Khan, Amnesty International’s secretary general. “The attack in Qana is symptomatic of the way in which this conflict has been fought to date and indicates either that Israel is failing to take necessary precautions to spare civilians or that it has intentionally launched a disproportionate attack on civilians.”[2]

Furthermore, Arab Media Watch has spoken to numerous sources on the ground in Lebanon, including several international human rights organisations (Amnesty, Save the Children, Oxfam, HRW and Unicef), British journalists from the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mirror and the Guardian, the Lebanese ambassador in London and a professor at the American University of Beirut, and none have seen any evidence to back the claim that Hizbollah is using civilians as human shields.

HRW Emergencies Director Peter Bouckaert describes Israel’s claim as “a convenient excuse...[O]ur investigations have not found evidence to support Israeli allegations that Hizbullah are intentionally endangering Lebanese civilians by systematically fighting from civilian positions...[T]ime and again villagers tell us that Hizbullah is fighting from the hills. Meanwhile, the homes hit by Israel have only civilians in them.”[3]

A source at Oxfam described the allegation as “nonsense” by “the Israeli propaganda machine” to create “very dodgy journalism.” Independent correspondent Robert Fisk, who lives in Lebanon and has reported from the country for more than 20 years, called it “bullshit.” A reporter for the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper known for its pro-Israeli editorial policy, called it “total and utter rubbish,” “completely retarded,” “a whole lot of crap” and “simply not true.” Another Telegraph reporter described the claim as “absolutely wrong.” The Lebanese ambassador described it as “really stupid,” and Professor Omar Nashabe called it “incorrect,” “inadequate” and “baseless.”

The sources said such allegations were nothing new. “This came up previously during the occupation of the south of Lebanon,” said Nicole Choueiry, Amnesty’s press officer for the Middle East and North Africa.

This is “the usual thing they say about Hizbollah,” said Donatella Rivera, Amnesty’s researcher on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. “It’s a very old story. Israel has been saying that about Gaza and Palestine in general forever, so it’s a broken record.”

Fisk said: “There’s a general lie going around that Arabs don’t love their children, that they want to sacrifice them, the idea being that all Arabs are basically savages and awful people. The generic thing is to make the Arabs uncaring of their own children, and that they are basically animals. It is part of the beastialisation of Arabs, and this sounds like the same thing.”

Sources poured scorn on the idea that Lebanese civilians were unfortunate collateral damage as Israel bombed areas from where Hizbollah were firing rockets. “Israel has pinpoint accuracy,” said a Telegraph reporter.

“Israel has one of the most advanced technological armies in the world, with equipment that can allow it to pinpoint the exact target or location they want,” said Nashabe. “This means they are fully responsible for where their bombs land. They have the advanced technology, whereas Hizbollah does not. If you look statistically, the Israeli army has bombarded more civilian targets than the resistance has.”

Fisk added: “How do you explain that the air force that uses pinpoint and surgical precision manages to kill so many children, young women and old people? The only way you can explain it, other than you don’t care, is to say ‘oh well, they were being used as human shields by animals like Hizbollah.’”

Sources said the idea of the Lebanese group using civilians as human shields is absurd considering it draws most of its support from people in the areas it is based.

“A lot of these people support Hizbollah because they live in the south and it’s the only group that has ever helped them,” said a Telegraph reporter. “It has built schools and hospitals while no one paid any attention to them from the central government. If Hizbollah was using people as human shields, it wouldn’t get their support.”

Fisk said: “Most of them are with their own children. Why would they use them as human shields?” Nashabe reiterated this sentiment: “Hizbollah are part of the population. They would not hide behind their own children or family.”

HRW states that even if Hizbollah were to locate military targets in populated areas, “Israel must refrain from launching any attack that may be expected to cause excessive civilian loss in comparison to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. That is, a violation by Hizbollah in this regard does not justify Israeli forces ignoring the civilian consequences of a planned attack. The intentional launch of an attack in an area without regard to the civilian consequences or in the knowledge that the harm to civilians would be disproportionately high compared to any definite military benefit to be achieved would be a serious violation of international humanitarian law, and a war crime.

“In any event, the presence of a Hizbollah commander or military facility in a populated area never justifies attacking the area as such rather than the particular military target. It is a prohibited indiscriminate attack, and a war crime, to treat an entire area as a military target instead of attacking the particular military facilities or personnel within that area.”[4]

Amnesty reiterates this, saying that “international humanitarian law makes it clear that even if one side is shielding itself behind civilians, such an abuse does not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians.”[5]

Moreover, it is truly ironic that the accuser is long known to use human shields itself, which is a war crime. “Hizbollah are not known to use human shields, whereas the Israelis are,” said an Oxfam source. “They have a history as long as my arm.”

