Arab News Special

Arab News:
Editorial: Lebanon Holocaust

31 July 2006
Monday, 31, July, 2006 (06, Rajab, 1427)

Israel's murderous bloody attack yesterday, using US-supplied laser-guided missiles, represents a new low in subhuman depravity. The target was a residential building in the Lebanese village of Qana; 50 people were killed, more than half of them handicapped children. The barbarity of the attack shocked the world and Israel’s statement that it regretted the deaths but that Hezbollah fighters were known to operate from the village does nothing at all to justify such enormous loss of innocent civilian life.

The oft-repeated Israeli mantra — “We warned people to leave” — surely does not stand up to any form of humane scrutiny or to international humanitarian law. The much-vaunted Israeli intelligence that until today boasted it knew if buildings had people in them is now in shreds. What nonsense is the claim of Israeli technological superiority if it flattens a building full of innocent mothers and their children who were simply too poor to flee to safety? Israel hides behind the relative safety of bombing Lebanese towns instead of sending in ground troops to fight. If Israel were truly brave, it would have sent soldiers to find Hezbollah’s alleged missiles instead of slaughtering innocent women and children in cold blood! What has happened is nothing less than Lebanon’s own Holocaust. The descendants of those who fled the European Holocaust are ironically resorting to greater savagery than the Nazis. It is heartbreaking that an atrocity such as Qana should occur but the fact is that it will increase the pressure on Israel, the aggressor, and America, the abettor. Surely after the massacre, diplomatic efforts will pick up steam; a Security Council resolution could be reached in a few days before an international force is deployed. After all, it is America’s reputation and credibility, as much as Lebanon’s people and infrastructure, that are on the line.

There have now been unforeseen changes in the four days since Rome where US Secretary of State Rice refused to call for a cease-fire and decided that it was worth crippling a nascent Arab democracy with hundreds of civilian casualties and infrastructure damage running into billions of dollars. The greatest change is perhaps the extra time the US was willing to allow Israel to continue its decimation of Lebanon. Qana has surely changed that. In Rome, the US obstructed peace efforts, trading an immediate end to the war for a new Middle East, promised by Rice and currently being midwifed by Israel’s ruthless war machine. It was primarily thanks to Rice that there was no going back to the status quo and that Israel’s massacre of Lebanon was allowed to continue. Rice fiddled and Lebanon burned. If something had been done in Rome last week, yesterday’s Qana massacre — whose 1996 ghost still haunts the region’s memories — might not have happened. Had the US been an honest broker last week, the many killings prior to Qana, and Qana itself, might have been avoided. It is not that Washington was powerless to exert pressure or bring about a halt to the destruction of Lebanon by its ally. Because Washington did not want to do anything, it didn’t. What it wanted and sought was a new Middle East. The new Middle East is not about Qana but Qana is its inevitable consequence, one so terrible that Rice canceled a scheduled appearance in Beirut. It has taken the destruction in Qana — indeed of three Arab countries: Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq as well as of countless Arab lives for Rice’s new Middle East to be born. And the international community and the nations of the region have no choice but to bear the pain, no matter how severe, of the birth of this wonderful thing the United States calls the new Middle East.

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=77171&d=31&m=7&y=2006

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Arab News:
Israel Massacres Kids

Agencies
Monday, 31, July, 2006 (06, Rajab, 1427)

QANA, Lebanon, 31 July 2006 — At least 56 people, more than half children, were killed yesterday in an Israeli airstrike that crushed a building, the deadliest attack of the Israeli campaign, raising Lebanon’s overall death toll to over 500. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returned early to Washington with her diplomatic mission derailed after Lebanese leaders told her not to come.

Lebanon’s prime minister said his country would not talk to the Americans over anything but an unconditional cease-fire. Rice, in Jerusalem for talks with Israeli officials, said she was “deeply saddened by the terrible loss of innocent life” but stopped short of calling for an immediate end to the hostilities.

However, she made one of her strongest statements yet saying: “We want a cease-fire as soon as possible.”

The United States has resisted world pressure to call for a halt to the fighting, saying it wants first to ensure a deal is in place that will eliminate Hezbollah fighters from Israel’s border and bring an international force to southern Lebanon.

