[News] Israel's latest invasion of Lebanon and western culpability

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2006%20Opinion%20Editorials/August/3%20o/Israel's%20latest%20invasion%20of%20Lebanon%20and%20western%20culpability%20By%20Habib%20Siddiqui.htm

Israel's latest invasion of Lebanon and western culpability

By Habib Siddiqui

Al-Jazeerah, August 3, 2006

It should be quite obvious by now that Israel’s 
latest invasion of Gaza and Lebanon had very 
little to do with rescuing her fallen soldiers. 
As I write, the rogue state, run by some of the 
worst war-criminals of our time, has killed some 
750 unarmed Lebanese civilians - mostly women and 
children, destroyed mosques, bridges, roads, 
houses, schools, hospitals and much of the 
infra-structure of southern half of Lebanon. As 
in 1996, the terrorist state has massacred scores 
of civilians in Qana this past weekend (July 30, 2006).

Israel has bombed Red Cross center and 
ambulances, and a UN observation post killing 4 
observers. She has displaced a million people 
inside the country, some of whom are forced to 
take shelters in even prisons. Infants have been 
forcibly separated from their parents, and the 
elderly from their care-taking children. Relief 
supplies are difficult to get to the internally 
displaced refugees. Nothing is immune from Israel’s bombing campaign.

If a small fraction of these crimes were to be 
committed by any invading state, in contravention 
to international laws, Christ-loving Bush and 
Blair and their European friends in the NATO 
would be screaming aloud demanding cease-fire, 
failing which they would threaten the invading 
nation with all kinds of actions - UN sanctions, 
embargo and war. But when it comes to crimes of 
Israel, these western warlords are her greatest 
cheer-leaders and are insanely, as if 
demon-possessed, unperturbed by gruesome killings 
and massive destruction, wreaked by the pariah 
state. Like psychopathic and megalomaniac serial 
killers, they want to see more Muslim blood, more 
destruction, literally hell on earth and not 
cease-fire, because to them Muslim lives and 
properties are cheap and expendable. What a 
display of compassionate conservatism by Bush and Blair!

As Michael Schure, an ex-CIA analyst and the 
foremost expert on al-Qaeda, has said, Bush and 
Blair through their both overt and covert 
supports of such monumental crimes against 
Muslims have repeatedly shown that they are the 
worst enemies of Muslims. They have given 
credence to everything that their adversaries -- 
conveniently depicted in the West as the ‘bad’ 
guys, the so-called terrorists -- have been 
saying about the West. No bones about it. Truly, 
it is not OBL and al-Zawahiri that is 
radicalizing Muslims throughout the world, but 
these two white-collar Christian warlords that 
epitomize evil and hypocrisy. With world leaders 
like these, who needs OBL to bring the Armageddon on earth?

Exchange of prisoners between contending parties 
is not new. It takes place all the time. Even 
Israel has, in the past, negotiated such 
exchanges. Moreover, the demand of Hizbullah and 
Hamas to exchange captured Israeli soldiers for 
Muslims prisoners held by Israel is justified 
given the fact that it is Israel that for decades 
has been holding thousands of Palestinian 
prisoners and hundreds of Lebanese citizens -- 
many of whom are women, children and (even) 
infants -- some literally kidnapped.

Remember that although Israel was forced to 
withdraw from southern Lebanon in 2000, some 22 
years after its invasion, she continued to hold 
onto the Sheba Farms in defiance of UN Security 
Council resolution 425, and refused the release 
of 300 Lebanese prisoners including a number of 
Hizbullah leaders. Israel also refused to 
handover to the Lebanese government the map of 
land mines planted in south Lebanon. She 
continued to violate the air, water and land 
sovereignty of Lebanon. Even the plea of Lebanese 
Prime Minister Fuad Siniora with the Bush 
Administration to pressure Israel did not produce 
any result. So, when all the options for a 
peaceful resolution of these legitimate concerns 
were balked at by the Zionist regime, Hizbullah 
captured two Israeli soldiers when they violated 
Lebanese sovereignty on July 12.

Like any honest dealer, Hizbullah promptly called 
for the exchange of prisoners. Unfortunately, 
Israel does not care about the fate of those 
soldiers. She used the event as a pretext for 
something more sinister, something that remained 
unfulfilled from the Zionist blueprint for 
six-decade long history of annexation and 
annihilation, massacre and manipulation – all 
sanctioned as ‘kosher’ acts by her goy western 
patrons. The current murderous campaign of Israel 
inside Lebanon cannot, therefore, be grasped 
without an understanding of statements of its 
founding fathers -- all conniving individuals, if 
not homicidal terrorists, some later to be 
honored as ministers and presidents in the pariah state of Israel.

