I've Heard That Song Before

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By most measures, it would seem the Israelis are winning the Palestinian-Israeli war. They control and colonize Arab lands, enjoy military superiority and total American support, and unilaterally define most diplomatic parameters of the conflict. Yet this may be a mistaken assessment:

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The Daily Star (Lebanon)
by Rami G. Khouri - 12/30/06

Israel's dominance may be going into slow reversal

The Palestinians and Arabs are perhaps starting to win some battles, while Israel is losing some of its dominance. Seven events in the past five months seem to lend credence to this view.

The first was Hizbullah's ability to fight Israel for 34 days this summer, and on the 34th day to keep firing hundreds of rockets into Israeli territory. Morality and political consequences aside, this reflected a truly historic combination of political will, technical military proficiency, and a capacity to remain shielded from Israeli, Western and Arab spies and infiltrators. No Arab party had ever crossed this threshold in the century-long conflict with Zionism and Israel.

The second event was Israel's (and Washington's) having to accept the August cease-fire resolution at the United Nations, after the United States had given Israel weeks of extra warfare to hit Hizbullah. A determined Arab group forced Israel and the US to accept a political resolution instead of military victory, and the cease-fire resolution included measures that Israel had previously always rejected - addressing the occupied Shebaa Farms area in the context of the Israel-Lebanon conflict, rather than as occupied Syrian land, and specifying the return or exchange of Israeli and Lebanese prisoners.

Israel quietly dropped its previous position that the two Israeli soldiers snatched by Hizbullah on July 12 had to be returned unconditionally. The stationing of over 20,000 Lebanese and international troops in Southern Lebanon has long been an Israeli demand, but also came at a price: limiting Israel's scope of action in Lebanon and its overflights.

The third noteworthy development was Israel's accepting a cease-fire with the Palestinians in Gaza in late November, after it had said that it would not end its attacks and would do anything required to retrieve Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whom Palestinian guerrillas had snatched from an Israeli Army post on the Gaza-Israel border. The juxtaposition of events in Lebanon and Gaza this summer was powerfully telling. Israel's once vaunted military prowess and frightening deterrence failed to stop Lebanese and Palestinian fighters from abducting three of its soldiers from border areas. Israel's subsequent severe, savage military attacks and mass punishment of civilian populations failed to make the Arabs cough up the soldiers. Weeks or months later, Israel swallowed its words, put away its ultimatums and threats, and accepted cease-fires in both cases.

The fourth important recent development is that Israel has been unable to stop the firing of rudimentary Qassam rockets into its southern region by Palestinian militants. Israeli military might and intelligence capabilities - along with killing some 400 Palestinians since June - have not stopped determined young men from firing these rockets into Israel.

The fifth striking incident occurred in early November, when Israel had pinned down a group of Palestinian fighters in a mosque in Beit Hanun in northern Gaza, expecting them to surrender or be killed. Instead, over 200 Palestinian women broke through the siege, swarmed the mosque, and provided cover for the young fighters to escape, with two women being killed and a dozen injured. Battle lines that had been defined by Israeli troops fighting a handful of Palestinian youths were transformed into the Israeli Army's finding itself helpless - and defeated - in the face of the Palestinian civilian population.

The sixth incident happened in mid-November, when the Israeli Army telephoned the home of a Palestinian militant in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza and warned the inhabitants to leave the three-story residential building because it was going to be destroyed. Instead of fleeing as they had usually done, hundreds of civilians swarmed into the residence, stood on the rooftop, and dared the Israelis to kill them all. Faced with civilians who no longer feared death, the mighty Israeli killing machine and its befuddled political leaders suddenly became much less impressive - for they had lost much of their capacity to intimidate.

The seventh incident, earlier this week, was Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, where it was announced that Israel would release $100 million of withheld Palestinian tax revenues and remove some checkpoints in the West Bank. Reversing his previous refusal to make such gestures or meet with the Palestinians before Shalit was released, Olmert met, talked and made concessions to the Palestinians with Shalit nowhere in sight.

History will clarify if these events indeed signify a change in the military or political balance of power in Arab-Israeli confrontations. We must hope for now that the trend these events signify will open the eyes and brains of Arab and Israeli leaders who have relied mainly on military force to achieve their goals, and instead propel them toward negotiations as a more effective and humane route to achieving their rights, and living a normal life in peace, security and mutual recognition.

