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What 'War'?
Dulles NOW Chapter
August 1, 2006
It is said that murderers always return to the site of their crimes. This month, Israel returned to destroy Lebanon once again. Their latest onslaught had taken place in 1982 when at least 20,000 civilians were killed; mass massacres were perpetrated, notably in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camp. Israel's occupation forces stayed twenty years until they were pushed out. They left a trail of misery and devastation behind in addition to the 140,000 land mines that are still there.
The Lebanese took fifteen years to painstakingly rebuilt, formed a secular democracy, updated their economy, and held elections. It was the 'Cedar Revolution' praised by
their then great best American friend, George W. Bush. But Israel's old dream of colonizing Lebanon never died.
A few weeks ago, Israel wrapped itself in the flag of 'national defense' when two of her soldiers supposedly kidnapped on Israel's territory were actually captured on Lebanese soil where their tank had ventured. This launched the long-planned massive air, sea and land attack, the land part just rehearsed last June, with the modest goal of 'setting Lebanon back twenty years', that is back to their last occupation. It then proceeded to methodically flatten the small, mostly defenseless nation of almost 4 million.
In doing so, Israel saw nothing wrong with dumping Daisy Cutter bombs, white phosphorus bombs, laser-guided
bombs, cluster bombs, assorted chemical warheads, grenades, depleted uranium (DU), napalm and poison gas
on the population. Over 2,000 air strikes dropped more
than 20,000 tons of such deadly mix since last July 12.
It found absolutely normal the blowing up of the brand new Beirut airport, of ninety-five percent of Lebanon's bridges,
of eighty percent of her main roads, of her ports, factories, water systems, electrical grids, railroads, hospitals, schools, public parks, shops, high-rise apartment buildings and gasoline depots.
Equally logical for Tel Aviv was the bombing of the Jiyyeh
oil storage tanks which emptied 30,000 tons of black sludge in the Mediterranean Sea and washed upon half of Lebanon's splendid beaches. It killed marine life and created an environmental disaster unseen in the history of the country and from which it will take years for the fragile ecosystem to recover. Another tank is still burning and also threatens to spill an additional 30,000 tons the same way.
It still finds perfectly appropriate the razing of whole villages, the sending of one million desperate refugees on destroyed roads under the scorching Middle East summer sun without food, water, medical supplies, clothing or sleeping material while the homes and possessions they
left behind are smashed to pieces.
It sees fit the firing of precision missiles upon them, those on foot carrying infants and meager belongings, those piled in cars with their families, those in clearly marked rescue squads and Red Cross ambulances, in UN observation posts and in press convoys. And it is as self-anointed 'saviors of civilization' that it bombed Baalbeck's historical ruins.
Those too old too sick or too poor stayed behind, not
far from the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bodies decomposing in the collapsed buildings, in the streets, in burnt cars. There was nowhere for them to go anyway. Water-related contagious illnesses are spreading. Thousands of the wounded display the horrendous injuries that Israel's chemical explosives caused and for which there is no medical treatment. Dead and wounded children are everywhere. So are women.
So entertaining is the whole adventure that most Israelis cheer. 'Pulverize' is the motto. Children are enrolled to sign 'with love' on the bombs set to incinerate Lebanese children, healthy or handicapped, Israel's well-known targets of choice. Crocodile tears are wiped with one hand while the other activates the detonators. 'This is not against the Lebanese people' chants the Tel Aviv choir, an unctuous display of the sadism Palestinians only know too well.
Israel's second mass murder in Qana in ten years brought 'deep regrets' and apologies while putting blame on the victims who presumably 'should not have been there' as Ariel Sharon was fond of saying. In the same vein, Condoleeza Rice is 'deeply saddened' by the human carnage she engineered and continues to shore up. Our disconnected president is busy talking to God.
Here in the US, Israel's simplistic and redundant propaganda oozes out of our own propaganda apparatus, the 'media', the whiff of it gagging into submission a population carefully kept from the horrendous images and reports that the rest of the world sees, reads and hears.
The United States, followed by the trot-along Blair, supports Tel Aviv's criminal rampage fully and unconditionally. The US provides plenty of funds, military hardware and technical assistance. It has blocked all international attempts to establish an urgent unconditional ceasefire in order to give Israel all the time it wants 'do the job', that is to expand the killing and devastation to its heart's content.
It is Syria, next on the Anglo-American-Israeli demolition derby program, that has opened her borders to the hapless refugees and it is Syria which is sending whatever humanitarian aid it can inside Lebanon. The United States is thus at war with one more country of no threat to itself. How this can be in our nation's interest begs for logic but then again, the nation's interest has not mattered in a long time.
Meanwhile, Israel did not miss the opportunity to pour missiles and bombs on the utterly defenseless and destitute refugee camps of Palestine. On the ground, tanks demolish their homes, their hospitals, their schools, their orchards, their stores and, of course, slaughter their children. Abandoned is the crowded Rachidiye Palestinian camp near the Lebanese border where 18,000 are trapped under the bombs, huddled in the no man's land Israel created in 1982.
Whether one chooses to see Hizbollah as 'terrorists' the way occupying Israel does or as 'resistance fighters' the way most Lebanese do, it is a nationalist, anti-colonialist movement created in 1982 as a front against Israel's repeated invasions. As such, it has legitimacy and garners extensive popular support. The Lebanese nation has rallied behind them and is holding together in spite of the unimaginable human devastation, despair, suffering and knowledge that they have indeed been betrayed by the United States.
Unity is all they have. For the only Anglo-American-Israeli 'long-term peace plan' much touted by the pathetic Condoleezza Rice that 'has to be done right' is the permanent partitions of their land, the fomenting of civil war, religious strife and foreign military occupation.
The emerging reality is that a country is destroying another for no reason. The current blind pounding is not a 'war'
and it is not the 'self-defense' portrayed. The Lebanese Resistance has no airplanes, no tanks, no Daisy Cutters,
no 500-LB bombs, no helicopters, The world knows that the release of the two soldiers could have easily been obtained through negotiations.
The Israelo-Anglo-American grotesque destruction of people and property is nothing but a killing rampage for the sake of killing, an unquenchable thirst for Arab blood and possessions. It is a remake of the illegal Iraq war, planned by the same people making the same mistakes and committing the same crimes. It is but the face of the inherent racism at the core of all colonialist quests, as this one certainly is.
Dulles NOW activists have, therefore, voted unanimously to:
- Join world's calls for an immediate unconditional ceasefire.
- Urge the UN to give financial assistance to Syria to help with humanitarian relief.
- Join the calls for the return of all displaced refugees to South Lebanon.
- Join the calls for the release of the thousands Lebanese and Palestinians kidnapped, kept and tortured in Israeli jails, some for over 20 years.
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