The missiles struck just after 1 a.m., leveling a three-story building in Qana where two extended families, the Shalhoubs and Hashims, had taken refuge in the basement from heavy Israeli bombardment in the area. Throughout the day, rescue workers were digging through the rubble, lifting out bodies dressed in colorful clothes of women and children. At one point they found a single room with 18 bodies, police said.

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah pledged Riyadh’s full support to Lebanon in the face of Israeli aggression. He also backed Beirut’s position of not holding any negotiations with Israel before the Jewish state agrees to an unconditional cease-fire.

“During a telephone conversation, Siniora briefed the king on the developments in Lebanon, especially the brutal Qana massacre carried out by Israel yesterday which killed tens of innocent people,” the Saudi Press Agency said. Abdullah also supported Siniora’s call for an international investigation into Israeli massacres in Lebanon.

“King Abdullah reiterated the Kingdom’s support for Lebanon and said his country would stand by Lebanon in all situations,” the official agency said.

The Saudi leader later met with his Jordanian counterpart, King Abdallah, in Jeddah and denounced the deaths and destructions caused by Israel in both Palestine and Lebanon. The two Arab leaders called for an end to Israeli aggression.

An official spokesman, meanwhile, denounced the Israeli massacre.

“Saudi Arabia is calling for an immediate cease-fire as well as responding to the demands of the Lebanese government,” the official said.

He also warned against the consequences of Israeli aggression, saying it would increase violence and run out of control.

The Saudi spokesman said Israel dared to attack Lebanon as a result of the failure of the international community to bring about a cease-fire and because of the moral, political and material support received by the Jewish state.

“Why are they killing us? What have we done?” screamed Khalil Shahloub, who was helping pull out the dead until he saw his brother’s body taken out on a stretcher. The dead included at least 34 children and 12 adult women, security officials said.

Israel said Hezbollah had fired rockets from near the building into northern Israel.

Some 5,000 protesters gathered in downtown Beirut, at one point attacking a UN building and burning American flags, shouting, “Destroy Tel Aviv, destroy Tel Aviv” and chanting for Hezbollah’s ally Syria to hit Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel “is not in a hurry to have a cease-fire” before it achieves its goals of decimating Hezbollah.

He told Rice that Israel would need 10 to 14 more days to finish its offensive, according to a senior Israeli government official.

“We will not stop this battle, despite the difficult incidents this morning,” Olmert told his Cabinet after the strike, according to a participant. “We will continue the activity and if necessary it will be broadened without hesitation.”

The Lebanese government this week had been putting forward ideas on disarming Hezbollah and deploying an international force in the south. But after the strike, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora said any negotiations on a broader deal were off.

“We will not negotiate until the Israeli war stops shedding the blood of innocent people,” he told a press conference. He said the Lebanese government still supported the ideas it offered this week, but would not discuss them without a stop in fighting.

Rice was in Jerusalem meeting Israeli leaders, and Siniora’s office said he told Rice not to come to Beirut. Rice disputed that version, telling reporters, “I called him and told him that I was not coming today, because I felt very strongly that my work toward a cease-fire is really here, today.” A US official later said she had decided to return home today morning to work on a UN Security Council resolution.

The carnage fueled global outrage. International reaction was swift and generally scathing. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s personal representative in Lebanon was “deeply shocked and saddened” by the civilian deaths, and called for an immediate cease-fire and an investigation, a UN statement said. Hezbollah vowed to punish Israel for the carnage. “This horrible massacre, like the others, will not remain unpunished,” the group said in a statement.

Regional leaders including Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said the attack was inexcusable and “irresponsible.” Jordan’s King Abdallah denounced it as “criminal aggression.” The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) blasted what it called a “war crime” by Israel.

The United Arab Emirates condemned what it described as an “ugly massacre,” and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said it was a “crime” that underlined the need for an immediate cease-fire in the region. Echoing Hezbollah’s warning of retaliation, Palestinian group Hamas said “all options were open” against Israel which had “crossed all red lines” with its attack on Qana.