Website: dailystar.com

Paris Link - 11/20/06
by Gareth Cartman

Tensions Mount Between France and Israel

A frosty UN meeting showed cracks in the relationship between France and Israel this weekend. A French-led compromise established a "fact-finding committee" to investigate the killings of Beit Hanoun. Israel feels that France is too pro-Arab.

Israel's ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman epitomised the strained relations between France and Israel by refusing to acknowledge his French counterpart this weekend. As the US vetoes the condemnation of Israel's attack on civilians in Beit Hanoun, France is being accused of being too "arab-friendly". ( comment )

After a week in which the French army readily admitted it would shoot down Israeli fighter pilots that breach the no-fly zone in Lebanon, Israeli anger is growing towards the French. A previous incident in which French anti-aircraft missiles almost fired at two Israeli fighter jets saw the Israeli ambassador hauled before the Foreign Office at Quai D'Orsay.

The French were pushing for a condemnation of Israel at the UN for the attack on Beit Hanoun. The US used its right to veto the condemnation, while the French worked closely with Palestine, Lebanon and Qatar in order to come to an agreement with the EU. Israel is thought to be angered by France's refusal to work alongside it in order to reach agreement with European partners.

Instead of condemnation, a compromise was reached which would establish a 'fact-finding mission' to establish the events that led up to the attack. The original draft proposed by Palestine and a group of other nations included condemnation, an investigation and a security system that would guarantee security for the Palestinian people.

Dan Gillerman, despite having seen the original draft thrown out, was furious with the French behaviour: "France is truly an Arab extension", he railed. ( comment )

Website: paris-link-home.com

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Of all the statistics to emerge from Israel's recent war on Lebanon, the most shocking concerns the number of cluster bombs that Israel dropped on or fired into Lebanon.

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Los Angeles Times - 10/21/06
by Professor Saree Makdisi, UCLA

War Crimes Remain Unpunished

A cluster bomb is made up of a canister that opens and releases hundreds of individual bomblets, which are dispersed and explode over a wide area, showering it with molten metal and lethal fragments.

About 40% of the bomblets dropped by Israel (many of which were American-made) did not explode in the air or on impact with the ground. They now detonate when someone disturbs them -- a soldier, a farmer, a shepherd, a child attracted by the lure of a shiny metal object.

Cluster bombs are, by definition, inaccurate weapons that are designed to affect a very wide area unpredictably. If they do not discriminate between civilian and military targets when they are dropped, they certainly do not discriminate in the months and years after the end of hostilities, when they go on killing and maiming anyone who happens upon them.
In fact, it is estimated that there are more unexploded bomblets in southern Lebanon than there are people. They lurk in tobacco fields, olive groves, on rooftops, in farms, mixed in with rubble. They are injuring two or three people every day, according to the United Nations, and have killed 20 people since the cease-fire in August.
Dropped so late in the war, it's hard to imagine what specific military objective these bombs could possibly have been meant to accomplish. Instead, they seem to have been dropped as a final, gratuitous act of violence in a war waged against an entire population. The vast majority of the 1,200 Lebanese killed by Israeli bombardments were civilians; one in three was a child.

With 100,000 innocent people trapped in the south because they could not, or dared not, flee on roads that Israel was indiscriminately bombing every day, Israel's justice minister declared that they were all -- men, women and children -- "terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah."

Nor was this his view alone. The Israelis dropped leaflets warning that "any vehicle of any kind traveling south of the Litani River will be bombed, on suspicion of transporting rockets, military equipment and terrorists." The Israeli chief of staff was especially clear. "Nothing is safe" in Lebanon, he said. "As simple as that."

Israel carried out 7,000 air raids and fired 160,000 artillery projectiles into Lebanon, a tiny country. That's about two air raids and 40 projectiles per square mile.

But the punishment was not evenly distributed. Israel's war was aimed specifically at Lebanon's Shiite population. Shiite neighborhoods in Beirut were destroyed, but other neighborhoods remained untouched. Shiite villages in the south were obliterated -- literally wiped from the surface of the Earth -- while nearby Christian villages escaped unscathed, mercifully able to shelter their Shiite neighbors.

Israeli officials said this was a war against Hezbollah, that Hezbollah was hiding in the midst of the population. But this wasn't a war against Hezbollah. It was a war to punish the entire population for its support of the guerrillas.

Not only was Hezbollah not hiding behind civilians, it ought to be obvious that the violence was directed in the first instance at the civilians themselves. To direct such violence at one community, one religious group, one minority -- and to deny them the ability to return safely home -- was what this war was all about.

