Israeli-Hizbullah Battles in Deep South
Israelis Bombed Qana while Relief and Rescue troops worked

Update: Israeli war planes conducted further air raids Monday morning, despite Israeli officials' earlier pledge to cease for 48 hours. The Israelis bombed a car with a Lebanese Army officer and soldiers, killing him. They have repeatedly bombed Lebanese army bases and facilities and have killed over a dozen Lebanese troops and officers, but this is the first time I remember them apologizing for it. What does this change of attitude mean?

The Israeli government announced a 48-eight-hour cessation of its air raids on Lebanon while it investigated itself for the killing of large numbers of innocent civilians, especially children, at Qana. During this time, it is also allowing a 24-hour window for Lebanese in the south to leave the area safely without fear of being bombed by the Israeli air force and they flee (a fate that befell some Lebanese refugees in the past few days). Since emptying south Lebanon of people is part of the Israeli war plan, it wasn't actually altruistic of them to allow people to leave.

Nicholas Blanford reports on the horror at Qana.


Courtesy al-Hayat.

Blanford reveals that Israeli warplanes actually continued to bomb the town while the rescue workers were pulling ragdoll-dead children out of the building. That's cold, man. Cold:

' An earth-mover ground down the lane and began clawing chunks of concrete away from the building. Even as the rescue team toiled to recover the dead, Israeli jets continued to roar overhead and the thump of air strikes and exploding artillery shells reverberated around the steep valley. '

Israeli forces and Hizbullah fighters continued to fight on land in the border regions on Sunday. Hizbullah also fired numerous rockets into Israel, though they appear mostly to have been ineffectual, they did cause some damages and injuries.


Max Blumenthal on "The Israeli Checklist"

What is Hizbullah?

Western and Israeli pundits keep comparing Hizbullah to al-Qaeda. It is a huge conceptual error. There is a crucial difference between an international terrorist network like al-Qaeda, which can be disrupted by good old policing techniques (such as inserting an agent in the Western Union office in Karachi), and a sub-nationalist movement.

Al-Qaeda is some 5,000 multinational volunteers organized in tiny cells.

Hizbullah is a mass expression of subnationalism that has the loyalty of some 1.3 million highly connected and politically mobilized peasants and slum dwellers. Over a relatively compact area.

I take sub-nationalism as a concept from Anthony D. Smith. It would be most familiar to Western readers under the rubric of the Irish Catholics of North Ireland, or even the Scots of the UK. Subnationalism, like the larger, over-arching nationalism, is a mass movement.

Thus, a very large number of the Pushtuns in Afghanistan are sub-nationalists with a commitment to Pushtun dominance. They deeply resent the victory of the Northern Alliance (i.e. Tajiks, Hazara Shiites, and Uzbeks) in 2001-2002. A lot of what our press calls resurgent "Taliban" activity is just Pushtun irredentism. There are approximately 14 million Pushtuns in Afghanistan and another 14 million or so in Pakistan.

The Shiites of southern Lebanon are compact enough to likewise offer a subnationalism. Note that this is a new phenomenon. The Shiite masses were not socially and politically mobilized until at least the 1970s, and probably it is more accurate to say the 1980s. ("Social mobilization" refers to literacy, access to media, urbanization, industrialization and so forth; isolated small villages have difficulty organizing big movements.)

The main factor in causing these peasant sharecroppers to become politically aware and mobilized was the Arab Israeli conflict. The Israelis stole some of their land in 1948 and expelled 100,000 Palestinians north into south Lebanon, where they competed for resources with local Lebanese Shiites. In the late 1960s and early 1970s the Palestinians became politically and militarily organized by the PLO. The Shiites' conflict with the PLO in the southern camps in the 1970s was probably a key beginning, but from 1982 it was primarily their conflict with the Israeli Occupation army that spurred them on.

Processes of integration into the world market and increased mechanization of south Lebanon agriculture, as well as urbanization (Tyre, south Beirut) provided a *social* mobilization substrate that enabled but did not cause their *political mobilization* (see A. Richard Norton's book on early AMAL). The rise of a Shiite wealthy class, especially as a result of commerce with the Oil Gulf, added to the community's organizational capacity and resources. Still, the Shiites of south Lebanon are generally poor and a lot of them are still rural.

The Sunni Arabs of central, west and north Iraq are now also creating a subnationalism and organizing extensive paramilitary cells with highly significant asymmetrical warfare capabilities. The entire might of the formidable US military machine has made no headway against these 5 million persons.

Where subnationalisms are organized by party-militias willing to use carbombings and other asymmetrical forms of warfare, they are extremely difficult, if not impossible to defeat militarily. It would take a World War II style crushing military defeat of these populations, with the willingness of the conqueror to suffer tens of thousands dead in troop casualties. Israel is not even in a position to risk such a thing, given its small population.

Hizbullah is not like al-Qaeda in any way, sociologically speaking, and making such an analogy is a sure way for a general or politician to trick himself into entering the fires of hell.

What the Israelis set out to do, if they intended to "destroy" or even substantially attrite Hizbullah, was completely impractical. What they have done is to convince even Lebanese formerly on the fence about the issue that Hizbullah's leaders were correct in predicting that Lebanon would again be attacked in the most brutal and horrible way by the Israelis and that an even more powerful deterrent is needed. I.e more silkworms, not fewer. . The days when the Israelis could lord it over disconnected unmobilized Arab peasant villagers with their high tech army are coming to a close. The Arabs are still very weak, but are throwing up powerful asymmetrical challenges (e.g. party-militias with silkworm missiles!). Israeli alarm about the new connectedness of their foe explains the orgy of destruction aimed at bridges, roads, television and radio facilities and internet servers. But it is too late to disconnect the south Lebanese, who can easily and quickly rebuild all those connectors.

One hope the Israeli hawks appear to entertain is that they can permanently depopulate strips Lebanon south of the Litani river. Since most Shiites vote Hizbullah and offer political support and cover to it, fewer people means fewer assets for the party-militia. This project would require the total destruction of large numbers of villages and the permanent displacement of their inhabitants north to Beirut.

That is why the massacre at Qana occurred. The Israelis had bombed Qana 80 times. They were destroying all of its buildings. Therefore, of course, they destroyed the building where dozens of children and families were hiding. This tactic is both collective punishment and ethnic cleansing all at once. It is not only a matter, as the Israelis claim, of hitting Hizbullah rocket launchers. They are destroying all of the buildings.

The Israeli demographic project of thinning out the population of the far south of Lebanon will fail. They do not control that territory, and cannot stop people from coming back and rebuilding. The Israelis have an Orientalist myth that the Arabs are Bedouin and not attached to their ancestral villages. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon still group their neighborhoods around their camps in accordance with the geography of their former villages. The Lebanese Shiites will mostly come back.

The Israelis cannot win this struggle against a sophisticated, highly organized and well armed subnationalism.

The only practical thing to do when you can't easily beat people into submission is to find a compromise with them that both sides can live with. It will be a hard lesson for both the Lebanese Shiites and the Israelis. But they will learn it or will go on living with a lot of death and destruction.

Sistani Threatens US over Israeli War on Lebanon

The US punditocracy and ruling elite is fixated on Hizbullah as a "terrorist group" even though the organization hasn't engaged in international terror against American civilians in many years. What they forget about Hizbullah is that it is also a Shiite religious party, and that that is how it is perceived for the most part by Iraqi Shiites. Some 45 percent of Lebanese are probably Shiites.

The other thing to remember is that the United States is now a Shiite Power in part, insofar as it semi-rules a Shiite-majority country, Iraq.

The Associated Press is carrying the story that Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has demanded an immediate ceasefire in Israel's war on Lebanon, in the wake of the Qana massacre:

' `Islamic nations will not forgive the entities that hinder a cease-fire,'' al-Sistani said in a clear reference to the United States.

``It is not possible to stand helpless in front of this Israeli aggression on Lebanon,'' he added. ``If an immediate cease-fire in this Israeli aggression is not imposed, dire consequences will befall the region.''

Sistani had earlier condemned Israeli air raids on Lebanon but had confined himself to ordering the Iraqi Shiite religious establishment to provide aid to victims of the war in Lebanon.

Sistani's statements of early Monday morning (which are not yet reflected at his website in Arabic) go substantially beyond his earlier statement.

Several questions arise: 1) Why is Sistani speaking like this? 2) What can he do about it all? and 3) What are the possible consequences if he turns anti-American in practice, not just in rhetoric, as in the past?



Sistani is taking such a hard line on this issue not only because he feels strongly about it (his fatwa against the Jenin operation of 2002 was vehement) but also because he is in danger of being outflanked by Muqtada al-Sadr. Sadr's Mahdi Army is said to be "boiling" over the Israeli war on Hizbullah, since after all the Sadrists are also fundamentalist Shiites and they identify with the Lebanese Hizbullah. There have already been big demonstrations in Baghdad against the Israeli attacks, to which Sadrists flocked but probably also other Shiites.

Sistani cannot allow Muqtada to monopolize this issue, or the young cleric's legitimacy will grow among the angry Shiite masses at the expense of Sistani's.

Sistani is not linked to Hizbullah, which is strongly Khomeinist in orientation. Sistani largely rejects Khomeinism. He told an Iraqi acquaintance of mine, "Even if I must be wiped out, I will not allow Iraq to repeat the Iranian experience." When Sistani had his heart problems in summer, 2004, he flew to London via Beirut. He stopped in Beirut several hours, and Nabih Berri came out to the airport to consult with him. Berri is the speaker of the Lebanese parliament and the leader of the Amal Party. Amal is the party of the secularizing, moderate Lebanese Shiites. It was more militant in the 1980s but it mellowed.

So Sistani's political ties in Lebanon go to Amal much more than to Hizbullah. Sistani has many followers or "emulators" (muqallidun) among the Lebanese Shiites, though the hard core Hizbullahis tend to follow Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei of Iran instead. Some Lebanese Shiites follow the Lebanese grand ayatollah, Husain Fadlullah.

Note that Amal is allied with Hizbullah in parliament, and some Amal fighters have been killed in clashes with Israelis in the deep south. Amal abandoned its paramilitary during the 1990s, but seems to have kept some units active down near the Israeli border.

So Berri would have been in a position to implore Sistani to intervene. Sistani is hoping for something like a moderate Amal party to coalesce in Iraq and would want to help Berri any way he could.

Sistani has issued a warning to the United States. He wants Bush to intervene to arrange a ceasefire, i.e. the cessation of israeli air raids on Lebanon in general.

What could he do if he were ignored? Sistani could call massive anti-US and anti-Israel demonstrations. Given Iraq's profound political instability, this development could be extremely dangerous. US troops in Baghdad and elsewhere are planning offensives against Shiite paramilitary groups, so tensions are likely to rise in the Shiite areas anyway. But big demonstrations could easily boil over into actual attacks on US and British troops. Both depend heavily on fuel that is transported through the Shiite south. Were the Shiites actively to turn on the US for its wholehearted support of continued Israeli air raids, the US military could be cut off from fuel and supplies. The British only have around 8,000 troops in Iraq, and they would be in profound danger if Iraq's Shiites became militantly anti-occupation.

Since the Israeli treatment of Arabs is an issue on which Sunnis and Shiites agree, there is also a possibility that Sistani could finally get some respect from the Sunni community if he led such a compaign. That development would be more dangerous to the continued US military presence in Iraq than any other I can think of.

The US is already not winning against a Sunni Arab insurgency, backed by around 5 million Iraqis. If 16 million Shiites turned on the US because of its wholehearted support for Israel's actions in Lebanon, the US military mission in Iraq could quickly become completely and urgently untenable. In this case, the British troops in particular would be lucky to escape the country with their lives.

Sistani does not issue threats lightly, and he has repeatedly shown a willingness to back them up with action. Bush and US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad will ignore him to their peril.

Why Mel Gibson is Wrong

It is not very important or interesting that a Hollywood star has substance abuse problems. But the alleged sentiment expressed by Mel Gibson to the police who arrested him, as follows, is worth some comment:

' "Once inside the car, a source directly connected with the case says Gibson began banging himself against the seat. The report says Gibson told the deputy, 'You mother f****r. I'm going to f*** you.' The report also says 'Gibson almost continually [sic] threatened me saying he 'owns Malibu' and will spend all of his money to 'get even' with me.

"The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: 'F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.' Gibson then asked the deputy, 'Are you a Jew?'" '

I made some comments about this issue when The Passion of the Christ came out, which I reprint below.

As for the rest, simple truths sometimes need restating.

First: It is wrong to corral out a group of people on the basis of some attribute, such as religion, and then blame them collectively for something.

For instance, it would be just as wrong to say that Muslims are responsible for all the terrorism in the world.

Individual human beings aren't responsible for the actions of other people with whom they have some marker of identity in common. (The good Lord knows I wouldn't want to be held responsible for the actions of Donald Rumsfeld, even though we're both English-speaking Americans of Christian background). Collective guilt and collective punishment are always wrong, morally and legally.

Second: It is, like, not correct in any way that "Jews" are responsible for wars in the world. I'd say the credit for WW I goes to the Kaiser. WW II? Hitler. And he did not even like Jews. The Korean and Vietnamese wars were rooted in colonial dynamics (Japan and France), in East Asian Communist Parties, and in rising American power along the Pacific Rim. See, hard as I look, I can't find any evidence of Jewish responsibility here.

Now if one were talking contemporary wars in the Middle East, it wouldn't work there, either. The war of Morocco against the Polisario movement in the Sahara? Muslim on Muslim. The civil war in Algeria of the 1990s? Muslim on Muslim. The Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988? Secular Arab nationalism versus Shiite fundamentalism. The Israelis were tangentially involved in the latter, since they sold arms to Iran, but they did not cause the war. Saddam Hussein caused the war. Have the Israelis sometimes fired the first shot in a war? Yes. Did "Jews" cause those wars? No.

As for the Iraq War, puh-lease. Opinion polling shows that in spring of 2003, some 75 percent of Americans wanted to go to war against Saddam's regime. At the same time, only a little over 50 percent of American Jews supported the war. "Jews" did not cause the Iraq War. George W. Bush caused the Iraq War. He had Gentile advisers who wanted him to go for it. He had a handful of Jewish advisers who wanted him to go for it. But he is the president. It was his decision. And the American Jewish community was distinctly lukewarm about the whole idea, and very divided.

Finally, defining people is impossible. Human beings cannot be reduced to only one marker of identity. We all have multiple identities. Mel cannot just corral off a group of people and define them in a unidimensional way. And on the other side of things, there is a sense in which the US as a Creole society imbibes a good deal from each of its constituent subcultures. The United States would not have the practical freedoms it does have if it weren't for the activism in the 20th century of American Jews. We would not have nearly as deep and rich a culture without the profound contribution of Jewish thinkers and artists. We are all partially Jewish in this vague, cultural sharing, and are all much the better for it. But the main thing is, we are all human beings together down here, and need each other, and must respect one another.

So how could you draw a line of the sort Drunk Mel wants to draw?

He said a stupid, bigotted thing, and needs to face his problem squarely and apologize explicitly for stereotyping and blaming a whole people.

Here is what I said in February, 2004, about the controversy over "The Passion of the Christ":

=====

The Passion of Christ in the World Religions

The phenomenon of Mel Gibson's The Passion, about the death of Jesus of Nazareth, has provoked a lively debate about the dangers of anti-Semitism. Historians are well aware that medieval passion plays (which shared the sado-masochistic themes of Gibson's movie) often resulted in attacks on Jews. The concern of American Jewish leaders is therefore entirely valid.

Some of the problem goes back to the Gospel writers, who wrote many years after the fact and depict the Jewish leaders in a frankly implausible way because they had lost contact with Jewish customs. They have the Sanhedrin or Jewish religious council meeting about Jesus on the Sabbath, which just would not have happened. They have it meeting at night, which also would not have happened. Their account accords with nothing of the procedures and laws we know to have been followed at that time. The likelihood is that the Romans arrested and killed Jesus as a potential Zealot or religious radical whom they perceived as threatening, but that the later Christian community strove to have better relations with Rome just as Roman-Jewish relations got very bad. So the Gospel authors soft-pedaled Rome's role and invented nocturnal Sabbath Sanhedrins that have gotten Jews beaten up ever since.

In a post-September 11 world, this controversy has taken on wider significance. Film critic Michael Medved argued that American Jewish leaders were wrong to attack the film as anti-Semitic because they risked alienating Christian allies (of rightwing Zionism, apparently), who were needed to fight the "Islamo-fascists" (his word, on the Deborah Norville show) attacking Jews in Israel.

Although Medved appears in this argument to be taking the more "assimilated" position, basically saying that the rightwing Christians should be allowed to broadcast their historically absurd and offensive images of first-century Jews in peace regardless of the consequences, in fact his is the more reactionary position on several levels.

First, he is saying that a minority that faces many attacks every year in the US and Europe should not speak out about cultural phenomena that might increase those attacks. The United States is a relatively tolerant society in world-historical terms, but the ADL alleges that 17 percent of Americans hold anti-Semitic beliefs, and there are every year too many incidents of vandalism of Jewish property and harassment of Jews. I suspect I differ with the ADL on what exactly anti-Semitism is (it isn't criticism of Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories), but I accept their number as a ballpark figure. And if that is the number, it is way too high. Bigotry is when you stereotype an entire group, and then blame individuals for imagined "group" traits. Individuals are unique, and you can't tar a whole people with a single brush. And, it is by speaking out about the problem that any minority makes progress in the United States. Who would imagine telling African-Americans they should be quiet about films that depict them as villains harming something whites hold dear? No liberals that I know of.

Second, Medved is eager to perpetuate a dangerous political marriage of convenience between the rightwing settler movement in Israel and the American evangelicals. The rightwing Christians in the US don't support the settlers against the Palestinians because they love Judaism. They want to set things up for the conversion of all Jews to Christianity and the return of Christ, i.e., for the end of the Jewish people. (Interestingly, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is aware of this "Christian Zionism" and cites it as one motive for the US occupation of Iraq; it is not making Israel or the US any friends). The Likud may get votes and de facto campaign money from the rightwing Christians in the short term, but it is encouraging Christian anti-Semitism by disguising it as support for Israel. In fact, Israel's best interests lie in a return to the 1967 borders and making peace with Arab and Muslim neighbors, not by a ruthless expansionism and continued colonial occupation that harms Israel's image and debilitates Israeli democracy. (Yitzhak Rabin's policies of Oslo and after, before an ultra-Orthodox Jewish assassin cut him down, would have pulled the rug out from under Zarqawi's argument).