In 1919, the World Zionist Organization submitted 
to the Versailles Peace Conference, held near 
Paris its official plan for the creation of a 
Jewish state in Palestine. The submitted map 
included the southern part of Lebanon to the 
Litani River, the Syrian Golan Heights, and the 
West and East banks of the Jordan River. -

Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, 
said of his negotiation with the German 
Chancellor: "He asked what territory we wanted to 
have, whether as far north as Beirut or even 
beyond that. I said: We will ask for what we need 
- more immigrants, the more land." (The Complete 
Diaries of Theodore Herzl, p. 701) That was 
probably in late 19th or early 20th century, 
before his death. Now let us see what the founder 
of Zionist state of Israel, David Ben Gurion, 
wrote in his diary on May 21, 1947: "The Achilles 
heel of the Arab coalition is the Lebanon. Muslim 
supremacy in this country is artificial and can 
be easily overthrown. A Christian state ought to 
be set up there, with its southern frontier on 
the river Litani. We would sign a treaty of 
alliance with the state. Thus, when we have 
broken the strength of the Arab legion and bombed 
Amman, we could wipe out Trans-Jordan; after that 
Syria could fall. And if Egypt still dared to 
make war on us, we would bomb Port Said, 
Alexandria and Cairo. We should thus end the war 
and would have paid to Egypt, Assyria and Chaldea 
on behalf of our ancestors."[1] He also said, 
“The present map of Palestine was drawn by the 
British mandate. The Jewish people have another 
map which our youth and adults should strive to 
fulfill -- From the Nile to the Euphrates."

Moshe Dayan told the Times of London (June 25, 
1969) that, "Our fathers had reached the 
frontiers which were recognized in Partition 
Plan. Our generation reached the frontiers of 
1949. Now the Six-day generation (referring to 
those who participated in 1967 war) has managed 
to reach Suez, Jordan and the Golan Heights. This 
is not the end. After the present cease-fire 
lines, there will be new ones. They will extend 
beyond Jordan - perhaps to Lebanon and perhaps to Central Syria as well."

 From the sample of statements of Zionist 
leaders, shared above, it is not difficult to 
fathom why Israeli Prime Minister Olmert 
preferred invasion of Lebanon over negotiation to 
exchange prisoners. Israel has always been a 
colonial enterprise that thrives on opportunities 
for practicing state-run terrorism and 
colonization against Arabs.[2] The capture of 
Israeli soldiers provides that criminal 
justification to destroy and slaughter, let alone 
an opportunity to set up a client state in the 
plundered territory that would safeguard Israel’s 
so-called inalienable rights to intervene. 
Invasion comes rather easy with Israeli warlords. 
To these hawks, Barak’s 2000 pullout from the 
‘Security zone’ was a mistake and needed to be 
corrected. They want a ‘Buffer zone.’

Taking advantage of civil war inside Lebanon, 
arisen out of power struggle between various 
Lebanese factions and foreign meddling, Israel 
occupied south Lebanon in March 1978. She 
withdrew in June after transferring control of 
the territories to her surrogate Christian South 
Lebanese Army (SLA). In 1981, fight broke out 
between Israeli-supported Christians and Syrian 
forces, and Beirut was heavily bombed by Israel. 
In June 1982 in a genocidal mood, Ariel Sharon’s 
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invaded Lebanon to 
eliminate the PLO. According to western analysts 
nearly 18,000 Muslims were killed, about a 
million rendered homeless, another half-a-million 
awaiting death in Israeli seized territories of southern Lebanon.

After destroying much of Beirut and southern 
Lebanon, and aiding in the massacre of thousands 
of refugees in the Sabra and Chatila refugee 
camps, the IDF partially evacuated from occupied 
Lebanon (holding onto what it described as the 
'southern security zone' that ran along Israel's 
northern border and extended 18 miles deep into 
Lebanese territories in the south) and let 
multi-national forces from U.S., Britain, France 
and Italy to enter into the arena. These 
so-called "peace keepers", instead of really 
preserving and working for peace as neutral 
arbiters, took the side of Israel and her 
surrogate forces among the Falangists. Worse 
still, the U.S. Sixth Fleet fired mortars that 
killed hundreds of Muslim civilians, destroyed 
villages, towns and mountains that were lived by the Shi’a and Druze.