The armed wing of Abbas’ Fatah faction said it would target the United States and other Western countries in retaliation. The Iranian regime, which is accused of supplying Hezbollah with rockets to attack Israel from Lebanon, blamed Rice for the Qana attack, saying it was the direct result of her visit to the region. It called for American and Israeli leaders to be put on trial for “crimes against humanity.”

Turkey, India and Pakistan added their voices to the condemnations of the raid. In Europe, Finland, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, said it was “shocked and dismayed” by the strikes on Qana. “There is no justification for attacks causing casualties among innocent civilians, most of them women and children,” it said in a statement, echoing condemnations from Scandinavian and other European countries.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett described the Qana raids as “quite appalling” and said Britain had “repeatedly urged the Israelis to act proportionately.”

German Foreign Minister Franck Walter Steinmeier expressed “profound pity” for the victims of the bombing. He called on Israel to observe “proportion” in its attacks and avoid civilian casualties, and reiterated calls for a swift cease-fire.

French President Jacques Chirac condemned the bombardment as an “unjustifiable action which shows more than ever the need to agree on an immediate cease-fire.”

Spain joined in condemning the Israeli action and the governments of Italy and Ireland also expressed their consternation. The European Union’s foreign policy chief Javier Solana said nothing could justify the Qana bombing, adding that the EU backed an “immediate cease-fire.” Israel said its Defense Minister Amir Peretz had ordered the army to investigate the Qana raid.

Lebanon’s Health Minister Mohammed Khalifeh yesterday put at 750 the death toll in the country after 19 days of Israeli attacks.

In April 1996 more than 100 Lebanese civilians were killed in Qana in the hills east of the port city of Tyre, in an Israeli artillery shelling of a UN base. The civilians had sought refuge with the UN to escape Israeli bombardment and the attack sparked an international outcry that helped end an Israeli offensive.

Meanwhile, Israel launched its second ground incursion into southern Lebanon. Before dawn yesterday, Israeli forces backed by heavy artillery fire crossed the border and clashed with Hezbollah fighters in the Taibeh Project area, some three or four kilometers (1.8 to 2.5 miles) inside Lebanon. Hezbollah said eight Israeli soldiers were killed, while the Israeli Army said only that one of its soldiers had been moderately wounded.

Heavy artillery rained down on the nearby villages of Yuhmor and Arnoun as Israeli jets were seen in the skies overhead. The incursion came after Israeli forces pulled back Saturday from Bint Jbeil launched a week ago. The incursion sparked heavy fighting with Hezbollah fighters, who put up a tougher resistance than expected and appeared to still be in the area after the pullback.

The United Nations World Food Program canceled an aid convoy’s trip to the embattled south, after the Israeli military denied safe passage, the group said in a statement. The six-truck convoy had been scheduled to bring relief supplies to Marjayoun.

Lebanese civilians have suffered the most from the fighting, which broke out after Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid July 12 and killed eight others. Some 458 Lebanese were killed in the fighting through Saturday — before the attacks on Qana. Thirty-three Israeli soldiers have died, and Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have killed 18 civilians, Israeli authorities said, correcting earlier reports of 19 civilian dead. More than 750,000 Lebanese have fled their homes in the fighting. But many thousands more are still believed holed up in the south, taking refuge in schools, hospitals or basements of apartment buildings amid the fighting — many of them too afraid to flee on roads heavily hit by Israeli strikes.

In Qana, Khalil Shalhoub and several other residents said people were simply too terrified to take the road out of the village, which has been attacked repeatedly by rockets and bombs. Charred wreckage and smashed buildings line the roughly 12-kilometer road from Qana to Tyre, where a small amount of humanitarian supplies had arrived. European ships had picked up foreign citizens from Tyre’s port, but there were no evacuations of Lebanese.

On Thursday, the Israeli military’s Al-Mashriq radio that broadcasts into southern Lebanon warned residents that their villages would be “totally destroyed” if missiles are fired from them. Leaflets with similar messages were dropped in some areas Saturday.