Third, it is hard to see the difference between the bigotry of anti-Semitism as an evil and the bigotry that Medved displays toward Islam. It is more offensive than I can say for him to use the word "Islamo-fascist." Islam is a sacred term to 1.3 billion people in the world. It enshrines their highest ideals. To combine it with the word "fascist" in one phrase is a desecration and a form of hate speech. Are there Muslims who are fascists? Sure. But there is no Islamic fascism, since "Islam" has to do with the highest ideals of the religion. In the same way, there have been lots of Christian fascists, but to speak of Christo-Fascism is just offensive. It goes without saying that a phrase like Judeo-fascist is an unutterable abortion. (And this despite the fact that Vladimir Jabotinsky, the ideological ancestor of Likud and the Neocons, spoke explicitly of the desirability of Jewish fascism in the interwar period). Medved is even inaccurate, since the terrorist attack on civilians in Jerusalem to which he referred was the work of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a secular rather than an ostensibly Muslim group.

Interestingly, the Koran, the holy book of Islam, denies that the Jews were responsible for Jesus's death (4:154-159). It appears that some Jews of the ancient Arabian city of Medinah were disappointed when they learned that the Prophet Muhammad had accepted Jesus as a prophet of God, and had put this decision down by observing that he wasn't much of a prophet if the Jews had managed to kill him. The Koran replies to this boast (surely by some jerk in the Medinan Jewish quarter) by saying, "They did not kill him, and they did not crucify him, it only appeared to them so." What exactly the Koran meant by this phrase has been debated ever since. As an academic, I do not read it as a denial of the crucifixion. The Koran talks of Jesus dying, and is not at all Gnostic in emphasis, at one point insisting that Jesus and Mary ate food (presumably against Gnostics who maintained that their bodies were purely spiritual). A lot of Muslims have adopted the rather absurd belief that Jesus was not crucified, but rather a body double took his place. (This is like something out of the fiction of Argentinean fabulist Jorge Luis Borges). Those Muslims who accepted Jesus' death on the cross (and nothing else in the Koran denies it) interpret the verse as saying it was God's will that Jesus be sacrificed, and so it was not the Jews' doing. (Great Muslims like at-Tabari and Ibn Khaldun accepted the crucifixion). Any way you look at it, though, the Koran explicitly relieves Jews of any responsibility for Jesus' crucifixion and death. In this it displays a more admirable sentiment than some passages of the Gospels, and certainly than the bizarre far-rightwing Catholic cult in which Mel Gibson was raised, which appears to involve Holocaust denial, and which deeply influenced his sanguinary film.

The Qana Massacre, Part II

Israeli war planes scored a direct hit on a building in the Shiite village of Qana where destitute farming folk, including old people, women and children, had taken refuge in the basement from Israeli bombing raids. At least 60 are dead, as bodies are pulled from the rubble. 19 children are confirmed dead and another 11 are thought still to be in the basement. The Israelis say they had pamphleted the region demanding that all civilians leave, and high Israeli officials have openly said that anyone who remains is fair game (low civilianity index, and maybe low humanianity index, too). The Israelis don't say, however, how desperately poor hardscrabble farmers including the aged and infirm and children are supposed to travel to Beirut over the roads and bridges that the Israelis have bombed out, and on what they are supposed to live when they get there.

The Israelis had launched 80 air raids on the village of Qana overnight, with large numbers of buildings flattened, according to CNN.

The Israelis appear to be engaged in a concerted campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Shiite towns and villages of southern Lebanon, and are indiscriminately bombing all buildings in the area south of the Litani River. They have chased hundreds of thousands of residents out, and are destroying the property they left behind in a systematic way, rather as they destroy the houses belonging to the family members related to suicide bombers. In other words, the Israelis are engaged in collective punishment on a vast scale. They maintain that rocket launching sites are embedded in these villages. But since Hizbullah keeps firing large numbers of rockets, it does not actually appear to be the case that the Israelis are hitting the rocket launchers. They are demonstrably hitting civilian houses and apartment buildings in a methodical way. There is no independent evidence that this civilian building in Qana was used for any military purpose. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has called for an international investigation and an immediate ceasefire, and he summarily sent Condi Rice away until she brings such a proposal.

Thousands of Lebanese in Beirut demonstrated in response and invaded the UN HQ in the capital. They also chanted against the United States ambassador in Lebanon, Jeffrey Feltman, screaming "Feltman out now!"

Feltman seems to be trapped in the US embassy, away from which most embassy employees have already been sent abroad. He expressed his regret to the Lebanese government for not being able to come to Baabda.

The Israelis bombed the Beirut-Damascus highway again on Saturday, adding to the crippling of Lebanon's infrastructure. Damascus is Beirut's inland trading partner and Lebanese trying to get out of the country have to go that route.

Mark Perry analyzes the decision-making that led to Qana.

Hamid Mir in Beirut finds that even some Christian nightclub owners are supporting Hizbullah! Opinion polls show Christian support for Hizbullah's resistance to the Israelis to have risen to over 50 percent in recent days, from the mid-40s.

Question 1: In what way is the Israeli compaign in South Lebanon different from Slobodon Milosevic's campaign in Bosnia?

Question 2: Since Bush and Rice derailed any move toward a ceasefire of the sort that the entire rest of the world demanded, aren't they directly implicated in this bloodshed?

AP reports on what the moral response would be of a normal human being in high political office:

' French President Jacques Chirac's office said "France condemns this unjustifiable action, which shows more than ever the need to move toward an immediate cease-fire, without which other such dramas can only be repeated."

Jordan's King Abdullah II condemned "the ugly crime perpetrated by Israeli forces in Qana," calling it "a blatant violation of the law and all international conventions."'

Later in the day, Pope Benedict XVI called for an immediate ceasefire.

I repeat, the Pope has called for an immediate ceasefire.

We know what we can expect from W.

Issandr El Amrani links to pictures of the Qana massacre and reminds us of the massacre of ten years ago.

Tom Engelhardt on the barbarity of air war.

Brent Scowcroft argues for a comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since the Arab League made such an offer to Israel way back in 2002, I'd say the ball is in Olmert's court. Good luck.

The Crisis Group has also put up a comprehensive peace plan.

Between 2000, when the Israelis withdrew unilaterally from their illegal military occupation of Lebanon's south, through July 12, 2006, six Israeli civilians died in border violence.

Israel's attack on fuel stations at the Christian port of Jounieh and elsewhere have caused massive oil spills on Lebanese beaches, perhaps the biggest environmental disaster ever in the Mediterranean.

Renewed Israeli Airstrikes Kill Family,
Others, Wound 2 UN Troops;
Nasrallah Vows Longer Range Rocket Strikes

The Israelis continued air strikes on Saturday. Naharnet.com carries this via AFP and AP:

'Elsewhere, Israeli warplanes demolished houses, killing seven people, including a woman and her five children . . . Lebanese civilians have born the brunt of the Israeli onslaught. The woman and her children were crushed in their home by a strike outside the market town of Nabatiyeh, which also killed a man in a nearby house, Lebanese security officials said. In the border village of Ain Arab in southeast Lebanon, six bodies were dug from the rubble of a house destroyed by a strike Friday, police said. Thirty-two Lebanese villagers killed in Israeli raids were also laid to rest in a mass grave in the southern port city of Tyre. '

Other Israeli attacks on Lebanon:

'Early Saturday, Israeli fighter jets renewed raids on Beirut's southern suburbs destroying a four-wheel-drive vehicle in a missile strike. The driver escaped unharmed when he jumped out of the vehicle. Israeli forces have repeatedly targeted cars and trucks . . . Two people were wounded in an attack on a lorry in the Bekaa Valley area of Sultan Yaacoub, the National News Agency said. Israeli forces also bombarded from the air and the sea various regions of south Lebanon, targeting valleys and houses. There were no immediate reports of casualties. '

And there was this:

' Before dawn on Sunday, Israeli warplanes hit the Masnaa border crossing, cutting the main road that links Lebanon to Syria and forcing the closure of the main transit point for refugees fleeing and humanitarian aid entering Lebanon. Two more missiles hit the area early Sunday. . . Two Indian UN peacekeepers were wounded on Saturday in an Israeli air raid on their post in south Lebanon. Four UN military observers were killed earlier this week in an Israeli strike on their observation post. '

The Israeli military mysteriously and suddenly pulled out of the far-south town of Bint Jbeil on Saturday, after a hard-fought battle to take the town of 30,000 that cost the lives of 8 Israeli troops last Wednesday alone. Naharnet says, "On Friday, the Israeli army said seven of its soldiers were wounded, including one seriously, when Hizbullah fighters attacked a ridge overlooking Bint Jbeil and the nearby village of Maroun al-Ras. " It appears to be the case that the Israelis were over-confident and have been taking much higher casualties than they had been prepared for, and so withdrew lest the casualties mount, until they figured out what to do about Hizbullah's tactics.

Altogether about 33 Israeli troops have been killed in the fighting with Hizbullah, with 17 civilians dead. The Lebanese authorities estimate that some 400 Lebanese civilians have died in the Israeli assaults, plus another 200 that likely are still buried in rubble.

Hizbullah fired 90 rockets at Israel on Saturday, again, but none did significant damage or inflicted severe wounds. 7 civilians and 3 soldiers were reported injured.

Hizbullah leader Shaikh Hasan Nasrallah pledged Saturday to hit even further into the heart of Israel with his rockets if the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon did not cease. He denied that the Israelis had won any victories, pointing to their destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure as a "savage achievement."

Israel rejected a plea from the UN for a 72-hour ceasefire to allow aid to be distributed. Some food and other aid has arrived in Beirut but relief workers are afraid to distribute it because the Israelis are targeting moving trucks for destruction.

Hundreds of Egyptians demonstrated at al-Azhar mosque on Friday against the Israeli war on Lebanon. They called for Hizbullah to destroy Tel Aviv and denounced Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Saudii King Abduallh for not intervening with all their energies to denounce Israel.

Over a Dozen Dead in Civil War Violence
Khafaji denounces Maliki for Visit to Bush


Guerrillas detonated a car bomb in Kirkuk on Saturday, killing four persons and wounding 15. There have been lots of bombings in the volatile multi-ethnic oil city recently, and some worry about a sectarian war breaking out there.

Turkish troops reportedly made a brief incursion into Iraq on Friday in search of members of the PKK guerrilla group.

In other violence, the US military announced that four Marines had been killed in al-Anbar province on Thursday. A grenade attack wounded 12 laborers in Baghdad. A senior officer in the Iraqi border patrol was assassinated in Karbala. Several persons were wounded in an attack in Fallujah. There was a firefight between the US/Iraqi police and the Mahdi Army in Diwaniyah, which left 7 policemen wounded. No word of Mahdi Army casualties if any. My guess is that if the Mahdi Army really wants Diwaniyah there isn't that much anyone can do about it in the medium term. Reuters has other details of the ongoing civil war attacks.

In addition, there were guerrilla attacks on two mosques in Baghdad.

And, guerrillas destroyed a small Shiite shrine in Diyala province.

Also in Diyalah:

' Unknown gunmen on Saturday killed two people, wounded two others and kidnapped two more in separate incidents in the volatile Diyala province in northeast Baghdad. '

The Sadrist Shaikh Khafaji denounced, in his Friday prayer sermon, the visit of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to the US. He also tied the Lebanon war to the war in Iraq. Jeffrey Fleishman writes, ' Nouri al-Maliki's trip to Washington this week as a betrayal of Islam and a humiliation to his people at the hands of U.S. and Israeli aggressors. Sheik Khafaji intertwined the bloodshed in Iraq and Lebanon, calling it a design by Christians and Jews to defeat the Muslim world. '

Meanwhile, on Friday Abdul Aziz al-Hakim finally admitted the need to disband the sectarian militias in Iraq. But he also demanded that the US turn security duties over to the Iraqi government immediately. The main force that might deal with security instead? Sectarian militias, one of which, the Badr Corps, al-Hakim oversees.
Mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad are being ethnically cleansed, as Sunnis flee Shiite districts and vice versa.

Frank Rich, one of our most perceptive intellectuals, points to the odd downplaying of Iraq news what with the advent of the Israel-Lebanon crisis. But Rich is being a little unfair. If they tried to cover two important issues like Iraq and Israel-Lebanon, the television news producers would ask, how could they fit in the missing white women and the small town murder mysteries?

First there is large scale social violence. And then the banks start going under and being robbed at will. Then the economy collapses. I saw it happen to Lebanon in the late 1970s. It is happening in Iraq now, according to James Glanz of the NYT.

Fraud in AID accounting for projects in Iraq?

An Australian general, Major General Maurie McNarn, played a "red card" during the 2003 US attack on Iraq, vetoing massive bombing raids that would unnecessarily kill innocent civilians. See folks, there really is a distinction between making war and committing gross war crimes, and some professional military men know what it is and stand by it. I fear Tommy Franks and some other US officers were not among them.

McNarn reveals that George W. Bush himself vetoed involving the United Nations in Iraq in summer of 2003: '"The UN can't manage a damn thing," Mr Bush told Mr Downer, recalling his visit to Kosovo, where the President found the UN personnel to be "a bunch of drunks". ' Hmmm. Can't manage a damn thing and a bunch of drunks. Sound like anyone we know? Can you say, Reflection fallacy?

Blair and the Rhetoric of False Equivalence

The techniques of propaganda were on full display during the joint news conference of George W. Bush and British PM Tony Blair on Friday. Blair began by saying,

' What is happening in the Middle East at the moment is a complete tragedy for Lebanon, for Israel and for the wider region. '

Note how by calling it a "tragedy," Blair takes the onus off Israel for launching a total war on the Lebanese infrastructure and population. A hurricane is a tragedy, Mr. Prime Minister. This is a war. It is a war launched by specific persons, including especially Ehud Olmert and Gen. Halutz. It isn't something that can be put into the passive voice.

Moreover, Blair further obscures reality by making the "tragedy" cover 'Lebanon, Israel, and the wider region.' 50 Israelis have died, 33 of them military. On the order of 600 Lebanese civilians have been killed, with over 400 bodies recovered. Hizbullah's rockets have damaged some buildings, but the scale of destruction in Lebanon by far dwarfs that in Israel. The Israelis have targeted residential apartment buildings, bridges, roads, telecom towers, internet servers. They have made 750,000 Lebanese homeless, out of 3.8 million residents of Lebanon.

It isn't a "tragedy" and its effects haven't been the same everywhere.

Here is more of Blair:

' And the scale of destruction is very clear. There are innocent lives that have been lost, both Lebanese and Israeli. There are hundreds of thousands of people that have been displaced from their homes, again, both in Lebanon and in Israel. And it's been a tremendous and terrible setback for Lebanon's democracy. '

His rhetoric attempts to lump together Israel and Lebanon with regard to the "scale of destruction." And, even if it were true that "hundreds of thousands" of Israelis have been displaced, which I doubt, the fact is that very few of them have lost a home or suffered serious wounds, compared to the thousands and thousands of Lebanese who have. There is not any equivalence, of the sort Blair pretends exists, between the suffering of the Lebanese and the suffering of the Israelis. There certainly are Israelis suffering. But their number is tiny in comparison to the Lebanese who have.

I could go on, but it is pretty clear, I think. Even the British cabinet is unhappy with Blair over his performance.

Islands in Arabia

Patrick McGreevy writes from Beirut:

' Islands in Arabia

Sitting on my balcony staring down at the Sea Gate of the American University of Beirut, and to the Mediterranean beyond, I am in no danger. The bombs are in the distance. The fighting is in the south. In Tel Aviv, Israeli citizens are staring at the same sea, in perfect safety. The missiles are landing in Haifa and farther north. And those following this war from living rooms around the world are in utter cocoons of safety. Most of us are separated from the violence that under girds our world and its order. But are we safe from fear? And does our fear make us wish for an order more and more strongly under girded?

AUB, like the State of Israel, is an implantation on the Levant from the West. Israel’s unilateral attempt to disengage and repair behind its enormous wall, as if it were an island in a sea of Arabs, reminds me of New Orleans dreaming of safety behind its levees. But New Orleans is an artificial island that is actually below sea level. Is Israel below sea level as well? AUB has evolved in a very different direction with regard to its surroundings. Might the Israelis learn something from its experience?

The American missionaries who first arrived in the eastern Mediterranean in 1820 were inspired by the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening. As historian Ussama Makdisi puts it, they sought “to evangelize the world in order to facilitate the Second Coming of Christ.” They also saw themselves as representatives of the most enlightened, most advanced, most modern of civilizations—the truth of their religion being the centerpiece of this superiority. They founded schools because Christians needed to read the Bible. They introduced western medical practices and what later became the standard Arabic script. When they founded Syrian Protestant College in 1866 (later AUB), they hoped to attract students by teaching them about medicine, agriculture and the arts. The entire enterprise was a failure in terms of its goal of gaining converts: there were hardly any. But their inadvertent philanthropy had a profound impact. Many Arabs embraced the modern notions they learned at the college. In 1882, a huge controversy erupted when the Presbyterian Board of Trustees in the US forbade the teaching of the theory of evolution, and eventually dismissed two promising Arab scientists who had dared embrace modernity more thoroughly than the university’s trustees. As years passed, the university’s mission became increasingly secular and its faculty and administration increasingly Arab. In 1920, it changed its name to the American University of Beirut. John Munro, who has written a history of the university, suggests that the word “of” in its name became more and more representative of reality. The university played an important role in the revival of Arabic literature and Arab nationalism. Partly because of AUB, most Arabs held favorable views of the US, at least until the 1967 War. Even during the horrors of Lebanon’s long Civil War, all sides spared the AUB campus and hospital. The University has walls and gates, but its guards do not carry guns. Its walls serve to designate it as a particular place where students from all of the region’s religions and ethnic groups can openly debate and pursue knowledge. As AUB student Randy Nahle put it in his prize-winning Founders’ Day essay in 2004, the university provided “an open forum where Occidental and Oriental streams of thought could meet and debate and reshape each other.” When AUB’s Center for American Studies and Research that I direct decided to offer a course called “The Holocaust in American Literature and Culture” last semester, we were aware that, though our decision was not without controversy, AUB was a free and open space where even this topic could be approached in a scholarly way. Instead of remaining an isolated island, AUB has continued to evolve. If it is an American institution, it is not because it slavishly serves the agenda of any presidential administration, but because it openly embraces ideals that have motivated the most admired of US achievements.

Can Israel evolve and become a country “of” its region rather than an island “in” it? A country where people of all religions have absolute equality? A country with “liberty and justice for all”? If so, both Israel and its neighbors have a great deal to gain.

In the Levant, endless empires have come and gone. Living here naturally turns one’s mind to the long view. In July of 2006, the American University of Beirut may seem vulnerable and Israel invincible, which is more likely to exist in 500 years? Perhaps now is a time to think about these most basic issues. What kind of island is likely to persist: one with open gates, or one with high walls? One that is a meeting place of cultures, or one that strives for cultural purity?