Such atrocities and betrayals brought about the 
emergence of resistance fighters of Hizbullah, 
born in families of the Shi’ite victims and out 
of the ashes of south Lebanon. As the USA and 
France acted more like proxies to pro-Israel 
forces in the region, the U.S. Embassy (April 
1983), and French and U.S. Army barracks (October 
23, 1983) were attacked by these resistance 
fighters killing nearly 300. By the time the 
Civil War ended, Hizbullah, with its militia, 
refused to disarm in fighting the Israeli 
presence in the security zone. The Lebanese 
government with a weak military was in no 
position to contest IDF and found it prudent to 
overlook Hizbullah’s efforts to securing the 
southern border. Thus, the latter had a de facto 
approval from its constituency.  [A poll 
conducted by the Arab-American Institute as 
recently as April of 2006 showed widespread 
support for Hizbullah. Only 6% of Lebanese people 
agreed to a disarmament of the group.][3]

Hizbullah also did a superb job building clinics, 
hospitals and schools, paving roads and 
constructing homes, and rebuilding houses and 
other infrastructure in war-torn Lebanon. These 
activities earned them immense popularity in the 
south and made them a major political and social force to be reckoned with.

The presence of the IDF and its surrogate SLA in 
the south was a source of constant irritation for 
Lebanon and her people, and led to hostilities 
with Hizbullah and the Lebanese forces. In April 
1996, during Israeli "Grapes of Wrath" campaign 
to destroy Hizbullah guerrillas, Israeli 
artillery gunners shelled a United Nations base 
in Qana, east of the port city of Tyre, killing 
more than 100 civilians sheltering there. That 
massacre at Qana galvanized the western leaders to arrange a ceasefire.

Fighting between the Hizbullah and the IDF 
resumed again in June of 1999. In May 2000, under 
the new Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the IDF 
started to gradually withdraw from southern 
Lebanon turning over its positions to its ally - 
the SLA. However, amidst incessant pressure from 
the Hizbullah, SLA collapsed, leading Israel to 
accelerate its withdrawal, which it accomplished 
by late May. Nonetheless, she held on to the Sheba Farms.

On Sunday, July 30, 2006, under new Prime 
Minister Olmert, the IDF repeated the war crimes 
of 1996 through missile strikes in the village of 
Qana. Villagers had gathered in a shelter in one 
of Qana's buildings, probably thinking that the 
massacre of 1996 would not be repeated by savage 
Israelis. But they were wrong.  Lebanese Red 
Cross officials said that 58 people died in the 
Israeli assault on the village, including 34 
children. Rescuers dug through the debris to 
remove dozens of bodies. (See 
<http://habibsiddiqui.unibd.org/>http://habibsiddiqui.unibd.org 
for pictures of war from Lebanon)

In 1996, Qana was the price Lebanon had to pay 
for world leaders to end the killing. But this 
time, with the US and its neoconservative, 
pro-Likud, Bible-believing leadership (with 
members in the Senate and Congress, with rare 
exceptions) firmly behind Israel’s war-crimes, no 
such ceasefire is in the making. So, when the 
rest of the world cries out foul and is saddened 
with savagery of Israel, and demonstrates for 
ceasefire, leaders like Bush, Blair and Condi 
Rice show how evil western leadership has become. 
Their behavior is immoral, demented, sadistic and 
criminal. Truly, if we are looking for a 
modern-day Nero, we have it in these blood-thirsty maniacs.

In their delirious mindset, these warlords and 
war-criminals have forgotten that when the doors 
of negotiation, seeking fairness and justice, are 
shut down, radical elements -- prone to seek 
alternative ways to redress their grievances -- 
always emerge. If that happens, don’t mumble ‘why 
they hate us?’ It is events like Qana that 
produces recruits for 9/11, 7/11 and 7/7.

The current events in the Occupied Palestine and 
Lebanon once again have shown the utter moral 
bankruptcy of the West and its leadership, 
especially of the USA and the UK. Hypocrisy is 
its hallmark. The West can preach equality, 
liberty, democracy and human rights, but they 
truly don’t mean them when it comes to vast 
majority of non-whites. So, when Israel commits 
monumental crimes against Arabs, violating scores 
of international laws and UN charters, the USA 
and her western allies have consistently cheered 
and supported her criminal activities.

It is a high time for conscientious human beings 
around the world to demand trial of President 
Bush of USA and Prime Minister Blair of UK in the 
International Court of Justice for aiding in the 
massacre of hundreds of civilians in Lebanon and 
the Gaza strip (let alone causing deaths and 
destruction in Iraq), failing which, I am afraid, 
the UN and its agencies will increasingly be 
viewed, and justifiably so, only as a club to 
inflict pain on victims and never to redress their grievances.

It is said that when criminals and demons rule 
our world, it is better for human beings to be 
dead than alive. How long will humanity let these 
modern-day Neroes to rule our world?


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