To drop two or three bomblets for every man, woman and child in southern Lebanon -- after having wiped out their homes, smashed their communities, destroyed their livelihoods -- is to wage war against them all.

And we supplied the weapons.

And the Zionist Occupied Government of the United States supplied the weapons.

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AFP - 10/20/06

Ahmadinejad predicts Israel's collapse, warns of 'boiling wrath'

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has predicted Israel will collapse and warned that its allies face the "boiling wrath" of the people if they continue to support the Jewish state.

The renewed assault on Israel by Ahmadinejad -- who has been castigated by world powers for his frequent anti-Israeli outbursts -- came as tens of thousands marched through Tehran in an annual pro-Palestinian rally.

Ahmadinejad, who has previously called for Israel to be "wiped from the map" and described the Holocaust as a myth, told the protestors:

This regime (Israel) will be gone, definitely.

You (the Western powers) should know that any government that stands by the Zionist regime from now on will not see any result but the hatred of the people. The wrath of the region's people is boiling.

Efforts to stabilise this fraudulent regime have completely failed, thank God . . . This regime has lost the rationale of its existence.

Ahmadinejad described his warning as an "ultimatum" for Western powers:

You should not complain that we did not give a warning. We are saying this explicitly now.

If a hurricane starts be rest assured that the dimensions of this hurricane will not be limited to the geographic borders of Palestine.

This regime (Israel) will take its supporters to the bottom of the swamp.

The best solution is for you to take all the components of the regime and take it away.

Chanting "Death to Israel" and predicting the "Triumph of Palestine", tens of thousands of people had earlier converged on Tehran University, where Ahmadinejad gave his speech, to mark Iran's Quds (Jerusalem) Day.

Started on the initiative of Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the event annually attracts massive crowds, many of them government workers, to call for the handing of Jerusalem to the Palestinians.

Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki referred to the sex scandal that has left Israeli president Moshe Katsav facing possible indictment for rape, saying such "ethical deviation" showed Israel was collapsing.

"The Zionist regime is filled with moral corruption and ethical deviation in its highest ranks. Therefore this regime internally, and regionally from the outside, is cracking and is falling apart."

Ahmadinejad once again questioned the extent of the Holocaust and said that, in any case, it was not right for the Palestinians to pay for events committed on European soil.

"If the Holocaust is real why are those who have the opposite opinion about it being arrested and jailed? If it is true, where did it happen? If it was in Europe, why should it be paid for in Palestine?"
Iran insists it has every right to a full nuclear fuel cycle and has refused to obey repeated UN deadlines to halt uranium enrichment, which the West fears could be diverted to make weapons.

Ahmadinejad reaffirmed Iran's defiant stance, saying "Iran is ready to negotiate but will not tolerate the slightest pressure."

He also recalled that on a recent visit to the United States he had dared Western powers in an address to a think-tank to shut their own nuclear fuel programmes and let Iran supply the material.

"I told them 'You shut down your nuclear programmes and we will produce fuel from the fuel cycle in five years time and sell it to you at a 50 percent discount!"

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AHN - 09/19/06

Israel Believes Assault On Gaza Will Be Necessary

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Dan Halutz was backed by members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday in his assessment that a large-scale military operation in the Gaza Strip will be necessary in the short term.

In his briefing to the committee, Halutz noted that Gaza-based terror groups continue to import large supplies of war material, including advanced anti-tank missiles. The aim, he said, is to create a situation like that faced by Israel in southern Lebanon this summer.

Former committee chairman and Likud lawmaker Yuval Steinitz urged an immediate and comprehensive air and ground assault to eliminate the terrorist threat before it reaches the level of that posed by Hezbollah.

Right-wing MK Effi Eitam told Ynet that judging by Halutz's comments, it sounds as though the IDF is already preparing such an operation.

Likud MK Silvan Shalom noted that "after two unilateral withdrawals in Lebanon, we saw that the territories cleared have turned into terror bases," and added that "in order to prevent the same situation in Gaza, the IDF must prepare for a preemptive attack."

Gaza-based militants continue to fire Kassam and Katyusha rockets into southern Israel at a rate of several per day, and attempted cross-border assaults are not uncommon.

A terrorist infiltration on June 25 that led to the abduction of an IDF soldier sparked a military response far more limited in scope to the one being proposed by the committee members.

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Comment: Wow! So much for the lauded "Gaza Withdrawal". It seems that the real reason for the last year's pullout was simply to clear the field so that Israeli snipers and tanks could get a better view of their child targets.

