Early this morning around 12:30 Israeli F-16 jets dropped bombs on the southern Lebonese city of Qana. In this attack a building housing refugees who had fled from earlier Israeli bombardment were targetted and the men, women and children sleeping in the basement of the building were killed when the Israeli bombs demolished the building. The dispropotionate use of firepower by the Israelis is causing universal concern and while the world waits for the US to rein in the Israelis the pace of relentless killing continues without respite. Throughout the past 18 days Israeli jets have pounded hospitals,schools, appartment buildings, shopping centres, churches and civil infrastructure. They have replicated the pattern of destruction initiated in the GazaStrip--kill, attack civilians, destroy civic infrastructure and hospitals. In Lebanon the Israelis have gone one step beyond what they were doing in Gaza: they are follwing refugee convoys and killing them as they attempt to flee. This pattern of repraisals shows that the claim that Hizbollah is using civilians as cover for their rockets is false. Surely it is impossible to fire Katusha Rockets from refugee convoys.
The destruction rained upon Beirut city is so severe that parts of the city have been reduced to a moonscape with just rocks, glass and the stench of rotting flesh hanging like a hat overhead. The Isralis are not even allowing the Lebonese time to bury their dead. The pace of bombing is continuous and systematic. Using GPS and digital imaging the Israeli Air Force has been targetting the civilian areas killing in Southern Lebanon, Beirut ,Tyre and Qana over 600 civilians, the majority of whom are children and women. Helpless victims of a war state that has gone out of control. I wonder why the political leadership of Israel does not understand that for each of such crimes they commit, the chances of a lasting peace recedes. It is likely that Israel is not interested in peace and along with their big power supporter is taking the world for a ride when publically they endorse a two state solution and take every opportunity to kill, maim, and bomb innocent civilians who are not their enemy. The Internationall Commmunity has already began to feel that the UN ,like the League of Nations which could do little to control the Germans in the years before World War II,has become an embarrasment. Standing by watching helplessly as children and women are incenerated in the shelling and bombing unleashed by the State of Israel.
The International Community is aware that cluster munitions are being used by Israel against civilians. Howtizer fired cluster munitions are the most horrible and infernal engines of death from the death factories that supply such weapons. The USA has rushed an urgent supplyn of such weapons to Israel and they are being deployed against civilians. In Beirut Hospital the emergency services are running on generators and there is no supply of oxygen or medicines. Diabetic patients have run out of insulin and several have died in the last few weeks. The civic infrastructure has been completely and thoroughly destroyed.
The Israeli claim that they target civilian areas because they protect the Hizbollah and are launching ground for Katusha Rockets is to say the least an alibi. This is only a justification for large scale boming and causing civilian deaths as reparisals. Israel has not produced a shred of evidence to back this claim. The "embedded" American journalists who are keen to toe the line of their governemnt have visited the sites bombed by the Israelis and have clearly shown that they were only residential areas. No weapon, let alone rocket launchers have been found in the ruins of the bombed out buildings. It is an Orwellian tactic first pioneered by Dr Goebels: Repeat a lie a hundred times and people will start believing it. The cityscape of Souther Beirut, is packed with narrow lanes and by lanes with many high rise building, buit after the 74 civil war. It is impossible to fire rockets from such packed residential areas and Israel is using this to cover the warcimes it is commiting in Lebanon.
The capture of the 2 Israli soldiers by Hizbollah is generally trotted out as the cause for the outbreak of this round of hostilities. Even here the Israelis are being highly economical with truth. On July 29,1989 Israli commandos invaded the Lebonese toen of Jibchit and took Shiekh Abdul Karim captive in order to use him as a bargaining chip for excahning with some prisoners held by Hizbollah. UN Resolution 638 was of course ignored. In May 1994 Mustafe al-Dirani was kidnapped and brought to Israel, an act of what the Bushmen will call "Extraordinary rendition". He was held as an hostage inorder to be exchanged for the Israeli aviator Ron Arad who was shot down over Sidon in 1986. I can give more ibnstances but will stop at two just to prove that Israelis have gone in for prisoner exchanges in the past and while Hizbollah's actions were wrong, they were hardly the ones who begann this practice of taking prisoners for hostage and holding them on cAMPM 1391.
Even if we admit that Hizbollah did a morally reprehensible and politically irresponsible act, the reparisals launched by Israel have far far outweighed the intial act. Killing civilains on an industrial scale usinmg air power shows that Israel is now a state waging war against humanity and the International Community must act in adecicive manner to protect the lives of innocent men, women and children of Lebanon. Lebanon des not even have anti aircraft guns and to that extent the country has been demilitarise. In fact by its brutal, barbaric and savage actions against civilians Israel has forfeited whatever respect and synpathy it had.
What can the UN do. The UN was ineffective in Iraq and USA went ahead with its illegal war against Iraq and the world is seeing the consequences. UN resolutions 242, 338 and 638 have been ignored with US complicity while UN resolution 1559 is given the status of a biblical prophet. Moreover the negotiations within Lebanon for the implementatioinof this resolution had reached a criticasl stage when Istrael launched it barbaric campaign. The incantation form Israeli ministers that the Katusha Rockets are the cause of this action of reparisal. The fact is that more than 2000 Katusha Rockets have been fired and all of them have been firs from sites located away from the civilian areas. Israel is only using this to justify its callous disregard for the lives of Arab men women and children. It may not be out of place to note that the undercurrent of racism has always poisoned Arab-Israeli relations and by turning Lebanon into a 21st century killing field Israel has ceratinly lost whatever little respect it enjoyed in that part of theworld