Israelis Kill 7 Civilians in Massive Air Raids
on Beirut, South, Baalbak
Hizbullah Rockets Kill 8 Civilians in Israel
Israel resumed a heavy bombardment of South Beirut on Thursday, hitting al-Awza'i 24 times in the space of two hours. There are no Hizbullah facilities in al-Awza'i, according to LBC (a Christian-owned Lebanese satellite channel). AFP says that Israeli war planes fired missiles at "the Rweiss and Haret-Hreik districts in south Beirut, police said. Rweiss, which had initially been spared, was first targeted the previous night after a week's respite in strikes on the capital's suburbs. Haret-Hreik and Bir al-Abed, where Hezbollah's headquarters is located, were pounded for two weeks and are in ruins."
Israel also conducted air raids on Tyre and Nabatiyah in the south and on Baalbak in the Biqa'.
What Baalbak really looks like after the Israeli raid.
Israeli airstrikes on a series of southern villages left 7 civilians dead and provoked further outrage in the Muslim world.
Hasan Nasrallah issued a videotape on Thursday in which he threatened to send rockets on Tel Aviv if the Israelis bombed Beirut again.
I saw the speech on satellite in Arabic Nasrallah also appealed to the Muslim masses over the heads of their rulers. And, he told the Arab leaders that they are not going to be able to keep their positions in America's "New Middle East." They will be overthrown, he said, and their countries will be reduced to chaos and split up into small postage stamp countries. (He appeared to be reasoning on the basis of what the US has done to Iraq).
Excerpts from the Daily Star article:
' "Let my words be clear, any attack on Lebanon's capital, Beirut, will result in Hizbullah bombarding the Zionist entity's capital, Tel Aviv . . . We are ready to keep the whole thing restricted to a military fight with the Israeli Army, on the ground, fighters to fighters . . ."
"Our fight with the Israeli Army is based on the tactic of street fights against an organized army. This means we hit and run without holding our positions," Nasrallah said. "The Israelis claimed they had heavy clashes with our fighters resulting in the taking over of a Hizbullah post in the southern town of al-Abbad. The truth is our fighters had left the post when the aggression first started three weeks ago. I don't know with whom the Israelis had heavy clashes there . . ."
"In an attempt to identify himself with former Israeli leaders such as [Ariel] Sharon and [Yitzhak[ Rabin and [Menachem[ Began, he [Olmert] succeeded in matching their accomplishments in committing massacres and killing civilians, women and children, but failed miserably in proving himself as a political leader . . . [he is] an incompetent moron."
Nasrallah mocked the "stupid, massive and ignorant Israeli military machine . . . [the] "clearest examples are the 300 rockets which we launched on Israel [Wednesday]."
' Nasrallah said the only solution to the crisis "is through a direct cease-fire, an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territories and ... a political remedy." '
Israeli television quoted a high Israeli military official saying in response that if Tel Aviv is hit, all of Lebanese infrastructure will be destroyed. AFP doesn't state the man's name, but he needs to read the Geneva Conventions. If he follows through on this threat, having explicitly made it, I hope that some civilized European country finds a way to try him for war crimes. Hitting non-military infrastructure necessary to civilian life is tantamount to murder.
Fuel is running low in Beirut, threatening hospital services.
Israel stopped the delivery of fuel shipments to Lebanon on Thursday.
Even among the Israeli special ops, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. A fourteen year old tells his terrifying story of being kidnapped by Israeli soldiers because of his last name.
Pay attention to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
Hizbullah again rained rockets down on northern Israel, killing 8 innocent civilians, three of them young Palestinian-Israeli men. Nasrallah fancies himself a statesman and guerrilla fighter, but nothing could be more cowardly than to kill ordinary people on the street or in their cars. The indiscriminate character of his bombardments is demonstrated by his penchant for managing to kill so many Palestinian Israelis. Nasrallah is not the head of a state and has no recognized authority to wage war, and so is just a common serial murderer.
Hizbullah also killed 4 Israeli soldiers on Thursday as the latter continued their ground offensive into southern Lebanon.
It falls to France, Egypt and Jordan to play the grownups and try to get a cessation of military hostilities.
Israeli tanks and bulldozers invaded Gaza, killing 7 Palestinians.
