It should be quite obvious by now that Israel’s latest invasion of Gaza and Lebanon had very little to do with rescuing her fallen soldiers. As I write, the rogue state, run by some of the worst war-criminals of our time, has killed some 750 unarmed Lebanese civilians – mostly women and children, destroyed mosques, bridges, roads, houses, schools, hospitals and much of the infra-structure of southern half of Lebanon. As in 1996, the terrorist state has massacred scores of civilians in Qana this past weekend (July 30, 2006).
Israel has bombed Red Cross center and ambulances, and a UN observation post killing 4 observers. She has displaced a million people inside the country, some of whom are forced to take shelters in even prisons. Infants have been forcibly separated from their parents, and the elderly from their care-taking children. Relief supplies are difficult to get to the internally displaced refugees. Nothing is immune from Israel’s bombing campaign.
If a small fraction of these crimes were to be committed by any invading state, in contravention to international laws, Christ-loving Bush and Blair and their European friends in the NATO would be screaming aloud demanding cease-fire, failing which they would threaten the invading nation with all kinds of actions – UN sanctions, embargo and war. But when it comes to crimes of Israel, these western warlords are her greatest cheer-leaders and are insanely, as if demon-possessed, unperturbed by gruesome killings and massive destruction, wreaked by the pariah state. Like psychopathic and megalomaniac serial killers, they want to see more Muslim blood, more destruction, literally hell on earth and not cease-fire, because to them Muslim lives and properties are cheap and expendable. What a display of compassionate conservatism by Bush and Blair!
As Michael Schure, an ex-CIA analyst and the foremost expert on al-Qaeda, has said, Bush and Blair through their both overt and covert supports of such monumental crimes against Muslims have repeatedly shown that they are the worst enemies of Muslims. They have given credence to everything that their adversaries — conveniently depicted in the West as the ‘bad’ guys, the so-called terrorists — have been saying about the West. No bones about it. Truly, it is not OBL and al-Zawahiri that is radicalizing Muslims throughout the world, but these two white-collar Christian warlords that epitomize evil and hypocrisy. With world leaders like these, who needs OBL to bring the Armageddon on earth?
Exchange of prisoners between contending parties is not new. It takes place all the time. Even Israel has, in the past, negotiated such exchanges. Moreover, the demand of Hizbullah and Hamas to exchange captured Israeli soldiers for Muslims prisoners held by Israel is justified given the fact that it is Israel that for decades has been holding thousands of Palestinian prisoners and hundreds of Lebanese citizens — many of whom are women, children and (even) infants — some literally kidnapped.
Remember that although Israel was forced to withdraw from southern Lebanon in 2000, some 22 years after its invasion, she continued to hold onto the Sheba Farms in defiance of UN Security Council resolution 425, and refused the release of 300 Lebanese prisoners including a number of Hizbullah leaders. Israel also refused to handover to the Lebanese government the map of land mines planted in south Lebanon. She continued to violate the air, water and land sovereignty of Lebanon. Even the plea of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora with the Bush Administration to pressure Israel did not produce any result. So, when all the options for a peaceful resolution of these legitimate concerns were balked at by the Zionist regime, Hizbullah captured two Israeli soldiers when they violated Lebanese sovereignty on July 12.
Like any honest dealer, Hizbullah promptly called for the exchange of prisoners. Unfortunately, Israel does not care about the fate of those soldiers. She used the event as a pretext for something more sinister, something that remained unfulfilled from the Zionist blueprint for six-decade long history of annexation and annihilation, massacre and manipulation –” all sanctioned as ‘kosher’ acts by her goy western patrons. The current murderous campaign of Israel inside Lebanon cannot, therefore, be grasped without an understanding of statements of its founding fathers — all conniving individuals, if not homicidal terrorists, some later to be honored as ministers and presidents in the pariah state of Israel.