Patrick McGreevy ''

Israeli Air Strikes Kill 15 Civilians:
Hizbullah Fires longer range Missile, Misses

The Daily Star reports:

' Israel's powerful war machine pounded Lebanon for the 17th day on Friday as Hizbullah launched new, longer-range wepons on settlements in northern Israel . . . Israeli planes and warships hammered Southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley . . .

'At least 15 civilians, including a Jordanian, were killed by Israeli raids Friday and several others wounded, including four children, while a church was demolished in Safad al-Battikh . . .

"The Israeli bombing wounded one French journalist in the Southern town of Ainata and another media convoy was bombed on the road leading to the Southern town of Rmeish," the report added. The French journalist was identified as Paul Quatier from France's Channel 2. '

Pictures

Lebanese in the south, mainly Shiites are turning to Hizbullah in a big way.

The UN is calling for a three-day aid cease-fire, so that food and other necessities can be delivered to suffering Lebanese civilians. The Israelis at the moment are only authorizing aid convoys on an ad hoc basis, which means they are constantly in danger of being attacked by the Israeli army.

Many Indians are upset about what is being done to Lebanon. I would guess that there are nearly 5 million Shiites in India (they are about 5 percent of the Muslims, who are 11 percent of India's more than 1 billion persons.

What about the country's executive? Prime Minister Manmohan Singh articulated the country's feelings when he addressed parliament on Thursday:

' While condemning the Hezbollah abduction of two Israeli soldiers, which triggered the Israeli onslaught, Manmohan Singh took Tel Aviv to task: "The virtual destruction of a country which has been painfully rebuilt after two decades of civil war can hardly be countenanced by any civilized state." '

If the US Congress is going to earmark millions for the Lebanese army, wouldn't it want to ask the Israelis to stop bombarding it first?

What do the Lebanese think about all this? They have revenge on their minds and most support Hizbullah's actions, even a majority of the Christians. Christians make up 40 percent of the voting-age population, and hold the presidency and a number of cabinet posts, as well as many positions in the officer corps.

The percentage of Lebanese in a recent poll who think that the US is an honest broker and has a place in Lebanese affairs has fallen from nearly 40 percent last January to 10 percent today. Lebanon was supposed to be the Bush administration's success story. All has turned to ashes.

As for the Israeli hope of getting the Lebanese to turn on Hizbullah, that doesn't seem to be working out very well. 87 percent of the Lebanese expressed support for Hizbullah's retaliatory attacks on northern Israel. 70 percent supported Hizbullah's capture of Israeli troops to force Israel to release Lebanese prisoners. Support for this move actually rose to a clear majority even among Christians. Only
the Druze among Lebanese ethnic/religious communities mostly disapproved (they are 6 percent of the population). 63 percent expect Hizbullah to be victorious over Israel.

As for suffering in Israel, which is widespread and worrisome: The bad news is that Hizbullah was able to fire a missile a little bit south of Haifa on Friday. The good news is that they don't appear to have been able actually to hit anything.

There is another dimension, besides the deaths, wounded and psychological trauma, to the damage Hizbullah's illegal and criminal targetting of civilians is doing, which is the economic.

AFP on the damage the war is doing in Israel to Haifa's economy.

' Haifa port, the Jewish state's second-largest, is closed. So is the railway line north of the city. . . According to a recent study by the Israeli Association of Manufacturers, just a third of enterprises in Israel's north are functioning normally. Thirty-five percent have closed completely and another 35 percent are not operating at full capacity. The conflict is costing Haifa 300-500 million shekels ($68-$113 million) per day, the study estimates. '

Tourism is dead, and some restaurants have suffered a 90 percent fall-off in business.

Israeli cabinet rejects masive reliance on troops.

The Israeli war with Hizbullah is going badly for the Israelis. Some generals think the problem is too few troops. But the Israeli cabinet rejected that way of thinking, Thursday, sticking to its current mixture of air power and light infantry.

Air strikes in the south will continue.

Bloomberg reports that the the Israeli assault on Lebanon may have much strengthened the hand of Shaikh Hassan Nasrullah.

Mitch Prothero in Salon.com on the myth that Hizbullah hides among civilians.

' Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around their targets, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths -- the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far -- on "terrorists" who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.

But this claim is almost always false. My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters -- as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers -- avoid civilians. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators -- as so many Palestinian militants have been.

For their part, the Israelis seem to think that if they keep pounding civilians, they'll get some fighters, too. '

A Christian Bishop in Jerusalem would get a better hearing among American Christians than would non-Christian leaders, right? Wrong.

32 Killed, 151 Wounded in Karada Strikes

Sunni Arab guerrillas used a combination of car bombs and mortar strikes to kill at least 32 persons in the upscale, predominantly Shiite Karada district on Thursday, while wounding 151.

The explosions took place near the home of Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi, and this area generally supports the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). That is, the Sunni Arab guerrillas were targeting the Shiite bourgeoisie this time, not the poor of Sadr City. SCIRI leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim also leads the United Iraqi Alliance, the largest party in parliament.


Photo Courtesy KarbalaNews.net

Some 19 bodies were found in the capital, killed execution style, the victims of faith-based reprisals. In East Baghdad, 5 traffic policemen were kidnapped.

Guerrillas opened fire on Georgian troops at a checkpoint near Baquba on Thursday. No word on casualties.

Reuters reports other casualties in the ongoing civil war violence.

Tony Karon on how the Lebanon War imperils Bush's policies in Iraq.

Blackwater and Falluja-- did the mercenaries mess up the US effort in Iraq?

Criminalizing Civilians

Patrick McGreevy writes from Beirut:

' Criminalizing Civilians

In the days before the US-commanded forces unleashed the second siege of Falluja in November 2004, a quarter million women, children and old men fled the city, but males between the ages of 15 and 45 were denied passage. They were essentially criminalized and forced to remain in a zone upon which hell was about to descend. These poor souls were condemned to a legal category that philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls hominus sacres, those without rights who can be killed without it being called the murder of a human, homicide.

Israeli leaders have a decision to make. After the IDF’s devastating losses at Bint Jabeil on Wednesday, the Washington Post Foreign Service reported this statement from former Mossad officer Yossi Alpher: “I dare say, based on what we’ve seen so far, these may be the best Arab troops we’ve seen so far.” An Nahar today reported that, Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon proclaimed: “Everyone who is still in south Lebanon is linked to Hizbullah, we have called on all who are there to leave.” He then suggested that “maximum firepower has to be used.” As justification, he cited the meeting in Rome, from which “we have in effect obtained the authorization to continue our operations until Hisbullah is no longer present in southern Lebanon.”

Look at this logic: since Israel has asked civilians to leave, any that disobeyed have forfeited their status as civilians. Because the United States and its British followers have blocked the resolution to stop the killing, Israel will continue until Hezbollah “is no longer present.” But remember Hezbollah has been redefined to include all those “still in south Lebanon.” This crude logic renders all the people of southern Lebanon hominus sacres.

A serious war crime may be imminent. The responsibility to protect civilians does not end when an invading army asks them to clear out. An Nahar also reported that hundreds of people were trapped in southern villages. Moreover, there is evidence that some who tried to flee north in cars have been targeted.

On his web log informedcomment.com, Juan Cole argued on Monday that since Hezbollah fighters cannot effectively aim their rockets, and since they must understand they are most likely to hit civilians, they are therefore guilty of war crimes themselves. Hezbollah leaders would undoubtedly respond that they are not intentionally targeting civilians. From the beginning of the war, Israeli leaders have justified the deaths of Lebanese civilians by claiming that they also never target civilians; it is simply that Hezbollah fights from civilian areas and there is a lot of collateral damage when they are targeted.

All of this is bad enough, but what may be in store if the frustrated IDF begins to treat all people in south Lebanon as enemies will be a war crime of a different magnitude. In most past wars, the victors had the luxury of telling the story, and prosecuting the war crimes. In this war, the eyes of the world are squarely fixed on what is about to happen. Israel’s powerful alley may be able to prevent prosecutions of its decision makers, but all will know what decision they made. Most importantly the Arab World we know, and will not forget. Israel has a decision to make. '

Patrick McGreevy
Beirut'

Boston Benefit

Boston Performing Artists for Peace Present:

A Benefit Concert
for Civilian Victims of the
Israeli-Lebanese Conflict


Including participants from the following area organizations:
(organizations named for identification purposes only)

American Repertory Theater -- The Boston Camerata --
The Boston Philharmonic -- Dünya Turkish Music Ensemble Emmanuel Music -- From the Top --- Sharq Arab-American Ensemble -- Voices of Black Persuasion

Anne Azéma -- Joel Cohen -- Jeremy Geidt -- Kareem Roustom --
Mehmet Sanlikol -- Craig Smith -- Benjamin Zander

And others!


8 P.M. August 7, 2006
at Emmanuel Church, Newbury St., Boston

All proceeds to be forwarded to nonpartisan humanitarian relief

FREE ADMISSION, donations requested

Contact: Yasmina Kamal
yasminakamal@verizon.net

Al Qaeda enters Fray

The Israeli occupation of Jerusalem has long been an al Qaeda bugbear. It sent Richard Reid to case El Al, israeli airlines. It hit Israeli tourists in Mombasa and the Sinai. But Bin Laden always avoided investing in an area where there was already an active insurgency. He also could not join in with heretical Shiites like Hizbulah.

Ayman al Zawahiri today made a change in both policies. He wants al Qaeda to pile on in Gaza and to defend Hizbullah in Lebanon.

The Sunni Arab regimes have been reluctant to press too hard for ceasefire because they see Hizbullah as an agent of Iran. This foot dragging has been unpopular among the public. Al Qaeda is now playing to that gallery.

As usual, Israel is radicalizing the Muslim world. The US, too, will suffer.

Zawahiri has turned to pan Islam and the Near Enemy. He is willing to help Nasrallah and the Qassam Brigades. It is a historic about face. It could be significant. More later.

9 Israeli Troops Killed
Israel Bombs Lebanese Army

The Israelis launched a new wave of bombing attacks on Thursday morning:

' Israeli military aircraft bombed a Lebanese army base in the Amsheet area north of Beirut and destroyed a radio relay station in the area, local media reported, citing Lebanese military sources. Meanwhile, Israel warplanes also struck areas in south Lebanon. . .'

The Israeli official line is that they are only fighting Hizbullah and that the huge number of civilian casualties is an accident. But why are they bombing the regular Lebanese army north of Beirut if their real enemy is Hizbullah, a southern Shiite paramilitary? Why are they bombing radio relay stations?

Note that the only way this conflict can end is for the Lebanese state to be strengthened so that it has a hope of dealing with Hizbullah. Uh, these actions are not, like, strengthening the Lebanese state.

On Wednesday,

An Israeli air strike 'hit a truck carrying medical and food supplies donated to Lebanon by the United Arab Emirates, killing its Syrian driver and wounding two others, security sources said. The truck was destroyed just a few kilometres from Lebanon's eastern border with Syria in the town of Anjar. '

A truck full of medical and food supplies?

China strongly condemned the Israeli air strike on a United Nations peacekeeping base, which left a Chinse soldier dead. President Hu Jintao also called for an immediate ceasefire.

The senior Irish officer in UNIFIL had warned the Israelis 6 times that they were striking too close to the UN base. After the Israelis had killed 4 UN soldiers, Egyptian UN troops were sent in to retrieve the bodies. The Israelis fired on them, too. International law stipulates that those who kill UN peacekeepers can be extradited and tried for the crime.

The true number of Israeli toops killed Wednesday fighing Hizbullah in the south was 9. 8 were killed in the house to house battle for Bint Jbeil, which the Israelis had announced that they had captured the previous day. The Israelis are now claiming to have killed 250 Hizbullah fighters in the south, but no independent observer puts the number so high. The poor performance of the Israeli army in taking two towns, one of them a village of 400 and now a small town of 30,000, has provoked a firestorm of criticism in the Israeli public.

Israeli ground operations in Gaza killed 23 persons on Wednesday, about half of them innocent civilians.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora called on Israel to negotiate the return to lebanon of the Shebaa Farms area, Occupied since 1967.

The horror faced by Lebanese civilians in the border towns near Israel is revealed by the VOA:

'Tehfa says the bombs are not the only danger. Yaroun is all but cut off from the outside world. "Plus, the people die without food. There is no water, no electricity, no gas. Nothing!" she added. Tehfa literally walked to safety, wearing a pair of black flip-flop sandals and carrying nothing but her shiny black handbag. After nearly two weeks under siege, she and a group of about 70 townspeople - waving a large white flag - walked six kilometers to the nearest village, a place called Rmeich. Another Australian, Fatima Salim, managed to find a car to take her to Rmeich, and then slept in a cramped apartment with 80 other people for three days. "I lost my mother, my brother, my sister-in-law. I do not know where they are gone," she said. "Because I go out from one door, they go out from another door. And for one minute, I cannot see my parents. I do not know where they are." '

The Number of internally displaced Lebanese, i.e. people reduced to homelessness by Israel's war on Lebanon, has risen to an estimated 600,000, according to the UN.

France is willing to play a major role in any peacekeeping effort in southern Lebanon. But President Jacques Chirac opposes doing it under the rubric of NATO. He says it is viewed in the region as "the armed wing of the West." How refreshing to find a president who both knows this and cares what Arabs think.

Hizbullah sent 10 rockets on Safed early Thursday morning. No word of any casualties. Over a dozen were said to have been wounded on Wednesday by dozens of Hizbullah rockets.

Al-Zaman: Shiite Clashes with British in
South As Security Deteriorates
Grand Ayatollah al-Najafi calls for
withdrawal of foreign troops

Al-Zaman reports that the security situation in southern Iraq "exploded" on Wednesday. Fighting broke out between local militiamen and British forces in the provinces of Basra, Amara and Diwaniyah. Informed government sources told al-Zaman that the Shiite religious parties have formed lobbies to pressure the Maliki government over its attampts to establish security in all the cities of Iraq. The sources suggest that the military escalation coincided with the exceptional backing Maliki's government has received from the Bush administration.

The sources say that the pressure of these lobbies for the religious parties with militias in the south even reached the grand ayatollahs in Najaf. The Pakistani cleric Bashir al-Najafi warned of the possible eruption of a popular revolution if the government did not address the pressing issues [of security] and the problem of services. His office issued a statement in which the grand ayatollahs said, "We fear the coming of a day when we cannot restrain a revolution of the people, with all its unsavory consequences." He said that the Iraqi government must take over security altogether from the foreign forces in Iraq.

Al-Zaman says that al-Najafi would not speak out on these political issues on his own, and that his remarks almost certainly reflect a consensus among the four grand ayatollahs of Najaf (among whom Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani is first among equals.)

The sources said that fighting broke out on Wednesday between the Mahdi Army and British troops in the eastern section of Amara (the districts of Mahmudiyah, al-Saray and Hayy al-Husayn). They said that the Mahdi Army fighters deployed anti-tank missiles against 15 British tanks, after there had been a notable spreading out of Jaysh Mahdi fighters through the city.

Mahdi Army guerrillas in Basra shot anti-tank missiles at British tanks. In Diwaniyah, gunmen bombarded Lake Echo and the Coaltion forces stationed there.

President Bush cited the improved security in the Shiite south of the country (the British have withdrawn from Muthanna) as a sign of progress during his joint news conference in Washington with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Men dressed in police uniforms went into an apartment building in downtown Baghdad and kidnapped 17 persons, including 5 women and 2 children. Typically such abductions are part of faith-based reprisals in the Sunni-Shiite civil war.

Reuters reports civil war violence on Wednesday. In addition, 5 bodies showed up dead in the streets of Baghdad and a general in the Interior Ministry was abducted. The Interior Ministry is in charge of providing domestic security.

Robert Reid of AP sees another confrontation building between Coalition troops and the Mahdi Army of young Shiite clerical nationalist, Muqtada al-Sadr.

Israelis Kill UN Peacekeepers
Halutz Commits to War Crimes
Israeli Airstrikes Kill Nabatiyeh Family
$150 Million Damage to Factories


Update: Hizbullah fighters defending Bint Jbeil have killed 14 Israeli soldiers, according to early reports on Wednesday. Hizbullah is ratcheting up its kill ratio with the Israeli military toward 1:1, something no other Arab fighting force has even approached.

A Radio interview with me by Barry Gordon.


UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed shock at the deliberate targetting of the UN peacekeeping base in Khiam, south Lebanon.

' "This coordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long established and clearly marked U.N. post at Khiam occurred despite personal assurances given to me by (Israeli) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that U.N. positions would be spared Israeli fire," '

The Israelis denied that they hit the base deliberately, but Kofi would know. Why do it? When you have in mind war crimes, it is better not to have neutral observers in the region.

Philip Gordon relays the thinking of the Israeli political and military elite behind its inhuman and massive bombing of all Lebanon:

' According to retired Israeli army Col. Gal Luft, the goal of the campaign is to "create a rift between the Lebanese population and Hezbollah supporters." The message to Lebanon's elite, he said, is this: "If you want your air conditioning to work and if you want to be able to fly to Paris for shopping, you must pull your head out of the sand and take action toward shutting down Hezbollah-land." '

In other words, Zbig was right that the Israelis have kidnapped the 3.8 million Lebanese and are holding them all for ranson, while breaking their legs from time to time to encourage prompt payment. The horrible thing is that the Lebanese could not do anything about Hizbullah if they wanted to. Their government is weak and divided (Hizbullah is in it, and the Bush administration and Ambassador Mark Feltman signed off on that!) Their new, green army only has 60,000 men, and a lot of them are Shiites who would not fight Hizbullah. Lebanon was a patient that needed to be nurtured carefully to health. Instead, it has been drafted and put into the middle of the worst fighting on the battlefield.

Then there is this: ' Brigadier General Dan Halutz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, emphasised that the offensive . . . was open-ended. “Nothing is safe (in Lebanon), as simple as that,” he said. '

In other words, Halutz, who is also said to have threatened ten for one reprisals, is openly declaring that he will commit war crimes if he wants to. Nothing is safe? A Christian school in the northern village of Bsharri? A Druze old people's home in the Shouf mountains? A Sunni family out for a stroll in the northern port of Tripoli? He can murder all of them at will, Halutz says. And Luft gives us the rationale. If these Lebanese civilians aren't curbing Hizbullah for Israel, they just aren't going to be enjoying their lives. They are a nation of hostages until such time as they have properly developed Stockholm syndrome and begin thanking the Israelis for their tender mercies.