Israel has been accused numerous times by internationally respected human rights organisations of using Palestinians as shields during the current uprising against occupation, most recently by Oxfam and Israel’s B’Tselem on 21 July 2006, though this was not reported by the media.[6][7]

Fisk said he personally saw Israelis use Lebanese as human shields during their 1980s invasion, “by forcing them to sit in front of their armoured vehicles as they were going into the streets. So for human shields, the experts are the Israelis.”

Rivera concludes: “Ultimately, the fact is the children are being killed by Israeli bombs.”

Notes

1. http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/07/30/lebano13881.htm
2. http://news.amnesty.org/index/engmde020022006
3. http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/07/31/isrlpa13882.htm
4. http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/07/17/lebano13748.htm#10
5. http://news.amnesty.org/index/engmde020022006
6. http://www.oxfam.org.uk/press/releases/palestine210706.htm
7. http://www.btselem.org/english/Human_Shields/20060720_Human_Shiel ds_in_Beit_Hanun.asp

Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi is the Arab Media Watch chairman.

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The Logic of Israel’s War on Civilians

A Sky News newscaster, interviewing British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett on July 30 demanded an answer to this paraphrased question: if indeed Israel had precise intelligence that a Hizbollah operative was present in the village of Qana, in South Lebanon, how could it possibly fail to realize that the area was also crowded with civilians?

The question was prompted by Beckett’s insistence that while Israeli attacks that victimize uncountable civilians — like that in Qana which killed scores, mostly children — were “appalling,” they resulted from tactical errors, and were never deliberate. In fact, she referred to the “apparent deliberate targeting” — as described by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan — of the UN peacekeepers compound in South Lebanon and the killing of four unarmed observers, as a “mistake.”

In effect, Israel is hardly accused — at least in the Western narrative of the Middle East crisis, as exemplified in media coverage and political discourse — of deliberately targeting civilians, even among those who are daring enough to describe Israel’s response to Hizbollah’s “provocation” — the capturing of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 — as “disproportionate.”

Israel often acknowledges — with “regret” — the high civilian toll of its war; sometimes it goes as far as apologizing for such unintended “mistakes.” The Israeli government however is adamant that it will continue to carry out such attacks; that it’s those who “hide among the civilian population” which deserve the blame, not Israel; that neither Hizbollah nor Palestinian resistance groups seem to care much for the life of Israeli civilians, while Israel does care for Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. In fact, and ironically, according to various Israeli politicians and media pundits, one of Israel’s objectives is to liberate its neighbors from the suffocating grip of terrorists.

An objective journalist is expected to highlight both narratives, without pointing out the fallacies of one or the other. Such “objectivity” has served Israel well, since facts on the ground are hardly consistent with its claims.

For example, out of nearly 4,000 Palestinians killed during the Second Palestinian Uprising — in the last 5 years — the overwhelming majority have been civilians, many of whom are children. Such figures are also mirrored in much of the damage inflicted by Israel’s military machine against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories: the great majority of the wounded, the destroyed infrastructure, the confiscated land, the razed orchards, the bulldozed homes, etc, have been overwhelmingly civilian. Wednesday, July 26, was hardly a diversion from that norm, as 29 Palestinian civilians, many of whom were children as young as a few months old, were killed in northern Gaza, all in the span of 24 hours.

As of today, including the Qana onslaught, the number of Lebanese civilians confirmed dead has crossed the 750 mark; more than one third of them are children, according to UN counts. Likewise, the destroyed Lebanese infrastructure, not only in Hizbollah’s strongholds in the south, but across Lebanon was built primarily for the benefit of the civilian population. The handy excuse that Hizbollah and Hamas fighters launch their rockets at Israel from civilian areas, no longer suffices. There is yet to be one shred of evidence, one video or bit of satellite footage — at least in the ongoing war in Lebanon — that confirms such an allegation. In fact, it seems imprudent for Hizbollah’s fighters to expose their operations to Israel’s informers, while they can safely fire from the numerous orchards dotting the south region.

Concurrently, the “unintended mistakes” theory, promulgated by Israel’s apologists — the Bush Administration, among others — is utterly inconsistent with claims promoted by Israel and its apologists that Israel is the “most moral army in the world,” and that Israel uses the most advanced war technology to avoid harming civilians.

These allegations cannot all be accurate, all at once. If Israel is indeed very “moral,” then why does its army continue to repeat the same “unintended mistakes,” over and over again, for decades? Is it possible that the killing and wounding of tens of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians as a result of those “unintended mistakes” didn’t induce a very moral army to reexamine its tactics and adopt a decisive change in military policy? Wouldn’t that be the “moral” thing to do? (Note that the small village of Qana was bombed by the Israeli air force in 1996, as civilians were seeking shelter in a UN compound, killing over 100 people.)

