Lebanon
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What's wrong with this
picture: Israel attacking the wrong "enemy" Olmert is a new and inexperienced leader. He felt that using his military would "prove" that he was in control and that Israel is a strong country. Unfortunately, he was wrong. More sophisticated and experienced politicians and leaders worldwide were already aware that Israel, a nuclear power, is backed by the richest and most powerful country on Earth. It was not wise to abuse such power. It is also a truism that Hezbollah is not Lebanon, and that Syria and Iran dominate and use Lebanon for their purposes. Mr. Olmert had nothing to prove, little to gain, and much to lose. He played into the hands of Israel's enemies. Kinda like his counterpart in America. Olmert did prove is his inexperience and insouciance. A strong American leader would have reminded him that crippling the emerging democracy in Lebanon was not smart on military, economic, or diplomatic levels. An effective American leader would have strongly denounced the use of American military hardware to destroy the infrastructure of Lebanon. In a thoughtful and prudent American response to this ill-fated aggression, an effective US leader would have exercised their options to defuse the aggression before the damages had been inflicted. A competent American president would have strongly suggested that Israel not act with such haste and imprudence. Unfortunately, we have no such leader. George Bush sent more bombs, neglected his duties, ignored the experts, and went on vacation. Now both Iraq and Lebanon are in crippled and in flames and Israel is more at risk, has lost the moral high ground, and has sacrificed expensive and tenuous political capital. The Bush administration is what is wrong with this picture. They are run by two schools of thought. One is the old school of transnational colonialism. These amoral "internationalists" answer only to the corporate bottom line, and if America or Israel loses... they see this as collateral damage and take the rising costs of oil and new munitions expenditures and no-bid contracts on reconstruction to the bank. The other school of thought is at least as dangerous. They see the globe in fundamentalist terms. These small minds see chaos anywhere on the globe as a sign of the coming "end times" when the earth is consumed by an angry, vengeful, king-like Jesus (or Superman) who, disguised as a mild-mannered messenger from god, comes to the rescue.
And these deep thinkers' fantasy has them floating up to some pontifical pie in the sky heaven while the rest of the earth |
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The most important lesson the United States can
learn from the latest war in Lebanon is that the Bush administration's
policy of disengagement has been a catastrophic failure. Disengagement from World Affairs Is a Failed Policy by Bill Wetzel |
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Lebanese Situation Isn’t Getting a Fair Press Hearing
Until Sunday, when Israeli bombers leveled a three-story building in the
tiny Lebanese village of Oana — killing at least 55 people, most of them
children — the U.S. media have been anything but even-handed in covering
Israel’s three-week assault on southern Lebanon, a stronghold of
Hezbollah.
...
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the
media watchdog group, reported prior to Sunday’s fatal assault: “…
The portrayal of Israel as the innocent victim in the Gaza
conflict is hard to square with the death toll in the months leading up
to the current crisis; between September 2005 and June 2006,
144 Palestinians in Gaza were killed by
Israeli forces, according to a list compiled by the
Israeli human rights group B’tselem; 29 of those killed were children.
During the same period, no Israelis were
killed as a result of violence from Gaza.”
But you’d never know it by reading U.S. newspapers. “On July 24, the day before Hamas’ cross-border raid,” the watchdog group continued, “Israel made an incursion of its own, capturing two Palestinians that it said were members of Hamas (something Hamas denied — The Los Angeles Times, July 26). This incident received far less coverage in the U.S. media than the subsequent seizure of the Israeli solider. The nation’s three leading dailies published one-sided, overly simplistic comments on the Middle East violence. “In the wake of the most serious outbreak of Israeli/Arab violence in years, three U.S. papers — the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times — have each strongly editorialized that Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon were solely responsible for sparking violence and that the Israeli military response was predictable and unavoidable. These editorials ignored recent events that indicate a much more complicated situation,” Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting observed. Under the headline, “Hamas Provokes a Fight,” (June 29), the New York Times editorialized that “the responsibility for this latest escalation rests squarely with Hamas” and that “Israeli military response was inevitable.” In another editorial two weeks later (July 15), the Times said: “It is important to be clear about not only who is responsible for the latest outbreak, but who stands to gain most from its continued escalation. Both questions have the same answer: Hamas and Hezbollah.” The media monitoring group suggests that the fighting did not begin with the capture of two Israeli soldiers. “While Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers may have reignited the smoldering conflict, the Israeli air campaign that followed was not a spontaneous reaction to aggression but a well-planned operation that was years in the making. “ ‘Of all of Israel’s wars since 1984, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared,’ Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, told the San Francisco Chronicle (July 21). By 2004, the military campaigned scheduled to last about three weeks that we’re seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it’s been simulated and rehearsed across the board.’ ” Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting posed a sobering question: If journalists have been told by Israel for more than a year that a war was coming, why are they all pretending that it all started on July 12? That’s a good question. I wish we had some good answers. George E. Curry is editor-in-chief of the NNPA News Service and BlackPressUSA.com.