In 1919, the World Zionist Organization submitted to the Versailles Peace Conference, held near Paris its official plan for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. The submitted map included the southern part of Lebanon to the Litani River, the Syrian Golan Heights, and the West and East banks of the Jordan River. –
Theodore Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, said of his negotiation with the German Chancellor: "He asked what territory we wanted to have, whether as far north as Beirut or even beyond that. I said: We will ask for what we need – more immigrants, the more land." (The Complete Diaries of Theodore Herzl, p. 701) That was probably in late 19th or early 20th century, before his death. Now let us see what the founder of Zionist state of Israel, David Ben Gurion, wrote in his diary on May 21, 1947: "The Achilles heel of the Arab coalition is the Lebanon. Muslim supremacy in this country is artificial and can be easily overthrown. A Christian state ought to be set up there, with its southern frontier on the river Litani. We would sign a treaty of alliance with the state. Thus, when we have broken the strength of the Arab legion and bombed Amman, we could wipe out Trans-Jordan; after that Syria could fall. And if Egypt still dared to make war on us, we would bomb Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo. We should thus end the war and would have paid to Egypt, Assyria and Chaldea on behalf of our ancestors."[1] He also said, “The present map of Palestine was drawn by the British mandate. The Jewish people have another map which our youth and adults should strive to fulfill — From the Nile to the Euphrates."
Moshe Dayan told the Times of London (June 25, 1969) that, "Our fathers had reached the frontiers which were recognized in Partition Plan. Our generation reached the frontiers of 1949. Now the Six-day generation (referring to those who participated in 1967 war) has managed to reach Suez, Jordan and the Golan Heights. This is not the end. After the present cease-fire lines, there will be new ones. They will extend beyond Jordan – perhaps to Lebanon and perhaps to Central Syria as well."
From the sample of statements of Zionist leaders, shared above, it is not difficult to fathom why Israeli Prime Minister Olmert preferred invasion of Lebanon over negotiation to exchange prisoners. Israel has always been a colonial enterprise that thrives on opportunities for practicing state-run terrorism and colonization against Arabs.[2] The capture of Israeli soldiers provides that criminal justification to destroy and slaughter, let alone an opportunity to set up a client state in the plundered territory that would safeguard Israel’s so-called inalienable rights to intervene. Invasion comes rather easy with Israeli warlords. To these hawks, Barak’s 2000 pullout from the ‘Security zone’ was a mistake and needed to be corrected. They want a ‘Buffer zone.’
Taking advantage of civil war inside Lebanon, arisen out of power struggle between various Lebanese factions and foreign meddling, Israel occupied south Lebanon in March 1978. She withdrew in June after transferring control of the territories to her surrogate Christian South Lebanese Army (SLA). In 1981, fight broke out between Israeli-supported Christians and Syrian forces, and Beirut was heavily bombed by Israel. In June 1982 in a genocidal mood, Ariel Sharon’s Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invaded Lebanon to eliminate the PLO. According to western analysts nearly 18,000 Muslims were killed, about a million rendered homeless, another half-a-million awaiting death in Israeli seized territories of southern Lebanon.
After destroying much of Beirut and southern Lebanon, and aiding in the massacre of thousands of refugees in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, the IDF partially evacuated from occupied Lebanon (holding onto what it described as the ‘southern security zone’ that ran along Israel’s northern border and extended 18 miles deep into Lebanese territories in the south) and let multi-national forces from U.S., Britain, France and Italy to enter into the arena. These so-called "peace keepers", instead of really preserving and working for peace as neutral arbiters, took the side of Israel and her surrogate forces among the Falangists. Worse still, the U.S. Sixth Fleet fired mortars that killed hundreds of Muslim civilians, destroyed villages, towns and mountains that were lived by the Shi’a and Druze.
Such atrocities and betrayals brought about the emergence of resistance fighters of Hizbullah, born in families of the Shi’ite victims and out of the ashes of south Lebanon. As the USA and France acted more like proxies to pro-Israel forces in the region, the U.S. Embassy (April 1983), and French and U.S. Army barracks (October 23, 1983) were attacked by these resistance fighters killing nearly 300. By the time the Civil War ended, Hizbullah, with its militia, refused to disarm in fighting the Israeli presence in the security zone. The Lebanese government with a weak military was in no position to contest IDF and found it prudent to overlook Hizbullah’s efforts to securing the southern border. Thus, the latter had a de facto approval from its constituency. [A poll conducted by the Arab-American Institute as recently as April of 2006 showed widespread support for Hizbullah. Only 6% of Lebanese people agreed to a disarmament of the group.] [3]
Hizbullah also did a superb job building clinics, hospitals and schools, paving roads and constructing homes, and rebuilding houses and other infrastructure in war-torn Lebanon. These activities earned them immense popularity in the south and made them a major political and social force to be reckoned with.