I was in Beirut briefly in mid-June. I went downtown in the evening, where big LCD displays had been set up outside at the cafes, and thousands of people were enjoying the World Cup games. The young Lebanese, in jeans, were dancing to the new pop music of stars like Nancy Ajram and Amal Hijazi. Some had painted their faces with Brazilian flags. They were rooting for Brazil. The shops were full of fashionable clothing and jewelry, the restaurants tastefully decorated, the gourmet Lebanese food tantalizing. The bookstores were full of probing studies and intelligent commentary. The Syrians were gone and there was a lighthearted atmosphere. The snooty nightclubs at places like Monot street were choosy about who could get in.

I went to see publishers about my project, of publishing the works of great American thinkers in Arabic. Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King. They mentioned about how the US did not have a good reputation and maybe not many readers would be interested. I said, maybe that is changing. Washington supports the new government, after all. We are your well-wishers.

Meanwhile, while Nancy was singing and Brazil was scoring, Halutz and Olmert were putting the final touches on their long-planned bombing campaign. They would go up and hit Tripoli's port, a Sunni area. They would hit the port at Jounieh, the trendy Christian city near Beirut. They would hit Beirut's port and its new shiny airport. They would hit the milk factory, the telecom towers, the roads, the bridges, and some clinics and hospitals for good measure. They would hit the fuel depots. It would be a total war on the Lebanese civilian population, setting 800,000 out of 3.8 million out from their homes or the rubble of their former homes, forcing them to other cities as homeless refugees, or abroad to Syria or Cyprus. They would reduce al-Dahiyah al-Janubiyah, the teeming Shiite slum to the south, to rubble and stray bloody fingers, feet and noses. They would say that these were all military targets, but they lied. Hizbullah is a political party with 14 MPs in parliament. It has political party offices, soup kitchens, clinics, in those Shiite slums. A lot of times it seems to be these that the Israelis hit. They lied and said that missiles were launched from Beirut, when they never were.

Israel's present policy toward Lebanon, of striking at so many civilian targets as to hold the entire civilian population hostage, is unspeakable.

I haven't complained about the Israeli border war with Hizbullah. I'm not sure it is wise, and I don't know how many Israelis Hizbullah even killed in, say, the year 2005. Is it really worth it? But I don't deny that Hizbullah went too far when it shelled dozens of civilian towns and cities and killed over a dozen innocent civilians, even in reprisal for the Israeli bombing campaign. (You can't target civilians. That is a prosecutable crime.) That is a clear casus belli, and I'd like to see Nasrallah tried at the Hague for all those civilian deaths he ordered. The fighting at Maroun al-Ra's and Bint Jbeil was horrible on all sides, but it was understandable, even justifiable. The fighting itself isn't going to lead anywwhere useful, though, and it is time for a ceasefire and political negotiations--the only way to actually settle such disputes.

What was done to Lebanon as a whole is among the most horrible war crimes of the young 21st century. And that it was done tells me that there is something sick in the heart of the Israeli military and political elite, a sickness of the soul that had better be faced and remedied before our entire world catches the contagion.

I mean, who talks like that? "if you want to be able to fly to Paris for shopping, you must pull your head out of the sand and take action toward shutting down Hezbollah-land." . . . “Nothing is safe, as simple as that.” If they are the good guys, why do they talk like James Bond villains?

Yes, yes, Nasrallah and his shock troops are also evil. They are also sick in the soul. We have established that. Halutz can have the 5,000 fighters and the 12,000 rockets to do as he pleases to them. I have been to Haifa, too, and the city means a lot to me. I mind deeply when I hear that the mad bombers around Nasrallah have killed people there and done substantial damage.

But you will note that 800,000 Israelis are not homeless, that the ports are still operating, that Tel Aviv airport is open, that over 400 Israeli civilians aren't dead in two weeks, that factories, roads, bridges, telecom towers are still there. In fact, you will note that no flotilla of international vessels had to come to evacuate tens of thousands of foreigners from Israel. It is suffering, and that is wrong. It is not suffering what Lebanon is.

The Daily Star reports

Israeli airstrikes throughout Lebanon killed 10 civilians and wiped out a family:

' Meanwhile, Israeli attacks on Lebanon claimed the lives of at least 10 civilians . . . Israeli warplanes raided Southern Lebanese towns and pounded the Bekaa and the Chouf areas, and committed a new massacre in the Southern town of Nabatiyeh, where six people from the Hamza family, Saad Hamza and his wife and children, were killed in attack on their home.

Rubble in Nabatiyah Courtesy as-Safir

The article adds,

After two days of relative calm, Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hizbullah stronghold, were once again targeted by Israel in an attack which destroyed 10 buildings . . .

I don't know why the wire services keep saying Monday had been a day of "relative calm" in Beirut. The Israelis bombed it at least twice, once before Condi's visit and once after.

Fighting continued in the far south as Israel continued its land invasion of Lebanon, including at Maroun al-Ra's, a small village the Israelis claimed to have taken days ago. One Israeli soldier was announced dead at Maroun al-Ra's on Tuesday. The Israelis claimed to have "sealed off" the town of Bint Jbeil (ordinary pop. 30,000) but admitted that they were engaging in firefights with its defenders. Hizbullah admitted that the Israeli army had killed 5 of its fighters on Tuesday.

With regard to Bint Jbeil, The Daily Star notes

' Sources in the foreign observer force UNIFIL said it was difficult to know which side controlled which parts of the town and that some civilians were feared trapped by the crossfire. '

Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot played down the idea that there were still civilians in Bint Jbeil, saying that there were only 200 to 400 Hizbullah guerrillas left there.

The total death toll for civilians in Israel's total war on Lebanon has risen to 406, with 20 Lebanese Army soldiers killed and 27 Hizbullah fighters.

The Israelis continued to interfere with humanitarian aid efforts despite their announcements to the contrary, according to the Daily Star:

Israeli warships also forbade a French ship loaded with humanitarian aid from reaching a port in Lebanon, according to media reports.

Israeli gunboats also fired warning shots at a Turkish ferry that was helping evacuate Australians from Lebanon and held it for several hours, Turkish Transport Minister Binali Yildirim said on Tuesday.

Hizbullah fired more than a dozen rockets into Haifa (see next entry).

Nicholas Blanford of the Daily Star reports on the human dimension of Israel's vast displacement of civilians from their homes in South Lebanon:

' TIBNINE: Wearing only slippers on his feet, it took Youssef Beydoun two-and-a-half terrifying hours to walk from his shell-battered village of Kounine to the relative safety of Tibnine. Here the 78-year-old is one of some 1,600 refugees crammed into Tibnine's government-run hospital, all of them having fled from a cluster of Shiite hill villages to the south. With drinking water running out, no milk, no electricity and declining stocks of food as well as little prospect of imminent escape from Tibnine, the refugees are caught in a vortex of confusion, fear, anger and despair.

"All the time there's bombing; all the houses have been hit. It was very bad. I thought my heart would stop," said Beydoun, a slim, stooped man with a white floppy hat shading his stubbly beard and weather-beaten face from the midday sun. He said he left Kounine after his house was flattened by Israeli bombing, killing his Sri Lankan and Ethiopian maids.

"They are still buried under the rubble," he said . . . Bint Jbeil and the surrounding Shiite villages, such as Aitaroun, Kounine, Beit Yahoun and Ainatta have borne the brunt of Israel's air and artillery blitz.

"It's very bad in Kounine," said Souad Shibli, 45, an Egyptian nurse whose Lebanese husband is working in Kuwait. "All night there are explosions. We want cars to go to Beirut. Please tell Kofi Annan we must have cars to get us out," she added, her voice becoming more desperate and shrill. '

The economic impact of the relentless Israeli bombings would be hard to calculate. Some experts are saying that the Israelis have caused at least $150 million in direct damage to factories:

' "The losses are more than $150 million in the current book value and we are afraid the situation will get worse," Jacques Sarraf, a chemical plant owner and the former president of the industrial association, told The Daily Star. More than a dozen factories in the Bekaa valley and other areas were hit by Israeli strikes in two weeks of bombing. Among the factories that were hit and destroyed were the country's largest dairy farm, Liban Lait; a paper mill; a packaging firm and wood plant.

"I just want to know why these factories are being targeted by the Israelis," Sarraf said. "Why Liban Lait, which makes cheese for the United Nations in Lebanon?" Liban Lait, which produces cheese, yogurt and labeneh, controls more than 50 percent of the Lebanese market. Sarraf said that the one of the industries that was flattened by the raids was an Indian investment project.

Many industrialists strongly believe that the ostensible cause of the Israeli bombardment, the abduction of two Israeli soldiers by the militant group Hizbullah, was nothing more than an excuse to destroy the Lebanese economy because the economy poses a challenge to Israel. '

Among the industries worst damaged is the telecom sector.

' Lebanon's mobile networks and satellite antennas are being targeted by Israeli warplanes, causing at least $10 to $15 million in material damage and a drop in the revenues of the telecom sector, Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamade said on Sunday. . . Israeli warplanes have hit transmitters, relay stations and satellite stations in Beirut, the South, the North and the Bekaa Valley since the war started 12 days ago.

Israeli warplanes bombarded a satellite and antenna station in Kesrouan on Saturday, killing an [Christian] employee of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation and destroying the television antenna. '

For essential background:

Jim Quilty in Middle East Report on Israel's war on the Lebanese Shiites.

Helena Cobban, "Hizbullah's New Face."

Congress Expects Islamic Dawa to Support Israel, Condemn Hizbullah
Dawa's Unsavory Past

The AIPAC Democrats in Congress came after Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki on Tuesday, condmening him for his refusal to condemn the Lebanese Hizbullah. Al-Maliki had on the contrary complained (quite rightly) about naked Israeli aggression on Lebanon and had called for a cease fire. At his news conference on Tuesday he dodged questions about the issue and said his main concerns were humanitarian.

I respond with a golden oldie from March, 2005.

The US Congress, aside from a strange inability to recognize the disproportionate use of force when it sees it, does not seem to realize that the Dawa Party of Iraq, from which Nuri al-Maliki hails, is a revolutionary Shiite religious party not that much different from the Lebanese Hizbullah.

The members of Congress also don't seem to realize that the Iraqi Dawa helped to form the Lebanese Hizbullah back in the early 1980s. The Dawa was in exile in Tehran, Damascus and Beirut and it formed a shadowy terror wing called, generically, Islamic Jihad. The IJ cell of the Dawa attacked the US and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983, in an operation probably directed by the Tehran branch, which was close to Khomeini.

My understanding is that Nuri al-Maliki was the bureau chief of the Dawa cell in Damascus in the 1980s. He must have been closely involved with the Iraqi Dawa in Beirut, which in turn was intimately involved in Hizbullah. I am not saying he himself did anything wrong. I don't know what he was doing in specific, other than trying to overthrow Saddam, which was heroic. But, did they really think he was going to condemn Hizbullah and take Israel's side?

And if he did, do they think that the Shiite religious parties that backed him would let him stay in office (they are the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Islamic Dawa, and the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr)?

Here is what I said the first time a Dawa Prime Minister was brought to power by US-sponsored elections, last year. I kept telling Americans that this was a mixed picture, not an unadulterated feel-good story, and I got nasty mail about raining on their parade. Now you see what I was talking about:

=====

Things have changed, and I am not at all suggesting that a vindictive attitude is appropriate, but Dawa has a background as a terrorist organization. While in Tehran, it spun off a shadowy set of special ops units generically called "Islamic Jihad," which operated in places like Kuwait and Lebanon. The Dawa's Islamic Jihad appears to have been at the nexus of splinter groups that later, in 1982, began to coalesce into Hezbollah (the 1983 truck bombing of US Marines is often blamed on "Hezbollah," but that organization barely existed then.) The current al-Dawa leadership repudiates these anti-West actions, and blames them on cells of al-Dawa temporarily taken over by Iranian elements. The arrest lists do not support this excuse. No one seems to want to bring up the following:


U.S. News & World Report

December 26, 1983 / January 2, 1984

The New Face of Mideast Terrorism

A new brand of terrorism confronting the U.S. in the Mideast was demonstrated in the closing days of 1983 when a suicide bomber wrecked the American Embassy in Kuwait.

Actions that once were hallmarks of Mideast radicals -- takeovers of buildings, hijackings of airliners and seizing of hostages -- are waning. In their place: Terrorism sponsored by governments -- notably Iran and Syria -- and carried out by Moslem fanatics fired by hatred of the U.S. and a desire for martyrdom.

Prompted as much by current issues as by ideology, the new terrorism is more lethal, widespread and harder to contain than terrorism of the 1970s.

U.S. officials blamed the December 12 bombing of their embassy in Kuwait on ''Islamic fundamentalists'' of the Shiite sect, backed by Iran and Syria.

The Americans charged that the attack was ''clearly connected'' to three disastrous bombings in Beirut -- one in April that killed more than 60 people at the U.S. Embassy and two suicide attacks in October that killed more than 240 American servicemen at the Marine barracks and 58 soldiers at the French peacekeeping headquarters. Shiites also are blamed for a bomb that killed 61 persons at an Israeli command center in southern Lebanon in November.

Suspicion for the attacks in Lebanon centered on one group -- the Islamic Jihad [Holy War], a secretive Shiite unit based in Syrian-controlled eastern Lebanon. It is closely linked to the Iranian regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini, who calls the U.S. the ''great Satan.''

The terrorist who detonated the truckload of explosives at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait was identified as a 25-year-old Iraqi belonging to an outlawed Moslem unit, the Iranian Dawa Group.



And this:


The Associated Press

February 11, 1984, Saturday

Trial Of Bomb Blast Defendants Opens

By ALY MAHMOUD (KUWAIT)

Twenty-one defendants accused of bombing the U.S. and French Embassies last December were formally arraigned today, as their trial began under extreme security.

To be tried in absentia are four defendants who are at large, the prosecutor general said.

Five people were killed and 86 injured in the rash of bombings on Dec. 12. Besides the U.S. and French embassies, four Kuwaiti targets were bombed.

The prosecution has demanded the death penalty for 19 of the defendants. The others are believed to have played a lesser role in the bombings in and around the capital of this oil-rich Arab nation . . . Of the other defendants, 17 are Iraqis; two, Lebanese, three, Kuwaitis and two are stateless. Most of them said they belonged to Al-Dawa (Islamic Call) Party, an Iraqi movement of Shiite Moslem fanatics who are pro-Iranian, said court sources who asked not to be identified.



And this:


The Associated Press

September 21, 1986, Sunday

Underground Iraqi Group Threatens French Hostages

BEIRUT, Lebanon

An Iraqi opposition group warned Sunday that French hostages in Lebanon will suffer if two Iraqis deported from France last February are not allowed to return to Paris soon. The statement was issued by the Beirut-based regional office of the Dawa Party, which is made up of Iraqi Shiite Moslems and supports mainly Shiite Iran in its 6-year-old war with Iraq. Iraq's government is made up mainly of Sunni Moslems. France deported the two students, Fawzi Hamzeh and Hassan Kheireddin, reported to be Dawa members, along with 11 other Middle Easterners after a series of terrorist bombings. The pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad organization, which has close ties with Dawa, said in March that it killed French hostage Michel Seurat in retaliation for the deportation. His body was not found . . .



and this:


The Associated Press

December 27, 1986, Saturday

Five Groups Claim Responsibility; Iraq Accuses Iran

BYLINE: By HAFEZ ABDEL-GHAFFAR

DATELINE: DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia

BODY:
Five groups in Lebanon claimed responsibility for the attempted hijacking of an Iraqi jet, but conflicting accounts remained of what happened before the jetliner crashed, killing at least 62 people. Iraqi Airways flight 163 was en route to Amman, Jordan, from Baghdad, Iraq, on Christmas Day when it crash landed in northern Saudi Arabia. The death toll was thought to be the highest in a hijacking or attempted hijacking in the history of air piracy . . . Another an anonymous caller to a Western news agency claimed responsibility on behalf of Islamic Jihad, or Islamic Holy War, a fundamentalist Shiite Moslem faction loyal to Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini . . . He told a Western news agency the hijackers acted in cooperation with the Dawa party of pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiites. The caller demanded the release of two hijackers he said were arrested after the crash.

. . . I am just saying that the Dawa Party has a history that must be recognized if we are to assess the meaning of it coming to power in Baghdad today.

Maliki and Bush Pledge Troops to Baghdad
32 Dead in Scattered Violence

In a tense and awkward news conference on Tuesday, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Bush pledged that more US troops would be brought to Baghdad. There has already been an increase from something like 44,000 to 55,000 in recent weeks, but apparently they think they need another full division.

They will embed US Military Police with Iraqi police, presumably to cut down on death squad activity by the friendly Iraqi men in blue.

There is nothing obvious in this plan that would make you think it will succeed where other such plans have not. And, if they are moving US troops from someplace else to Baghdad, wherever they moved from would be in danger of falling into instability. This thing has become a shell game.

The big success story stressed by Bush and Maliki was the withdrawal of the British troops from the small Muthanna province in the south (pop. 500,000). Note that officials in the provincial capital, Samawa, complained that they weren't ready to take over their own security, that there have been a series of police riots there, and that if there is any order it is imposed by the Badr Corps, an Iran-trained Shiite paramilitary. Maliki promised further withdrawals, and one can predict the same sorts of outcome.

Shiite nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Tuesday condemned the visit of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to Washington. Sadr wants a US withdrawal from his country, and says he is afraid Maliki will give away the store to Bush.

Reuters gives us its daily "Night of the Living Dead" round up of civil war violence in Iraq. I count 32 dead in these items, and I'm sure the report is not complete.

Bush's options in the Lebanon crisis are limited by his engagements in Iraq, Bloomberg News says.

Hizbullah Pledges Deeper Attacks
Strikes Haifa, Galilee
Kills Arab Girl

Hasan Nasrallah, the Hizbullah leader, threatened Tuesday to fire rockets beyond Haifa, implictly threatening Tel Aviv (and Jerusalem?) He expressed confidence that Israel could not win its ground war in the south, and said his fighters would ultimately recover any land taken by the Israelis.

Hizbullah again engaged in war crimes on Tuesday, raining some 90 katyusha rockets down on civilian targets and killing a fifteen-year-old Palestinian-Israeli girl.

A rocket slammed into the Abbas residence in the Galilee village of Maghar, killing Da'a Abbas and seriously wounding her 30-year-old brother. Their 12-year-old sister was also hurt. Two more Hizbullah rockets hit Maghar, lightly wounding two other persons.

Of the 18 or so Israeli civilians that Hizbullah has killed with its monstrous rocket attacks, I count at least 3 as Palestinian-Israelis! That is 16 percent! (Israel is about 15 percent Arab, a percentage the official Israeli census board expects to rise to 30 percent by 2030).