The psychopaths in the Israeli government really can't wait to get even more innocent Palestinian blood on their hands, and they are prepared to concoct any bogus claim they can to justify their rapacious agenda.

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Website: allheadlinenews.com

Haaretz Editorial - 09/14/06

Shooting without a target

During the final days of the war, when it became clear that the Israel Defense Forces had no solution to the ongoing launchings of Katyusha rockets, a decision was made to "flood" the area with cluster bombs, delivered by artillery shells and rockets. This was non-target specific shooting, based on the assumption that the bomblets would cover a large area, possibly destroy Hezbollah rocket launchers and cause as many casualties as possible among its fighters.

A soldier who fired 155mm artillery shells delivering cluster bombs told Haaretz that he was ordered to "flood" the area with these bombs, without having a specific target. A commander of a Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) told Haaretz that his order was to "saturate the area." These statements were published in stories by Meron Rapoport on September 8 and 12.

More than a million cluster bomblets were dropped in southern Lebanon. Each M-26 rocket fired by an MLRS contains 644 cluster bomblets, capable of covering an area the size of a football field.

Firing at undefined targets is a problem in and of itself. The dilemma it entails is reflected in statements by soldiers who fired cluster bombs during training and recognized that this type of weapon should be used only in a war against a regular army, for the purpose of hitting arms supply convoys or missile batteries -- not against civilian areas.

But beyond this dilemma, the committee investigating the war should find out whether anyone considered what would happen to the thousands of cluster bomblets that failed to explode, and were therefore transformed into mines spread throughout southern Lebanon.

The cluster bomb is not a banned weapon, but it is described as an "indiscriminate" weapon, which should not be used against targets in civilian areas because, inter alia, it continues to kill once the war is over.

Since the cease-fire went into effect, 12 Lebanese civilians have been killed by duds that exploded unexpectedly. Since the percentage of unexploded cluster bomblets ranges from 5 to 30 percent, according to various assessments, southern Lebanon is now an area littered by thousands of bomblets that have not yet exploded.
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Now, Israel can do little except accede to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's request and assist in marking the areas hit by the cluster bombs, so that there will be no further casualties among Lebanese civilians, who have already been hurt by the war. Significant portions of southern Lebanon have now become minefields. Annan's condemnation was not without basis.

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Related Posts -- 08/15/06 -- 08/12/06

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Related Post: 08/20/06

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In the middle of his sermon, Israeli prison officials interupt prayer service and put a muslim cleric in solitary confinement after beating him. Sadistic Israeli thugs have no humanity, no scrupples.

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Bethlehem - 08/18/06
by Najib Farag

Dozens of Israeli prison guards shut down Friday prayers and took the Sheikh to solitary confinement. The scene was typical throughout Israeli prisons holding Palestinian political prisoners.

During today’s service, one of the Sheikhs praised the triumph of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezollah. He commented that this was the sixth war that Israel has waged against Lebanon.

The Israeli prison administration is applying strict measures against political prisoners, including increased searches, more cases of solitary confinement, and additional property confiscation.

The Sheikh called on the Palestinian leadership to take advantage of the lessons to be learned by Hezbollah’s victory during the Israeli attacks, however marred that “victory” may be with over 1,000 Lebanese killed. One third of them were children.

The Sheikh stressed that resistance must be the path of the Palestinian people in order to achieve their legitimate rights.

According to human rights sources, the soldiers cut worshippers prayers short, stripping the Palestinians after severely beating the Sheikh while political prisoners screamed in protest.

The soldiers stormed the cells and common areas while military dogs searched personal belongings. The Israelis then confiscated electrical appliances and other belongings, and cut off their television in a policy described by the human rights sources as collective punishment.

An Israeli Prison Service spokesperson claimed that the Sheikh is imprisoned on a charge of belonging to Islamic Jihad and that his sermon incited violence against Israel. The Israeli spokesperson continued to say that his punishment for such was to be put in solitary confinement and the punishment for those praying was to have their personal belongings confiscated.

. . . and the punishment for those praying was to have their personal belongings confiscated.

The Independent - 08/14/06
by Robert Fisk
The real war in Lebanon begins today.

The world may believe -- and Israel may believe -- that the UN ceasefire due to come into effect at 6am today will mark the beginning of the end of the latest dirty war in Lebanon after up to 1,000 Lebanese civilians and more than 30 Israeli civilians have been killed.