A senior official in the Israeli Air Force said the village had been warned “several times” that it would be attacked because “hundreds of rockets have been fired from inside the village in the past two weeks, from the backyards, from the squares ... from as close as 50 to 60 meters from this building.”

The official said Hezbollah fighters often fire near buildings then use those buildings as cover but that he did not know if that was the case this time. Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr disputed allegations that Hezbollah was firing missiles from Qana. “What do you expect Israel to say? Will it say that it killed 40 children and women?” he told Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV station.

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=85943&d=31&m=7&y=2006

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All the Killings With
All Those Weapons Given by Americans

Essa bin Mohammed Al-Zedjali, Arab News
Monday, 31, July, 2006 (06, Rajab, 1427)

The US administration continues to provide Israel, its closest ally, with the most advanced weapons including the sophisticated Smart and Cluster bombs to be used in its continued war against Lebanon in much the same way they are being used against innocent civilians in the daily bombardment of Palestine.

According to a report in the New York Times last Monday, the US administration has rushed laser-guided precision bombs to Israel after an urgent request from Tel Aviv. The purpose is obviously to target key Hezbollah sites. Ironically, the bombs consignment has been sent to Israel through British airports, which has largely angered the British media who regard this transfer through their land as a tacit approval of Israeli massacres in Lebanon. The international community is well aware of the fact that such weapons, currently being unleashed on Lebanon, are banned by the international law. However, showing scant regard for the such laws, Israel continues to use them with absolute arrogance.

Already possessing an enormous arsenal of advanced weapons, Israel continues to enjoy swift supplies of latest artillery as well as unlimited military support from the US administration to strengthen its armed forces. As a clear proof of Israeli influence in America, its requests are never rejected. Such requests in fact often carry the hint of an order that should be promptly obeyed.

The internationally banned weapons easily find their way to Israel with no respect for international rules and resolutions. Israel never hesitates to use them as has been demonstrated in its war against Lebanon, confirmed by the world media and human rights organizations. The irony of ironies is that despite such confirmations, provided by the independent Western media, the international community, including the US, has hardly raised an eyebrow, let alone a full-throttled condemnation of such barbaric practices.

We all know how the US administration had once brought all the world powers together against Iraq under the pretext that it possessed weapons of mass destruction that were internationally banned.

For this assumption no evidence could be provided by the US administration despite intensive inspection of every inch of the Iraqi land by UN inspectors.

Israel will continue to oppose cease-fire as long as it is backed by the US administration and will continue to bombard Lebanon. During her recent visit to the Middle East, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made it clear that the US government was against an immediate cease-fire. Unfortunately, this will only result in the creation of another Iraq in the Middle East.

Everyone knows how the US stand led to the failure of the Rome conference as Rice outrightly rejected calls for an immediate cease-fire. Israel regards this US stand as a clear consent, a green light or a US blessing, to continue its war against Lebanon.

History tells us that the US administration has always opposed any support, financial or military, to regimes that pose any threat to the international peace and order. This, in Washington’s view, would lead to crimes, bloodletting and waste of innocent lives. In clear violation of this stated stance, the US administration has been generously providing Israel with all types of advanced weapons to continue killing innocent Palestinian and Lebanese people. Israel enjoys a criminal record. A clear evidence of this is the atrocities in Palestine and Lebanon.

In the backdrop of a fast-changing scenario, the US administration comes up with a new slogan every year. In 2005 it was the Great Middle East. Now it is the New Middle East. One wonders what it will be in 2007. The fact is that the world is fed up with the unfair US stance and blind support for Israel despite the fact that the US is the main sponsor of the Middle East peace process. It is now the need of the hour that some other neutral state is tasked with managing the peace process to ensure the end of hostilities and bloodshed in the region. The US administration is fully aware of the irony of Israeli existence as a malignant tumor in the body of Arab nation. However, as long as Israel’s objectives and ambition remain unlimited and unbridled and it continues to enjoy the blind backing of the US administration, the death and destruction in Palestine and Lebanon will continue. It might, in fact, extend to another country or countries.

— Essa bin Mohammed Al-Zedjali is editor in chief of The Times of Oman.

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=77143&d=31&m=7&y=2006