The Arab Muslims who live in Maghar, according to Haaretz, ' said they are not looking to blame anyone, but call on both sides to end the fighting. "This situation cannot go on," one said. '

Around 12 noon, Hizbullah hit the seaport of Haifa and its suburbs with 16 rockets, moderately injuring two civilians and lightly wounding 9. A 78-year-old had a heart attack while trying to get to a bomb shelter when the rockets started coming in. It is safe to say that Hasan Nasrallah murdered him, another war crime.

Haaretz says, "The rocket barrages left extensive damage to structures in Haifa's lower city. One of the missiles struck a restaurant in the city, causing damage but no casualties, according to Israel Radio."

Rockets also struck near Acre, Ma'alot, Nahariya, Carmiel and other cities. Three were injured, apparently lightly, in Ma'alot. Haaretz says, ' Two people in a community located east of Ma'alot were moderately to seriously wounded with shrapnel wounds to the neck and stomach. Of the wounded, two from Nahariya and one each from Shlomi and Acre were evacuated to Nahariya Hospital. Two people sustained shrapnel wounds in Tiberias . . . '

Problems with Israeli Military Performance

If you read Reuven Pedatzur's article in Haaretz attentively, you will see that he is indicting the Israeli armed forces as incompetent and also will detect that he is extremely alarmed. Despite his confidence, expressed at the outset, that Israeli military mistakes (primarily grossly underestimating Hizbullah) will not affect the course of the war, he admits that it will cast a shadow over its public reception. I don't think we can rule out an impact on the course of the war yet.

Wire services report

' Israeli Armed Forces effectives returning from the Lebanon’s front, say they are facing an intelligent, well prepared and ruthless guerrilla. The soldiers describe Hezbollah guerrillas hide between civilians and in underground bunkers that are two or three stories deep, evidence that this has been prepared for years. They are hard to beat and show no fear of dying, expressed an Israeli soldier. '

The Israelis are finding that the Hizbullah guerrillas have excellent intelligence on Israeli weaponry, and that they are capable of fighting orderly tactical battles from buildings with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. In other words, they are not facing the militia of tobacco share croppers. They are facing a highly professional military force, perhaps the most professional in the region aside from Israel's own.

The Israeli military is rapidly scaling back its military goals, since the ones initially announced with such confidence (pushing Hizbullah back 35 miles and completely destroying its missile arsenal) are obviously pie in the sky. The Israelis are stumbling around so badly that yesterday they lost a helicopter and killed 6 of their own men (it could have been much worse).

Rice Ultimatum to Lebanon undermined by Maliki
Israelis Kill 7 Civilians Monday in 40 Bombing Raids

The LA Times reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki broke ranks again with Washington on Monday, strongly criticizing Israel's destruction of Lebanon's ports, roads, bridges and other infrastructure and warning that it will lead to further extremism i the Middle East:

' In London, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki broke ranks with his U.S. and British allies and warned that the continued international tolerance of civilian casualties in Lebanon would spread extremism that could endanger Arab regimes throughout the Middle East. "I am afraid there will be a great push toward fundamentalism, and also a message — a negative one — to all those who want to follow the course of peace," Maliki said. "We will go back to zero — to actions and reactions." '

In a sign that the war is going badly for Israel, US Secretary of State Condi Rice made a surprise visit to Beirut on Monday. She came, however, not to be helpful, but to act as a courier, delivering Israel's ultimatum to Hizbullah. The message was that Hizbullah must turn over the two captured Israeli troops in its possession and withdraw its troops and weaponry some 15 miles from the Israeli border. (The vast majority of Hizbullah's katyusha rockets only have a range of 3 or 4 miles, so most would become useless in the struggle with Israel over the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms if Hizbullah did move them back that far.)

The meeting was reportedly tense. Rice proffered "support" to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, but not a ceasefire, which is what he really needs to keep his government from collapsing--and he testily told her so. She said she regretted the humanitarian situation (caused by America's ally with billions in American-supplied armaments), but the US is offering only $30 million in aid (billions of dollars of damage have been done to Lebanon by Israel, most of it unrelated to Hizbullah). She delivered her ultimatum to Nabih Berri, speaker of the Lebanese parliament and a leading secular Shiite politician who has an alliance of convenience with Hizbullah. Berri angrily rejected her terms and riposted that no negotiations would happen without there first being a ceasefire. He was relaying to her Hizbullah's position.

Rice's visit showed how low American stock has fallen in the Middle East, since she came virtually empty-handed, merely as a go-fer on behalf of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, with little positive to offer. Berri thunderously rejected her ultimatums, or rather those of her political bosses. She came with nice words but Israeli bombs hit Beirut before and after her visit, according to my sources. Her professions of sympathy rang hollow, since her government was encouraging the bombing raids and blocking any UN or European move toward a cease-fire. She played no more exalted a role than Mafia enforcer, lifting her suit coat at the corner to display the loaded pistol as she discussed just how much the owner of the Lebanese restaurant would be paying per month for "protection" from certain of her "friends," or else, you know, something bad could happen to this nice restaurant of yours.

And, she was undermined by Washington's warmest ally in the Muslim Middle East, the government of American Iraq, who delivered a message the opposite of her own. He argued for an immediate ceasefire and warned that Israel's destruction of the infrastructure of a whole country will grow extremism. Al-Maliki is referring to the "boiling" Mahdi Army in Iraq and other such phenomena, which have him in their sights, and maybe American targets as well.

AFP reports that the Israelis launched 40 bombing raids Sunday night into Monday, striking at rocket launchers and other targets, including civilian apartment buildings. in the course of which they killed 7 more Lebanese civilians on Monday. The body of a policemen killed days ago was retrieved from rubble in Baalbak.

In the deep south, the Israelis killed 3 Hizbullah fighters but suffered two dead and 14 wounded themselves (six of the wounded were victims of friendly fire).

Altogether, the Israelis, who announced that they are fighting Hizbullah, have killed only 19 of its fighters. AFP notes, "Of the total 373 people killed in Lebanon since hostilities began nearly two weeks ago, 326 were civilians and 27 were Lebanese soldiers and police. Another 786 civilians and 81 soldiers and policemen have been wounded, as have two members of the UN surveillance force deployed along Lebanon's southern border."

Two members of the UN surveillance team? (Late reports say "4"!)

North of Tyre, Israeli missiles "blew apart three adjacent buildings in six raids. Several people were buried in the debris, residents said." Among the results? "Two brothers, aged 9 and 11, and their uncle were killed in their home. . ."

'Another resident was killed in a dawn attack on the same village. Two other civilians were killed when their house south of Tyre was destroyed, and an attack on a nearby Palestinian refugee camp killed one of the inhabitants, medical officials said. "I was able to pull out the bodies of my nine-year-old daughter Zeinab and my son Mohammed, 11," Munzer Mwannes told AFP by telephone from Hallusiyeh as he called for help to try to dig his two other children out from the debris alive. "The body of my brother-in-law has also been retrieved," added Mwannes, who was wounded along with his wife in the raids. Sobbing, he told how Israeli aircraft swooped at least six times on four three-storey apartment blocks, "the highest in the village".'

A Palestinian refugee camp?

Down south on the border, the Israelis encountered a deadly attack in Maroun al-Ra's, the small village (ordinary pop.: 400) they thought they had already conquered. AFP says:

' Confrontations again took place inside Marun al-Ras . . . Hezbollah guerrillas came from behind a convoy of Israeli forces in the northern sector of the village, striking a tank which caught fire, they said. The Israeli military said an army helicopter crashed on the Israeli side of the border, killing two servicemen. Hezbollah claimed it had downed the aircraft but Israel said it was an accident.'

Later on Monday or early Tuesday, the Israelis announced that they had fought their way to nearby Bint Jbeil (ordinary pop.: 30,000) and had taken it. Aljazeera was reporting early Tuesday morning, however, that eyewitnesses on the scene were denying that the Israelis were actually in downtown Bint Jbeil, but accepted that they might be in the vicinity. As mentioned above, the Israelis lost 2 dead and 14 wounded in the push toward Bint Jbeil (with another 2 dead in the helicopter crash), and killed 3 Hizbullah fighters. Hizbullah claimed to have destroyed 4 Israeli tanks.

Hizbullah fired 80 rockets into northern Israel on Monday. One person was seriously injured. Others were claimed "wounded," but since the Israeli authorities have a habit of counting people who come to clinics to report "shock" as "wounded," I have lost faith in this particular statistic. Thankfully, Monday's rockets do not appear to have done much damage. Altogether, 41 Israelis have been killed since the fighting started, 17 of them civilians.

Human Rights Watch says that Israel is using cluster bombs in civilian areas, which I consider a war crime.

The Daily Star reports: "The United Nations launched an appeal for $150 million Monday to help provide emergency relief to the estimated 800,000 displaced Lebanese affected by the nearly two-week old conflict." The number of displaced persons is expected to increase as Israel continues its bombing raids and its incursion in the South.

More on the scale of the human crisis from Brian Whitaker of the Guardian.

Israeli shelling of Gaza on Monday killed 6, including two children.

Najla Said in Beirut.

Chronicle Forum on Blogging and Careers

The Chronicle of Higher Education did a forum, which is freely accessible this week, on the question of "Can Blogging Derail your Career?"

Among the respondents are some prominent academic bloggers, including Michael Berube, Brad DeLong, Dan Drezner, and Glenn Reynolds. Several of the contributors said nice things about this ephemeral servant, for which thanks. Some implied that I am misbehaving out here, to which I reply with this anecdote.

Henry David Thoreau refused to pay the poll tax put in to support the immoral American-Mexican War, and was sentenced to a night in jail. His friend Ralph Waldo Emerson came to visit him and asked him "David, what are you doing in there?" Thoreau replied, "What are you doing out there?" If intellectuals aren't misbehaving in the sense of dissenting and critiquing the collective grounds of our political being, then they aren't doing their jobs.

NB: I'm closing this column to comments. I wouldn't know how to moderate them.


My comment:


CAN BLOGGING DERAIL YOUR CAREER?

Juan R.I. Cole Responds

The question is whether Web-log commentary helps or damages an academic's career. It is a shameful question. Intellectuals should not be worrying about "careers," the tenured among us least of all. Despite the First Amendment, which only really protects one from the government, most Americans who speak out can face sanctions from other institutions in society. Journalists are fired all the time for taking the wrong political stance. That is why most bloggers employed in the private sector are anonymous or started out trying to be so.

Academics cannot easily be handed a pink slip, but they can be punished in other ways. The issues facing academics who dissent in public and in clear prose are the same today as they have always been. Maintaining a Web log now is no different in principle from writing a newsletter or publishing sharp opinion in popular magazines in the 1950s.

The difference today is that, because of Internet neutrality (which may not be long with us), an academic's voice is potentially as loud as or louder than those of corporate-backed pundits. Occasionally, my Web log has generated as many as 250,000 unique hits and over a million page views per month. Entries have also been sent in e-mail messages in numbers that cannot be traced. My Web log is, for the moment, certainly a mass medium.

The ability to speak directly and immediately to the public on matters of one's expertise, and to bring to bear all one's skills to affect the public debate, is new and breathtaking. I have had some success in explaining the threat of Al Qaeda and suggesting how it should be combated, and have addressed U.S. counter-terrorism officials on numerous occasions on those matters. And then there is Iraq, about which I was one of the few U.S. historians to have written professionally before the 2003 war. In the summer of 2003, when the general mood of the administration, the news media, and the public was unrelievedly celebratory, I warned that a guerrilla war was building and that powerful sectarian forces such as the movement of Moktada al-Sadr were a gathering threat. I gained a hearing not only with broad segments of the public but also at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

I am a Middle East expert. I lived in the area for nearly 10 years, speak several of its languages, and have given my life to understanding its history and culture. Since September 11, 2001, my country has been profoundly involved with the region, both negatively and positively. Powerful economic and political forces in American society would like to monopolize the discourse on these matters for the sake of their own interests, which may not be the same as the interests of those of us in the general public. Obviously, such forces will attempt to smear and marginalize those with whom they disagree. Before the Internet, they might have had an easier time of it. Being in the middle of all this, trying to help mutual understanding, is what I trained for. Should I have been silent, published only years later in stolid academic prose in journals locked up in a handful of research libraries? And this for the sake of a "career"? The role of the public intellectual is my career. And it is a hell of a career. I recommend it.


Juan R.I. Cole is a professor of modern Middle East and South Asian history at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. His blog can be found at http://juancole.com

Israelis Kill 8, wound 45 on Sunday
Strike Clinic, Ambulance, Factories, Minibus, Journalist
Hizbullah Rockets Hit Haifa, Kill 2

The Daily Star reports that

"Israeli warplanes continued their bombardment of Lebanon on Sunday, killing at least eight and wounding 45, as Hizbullah gave the Lebanese government the green light to negotiate on its behalf for a prisoner swap with Israel . . . "The Lebanese government will lead the exchange through the intermediary of a third party. This has been accepted by Hizbullah," Speaker Nabih Berri said Sunday. . .

Meanwhile the Israeli offensive continued for the 12th straight day, bringing the overall death toll to at least 380 with over 1,000 wounded, according to Lebanese authorities."

Jan Egeland, the United Nations undersecretary general for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said Sunday after touring South Beirut that most of the victims of Israel's attacks on Lebanon have been civilians, and that children are dying.

Israelis fired a missile that killed a Lebanese photographer who worked for The Bell magazine and for Agence France Presse, Layal Najib, 23.

An Israeli air strike killed 3 and wounded 13 when it hit a minibus "carrying 16 people fleeing the village of Tairi as it worked its way through the mountains from the Southern port city of Tyre . . . The Israeli military had told residents of Tairi and 12 other nearby villages Saturday to evacuate by 7 p.m. The villages form a corridor about 6 kilometers wide and 18 kilometers deep, believed to be the "buffer zone" desired by Israel."

I have noted before that it isn't very nice to make people leave their homes and then bomb them as they leave.

For more on the gauntlet that Israel is making innocent Lebanese civilians run in the south, see this article.

Lebanese television reported another 4 persons killed by Israeli air strikes in the south. Air raids on towns and villages around Tyre on Sunday left 45 wounded.

The Israelis also bombed south Beirut again. It is a pro-Hizbullah area, but its inhabitants are civilians.

On Sunday, Israel hit the Southern port city of Sidon for the first time, destroying a complex of buildings that contained clinics and service offices and was linked to Hizbullah, wounding four people. More than 5,000 people have sought refuge in the city from other Southern villages.

The Daily Star reports,

Israel also targeted Hizbullah's power base in the Bekaa Valley, hitting three factories, a house and bridges and roads. The air strikes ignited large fires, killed at least one civilian and wounded two others.

Three rescuers from the Civil Defense personnel of the Islamic Scout Mission, an association affiliated with the Amal Movement, were wounded after Israeli air raids struck their ambulance as it transported wounded civilians to nearby hospitals, according to Hassan Hamdan, the association's official in the South."

If the latter report is correct, and if the ambulance was marked as such, this strike was an Israeli war crime. If the Biqa' factories were not producing war materiel, hitting them was a war crime, too.

Hizbullah confirmed that the Israeli military had occupied the Lebanese village of Maroun al-Ra's in the south near the Israeli border, but gloated over how difficult the conquest had been:

"The enemy is deceiving its own people and the world by presenting the occupation of Maroun al-Ras as a great military achievement," a Hizbullah statement said. "An army using its elite forces and tanks backed by its air force that can enter a frontier village only after days of fighting ... is a defeated and useless army."

"Our steadfast fighters have presented through the Maroun al-Ras confrontations and the losses of the enemy - in troops, tanks and helicopters - an example of what the confrontations will be in every town, village and position," it said.

The Israeli narrative of the battle agrees that too many Israeli soldiers were lost (7) or wounded in the taking of Maroun al-Ra's, in part because of too much haste and poor tactical decisions (operating in broad daylight, letting individual tanks get isolated). Between 2 and 4 times as many Hizbullah fighers died. JP says the next challenge is to take Bint Jbail, a major Hizbullah stronghold.

The Chicago Tribune reports that Israeli troops found the Hizbullah fighters tenacious, and expect difficult battles ahead as they forge deeper into Lebanon. Joel Greenberg reports,

'Sitting on the Merkava tank he commands, Assaf, 22, who gave only his first name, said his force had destroyed two abandoned Hezbollah positions across the border and was facing a "serious" adversary, which has used mines and anti-tank rockets to battle the Israeli armor. Dudi Mizrahi, 21, the tank driver, said Hezbollah had been pushed back from the border but was capable of putting up a determined fight. "They're very small, but very, very stubborn," he said. "If there is a deeper incursion, there will definitely be resistance. They're hiding in bunkers, and they come out, fire a Katyusha rocket and go back in. They're holding up." '

Billmon quotes sources that do not believe the war is going at all well for Israel. Despite bombing Lebanon back to the stone age, they had not stopped the rocket attacks of Hizbullah, and taking a single village was costly for them. Billmon does not mention another element in the losing of the war, which is that aside from the US congress and the usual pundits in the US, most people in the world don't seem to approve of the Israeli wholesale destruction of a whole country. I don't think they were counting on those thousands of evacuees getting this kind of television coverage. They are used to controlling communications in Gaza and the West Bank and did not count on how intertwined Lebanon is with the world information system. (Hence their recent attacks on internet servers.)

Greenberg also reports on continued Hizbullah rocket strikes on northern Israel on Sunday:

'More than 90 rockets were fired at cities and towns across northern Israel on Sunday, killing two people and wounding several others in the port city of Haifa and a neighboring suburb. One of the dead was a motorist, killed in his car by shrapnel; another was a worker in a carpentry shop wrecked by the rocket blast. A couple in another suburb were saved when they took shelter in a bombproof room before a rocket slammed into their home. '

Some readers have asked why I characterize Hizbullah's rocket launches as war crimes. It is because the Geneva Convention requires that in war you have to aim at enemy combatants. You can't deliberately target civilians, and you can't endanger civilians unnecessarily. The Hizbullah rockets have poor targeting, and so just firing them endangers civilians. The rockets themselves have apparently killed almost no Israeli troops, and almost all their victims have been innocent civilians, like that poor man who was just driving along in or near Haifa. That is, the Hizbullah rockets have been fired indiscriminately (the only way they can be fired) and mainly hit civilian targets, which a prudent person could foresee. Bingo. War crime.

See the statement of the International Commission of Jurists.

See also The Fourth Geneva Convention:

There is actually an argument to be made that both Hizbullah and Israel have taken the civilian population of their enemy hostage. Since hostage-taking is forbidden, both are war criminals. I heard former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski make a similar argument at a salon dinner in Washington, DC, last week, though the wording above is my own.

