Israel Targets Milk, Medicine Factories
Hizbullah Kills One in Nahariyah
Israeli troops invaded Lebanon again early Wednesday morning, on what Israeli spokesmen called a limited search and destroy mission.
Hizbullah sent more rockets on northern Israel, killing one person at Nahariyah.
The death toll late Tuesday stood at 235 people killed in Lebanon and 25 in Israeli. About half of the Israeli deaths were military personnel. Only a handful of the Lebanese deaths have been military, and only a fraction of those have been Hizbullah fighters. In fact, have even ten Hizbullah guerrillas been killed by the Israelis since this fight began? They say it is a fight with Hizbullah. But then they bomb Greek Orthodox churches and milk factories far from Shiite areas. Hmmmm.
Israeli air strikes killed 30 more civilians on Tuesday:
The Israeli attacks were mainly concentrated on the Bekaa district, as Israeli warplanes launched missiles at the towns of Zahle, Baalbek, Rachaya al-Fokhar and others. The St. Gregorius Church in Rachaya al-Fokhar suffered a direct hit, as did the Lake Qaraoun Dam and the ambulance donated by the Emirates in Dahr al-Baydar. Dozens of civilians were killed and wounded in the attacks. Over 30 civilians were killed in Israeli air strikes against Lebanon on Tuesday. Ten civilians who had taken refuge inside the Greek Orthodox Church in Rachaya al-Fokhar were wounded in an attack. Lebanese security sources said Israel had used phosphorous missiles in the attack, an internationally banned weapon.
Some people just don't like their neighbors to have nice things. The Israelis hit Lebanese privately owned factories on Tuesday, including a dairy farm! These targets had absolutely nothing to do with Hizbullah, and were not military targets. These strikes are war crimes and part of a continuing Israeli campaign to ensure that Lebanon is economically poor and weak for decades to come:
Israel switched gears in its military campaign against Lebanon Monday and Tuesday, launching a series of debilitating air strikes against privately owned factories throughout the country and dealing a devastating blow to an economy already paralyzed by a week of hits on residential areas and crucial infrastructure. The production facilities of at least five companies in key industrial sectors - including the country's largest dairy farm, Liban Lait; a paper mill; a packaging firm and a pharmaceutical plant - have been disabled or completely destroyed. Industry insiders say the losses will cripple the economy for decades to come.
Lebanese lawyers are lodging a complaint against Israel charging it with crimes against humanity.
Robert Blecher on conflating Hizbullah and Hamas at the invaluable Middle East Report.
It turns out that the more Arab students listen to Radio Sawa and watch al-Hurra Television, the US government's main media effort at winning hearts and minds, the more they disliked US policies. Turns out it isn't how the policies are packaged on the airwaves that matters. It is the policies. The students mostly think they stink.
Only for those with really strong stomachs. This is what some of the hundreds of civilians killed by the Israeli military in Lebanon look like. Very graphic and disturbing. I disavow the labeling in the site. But this is a war, and this is what war looks like, and I think it is necessary to stare it right in the face: here, here; and here and, if it is back up (their server was overloaded) here.


13 Comments:
It seems to me obvious that the other objective of this aggression is to destroy any hope for Beirut to be the financial and economic centre of the region which it was slowly but surely regaining after the sorry years of the civil/social/international war (and Hara Kiri) that started in 1975.
Now just imagine if Israel manages to destroy or sign a peace treaty with the last "border" country holding more or less firm – i.e. Syria, guess which city will become the de facto centre of the whole area ? ... yes Tel-Aviv.
Has anybody noticed the irony of Resolution 1559? The purpose of Resolution 1559 was to disband all militias in Lebanon so as to ensure Lebanon's stability. None of the Security Council powers or Lebanese parties who pushed for 1559 ever said anything about protecting Israel. The only party to argue that Resolution 1559 was for Israel's benefit was Hizbollah:
"Without accusing anyone of treason or jumping to hasty conclusions, I am simply saying Resolution 1559 serves the Israeli policies in inciting civil war and creating political chaos and turbulence," Nasrallah said. "We should be careful not to take positions that would harm Lebanon or push it again into disarray and instability," he said.
Over the past week, Israel (which is in breach of how many UN resolutions?) has used Lebanon's failure to comply with Resolution 1559 to justify its murderous assault on the Lebanese people. A resolution that was enacted to bring stability to Lebanon has become a weapon in Lebanon's destruction. And, somewhere, Hassan Nasrallah is having a good chuckle.
One could understand air attacks on missile launchers, weapons depots, or attempts to decapitate Hezbollah. But the malicious, sadistic attacks on innocents and infrastructure are beyond the pale, and the United States is seen throughout the world as having given the green light. It is time to start putting distance between the United States and Israel.
Larry Johnson's latest commentary is a must read.
Here We Go Again!
I wonder if President Bush is really this uninformed about democratization research and theory. He is always addressing Huntington's Thrid Wave, but who really credits that particular research anyway. But, numerous studies show you need a strong middle class for Democracy to take hold. Thats why his whole democratize Iraq was such a laugh after we had imposed 10 years of sanctions. Really, with the systematic economic dessimation of the Arab communites surrounding Israel, it is little wonder that democracy is not taking root.