But the reality is quite different and will suffer no such self-delusion: the Israeli army, reeling under the Hizbollah's onslaught of the past 24 hours, is now facing the harshest guerrilla war in its history. And it is a war they may well lose.

In all, at least 39 -- possibly 43 -- Israeli soldiers have been killed in the past day as Hizbollah guerrillas, still launching missiles into Israel itself, have fought back against Israel's massive land invasion into Lebanon.

Israeli military authorities talked of "cleaning" and "mopping up" operations by their soldiers south of the Litani river but, to the Lebanese, it seems as if it is the Hizbollah that have been doing the "mopping up". By last night, the Israelis had not even been able to reach the dead crew of a [Israeli] helicopter -- shot down on Saturday night -- which crashed into a Lebanese valley.
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Hizbollah's laser-guided missiles -- Iranian-made, just as most Israeli arms are US-made -- appear to have caused havoc among Israeli troops on Saturday, and their downing of an Israeli helicopter was without precedent in their long war against Israel
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An Israeli was killed by Hizballoh's continued Katyusha fire across the border. The guerrilla army -- "terrorists" to the Israelis and Americans but increasingly heroes across the Muslim world -- have many dead to avenge, although their leadership seems less interested in exacting an eye for an eye and far more eager to strike at Israel's army.

At this fatal juncture in Middle East history -- and no one should underestimate this moment's importance in the region -- the Israeli army appears as impotent to protect its country as the Hizbollah clearly is to protect Lebanon.

But if the ceasefire collapses, as seems certain, neither the Israelis nor the Americans appear to have any plans to escape the consequences. The US saw this war as an opportunity to humble Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian sponsors but already it seems as if the tables have been turned.

The Israeli military appears to be efficient at destroying bridges, power stations, gas stations and apartment blocks - but signally inefficient in crushing the "terrorist" army they swore to liquidate.

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Israel has asked (ordered) the U.S. government (ZOG) to send cluster bombs to use in its month long war in Lebanon. Cluster bombs explode over a wide area, thus providing maximum killing power. More than 800 people have been killed in Lebanon. A substantial percentage, if not most, of the fatalities have been civilians including many children and elderly people. Countless others have been wounded and maimed. -- The Zionists' lust for blood has yet to be sated.

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NY Times - 08/11/06
by David S. Cloud

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Israel has asked the Bush administration to speed delivery of short-range antipersonnel rockets armed with cluster munitions, which it could use to strike Hezbollah missile sites in Lebanon, two U.S. officials said.

The request for M-26 artillery rockets, which are fired in barrages and carry hundreds of grenade-like bomblets that scatter and explode over a broad area, is likely to be approved shortly, along with other arms, a senior official said.

But some State Department officials have sought to delay the approval because of concerns over the likelihood of civilian casualties, and the diplomatic repercussions. The rockets, while they would be very effective against hidden missile launchers, officials say, are fired by the dozen and could be expected to cause civilian casualties if used against targets in populated areas.

Israel is asking for the rockets now because it has been unable to suppress Hezbollah’s Katyusha rocket attacks in the month-old conflict by using bombs dropped from aircraft and other types of artillery, the officials said. The Katyusha rockets have killed dozens of civilians in Israel.

The United States had approved the sale of M-26’s to Israel some time ago, but the weapons had not yet been delivered when the crisis in Lebanon erupted. If [when] the shipment is approved, Israel may be told that it must be especially careful about firing the rockets into populated areas, the senior official said.
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In the case of cluster munitions, including the Multiple Launch Rocket System, which fires the M-26, the Israeli military only fires into open terrain where rocket launchers or other military targets are found, to avoid killing civilians, an Israeli official said. [Yeah, sure!]
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Last month, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch said its researchers had uncovered evidence that Israel had fired cluster munitions on July 19 at the Lebanese village of Bilda, which the group said had killed one civilian and wounded at least 12 others, including 7 children.

The group said it had interviewed survivors of the attack, who described incoming artillery shells dispensing hundreds of cluster submunitions on the village.

Human Rights Watch also released photographs, taken recently by its researchers in northern Israel, of what it said were American-supplied artillery shells that had markings showing they carried cluster munitions.

Mr. Siegel, the Israeli Embassy spokesman, denied that cluster munitions had been used on the village.



Alright, enough is enough! -- I'm curious to know if any of you believe the dear Israeli spokesman is telling the truth. Come on, now. Don't be bashful. Let's see a show of hands! . . . Somebody? . . . Anybody? . . . -

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