100 Killed, In Massive Bombings in Sadr City, Kirkuk

The LA times reports that civil war violence in Iraq killed around 100 persons on Sunday The most deadly incidents were the bombing of laborers in Sadr City and the bomb that guerrillas detonated near a courthouse in Kirkuk, killing 21 and wounding 70. Another deadly bombing in East Baghdad near the city council HQ in Sadr City killed 8 and wounded 20. Some 21 bodies were discovered in Baghdad, and more were found floating in the Tigris near Suwayra. These corpses typically belonged to victims of faith-based reprisal killings.

Reuters gives details of other deadly incidents around the country.

The whole-hearted US backing for Israel's assault on Lebanon has deeply angered Iraqis:

' "The enemy is the same," said a statement issued by the Hawza, the network of seminaries in Najaf. "Their aim is to enslave and humiliate us. What's happening today in Lebanon is part of a bigger scheme to crush the blessed [Islamic] nation." '

GI's charged with murder claim that they were commanded to kill all males of military age.

US decisions and tactics made the Iraqi insurgency much worse than it would otherwise have been.

On top of everything else, the US occupation of Iraq has led to an explosion in the divorce rate!

The Descent into Hell is Optional

Patrick McGreevy writes from Beirut:

' The Descent into Hell Is Optional

The day after most of our American colleagues escaped the war zone of Lebanon, we wondered if the descent into hell many of them had imagined would materialize. In these days of precision terror, it seems that hell can be localized. In central Beirut, it feels like limbo, the first ring of Dante’s Inferno--where punishment is minimal because, while its inhabitants have not recognized the true god, neither have they defied the authority of his representatives on earth. Going south, one precedes progressively into the inner rings of torment, and of defiance. There is trouble in hell.

On the first ring of hell, we had several friends stop by for coffee on our balcony as we watched the parade of ships carrying refugees for Cyprus and Turkey. Later, I called my friend Nancy in Sidon (several rings deeper into hell); she had been awakened Sunday morning by the first bomb that targeted the center of the city, destroying a Hezbollah complex that provided medical, dental, educational and religious services to Sidon’s poorest residents. The city is now overflowing with 50,000 refugees who have been streaming in from farther south (the inner rings of hell). Nancy described how the pattern of life in Sidon has become more nocturnal, with people talking late into the night on their balconies and even in the cafés of the city’s souk. Farther south, in the inner circle of hell, the life of Lebanon was interrupted, but here, in the outer circle, it went on, defiantly.

Tonight, a remarkable American woman who has lived in Beirut for over 30 years, Jean-Marie C. . ., invited us to have cocktails on her balcony with some of her old friends who were seasoned journalists. One had been touring the southern suburbs, a landscape the likes of which no one has seen since Dresden in 1945. We discussed the various scenarios that might get us out of hell altogether, and the others that would send us back to its epicenter,

On the way to Jean-Marie’s flat, we had walked along the Corniche, a paved boardwalk that fronts the Mediterranean. It was surprising to see that people already were returning to public spaces (see attached pictures). A few weeks earlier, the Internal Security Forces had begun to prevent small-scale venders from pushing carts along the Cornish, but now, in the space opened by the chaos of the war, they were back. The Lebanese, after decades of intermittent disruption, have evolved into the most flexible of survivors. They were out again, defiantly. As I walked home from Jean-Marie’s with two western women, the Corniche was dark—-electrical outages are part of life here, even in peacetime—-we never had a thought for our safety. We don’t know the future, but for now, who dares to say that this is hell? The choice belongs to Lebanon.

Patrick McGreevy

Dershowitz and Grades of Human Beings

Alan "Torture is OK" Dershowitz is annoyed that the Israelis have been accused of killing innocent civilians. He is now arguing that there are degrees of "civilianity." He wonders how many innocent civilians killed by Israel in Lebanon would still be innocent if we could make finer distinctions.

(He should read the Lebanese newspapers and he would get the answer. One third of those killed by the Israelis are children. I'd guess they are all civilian all the time. And then there are the families, like the Canadian women, children and men blown up at Aitaroun. I suppose they are really civilians. Etc. )

But I don't know why Dershowitz stops there. Let me reformulate his argument for him. Shouldn't we recognize degrees of humanness? After all, isn't that the real problem? That the enemy is considered a full human being in the law of war? That horrible Supreme Court judgment that Hamdan had to be given a trial of some sort was based on the misunderstanding that he is a human being.

Israeli officials have already showed us how Arabs can be reclassified away from a full "human" category that they clearly, in the view of the Kadima government, do not deserve.

For instance, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman angrily denounced Kofi Annan for neglecting this key fact. The Guardian reports, ' Mr Gillerman said "something very important was missing" from Mr Annan's speech: any mention of terrorism. Hizbullah were "ruthless indiscriminate animals", he told reporters. '

So you see, one reason that you can just bomb the hell out of the Lebanese in general is that they aren't human beings at all. They are "animals." You might quibble that Gillerman is only referring to members of the Hizbullah party as animals, not all Lebanese. But most Shiite Lebanese, some 45 percent of the population, support Hizbullah. And the Lebanese government, made up of Christians, Sunnis and Druze, let Hizbullah into the Lebanese government and gave it cabinet posts. So probably those who tolerate Hizbullah are at most half-human. This has yet to be worked out. It might be possible to declare them .66 animal. Or maybe they are just all animals. They speak Arabic, after all, right Mr. Gillerman?

There is a problem with stopping here, however. It is not enough to reclassify some human beings as animals. After all, you have to treat animals humanely. You can even be fined for mistreating an animal, though probably you would not go to jail.

The staff of US Secretary of State Condi Rice has made a suggestion for another, more convenient level, that of snake. Thus, a senior White House official referred to the massive Israeli bombing campaign and destruction of Lebanon's civilization and killing of hundreds and wounding of over a thousand as "defanging" Hezbollah. I am pretty sure that language is meant to suggest that the Shiites of Lebanon, although apparently human beings, are actually snakes. I suppose it is possible that another sort of reptile is is intended, but I suspect that "snake" is the intended classification.

But some snakes are protected species. We need a lower category. It is clear that some human beings are neither human nor animal. Hamas and Hizbullah members, for instance, are actually not even full organisms, just diseases.

Israeli Deputy Consul General for San Francisco, Omer Caspi, said of the Lebanese and Palestinian publics concerning Hamas and Hizbullah members, "We say to them please remove this cancer off your body and soul before it is too late."

Caspi did not specify whether members of Hamas are leukemia and those of Hizbullah melanoma, or the reverse.

The good thing about finding out that some apparent human beings don't have to be treated as well as whales (which have almost been wiped out) is that it allows us to put behind all wimpy hesitancy just to do what needs to be done.

I mean, a cancer. Everyone knows what you have to do with a cancer. It requires chemotherapy. It needs to be just exterminated, before it kills the snakes, animals and humans.

So we have the human beings, like Israeli Prime Minister Ehud "Bomb'em Back to the Stone Age" Olmert and torture defender, attorney Alan Dershowitz.

Then we have the animals, like the "persons" who vote for Hizbullah and Hamas.

Then we have the level of human-appearing snakes, who need to be "defanged," which apparently involves killing their wives and children with air strikes.

Then we have the cancers, who need to be "wiped out" immediately.

I understand that President Bush is appointing Alan Dershowitz to be head of the "Human-Non-Human Metrics" commission that will decide which people are full human beings, and which fall into other categories, such as "animal," "snake," and "cancer."

It is rumored that that Dershowitz intends to create a special category, of "cockroach," for the human-appearing creatures who dare to criticize him.

AUB Relief Effort

Send money It can also be sent via the American University in Beirut's New York office. AUB is an educational institution incorporated in the US, so there is no question of the donations being anything but above-board.

The Lebanese mostly are angry with the US now, and many hate us, for unleashing Israel on them. At least we can do some penance.

500,000 displaced persons, and over a thousand wounded, is as big a humanitarian disaster as the Kashmir earthquake or some per-country effects of the last tsunami. Send a lot of money.

' The American University of Beirut is once again at the forefront of efforts to care for those who are suffering in Lebanon. We will do everything we can to take care of those who need our help. We have done it before. Our commitment to do so is just as strong today.

We are seeking your support for the newly created AUB Medical Emergency Fund so that we can continue relief efforts in the following two areas: medical supplies and volunteer relief.

You can make a secure online donation, https://give.aub.edu.lb.

You can issue a check payable to: American University of Beirut / Medical Emergency Fund American University of Beirut

You can issue a check payable to: American University of Beirut / Medical Emergency Fund American University of Beirut 3 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10017-2303 USA

For other payment methods, please contact jeffrey@aub.edu or + 212-583-7600 (New York Office) bimad@aub.edu.lb or + 961-3-996543 (Beirut Office) '

Sunday Afternoon Reading

Kos Diary on Kalman's piece about the preplanned character of Israel's war on Lebanon.

Candide's Notebooks - Lebanese-American Blog.

Congress and the Lebanon crisis-- Steve Zunes.

Israeli Peace movement.

Jane Hamsher.

Billmon.

Wayne White at TPM

Steve Gilliard on wooing Syria (hat tip to Eschaton)

Digby

Andrew Sullivan on Losing Faith

Tomdispatch.com on Bushworld.

Israel's arrest of Professor Ghazi Falah and refusal to charge him.

War on Lebanon Planned for at least a Year
The Bush Administration's Grand Strategy and the Birth Pangs of Terror

Israeli war planes hit the cities of Sidon, south Beirut and Baalbak on Saturday and Israeli ground troops fought a hard battle to take over the village of Maroun al-Ras, said to be a Hizbullah rocket-launching site. The Israeli bombing of Sidon hit a religious complex linked to Hizbullah. The BBC reports that 'The UN's Jan Egeland said half a million people needed assistance - and the number was likely to increase. One-third of the recent Lebanese casualties, he said, appeared to be children. '

Matthew Kalman reveals that Israel's wideranging assault on Lebanon has been planned in a general way for years, and a specific plan has been in the works for over a year. The "Three Week War" was shown to Washington think tanks and officials last year on powerpoint by a senior Israeli army officer:

"More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail."

The Israelis tend to launch their wars of choice in the summer, in part because they know that European and American universities will be the primary nodes of popular opposition, and the universities are out in the summer. This war has nothing to do with captured Israeli soldiers. It is a long-planned war to increase Israel's ascendency over Hizbullah and its patrons.

But since Hizbullah's short-range katyushas can only hit targets 3-4 miles away, and were mainly being fired at the occupied Shebaa Farms, why worry about it so much?

1. If Hizbullah forced Israel out of the Shebaa Farms, it might increase pressure for it to give back the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem, and all of the West Bank-- the other territories stolen by Israel in 1967. The Israelis have their own Domino Theory, which haunts them the way the original haunted Lyndon Johnson-- and just as foolishly.

2. Some of Hizbullah's missiles might have been able to hit sensitive Israeli chemical or nuclear sites, or just cause panic by hitting Israeli cities. There was zero likelihood of Hezbollah launching such a strike unprovoked. But this capacity formed at least a slight drag on the Israeli ability to strike Iran and the Palestinians with impunity. The destruction of the Hizbullah arsenal may be the precursor of even more drastic action against the Palestinians and perhaps a bombing raid on Iran's nuclear research facilities near Isfahan.

Israel is a regional superpower, the only nuclear power in the Middle East proper, and possessing the most technologically advanced military capability and the most professional military. Since Egypt opted out of the military struggle for economic reasons and since the US invasion broke Iraq's legs, there is no conventional military threat to Israel. Israel seeks complete military superiority, for several reasons. One impetus is defensive, on the theory that it has to win every contest and can never afford to lose even one, given its lack of strategic depth (it is a geographically small country with a small population, caught between the Mediterranean and potentially hostile neighboring populations). But the defensive reasons are only one dimension.

There are also offensive considerations. The Right in Israel is determined to permanently subjugate the Palestinians and forestall the emergence of a Palestinian state. This course of action requires the constant exercise of main force against the Palestinians, who resist it, as well as threats against Arab or Muslim neighbors who might be tempted to help the Palestinians. Thus, Iraq and Iran both had to be punished and weakened. Likewise, the Israeli Right has never given up an expansionist ideology. For instance, the Israelis have a big interest in the Litani River in south Lebanon. If and when the Israeli military and political elite felt they needed to add territory by taking it from neighbors, they wished to retain that capability.

The remaining challenges to complete Israeli military superiority and freedom of movement are 1) asymmetrical forces such as Hamas and Hizbullah guerrilla cells wielding rockets and 2) the menace of future unconventional challenges such as an Iranian nuclear weapon (circa 2016 if in fact the Iranians are working on it, which is not proved). Given the alliance of Shiite Hizbullah with Shiite Iran, one capability shielded the other.

That this war was pre-planned was obvious to me from the moment it began. The Israeli military proceeded methodically and systematically to destroy Lebanon's infrastructure, and clearly had been casing targets for some time. The vast majority of these targets were unrelated to Hizbullah. But since the northern Sunni port of Tripoli could theoretically be used by Syria or Iran to offload replacement rockets that could be transported by truck down south to Hizbullah, the Israelis hit it. And then they hit some trucks to let truck drivers know to stay home for a while.

That is why I was so shaken by George W. Bush's overheard conversation with Tony Blair about the war. He clearly thought that it broke out because Syria used Hizbullah to create a provocation. The President of the United States did not know that this war was a long-planned Israeli war of choice.

Why is that scary? Because the Israeli planning had to have been done in conjunction with Donald Rumsfeld at the US Department of Defense. The US Department of Defense is committed to rapidly re-arming Israel and providing it precision laser-guided weaponry, and to giving it time to substantially degrade Hizbullah's missile capabilities. The two are partners in the war effort.

For the Bush administration, Iran and Hizbullah are not existential threats. They are proximate threats. Iran is hostile to US corporate investment in the oil-rich Gulf,, and so is a big obstacle to American profit-making in the region. Rumsfeld is worried about Iran's admission as an observer to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is to say, that he is worried about a budding Chinese-Islamic axis that might lock up petroleum reserves and block US investments. If Chinese economic and military growth make it the most significant potential challenger to the Sole Superpower in the coming century, a Chinese alliance with the oil-rich Muslim regions, including Iran, would be even more formidable. The Shanghai group has already pulled off one coup against Rumsfeld, successfully convincing Uzbekistan to end US basing rights in that country.

Rumsfeld also believes, contrary to all available evidence, that Iran is actively destabilizing Iraq and is conniving with Syria and Hezbollah to do so.
(In fact, the Iraqis had shaped charges in their depots and did not need to learn about them from Iran or Hizbollah). At some points, the Pentagon has even tried to blame Iran for the radical Sunni Arab violence in Iraq, which makes no sense at all (and thus that propaganda campaign has been put on the back burner).

Rumsfeld is so eager to stop what he believes is an Iranian nuclear weapons program that he reportedly has considered using tactical nuclear weapons against it preemptively. After all, a nuclear-armed Iran would forestall American gunboat diplomacy in the oil-rich Gulf.

Iran also supports Syria, and Rumsfeld believes that Syria is helping destabilize Iraq, and is also a patron for Hizbullah.

Clearly, if one could get rid of Iran and Hezbollah, in Rumsfeld World, Iraq is much more likely to turn out a delayed success than an absolute disaster. And then the stalled-out rush to Bush's vision of "democracy" (i.e. Big Private Property) in the region could proceed. In fact, the instability in Iraq mainly comes from Sunni Arab guerrillas, who hate Iran and it is mutual.

The Bush administration's perceived economic and geopolitical interests thus overlap strongly with Israel's perceived security interests, with both benefitting from an Israeli destruction of Hizbullah. It is not impossible that the US Pentagon urged the Israelis on in this endeavor. They certainly knew about and approved of the plan.

What is scary is that Cheney and Rumsfeld don't appear to have let W. in on the whole thing. They told him that Bashar al-Asad of Syria stirred up a little trouble because he was afraid that Iraq the Model and the Lebanese Cedar Revolution might be such huge successes that they would topple him by example (just as, after Poland and the Czech Velvet Revolution, other Eastern European strongmen fell). (Don't fall down laughing at the idea of Iraq and Lebanon as Republican Party success stories; people in Washington, DC, coccoon a lot and have odd ideas about the way the world is.) So, Bush thought, if that is all that is going on, then someone just needs to call al-Asad and reassure him that we're not going to take him out, and get him to rein in Hizbullah. And then the war would suddenly stop. No one told Bush that this war was actually an Israeli war of choice and that al-Asad had nothing to do with it, that, indeed, it could only happen because al-Asad is already irrelevant.

That is why Administration hopes of using the Israeli attempt to destroy Hezbollah as a wedge to convince Syria to give up rejectionism and detach itself from Iran are crazy.

Syria is not going to give up its stance toward Israel unless it at the very least gets back the occupied Golan Heights. That is non-negotiable for Damascus. Since the Israeli Right is diehard opposed to making that deal, Israel will go on occupying part of Syrian soil. Syria cannot accept that outcome. Likewise, the Alawi regime in Syria faces a powerful challenge from the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood. The high Baath officials would be afraid that if they made peace with Israel and got nothing out of it for Syria, there would be a mass popular Islamist uprising. A separate peace that leaves the Palestinians to the Israelis' tender mercies would also stick in the craw of the Syrian public. The administration plan will fail.

Because of their fetish for states, the Neoconservatives of the Bush administration are unable to see that the Levant and points east are now the province of militia-parties that dominate localities and wield asymmetrical paramilitary force in such a way as to stymie states, whether local host states, local adversaries, or imperial Powers. Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas and other groups in Gaza and the West Bank, al-Qaeda/ radical Bedouins in the Sinai, the Muslim Brotherhood in some Sunni areas of Syria, the tribes and gangs of Maan in Jordan, the Peshmerga of the Kurds, the guerrilla groups of the Sunni Arabs in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, Badr Corps and Marsh Arabs of the Iraqi Shiites, the Basij and Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Iran, the party-tribes of Afghanistan--whether the Tajik Jami'at-i Islami or the Pushtun Taliban--and the biradaris and ethnic mafias of Pakistan, are all arguably as significant actors as states, and often more significant.