You would think Israel would want this too, given the Democratic Peace theories. Was that not why they nominally insisted on elected government in the territories? But, as we all know democracy is held in strength by its civil society, not passing in front of an election box. So, it seems that for Bush "Democracy" is a code name for a semblences of trying to work with the Arab world, while holding it back. And, for Israel "peace" is a code word for surpressing my neighbors so I may remain the most powerful.
If Bush had a good faith effort at keeping Lebanon strong.... well, he could have threatened Israel no more weapon sales until they stopped. But, we should certainly have Israel foot the bill for the damaged civilian infrastructures that they bombed. But, I will not hold my breath for this to happen. For all its complaints, Israel is held to a much lower standard of obeservance when it comes to international law than the rest of the world. Oh, not that many do not complain, but no sanctions are levied.
I do, myself, believe that if the USA keeps misusing its veto powers to protect Israel in case where it justifiably should be held to account, it may well lose this priveledge. If not, after a while, some states will simply start to ignore it.
Thanks Juan for all the excellent work you do here on this blog. -
It appears that (for the time being) instead of those Very graphic and disturbing images, the only thing we'll be staring in the face is a message that says "This Account Has Been Suspended". - I'm not inclined to think they just forgot to pay their server bill.
http://www.fromisraeltolebanon.org/ is dead
At this point, I'm trying to understand what Israel is trying to accomplish.
Militarily, its seems they have gone mad. You can (strategically, barely) justify bombing the airport and imposing a blockade: Hizbullah can only have so many rockets and so many troops.
But to continue to bomb northern Lebanon at this point? To bomb the Lebanese army? To keep bombing Beruit?
It seems to me this can only be good for Hizbullah: shifting world opinion away from Israel, and wasting Israeli firepower and effort on targets which don't harm Hizbullah.
I just got an email from an American friend who says blithely that hey, after all this dies down, Hizbullah will be gone. That will be great, right?
"By Any Means Necessary" is an old leftie slogan I always hated. You still see it on lapel pins in Berkeley. From my experience in Lebanon pre-civil-war, I concluded this sort of pseudo-guerilla posturing only brings down death and destruction.
When governments practice "By Any Means Necessary" they do themselves no favors.
But reason and history don't sway America's leaders any more than they do the Israelis. There are voices of reason in Israel right now. But nobody is listening.
The professor I asked you about is safe in the mountains, by the way.
The rebuttal from Crawford about Radio Sawa and Hurrah TV is interesting:
"Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the two networks, issued a blistering response to U.S. News about the study. 'It is astonishing that a flawed study such as this would appear in a peer-reviewed journal and looks more like a conclusion in search of a reinforcing study instead of the other way around,' he wrote. 'It does not meet the universally accepted standards of international media research. Its sample is too small, it is skewed by population with nearly half the respondents identified as Palestinian, and some of the respondents were not even listeners or viewers.'"
The technical Soc. Sci. points I wouldn't know about, but presumably if Mr. Tomlinson had survey results in hand that he liked better, he would have mentioned them.
On the political front, this fuss resembles Republican Party attitudes about global warming, perhaps even more than immediately appears. I am not sure that Mr. Tomlinson and his bosses really much care what effect their propaganda has on the intended patients. It is important to them that such propaganda exist, because it would be a disaster to give the impression that global warmers or Arab anti-Americans are so cogent that their arguments utterly cannot be resisted, but it need not matter much whether the propaganda is effective, when climatologists have very few votes in the USA and Prof. Nawawy's college students no votes at all. As long as the voters who might matter to the GOP are sufficiently convinced that "there is something to be said on both sides" and that something is in fact being said, all should go reasonably well, without it becoming urgent to know the "real" facts of either case.
The "right in the face" link works now, it's quickly transferred to http://fromisrael2lebanon.com/. The pictures are horrifying. -- Keith
Dr. Cole:
Who wins if Lebanon collapses? If Cambodia is an apt historical analogy (it might not be), whom does this empower in Lebanon and in the region?
I would be very interested to know your thoughts.
.
Will Turkey invade Iraq?
Israeli ground invasion in Lebanon and Turkish invasion in Iraq are two things that ME observers are expecting with fear. The reason for this is that invading places like Lebanon and Iraq is much simple than leaving. Once foreign troops are in, they get locked in guerilla quagmire and nobody knows how to pull them back.
Lebanon-wise, there is little doubt that, compared with Serbs in 1999, Hizballah's will to fight is much stronger. So, either Israelis will wink, or they will need ground invasion in Lebanon. The problem is, this will create perfect conditions for Hizballah insurgency. As of now, I don't see any Israeli reports of the ground invasion, but let us wait and see what will happen next.
Iraq-wise, now there is a report that the Turkish military are planning to send up to 50K troops into N.Iraq to fight PKK. Although there are plans for limited air strikes, it is highly unlikely that, once Turkey-Kurdsih hostilities will start in earnest, relatively weak (compared with IAF) Turkish Air Force will be able to achieve much.
Anyway, significant ground invasions of Israel in Lebanon and Turkey in Iraq will be an important step to the large scale regional war.
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