[News] Disproportionate my foot - War crimes and Lebanon
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Thu Aug 3 13:26:09 EDT 2006
War crimes and Lebanon
Thursday August 3, 2006
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/>The Guardian
The US-backed Israeli assault on Lebanon has left the country numb,
smouldering and angry. The massacre in Qana and the loss of life is
not simply "disproportionate". It is, according to existing
international laws, a war crime.
The deliberate and systematic destruction of Lebanon's social
infrastructure by the Israeli air force was also a war crime,
designed to reduce that country to the status of an Israeli-US
protectorate. The attempt has backfired. In Lebanon itself, 87% of
the population now support Hizbullah's resistance, including 80% of
Christian and Druze and 89% of Sunni Muslims, while 8% believe the US
supports Lebanon. But these actions will not be tried by any court
set up by the "international community" since the US and its allies
that commit or are complicit in these appalling crimes will not permit it.
It has now become clear that the assault on Lebanon to wipe out
Hizbullah had been prepared long before. Israel's crimes had been
given a green light by the US and its loyal British ally, despite the
opposition to Blair in his own country.
In short, the peace that Lebanon enjoyed has come to an end, and a
paralysed country is forced to remember a past it had hoped to
forget. The state terror inflicted on Lebanon is being repeated in
the Gaza ghetto, while the "international community" stands by and
watches in silence. Meanwhile, the rest of Palestine is annexed and
dismantled with the direct participation of the US and the tacit
approval of its allies.
We offer our solidarity and support to the victims of this brutality
and to those who mount a resistance against it. For our part, we will
use all the means at our disposal to expose the complicity of our
governments in these crimes. There will be no peace in the Middle
East while the occupations of Palestine and Iraq and the temporarily
"paused" bombings of Lebanon continue.
Tariq Ali
Noam Chomsky
Eduardo Galeano
Howard Zinn
Ken Loach
John Berger
Arundhati Roy
London
As our political leaders argue over the difference between a
"cessation of hostilities" and a "ceasefire", more and more children
die. The British government (unlike the US) has agreed to be bound by
the UN convention on the rights of the child. This is a legally
enforceable international treaty which enshrines the "right to life"
as one of its four core principles. I would be very interested to
know how the government justifies its actions in relation to its
responsibilities under the convention and why our new children's
commissioners have remained silent on what appears to be a flagrant
disregard of children's rights, as well as a breach of our
international obligations.
Professor Steve Trevillion
University of Leicester
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1835915,00.html>http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1835915,00.html
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