By its assault on Middle Eastern states, whether it takes the form of military confrontation or of "pressure" to "democratize, Neoconservatism in Washington and Tel Aviv has increased the power and saliency of militia rule throughout the region. The transition under American auspices of Iraq from a strong if odious central state to equally odious militia rule and chaotic violence is only the most obvious example of this process. More people have been killed in terror attacks in Iraq every month since February than were killed on September 11, 2001 in the US, and since Iraq is 11 times less populous than the US, the 6,000 killed in May and June are equivalent to 66,000 killed in civil war violence in the US. Condi Rice echoes the old Neocon theory of "creative chaos" when she confuses the Lebanon war with "the birth pangs" of a "new" Middle East. The chief outcome of the "war on terror" has been the proliferation of asymmetrical challengers. Israel's assault on the very fabric of the Lebanese state seems likely to weaken or collapse it and further that proliferation. Since asymmetrical challengers often turn to terrorism as a tactic, the "war on terror" has been, at the level of political society below that of high politics and the state, the most efficient engine for the production of terrorism in history.

Huge Blast in Shiite Sadr City Kills 33
Muqtada Calls on al-Maliki to Boycott Washington over Israeli Assault on Lebanon

Guerrillas detonated a massive car bomb Sunday morning in Sadr City, Shiite East Baghdad, illing at least 33 persons and wounding 70. This bombing was an attempt to provoke the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr to further reprisal killings against Sunni Arabs.

On Saturday, the Associate Press reports that "Two American soldiers have been killed in Baghdad, seven Shiite construction workers were gunned down and five Sunni civilians were blown up, deepening the capital's security crisis." Iraqi officials [Ar.] put the death toll on Saturday around the country at 39, including 6 policemen or soldiers and 11 guerrillas.

The mayor of Samarra, a largely Sunni Arab city north of Baghdad, barely escaped an assassination attempt consisting of a suicide bombing carried out by one of his own bodyguards, a man who was related to him.

In Kut, a roadside bomb killed one Iraqi soldier and wounded 4 others. In Amara, gunmen shot down a policeman. These killings are in the south, in Shiite cities, and reflect a different dynamic than in the Sunni Arab areas. The perpetrators were likely violent splinter groups from the Sadr Movement or just Marsh Arab gangs fighting for turf.

There were four bombings in Baghdad, 2 of them targeting US military patrols in Canal Street in the east of the capital. A bombing in Hilla wounded several persons.

Patrick Cockburn reports that the city of Baghdad is "breaking up", that the population is more terrified than he has seen them in all the time he has been going to Iraq since 1978, and that few shops are open and those are having fire sales.

Update
Reuters reports that many in the Iraqi political elite have concluded that Iraq as a political project is finished.

All that is left is to divide up the country, including partitioning Baghdad, and try to hang on in the enclaves (Montenegro-ization). Or, others are fleeing the country. Game over, not yet declared as such by the referees.

BBC Monitoring translates form al-Sharqiyah Television:

'July 21, 2006 Friday

HEADLINE: Iraqi Shi'i cleric Al-Sadr urges premier to cancel US visit

Text of report by Iraqi Al-Sharqiyah TV on 21 July

Delivering a Friday sermon at Al-Kufah Mosque [21 July], [Shi'i] Iraqi religious cleric Muqtada al-Sadr asked Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki not to visit the United States.

Al-Sadr said: "We heard that the prime minister is planning to head for America. We call on him not to do that."

Al-Sadr added: "Do not go there for the sake of the two dear Al-Sadr martyrs and you will have our support."

Al-Maliki, who is planning to visit the United States within the coming week, is scheduled to address a US Congress session on 26 July after meeting US President George Bush.

Source: Al-Sharqiyah TV, Baghdad, in Arabic 1400 gmt 21 Jul 06'

USG Open Source Center paraphrases Iraqi press reports, July 22:

' Al-Zaman carries on the front page a 300-word report entitled 'Al-Mahdi Army Parades in Solidarity with Hizballah; Al-Sadr Demands Al-Maliki To Cancel His Visit to Washington. . .

Al-Mashriq carries on the front page a 1,200-word report citing Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr forbidding Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki from visiting the US. . .

Dar al-Salam on 20 July runs on page 2 a 250-word report entitled 'Al-Rawi: Over 2,000 Professors Have Fled Country Since Occupation. . .

Al-Zaman runs on page 4 a 600-word report entitled 'Al-Kut: Number of Displaced People 15,000. . .

Al-Mashriq carries on the front page a 120-word report citing the head of Security and Defense Committee in the Iraqi parliament accusing the US ambassador in Baghdad of hindering Iraqi security forces from confronting Saddam's followers who are "implementing the sectarian violence game" in the country. . .

Dar al-Salam on 20 July carries on page 10 a 300-word report citing Dr Haydar al-Abadi, chairman of Displaced Persons Parliamentary Committee, confirming the displacement of 200,000 people in the last four months. . .

Dar al-Salam on 20 July publishes on page 6 a 1,500-word report citing travel agents and citizens confirming that growing numbers of Baghdadis are escaping from the city due to the deteriorating security situation and criticizing neighboring countries for their mistreatment. . .

Al-Zaman runs on page 5 a 500-word report on the statement issued by Salah al-Din Tribal Chiefs Council refusing Al-Sadr's call for a million-people demonstration to repair the holy shrines in Samarra. . .

Al-Sabah carries on the front page a 270-word editorial by Chief Editor Falah al-Mish'al calling on politicians, religious clerics, and tribal shaykhs to play an important role in preventing a civil war by implementing Al-Maliki's Initiative. . .

Al-Sabah carries on page 15 a 300-word report citing Al-Najaf deputy governor confirming that the electricity crisis is real in the governorate. He added that the governorate wishes to construct electricity stations that can provide 230 megawatts. . .

Torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was common, even after the revelations of torture and abuse became public.

Iraqi widows face dire times, with little government or social support.

Stem Cell Veto


BUSH: "Yes, dear, I understand that stem cell research
would let you dance at the masked ball. But the
Republican Party needs the fundies to get reelected,
so you're just going to have to sit there the rest
of your life."



======
Satire Alert: Doctored Photo
Juan Cole created this photo-cartoon and reliquishes
copyright in it, so feel free to mirror.

US Isolated as Rift Grows with UK

Even the British Foreign Office has now broken with the Washington consensus on the Israeli assault on Lebanon, which is basically that the Israelis should be able to destroy the whole country if they want to, over their two kidnapped soldiers. AFP reports:

' Britain's junior foreign minister Kim Howells, visiting Beirut, Saturday questioned Israel's military tactics and slammed its killing of "so many children and so many people".

"These are not surgical strikes," he said of the air and artillery bombardments since July 12 that have killed more than 300 civilians in Lebanon.

Photo courtesy as-Safir

"If they are chasing Hezbollah, then go for Hezbollah. You don't go for the entire Lebanese nation," he told a media conference after meeting Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

Howells's boss, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, echoed those concerns in an interview with the Financial Times and said a ground invasion that Israel appeared to be preparing would create "a very dangerous situation". '

Howell gets "the Understatement of the Year" award. Not surgical strikes, indeed.

Israel hits Christian Television in Christian North Lebanon, Kills TV Man

Hizbullah rocket launchers are in the far south of Lebanon and Hizbullah is a Shiite organization.

Note that in a national emergency when 500,000 persons have been rendered homeless and the number is growing, when there are hundreds of dead and thousands of wounded, national media such as television and radio are absolutely essential to relief efforts and to avoiding further mass casualties.

On Saturday Israel hit television broadcasting in Christian North Lebanon:

Fighter bombers fired missiles at transmission stations in the central and northern Lebanese mountains, leaving antennas burning on the ground. Three missiles hit a transmission station at Fatqa in the Keserwan mountains, leaving antennas burning on the ground. Another airstrike crippled a transmission tower at Terbol in northern Lebanon, where relay stations for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp., Future TV and Hezbollah's Al-Manar are located.

The three stations could no longer be seen in parts of the country although their satellite feed was unaffected. The Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. is the nation's leading private network. The transmission of Radio Free Lebanon, a private station, was also disrupted when airstrikes hit a tower on a mountaintop in Sannine that was also used by the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. . . Saturday's attack was the first major airstrike in the Christian heartland.

The air strike killed at least one LBC employee, an innocent civilian. The dead man's last name was Chidiac, i.e., he was a Christian. I am now watching the LBC anchor pledging to attempt to go on broadcasting. The international satellite feed has not been knocked out by the Israelis yet.

LBC is a Christian-owned station, also available in the US via DISH satellite network. One of its commentators, May Chidiac, was attacked last fall for her criticism of Syria.

Future television is owned by the Hariri family, founded by reformist Rafik al-Hariri, whose assassination in February 2005 sparked the "Cedar Revolution" and brought his son, Saad al-Hariri, to prominence as leader of a reform bloc in parliament supported by the Bush administration.

That is, Israel on Saturday attacked and partially crippled the media outlets of the Christian and Sunni factions in the Cedar Revolution that Bush and his supporters trumpeted as the foundation of the "new Middle East."

It also further endangered millions of Lebanese civilians.

Israeli political and military elites are clearly upset that they have not been able to monopolize images and reporting of their vicious total war on Lebanese society, Christian, Sunni, Druze and Shiite. Attacking Lebanese television is an attempt to ensure that the war is seen only through the lens of Israeli media, which are censored by the Israeli military. I.e., full spectrum dominance of news and images.

Lebanese Broadcasting Company, a Christian-owned concern, is not a legitimate Israeli target in its struggle against Hizbullah's rockets in the far south of Lebanon.

This was another Israeli war crime.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports,

' More than 40 rockets fired by Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah hit towns across northern Israel on Saturday, injuring more than a dozen people, damaging two houses and setting cars ablaze, medics and the army said.

Reuters reports that one of the injuries was serious.

Lebanon's Catholic Bishops Call for UN-Backed Ceasefire
Demand Steps to Prevent Humanitarian Crisis

Lebanon's Maronite Catholic Bishops called Saturday for an immediate ceasefire in Israel's attack on Lebanon. ("The Maronite bishops of South Lebanon (Mgr Nabil Hajje of Tyre and Mgr Elias Nassar of Saida) could not take part in the meeting.")

The uniate Maronite church has its own liturgy but recognizes the Pope as its leader. About 22 percent of voting-age Lebanese are Maronite Catholics. There are other uniate Catholics and a small number of Latin-rite ones. About 40 percent of voting-age Lebanese are Christians of one sort or another.

The Bishops put forward 8 major points:

" 1) Condemnation of Israel’s reaction to the kidnapping of two soldiers, indicating that response to the capture should not be a reaction against Lebanon, although the bishops did not subscribe one bit to the theory of kidnapping people;

2) An appeal to people of goodwill to help defenceless citizens who have been forced to abandon their homes and land of origin;

3) An appeal to the United Nations to double its efforts to arrive at a ceasefire, in such a way that will lead to opening the doors to mediation that could spare more innocent victims;

4) Appreciation for the “intelligent” effort of the Lebanese government and its [Christian] president [Emile Lahoud] through diplomatic means and backing for the government of Fouad Siniora;

5) Hope that all Lebanese political leaders, despite their different viewpoints, will overcome divisions and come together to seek a solution, avoiding useless challenges and clashes;

6) An invitation to all citizens to welcome their brothers without distinctions between Christians and Muslims, even opening schools and homes to offer solutions fitting the dignity of each person;

7)An appeal to those responsible for the violence to allow the arrival of food and medical supplies to people kidnapped or forced to remain in their homes subject to shelling. There was also an invitation to the Red Cross to assure aid to the needy.

8) The Maronite bishops hailed the initiative of the Holy Father Benedict XVI to pray tomorrow, 23 July, for peace in Lebanon, inviting all their believers to respect this desire of the pope, because only prayer can save the country."

As-Safir reports [Ar.] that that Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, Speaker of the House Nabih Berri, and reform bloc leader Saad al-Hariri have also called for an immediate ceasefire, but that Washington rejected their call.

Haifa Rocket attack Wounds 5 Israeli Civilians
Israel Bombs Numerous Lebanese Towns Again
Wave of Protests in Muslim, Western Capitals

A wave of protests swept the Middle East and Europe on Friday against the Israeli war on Lebanon. Thousands rallied in Sanaa in Yemen; in Amman, Jordan; in Cairo, Egypt; in Tripoli, Libya; and in Iraq, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia, etc. Also Berlin, with more European and N. American demonstrations planned for this weekend. The big Muslim Brotherhood demonstration in Amman would not have been allowed by the Jordanian authorities if they were not even more afraid that if they did not let the public blow off steam on the issue, the consequences in public turmoil would be even worse.

The estimates for the size of the crowds in these reports are in my view too low. I saw some of the demonstrations on Arab satellite television and they were enormous.

In Iraq, young Shiite clerical nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr gave an incendiary sermon in which he

' predicted Israel would collapse like New York's twin towers on Sept 11, 2001, if Sunnis and Shiites join in their fight. "I will continue defending my Shiite and Sunni brothers, and I tell them that if we unite, we will defeat Israel without the use of weapons," Sadr said during a speech in the southern city Iraqi city of Kufa. '

Yes, Bush has certainly created a model democracy in Iraq. (Muqtada has 30 members in parliament, and in conjunction with the Da'wa Party, he is a king maker in the new system).

The Daily Star reports, "Israel was attacked again on Friday, Hizbullah fighters fired two salvos of rockets at the port of Haifa Friday, wounding five people and damaging shops . . .

I continue to maintain that if the Israelis had tried harder to target missile launching pads instead of droping 80 percent of their bombs on non-Hizbullah areas or on infrastructure, they could have stopped these rocket attacks. Military action specifically to take out the missiles is legitimate, since they are being used in a war crime, which is the indiscriminate bombing of Haifa civilians.

The Daily star reports:

' Friday saw 12 more civilian deaths, 50 wounded and 12 reported missing. Israeli artillery, fighter-bombers and warships continued their bombardment of the South, the Bekaa and Mount Lebanon. At least 10 civilians were buried under rubble in the Southern town of Aitaroun after Israeli warplanes targeted a residential building. Witnesses reported hearing cries for help.

Of course, this article was filed very early Friday, and we don't know that whole day's outcome yet.

The report continues,

' Baabda was attacked by Israeli warplanes early Friday, killing one civilian and severely wounding another. The municipality building was also damaged in the air strike. [Baabda is way up at Beirut, and far from any Shiite area. The presidential palace is there, and foreign diplomats, including France's Villepin, have been in and out of Baabda in the last few days.]

Then there is this:

' Separately, Lebanese security sources said towns along the border had been targeted by 2,500 bombs, missiles, rockets and shells between Thursday night and dawn Friday. The sources also accused Israel of using cluster bombs in an attack on the Southern town of Blida. The sources added that phosphorous and cluster munitions were also on Al-Orqoub, Hasbayya, Ramta, Zaaourta, Amfit and other border villages. Israeli shelling also destroyed a pharmaceutical plant Tyre.

The Daily Star report continues

' In the Bekaa Valley, eight more air strikes on the Mdeirij bridge, part of the main Beirut-Damascus highway, finally toppled the Middle East's tallest bridge on Friday after daily attacks since July 12 . . . Towns in the Chouf, Damour and Naameh regions were also bombarded Friday, leaving one civilian dead and one wounded.

The bodies of 30 Lebanese remained under rubble in the Southern town of Srifa. The civilians have been trapped since three residential buildings were targeted by air strikes Wednesday. Aid and Civil Defense workers have not been able to reach the town due to heavy Israeli bombing.'

I wouldn't have thought you would want to "target" three "residential buildings." Ordinary civilian people tend to live in residential buildings.

Israel has killed so many civilians in South Lebanon that health authorities are forced to stick them in mass graves. Megan Stack writes:

' "I've been a doctor for years, and I've never seen anything like this," said Nabil Harkus, who stood over a trio of unidentified corpses. "They can't fight Hezbollah because Hezbollah is not an army," he said, referring to the Israeli warplanes overhead. "They kill the people because they think it's the only way to stop Hezbollah." The Lebanese government has confirmed the deaths of 350 people in the fighting so far, but rescue workers here warn that the true tally is probably much higher. Relentless bombing has wrecked roads and rendered communication so spotty that no one knows how many people have died. '

The Nabatiyah Hospital serves a city of over 100,000. Reuters reports, "Water is cut off, the electricity is down, and medicine can only reach Nabatiyeh hospital across broken roads and through Israeli air strikes. But the injured still come, and doctors fear worse is ahead. The hospital, in the rolling hills of southern Lebanon, has treated 75 people wounded in Israeli bombardment since the start of a 10-day-old conflict triggered by the capture of two Israeli soldiers by the Shi'ite Muslim guerrilla group Hizbollah. Director Marwan Ghandour says the hospital could be flooded with patients if Israel launches a ground offensive across the border, just 20 km (12 miles) to the south."

Some 70 percent of the 500,000 persons that the Israelis have rendered homeless by their intensive bombing of Lebanon are from the Shiite south.

Saudi Defence Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz told reporters on Friday, “We cannot let Israel pursue its actions. We cannot tolerate that Israel plays with the lives of citizens, civilians, women, old people and children.” He supported an international force along the border of the two countries. This is going to be hard on Abraham Foxman.

The humanitarian crisis is growing in Lebanon. We're going to be seeing a lot of this headline in the next few weeks.

A congressional resolution on Israel/Lebanon that we can support.

Grand Ayatollah Sistani Condemns Israel

The Arabic original of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's fatwa condemning the Israeli attack on Lebanon is here.

Someone sent me an English translation by email. I think the fatwa should be read as a sign that Sistani is extremely anxious that the Lebanon war will send Shiite Iraq spinning out of control and lead to a major confrontation between Iraqi Shiites and the US and British troops.

Statement from His Eminence Sayyid Sistani (long may he live) on the events in Lebanon

In The Name of Allah The Compassionate, The Merciful

For several days Lebanon has been exposed to a continuous Israeli aggression, targeting its defiant people and its infrastructure on a wide scale. This has led to hundreds of people being martyred and wounded and tens of thousands of people being displaced as well as vast destruction to houses, roads and other civilian establishments.

All this blatant repression is occurring under the persistent disregard of the whole world - except for a few ineffective words of condemnation and disapproval here and there. The world community needs to move on to stop the continuation of this flagrant aggression. The Muslim nation also needs to stand by in solidarity with the oppressed Lebanese people and aim to ensure the humanitarian requirements of the wounded and the displaced and others are met. The representatives of the religious Marja’iyyah in Lebanon and Momineen in general must implement the aforesaid with all the means they receive.

The oppressions suffered by the nations of the region, among them the Lebanese, will increase the nations’ anger and rage towards the international policies supporting and/or condoning such actions - which will naturally intensify the tension and hinder peace and security throughout the region.

May Allah protect Lebanon and its dear people and have mercy on its martyrs and grant the wounded a speedy recovery and good health.

The Office of H. E. Sayyid Sistani (long may he live) Najaf, 20 Jumada al-Akhar 1427 [16] July 2006

Evacuation of Westerners from Lebanon
Why are We the Story?