The second claim, that Israel strives to obtain high-tech (American) weapon technology to minimize civilian casualties, is also fraudulent. Once again, the numbers indicate the precise antithesis; denoting that either the “fifth strongest army in the world” is so horribly inept, that most of its military strikes result in blunders, or that the killing of civilians is in reality part and parcel of Israel’s military strategy. This latter assertion, in my opinion, is the true objective — but why?

Israeli officials may parrot to the media that Hizbollah (like Hamas) is an outsider force that holds no legal legitimacy, and that its true strength arises from its terrorist links to Iran and Syria. Conversely, Israeli conduct on the ground gives evidence to a different conviction: punishing the true party — ordinary Lebanese — that provide Hizbollah with the needed support to sustain such costly military confrontations with Israel, or ordinary Palestinians who elected Hamas to power.

Both Hizbollah and Hamas are homegrown; there should be little contention over this. But they cannot be scrutinized divorced from their immediate surroundings: Hizbollah emerged as a result of Israel’s frequent bloodbaths in Lebanon and its members are comprised primarily of victims of Israel’s past wars, while Hamas sprung from Palestinian refugee camps in the Occupied Territories and has been sustained with the support of the poorest segments of the population. Whatever strategic alliance they hold outside — Iran, Syria or whomever else that is willing to acknowledge their right to fight Israel — is out of a desperate need for a safe haven, financial assistance and a political platform.

Israel knows well that “destroying” Hizbollah and Hamas is a losing battle — they have tried this time and again, and have failed with each attempt.

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Hizbollah Is a Resistance Organization, Not a Militia

Excerpts from “What! A New Sykes/Picot Agreement? The United States Supported by France Wants to Impose This on the Arab States,” MidEast Web, November 5, 2004.

Hizbollah is a resistance organization, not a militia. Hizbollah, which was the major contributor to the liberation of South Lebanon and West Bekaa (which is 10 per cent of the total area of Lebanon) over a 22-year period was and is still performing its duty with the blessing of the Lebanese Government and people. Without its sacrifices and those of other resistance parties, this part of Lebanon would have been still occupied by the Zionist enemy, if not colonized as the Palestinian West Bank.

It is without doubt a Zionist interest to concentrate on the disarmament of the resistance forces [...] The resistance forces are a necessity for the security of Lebanon against the violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, and a vital need to proceed with the final and total liberation of the country and hopefully Palestine. On this basis the Zionist entity and its ally/supporter the United States see in the Lebanese resistance a threat to their interests in the region, that is their military, political and economic interests, namely their total domination of the area.

Excerpts from “UN Security Council Resolution 1559,” MidEast Web, September 2, 2004

[In this regard,] the United Nations Security Council passed resolution 1559 calling for non-interference in Lebanese affairs, for disarming of militias and for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon in accordance with previous UN resolutions.

A key provision of Resolution 1559 was disarmament of militias:

3. Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias;

4. Supports the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory;

The resolution was adopted by a vote of 9 in favor (Angola, Benin, Chile, France, Germany, Romania, Spain, United Kingdom, United States) to none against, with 6 abstentions (Algeria, Brazil, China, Pakistan, Philippines, Russian Federation).

A Lebanese representative made the following statement, quoted in the UN Press Release.

Mohamad Issa, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants of Lebanon, said that there were no militias in Lebanon. There was only the national Lebanese resistance, which appeared after the Israeli occupation and which would remain so long as Israel remained. The resistance force existed alongside the Lebanese national forces. Lebanon determined the presence and size of the force, depending on the country’s need. The authority of Lebanon extended to all parts of Lebanon except those areas occupied by Israel.

He said that submitting the draft resolution confused two matters. The first was the distinguished relations linking Lebanon and Syria, which achieved their joint interests, particularly the interests of Lebanon. Friendly Syria had helped Lebanon to maintain stability and security within its borders. It had warded off radicalism and violence, fed by the violence exercised by Israel against the Palestinians. Secondly, the matter was purely internal, and related to the presidential elections to be held in Lebanon. Syrian troops came to Lebanon in accordance with legitimate requests. Their presence was guarded by an agreement concluded by two sovereign States. Those troops had been redeployed several times. They contributed to rebuffing the radical reactions emanating from repulsive Israeli actions.

Hence, saying that Syria supported radical movements in Lebanon was not true. To the contrary, Syria supported the Lebanese national resistance, which desired to liberate the territories occupied by Israel. The draft resolution was talking about supporting free and just elections in Lebanon. He did not believe that internal matter had ever been discussed in the Council relating to any Member State. It was an internal matter, he stressed. The United Nations had not interfered in that matter with regard to any other State. There was no justification for the draft resolution, which constituted an interference in the internal affairs of a Member State.

In addition, it discussed bilateral relations between two friendly nations, neither of which had filed any complaint concerning those relations. He called for the withdrawal of the draft resolution.

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