Jim Lobe of Interpress Service surveys the wreckage of Bush's Middle East policy and finds it unedifying.
The death toll in the Qana massacre is now estimated at 28 with 13 missing by HRW. Since the 13 missing are almost certainly dead, the toll is 41 rather than 60. It is still a horrific massacre.
posted by Juan Cole @ 8/04/2006 12:30:00 AM
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9 Comments:
Past the point of no return.
In my pessimistic view the US and Israel can no longer even give lip service to Middle East political processes. Both countries are so isolated from and despised by the populations of this region that they cannot hopr to project a serious sense of accomodation, fairness, and compromise.
What remains for the two countries is an endless call to arms, armament, and war. Both countries are expert at developing and marketing enemy provocations. Both countries have an unfailing sense of rectitude, and populations that support the "might makes right" principle.
The moderate Arab leaders are not stupid. They are distancing themselves from, and openly and heavily criticising, Israel-USA.
This is not just pretence. They know that the New Middle East and Ms Rice's pangs are aimed squarely at them, and for installing Chalabi-like CIA agants in their place.
The USA itself is paying a heafty price for its lunacy, and will most likely opt for isolationism pretty damn soon.
As for Israel. Things are not looking good ... are they?
Israel resumed heavy bombardment of South Beirut..
And of North Beirut :
Five killed as Israeli airstrikes hit Lebanon
Israel pounded Hezbollah?s southern Beirut strongholds with missiles early today and, in a sharp expansion of its bombing of Lebanon, blasted highway bridges for the first time in the Christian heartland north of the capital during morning rush hour.
Four civilians were killed and 10 wounded in the airstrikes on bridges north of Beirut early today, the Lebanese Red Cross said.
South Beirut has been attacked repeatedly by Israeli warplanes since fighting began on July 12. It is predominantly Shiite Muslim and largely controlled by Hezbollah guerrillas.
But surprisingly, Israeli warplanes struck in the Christian areas north of Beirut where Hezbollah has no support and has no presence.
Is Israel waging war against all of Lebanon as a Gangster Capitalist, jealous of Beirut's rise as an economic center in the Middle East, or is Israel merely killing people and states that it deems a threat, or that may be a threat at sometime in the future? Their intentions are immaterial, of course. The result is the same collection of war crimes, in Lebanon and Gaza and the West Bank, no matter their intentions.
Either way, Israeli policy looks like the twin of Washington's policy. Which came first is a moot question. Both policies have the same neocon source.
And the neoliberal Demoplican "alternative" is no alternative at all.
It is time for a clean break with the cabal that has seized power in the US and in Israel.
The litmus test for anyone seeking national office in the USA : are you going to cut off all funding for Israel and for the Iraq war, the Lebanese war, and any others the neo{cons|liberals} may have started between now and election time?
Any answer but "yes" puts the candidate at odds with the interests of the American people.
Israel resumed a heavy bombardment of South Beirut on Thursday, hitting al-Awza'i 24 times in the space of two hours. There are no Hizbullah facilities in al-Awza'i, according to LBC (a Christian-owned Lebanese satellite channel). AFP says that Israeli war planes fired missiles at "the Rweiss and Haret-Hreik districts in south Beirut, police said. Rweiss, which had initially been spared, was first targeted the previous night after a week's respite in strikes on the capital's suburbs. Haret-Hreik and Bir al-Abed, where Hezbollah's headquarters is located, were pounded for two weeks and are in ruins."
To play advocatus diaboli for a moment, who was it that laid down the rule that only "facilities" are legitimately or usefully bombable?
Might one not regard this news as the latest development a sort of "evolutionary arms race" that arises for intelligible reasons from the on-going interaction between Tel Aviv's strategies and those of the Lebanese Party of God? The one team began with lots of "facilities" in South Lebanon and South Beirut, and then the other team duly bombed them. However it now turns out that Team A does not need any facilities to keep those unguided missiles coming. Team B's propaganda response has been that all those former facilities were in effect only so many "human shields" in the first place, which is good enough, perhaps, as far as it goes, but doesn't go any significant distance militarily. If Team A can set up anywhere at on five or ten minutes' notice and launch a rocket, well, why shouldn't Team B decide that "anywhere" is a very suitable spot to bomb, as it were? (Militarily suitable, that is -- taking no account of any legal or diplomatic or moral or P.R. difficulties that may arise.)