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From Carnage in Lebanon, a Concession By HELENE COOPER Israel agreed to suspend air strikes in its first significant concession, but the U.S. is still not calling for an immediate cease-fire. A Night of Death and Terror for Lebanese Villagers By SABRINA TAVERNISE The two families staying in the house in Qana that was struck by an Israeli missile had discussed leaving, but they were poor and travel was difficult. BUSH'S ENEMY DU JOUR Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet Hezbollah is a convenient way for Bush to shift focus from the escalating tide of gruesome violence in Iraq. http://www.alternet.org/story/39708/
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Anne Feeney
Folk /
Acoustic / Other UPDATE ON
BEIRUT/LEBANON Many of you know that I (Anne Feeney) was planning a trip to Beirut this summer to visit my son Daniel Berlin and his fiancée, Monique Murad. They have been there for the past two months studying Arabic and enjoying the culture and many pleasures that Beirut has to offer. It is with outrage and utter disbelief that we watch this country being destroyed -- hundreds dead and over 500,000 civilians forced to flee Lebanon with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Dan's blog - http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=40188690 - is filled with first hand observations of Lebanon before and after the attack. Thank goodness Dan and Monique were able to escape and will be safely back in the US on July 27th. Please call Congress and insist that no further weapons be sent by the US to the region and that we join the world in calling upon both sides for an immediate cease fire. http://www.unitedforpeace.org/article.php?id=3326 information about Anne Feeney's worldwide tour: http://annefeeney.com/calendar.html |
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“The country has been torn to shreds,” a desperate Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, said at a meeting he had called of foreign diplomats, including the American ambassador. “Is this the price we pay for aspiring to build our democratic institutions?” he asked in a bitter and emotional speech. “Can the international community stand by while such callous retribution by the state of Israel is inflicted on us?” The Conflict
Can Israel Think Before Shooting?
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Israel Widens Scope of Attacks Across Lebanon
Israel... laid siege to Lebanon, closing
its ports and bombing the only airport and major highways to the outside world.
The blockade trapped many of the estimated 25,000 visiting Americans, among them
Melani Cammett , a Harvard-affiliated professor living in the Back Bay, her
husband, and their two children, ages 3 and 5. ``We're just stuck
basically," she said in a telephone interview as she and her husband weighed
their options. They had not heard from the US embassy in two days. ``There is
very limited information about how to get out." |
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Israel's air and artillery campaign in
Lebanon against Hezbollah and civilian targets has killed 375
people, according to the Lebanese government, and displaced 600,000.
Israel has ordered all 400,000 Lebanese south of the Litani river to
flee or risk getting caught in the crossfire; but many have stayed,
including 70,000 in Tyre , the mayor said. Surveillance drones buzz overhead. Israeli shells from unseen boats offshore pound the coast, while Israeli jets drop either leaflets or bombs from the sky. On the stretch of road in front of Najem Hospital, the air campaign has taken a heavy toll. Across from the hospital's front steps, a Nissan van burned after being struck by an Israeli bomb or artillery shell. Farther down the road lay the rest of the wreckage of the three-car convoy hit by a bomb yesterday. In the other direction, drivers swerved around a 10-foot deep crater. A passenger car had plunged headfirst into the pit, perched almost straight upward. The Srour family left their village in south Lebanon yesterday morning sick of the bombing and convinced they'd be on a boat to Cyprus by evening. An Israeli bomb struck Mahmoud Srour, 8, and his family a few hundred yards from the Najem hospital. They were hoping to reach the safety of central Lebanon from the village of El Mansouri, 7 1/2 miles from Tyre. They were on the way to the Rest House Hotel in Tyre, the seafront resort where refugees from the south gather to plan moves to safer towns farther north. Their car was engulfed in flames. The boy's father, Mohammed, and
one of his brothers died, and an older brother was in surgery.
Mahmoud and his little sister Mariam, 8 months old, sustained severe
burns.Continued... At city hall, Mayor Abed al-Muhsen al-Husseini fielded a torrent of visitors: refugees desperate for housing and medicine, locals desperate for assistance. On Friday, Husseini bought 82 wood coffins for a mass burial in a field near a hospital with his own money; the municipality, he said, doesn't even have enough in its budget to bury the dead. He ticked off a list of destroyed targets, including apartment buildings, civilian homes, bridges, even an irrigation project for banana plantations along the Litani River. Israel, he said, ``is using American weapons to kill civilians." But, Husseini said, the 40,000 Tyre residents and 30,000 refugees who have joined them in the city will stay through the rest of Israel's siege. ``We have dignity," he said. ``We prefer to die on our land than
to beg."
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
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