The presence of the IDF and its surrogate SLA in the south was a source of constant irritation for Lebanon and her people, and led to hostilities with Hizbullah and the Lebanese forces. In April 1996, during Israeli "Grapes of Wrath" campaign to destroy Hizbullah guerrillas, Israeli artillery gunners shelled a United Nations base in Qana, east of the port city of Tyre, killing more than 100 civilians sheltering there. That massacre at Qana galvanized the western leaders to arrange a ceasefire.
Fighting between the Hizbullah and the IDF resumed again in June of 1999. In May 2000, under the new Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the IDF started to gradually withdraw from southern Lebanon turning over its positions to its ally – the SLA. However, amidst incessant pressure from the Hizbullah, SLA collapsed, leading Israel to accelerate its withdrawal, which it accomplished by late May. Nonetheless, she held on to the Sheba Farms.
On Sunday, July 30, 2006, under new Prime Minister Olmert, the IDF repeated the war crimes of 1996 through missile strikes in the village of Qana. Villagers had gathered in a shelter in one of Qana’s buildings, probably thinking that the massacre of 1996 would not be repeated by savage Israelis. But they were wrong. Lebanese Red Cross officials said that 58 people died in the Israeli assault on the village, including 34 children. Rescuers dug through the debris to remove dozens of bodies.[4]
In 1996, Qana was the price Lebanon had to pay for world leaders to end the killing. But this time, with the US and its neoconservative, pro-Likud, Bible-believing leadership (with members in the Senate and Congress, with rare exceptions) firmly behind Israel’s war-crimes, no such ceasefire is in the making. So, when the rest of the world cries out foul and is saddened with savagery of Israel, and demonstrates for ceasefire, leaders like Bush, Blair and Condi Rice show how evil western leadership has become. Their behavior is immoral, demented, sadistic and criminal. Truly, if we are looking for a modern-day Nero, we have it in these blood-thirsty maniacs.
In their delirious mindset, these warlords and war-criminals have forgotten that when the doors of negotiation, seeking fairness and justice, are shut down, radical elements — prone to seek alternative ways to redress their grievances — always emerge. If that happens, don’t mumble ‘why they hate us?’ It is events like Qana that produces recruits for 9/11, 7/11 and 7/7.
The current events in the Occupied Palestine and Lebanon once again have shown the utter moral bankruptcy of the West and its leadership, especially of the USA and the UK. Hypocrisy is its hallmark. The West can preach equality, liberty, democracy and human rights, but they truly don’t mean them when it comes to vast majority of non-whites. So, when Israel commits monumental crimes against Arabs, violating scores of international laws and UN charters, the USA and her western allies have consistently cheered and supported her criminal activities.
It is a high time for conscientious human beings around the world to demand trial of President Bush of USA and Prime Minister Blair of UK in the International Court of Justice for aiding in the massacre of hundreds of civilians in Lebanon and the Gaza strip (let alone causing deaths and destruction in Iraq), failing which, I am afraid, the UN and its agencies will increasingly be viewed, and justifiably so, only as a club to inflict pain on victims and never to redress their grievances.
It is said that when criminals and demons rule our world, it is better for human beings to be dead than alive. How long will humanity let these modern-day Neroes to rule our world?
Notes:
[1]. See also: Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.
[2]. Vladimir Jabotinsky, considered the spiritual godfather of many Likudniks, said, “Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the wishes of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, be continued and make progress only under the protection of a power independent of the native population – an iron wall, which will be in a position to resist the pressure to the native population. This is our policy towards the Arabs. … A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future. If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some rich man or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else-or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not difficult, not dangerous, but IMPOSSIBLE!… Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important… to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot – or else I am through with playing at colonizing.” ((The Iron Wall, 1923)
[3]. What must be done in Lebanon by Dr. James Zogby, Arab American Institute, Washington D.C.
[4]. See http://habibsiddiqui.unibd.org for pictures of war from Lebanon