In your blog you wrote: "Nasrallah is not the head of a state and has no recognized authority to wage war, and so is just a common serial murderer."
Heads of state are not the only figures who can wage war legally on the contrary; according to Akehursts Modern introduction to International Law, "If the people of a particular territory are regarded by International Law as possessing a legal right to self determination but the state administering that territory refuses to let them exercise that right, they may need to fight a war of national liberation to achieve that self determination in practice." Israel's initial occupation of Lebanon and then later the control of the Shebaa farms gives Hassan Nasrallah plenty of legal legitimacy to wage war.
again professor Cole your overly simplistic analysis of the situation is not grounded in sound International legal theory and practice. As you well know the Hizbullah resistance was created in response to Israel's occupation of Lebanon in 1982. Hizbullah as a resistance group was created to resist this occupation; a position and status legally recognized under international law. Israel's continued occupation of the Shebaa farms area continues to extend this legitimacy, and therefore, Nasrallah does have the right to wage war against Israel until Israel recognizes Lebanese sovereignty over the Shebaa farms and relinquishes control.
It's surprising that you haven't singled out any Israeli leaders for complicity in war crimes, or for that matter any members of the Bush administration.
Dr. Cole:
Heads of state can be common serial murders too.
JFL suggests that the lithmus test for public office be a pledge to cut off funds for Iraq and Israel. A wager: no major newspaper will even publish a letter or op ed with such proposal. No public candidate would ever dare associate with the idea.
Make no mistake about which side Americans see as the Force of Light. A July 19 CNN poll showed 57% of Americans favoring Israel, to 4% support for Hezbollah. No congressman up for re-election dare challenge this slant.
Even Walt and Mersheimer, on CSPAN, cut off a viewer who dared question Israel's legitimacy or right to US support. Easier to put a pro-polygamy question on the ballot. Watch: in CT the GOP may win a Senate seat in a 3-way race.
Here's the math: most Americans don't care a whole lot about the region. The 15% (including some Jews) who confess any qualms are not equipped to challenge the zeal and rage of the 20% who are committed, body and soul, to Israel.
Only Israelis themselves will have the faculty to perceive the ill fortune of current actions and conclude, in terms of their own interest, to change course.
Professor Cole,
This is probably, considered by some, a gratuitous comment, however considering the fire you've been under recently, it needs to be made.
Thank you for the fine analysis and the news that you bring to those who are not CNN'd and FOX'd.
Furthermore, thank you for subjecting yourself to the inanity of the interviews that you have to go through in the hopes of reaching a broader audience.
Please realize that it is through efforts like yours that a shift in attitude is taking place. It may seem like the task of Sisyphus but, in the long run, a change... however slight, will have been made through your efforts.
For that, the country and the world owes you a debt of gratitude.
Enough!! Get back to work and give us more raw data that we, as adults, can process on our own terms, using our own logic, our own morals, and our own humanity.
Again, thank you sir for the work that you do and the effort you put forth in the pursuit of sanity.
John Koch:
"No major newspaper will even publish a letter or op ed with such proposal."
I know that this is the gospel at the AIPAC, and certainly it has been that way for four decades.
But if we are to pull our irons from the fire at this late date we are going to have to do so without the "benefit" of the counsel of the MSM.
"No public candidate would ever dare associate with the idea."
Because the AIPAC comes after covenant breakers, hard!
That is why we must have a new crop of politicians unbeholden to the AIPAC; representatives, rather, of the interests of Americans.
I know you think you have it locked up John, but if we continue in this fashion we are about to have THE most serious meltdown in international relations.
My exhortation is just that. I have no idea what is going to happen. You may well be correct. Americans may stay asleep until it is all over. They may have already. But I believe, perhaps hope is more nearly the word, that we may yet stir ourselves to take back our country.
Things are so broken, spinning so rapidly out of control, that "the man in the street", like myself, is aware now of just how bad conditions are.
Certainly the one-two neocon punch of Iraq and Lebanon, with the neocons in Israel and the US now telegraphing their next attacks, is enough to point out where the proximate cause of all this worldwide mayhem lies.
This is certainly the most pressing opportunity we have had in my adult lifetime to break the shackles of the Israel Lobby.
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