Patrick McGreevy writes from Beirut:

' Why Are We the Story?

We woke up this morning to a crowded sea. From our Beirut balcony, we could see a steady parade of warships, ferries, cruise ships, helicopter ships, and one aircraft carrier. Helicopters ferried evacuees to the aircraft carrier, and it eventually disappeared to the west. Back and forth, all day, the ships steamed between Beirut and Cyprus. There had been many complaints about the efficiency of the evacuation, but it seems that sufficient resources and will is finally producing results. Tens of thousands are relieved to be getting out.

The use of the term “refugee” caused controversy when it was applied to those driven from their homes by Hurricane Katrina last September, but, in the current war, only the lucky get to be refugees. Unlike the Katrina victims, they actually do cross an international border; they also must pass through a military blockade. About 1500 Lebanese lined up yesterday to renew their passports or obtain new ones so that they could leave Lebanon; the scene at the General Security headquarters in Beirut was ugly. As citizens of a country under attack by Israeli forces, they will hardly be able to pierce the naval blockade, so their only option is a land route to Syria.

Most Lebanese are not lucky enough to be refugees. They will have to cope with living in a war zone. About 500,000 are even less likely—they have been driven from their homes in southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Katrina-like catastrophe in a country without the resources of the United States, during an ongoing war and blockade.

Domestic workers from developing countries also face a situation very different from that of North American and European citizens. These are mostly unmarried women from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Ghana, and other countries. Leaving Lebanon for the Philippines, for example, means finding yourself back where you started without a job and facing a very expensive return trip in order work again. Hence the Daily Star reported today that only 1000 of the 30,000 Filipinos have requested to leave Lebanon, and only 5,000 of the 90,000 Sri Lankans. Moreover, some who wish to leave, cannot because their sponsors themselves have fled and left them without papers.

The western media has been focused like a laser on the dramatic story of the evacuation of refugees from western countries. The Americans I know who are on their way out all have the same question: Why are we the story? With hundreds dead, thousands injured, hundreds of thousands displaced, Lebanon essentially turned into a Gaza with mountains, and the Bush Administration saying that talk of a cease-fire is “premature,” can we ever expect the western media to report what is significant rather than what will entertain its audience?

Patrick McGreevy '

Israelis Bomb Beirut, Baalbak Again
Tank Incursion in South
Massive Displacements, Humanitarian Crisis

"Israel's disproportionate use of force and collective punishment must stop."
- UN Secretary General Kofi Annan

[Red herring alert:Someone on the Web is questioning this quote or complaining that I didn't mention that Kofi also condemned Hizbullah. Oh for heaven's sakes. I used the quote as an epigraph. It is perfectly accurately quoted. If I had been doing a report on Annan, I would have quoted the whole passage. Using one of his phrases for an epigraph is perfectly legitimate. The quote is here.

The Daily Star reports,

' As The Daily Star went to press [Thursday night], three Israeli bombs fell on the southern suburbs of the capital and additional ordnance hit the northern city of Baalbek, leaving both areas ablaze. No casualty count was available.'

It also reports:

' Israel has opened a 60-kilometer front along the southern Lebanese border, from Naqoura to Majidiyeh, a Lebanese security source said on Thursday. "This front is to estimate Hizbullah's retaliation strength on the ground," the source said. "The fighting zone is inside Lebanese territory, which the UN itself has marked and which Israel agrees is Lebanese." Although up to now Israel has only hinted that it might undertake a full-scale invasion of Lebanon, on Thursday its tanks in fact attempted to cross the UN-demarcated Blue Line. According to a Hizbullah statement, Israeli troops met "fierce resistance from Hizbullah fighters as the Israelis crossed into Lebanon." An Israeli Army spokesperson said his troops were looking for "tunnels and weapons for the second day." '

South Beirut courtesy Daily Star

The tenement buildings of poor, Shiite, south Beirut lie in ruins, with hundreds of thousands of the poor made homeless as they fled relentless Israeli bombing of civilian neighborhoods. The Daily Star says:

' Dozens of buildings were demolished in Haret Hreik and Bir al-Abed in the southern suburbs, where 200,000 people formerly resided. In the midst of the rubble, a few residents dared to come back to their former homes and search for possessions to salvage. '

Hizbullah is the main political party in south Beirut and so of course had political offices there, which the Israelis have bombed. But they did so in complete disregard for civilian life, and what they bombed were not necessarily military targets. There is a difference between the Hizbullah paramilitary of some 5,000 fighters and the political party and its social service institutions-- which include hospitals, clinics and soup kitchens. Or did.

Meanwhile, Shiites of South Lebanon fled Israeli bombing of their villages, coming up north to Beirut, which lacks capacity to deal with these refugees.

The Associated Press reports:

As the death toll rose to 330 in Lebanon, as well as at least 32 Israelis, Lebanese streamed north into the capital and other regions, crowding into schools, relatives' homes or hotels. Taxi drivers in the south were charging up to $400 US a person for rides to Beirut - more than 40 times the usual price. In remote villages of the south, cut off by Isaraeli air strikes, residents made their way out over the mountains by foot. The price of food, medical supplies and gasoline rose by as much as 500 per cent in parts of Lebanon on Thursday as Israel's relentless bombardment destroyed roads, bridges and other supply routes. The World Food Program said estimates of basic food supplies ranged from one to three months. '

Not satisfied to have made 500,000 out of 3.8 million Lebanese homeless already, and to have chased over 100,000 out of their own country to Syria, AP says that on Thursday ' Israel warned hundreds of thousands of people to flee southern Lebanon "immediately . . ." '

The Orwellian world into which Olmert and his band of manic bombers have plunged ordinary Lebanese is illustrated by Liz Sly's report for the Trib:

' Thousands of Lebanese were trying to flee the south after Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets warning people to leave, stirring fears that an Israeli ground invasion was imminent. But hundreds of thousands more remain stranded in villages and towns across the south, unable to leave their homes because of the intensity of the sustained Israeli bombing campaign. United Nations and Lebanese officials warned of an impending humanitarian disaster unless food and medical supplies are allowed to reach the stricken area and called on Israel to establish a "humanitarian corridor" to allow aid to get through. '

So let's get this straight. The Israelis warn the small town Shiites of the south to flee their own homes and go hundreds of miles away (and live on what? in what?). But then they intensely bombing them, making it impossible for them to flee. The Lebanese have awoken to find themselves cockroaches.

I repeat, this is nothing less than an ethnic cleansing of the Shiites of southern Lebanon, an assault on an entire civilian population's way of life. Aside from ecology, it is no different from what Saddam Hussein did to the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, and the Israelis are doing it for exactly the same sorts of reasons that Saddam did.

The economy of downtown Beirut has been murdered by the Israelis.

An acquaintance passed this on;

' I've just heard from Christine . . . via text messaging . She is in the Bekaa valley in a bomb shelter and Israel is bombing the village where she is at the moment. She says they are bombing the Red Cross, food lorries, fire brigade, hospitals and emergency relief centres . . . She is very concerned about the lack of reporting by the international media about the details of this violence. '

As for Israel, Haaretz reports:

' There was a significant drop in the number of rockets launched against northern Israel, with an estimated 35-40 rockets hitting empty fields in the Galilee. IDF sources were hard pressed to explain the reason for the drop . . .

The air force carried out more than 150 sorties throughout Lebanon yesterday. Six launchers were destroyed and 16 Hezbollah bases as well as three arms storage facilities were bombed. The air assault destroyed 21 Hezbollah vehicles and included attacks on 100 bridges and roads throughout Lebanon.

In the upcoming days, the IDF plans to expand ground operations in southern Lebanon. Next week, more units will be moved to the North, which will enable broader operations against villages throughout the south. '

I don't think it is nice to carry out massive military "operations" against "villages." I am sure they meant to say "Hizbullah bases" or "missile emplacements." Or maybe they really do just mean "villages."

Professor Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University on the Lebanon crisis.

University of Akron geography professor Ghazi Falah is being detained by Israeli authorities without charges. This is outrageous.

Ghazieh Lebanon Blog.

Here is an individual effort to bring Israeli officials up on charges for war crimes in Lebanon.

More horrible, horrible pictures of the Israeli carnage against Lebanese civilians. I advise you not to click, but if you do, you are on your own.

USG summaries of Iraqi press for July 19:

' Al-Adalah publishes on page 2 a 400-word text of a statement by Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim demanding the Iraqi government to cooperate with Arab and Muslim countries to stop the Israeli attacks against Lebanon. . .

Al-Bayyinah carries on page 1 a 250-word report citing Unified Iraqi Coalition member Baha al-A'raji [aide to Muqtada al-Sadr] commenting on the Israeli attacks against Lebanon, and criticizing the Arab League for failing to support the Arab people. . .

Sistani Issues Impassioned Plea
48 Dead in Civil War Violence Thursday

Two bombings, in Baghdad and north of Beiji, killed 10 persons on Thursday. In addition, 38 corpses showed up on the streets of Baghdad, victims of faith-based reprisal killings.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani issued his strongest plea yet for Iraqis to cease their faith-based reprisal killings, which have been taking the lives of 100 persons a day.

Unfortunately, the time when Sistani could control these sectarian passions has passed. The word is that the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr is "boiling," in large part over the Israel assault on the Shiites of Lebanon. The Sadrists do not generally give their allegiance to Sistani. And, of course, the Sunni Arabs mostly despise him as a Shiite Iranian.

US military officials admitted that the average daily number of attacks in the Baghdad area is up 40%.

But, get this-- John Negroponte is accused by some of keeping CIA analysts from using the phrase "civil war" about Iraq. What does Sistani know that Negroponte does not?

Violence is surging in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, contested by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen. This according to the International Crisis Group.

Radical Sunnis and extremist Shiites don't have much in common, really. Except they really, really dislike the US and Israel. Actually, they mostly disliked the US because of Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinians, until the Americans invaded and occupied Iraq. Now there are two policy issues that they deeply dislike.

Parsi Guest Editorial: Action Against Iran a Mistake

' July 20, 2006

Statement from Dr. Trita Parsi, Phd, author of Treacherous Triangle-The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (Yale University Press, 2007)

It would be a serious mistake to follow the advice of Neo-con commentators who are now agitating for US military action against Iran. Just as they saw the invasion of Iraq as the key to resolving all our problems in the Middle East, so they now see military action against Iran. As the Weekly Standard puts it, "We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions -- and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."

The violence in the Middle East has provided the neo-conservatives with a pretext for actions they’ve long sought to promote—war with Iran. But contrary to conventional wisdom in Washington, the casus belli of the neo-conservatives – that Iran ordered the Hezbollah attack – is questionable. In fact, Iran stands to lose far more than it could gain from Hezbollah’s provocation of Israel. With a much weakened Hezbollah, Tehran will feel exposed to a potential Israeli or American attack on Iran.

Israel has chosen to use Hezbollah’s action to launch a major sustained attack calculated to destroy or substantially weaken Hezbollah as well as much of Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure. The Israelis may have concluded that a US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities is inevitable or desirable and therefore they’ve decided to preempt an anticipated Hezbollah retaliatory attack.

But as with the Neo-cons recommendations on Iraq, the initial military objectives may be very clear. The aftermath, however, is a different story. Absent any open lines of communication between the US and Iran, what started with a Hezbollah attack on Israel, and continued with a major Israeli offensive against Lebanon, may end up in a disastrous regional war. Washington and Tehran should prevent events from spiraling out of control by opening those necessary channels of communication.

BIO:

Dr. Parsi is one of the few people in the US - if not the only one - that has traveled both to Iran and Israel and interviewed top officials in these countries on the state of Israeli-Iranian relations. He has conducted more than 110 interviews with senior Israeli, Iranian and American officials in all three countries. He is fluent in Persian/Farsi.

He has followed Middle East politics for more than a decade, both through work in the field, and through extensive experience on Capitol Hill and the United Nations.

Dr. Parsi's articles on Middle East affairs have been published in the Financial Times, Jane's Intelligence Review, the Globalist, the Jerusalem Post, The Forward, BitterLemons and the Daily Star.

He is a frequent commentator on US-Iranian relations and Middle Eastern affairs, and has appeared on BBC World News, PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CNN (Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room), CNN International (Your World Today), Al Jazeera, C-Span, NPR, MSNBC, Voice of America and British Channel 4.

Contact: Trevor FitzGibbon, 202.246.5303'

"No More Infrastructure to Destroy"

Patrick McGreevy writes from Beirut:

' Beirut is tense. Some people are expressing worries that things could get very difficult. The worse-case scenarios are on people's minds, but so far there is no sign of social disorder among Lebanese citizens.

AUB's foreign faculty and staff are slowly being evacuated. The Americans were told they would be leaving today, but the plan was called off this morning. Now, it looks as if it will tomorrow. Apparently the scene at the port has gotten ugly at times, and there have been complaints about how things are being handled. A few of us will remain, for now at least.

There are so many warships and cruiseliners in the sea in front of Beirut that it looks like a cross between the Battle of Midway and Aruba.

AUB is moving medical staff and other essential personnel on to campus apartments as foreigners depart. The hospital is in desparate need of blood. The refugee problem is overwhelming. AUB is trying to do its part with the folks who have moved in from the southern suburbs. We understand that the Israelis have decided to stop hitting Lebanese infrastructure, perhaps because there no longer is any infrastructure. We know people are talking about the end game, but it is very difficult to imagine how this can end any time soon. Short of a massive ground invasion, Hezbollah cannot be destroyed; and Isreal has backed itself into a corner; if they stop, Hezbollah can claim victory. Hence the madness goes on. Eventually, people will have to talk to each other, but apparently only after a great deal more bleeding.

Our Lebanese friends and colleagues are sad and angry. The future is becoming hard to imagine. The Fall Semester? I know people everywhere are doing what they can to help. Don't forget us.

Patrick McGreevy'

2 Arab-Israeli Boys Killed by Hezbollah in Nazareth
Chemical Stores Moved from Haifa

Hizbullah fired many katyusha rockets into Israel again on Wednesday, killing two Arab-Israeli boys in Nazareth and lightly wounding 9 others with shrapnel.

Hizbullah's katyushas are extremely imprecise, so that in firing them at Israel the fighters are engaging in indiscriminate fire on civilian populations, which is a war crime.

Al-Bawaba says, "Katyushas also hit Nahariya in the late afternoon. Some 70 Katyushas were fired at Israel within the space of an hour. Earlier Wednesday, two rockets hit Haifa and others fell in the Western Galilee."

Most of the katyushas appear to produce few casualties and do little damage, though some have hit buildings.

Xinhua reports, "Haifa, Tiberias, Karmiel, Acre as well as a number of communities in the Galilee in northern Israel were pounded by a salvo of rockets, which totalled about 70 within an hour, said the reports, adding residents were instructed to stay inside. According to the reports, injuries were reported in Tiberias . . . Meanwhile, four people were also wounded, one seriously, when a Katyusha rocket landed near Safed on Wednesday afternoon. "

In Haifa, a katyusha hit a bus and lightly wounded the driver, and another damaged the home of an Arab Israeli family. Some residents of Haifa seem to be blaming the Olmert government for its all-out war on Lebanon. Hezbollah did not fire its rockets until Israel began bombarding Lebanon. Haifa is known for having a significant Arab population and for relatively good Arab-Israeli relations in the city.

Reports say that Haifa as a city is paralyzed and its commerce has ground to a halt, with streets deserted and shops closed up. An Israeli in Canada described the situation of her elderly parents in Haifa: ' "They're forced to dash to a local grocery store and then dash back and must stay shut into their apartment all day watching television, "which isn't easy," she said. "There hasn't been much damage to the city physically, but there's been huge damage spiritually. Everything has changed now that they're living in war." '

The Israeli Army has removed most of the dangerous chemicals from Haifa Port. The chemicals had become a hazard once Haifa began taking rocket fire. On Sunday, Hizbullah leader Shaikh Hasan Nasrallah said that he could have hit the chemical stores with rockets if he had wanted to, and implied that he could yet take this [monstrous] step.

Although the conflict is costing Israel an estimated $112 million per day, mainly in lost tourism and lost factory time, economists do not expect it to have a substantial economic impact. Israel's economy has been experiencing robust growth, and the fighting is not forecast to detract from it in a major way.

Israel Kills 57 in Lebanon
Arbour Warns War Crimes are Prosecutable


The Daily Star reports,

' Israeli fighter-bombers also destroyed nearly 20 residential homes and buildings in Lebanon in the early morning hours of Wednesday and continued air raids in the South, the Bekaa and Beirut's southern suburbs. At least 12 Lebanese, including children, were killed and 30 wounded in an Israeli air strike that destroyed several homes in the Southern village of Srifa, residents said. '

In fact, Israel "flattened" several Lebanese villages in the south with indiscriminate air strikes. One entire village section of 15 homes was destroyed, with a high civilian death toll. It is not possible that all 15 civilian residences were legitimate military targets. This is just state terror.

Food and medicine are running low for the vast displaced population, some 500,000 persons, raising the specter of a vast humanitarian crisis.

Israeli troops and armor fought with Hezbollah inside Lebanese territory on Wednesday. Hezbollah claimed to have destroyed two Israeli tanks.

The Lebanese government says that the Israelis have now killed more than 300 persons, all but a handful innocent civilians. Some of the military personnel killed were Lebanese army troops hundreds of miles from the Hizbullah positions in the South, who were not doing anything that threatened Israel. In fact, Israeli officials keep saying that want the help of the Lebanese army to curb Hizbullah. But then they bomb the Lebanese army. Say what?

Israeli war planes fired on two parked trucks in the Christian Ashrafiyah district of Beirut. These innocuous trucks in a Christian area were clearly not legitimate military targets in a struggle against Hizbullah. The message the Israeli air force is trying to send with such actions is that Lebanese should stop driving trucks for a while, or else they will be targets.

And this is my problem with Israel's war on Lebanon. The Olmert government wants to clean Hizbullah's katyusha rocket emplacements out of the area above its northern border with Israel. That may or may not be a realistic goal. Larry Cohler-Esses at the Jewish Week reports that a lot of military experts think Israel's military plan is impossible to accomplish. But it is legitimate for the Israeli government to fight Hizbullah and to attempt to destroy the missiles, once Hizbullah showered Israel with missiles (and even thought the missiles have mostly failed to hit anything).

But the Israeli military from the beginning of this conflict did not limit itself to fighting Hizbullah or to hitting its arsenal. The Israeli air force bombed Beirut airport (and bombed it again on Wednesday), and bombed the sea ports of Tripoli, Jounieh, Beirut, Sidon and Tyre. It bombed civilian neighborhoods and villages and killed whole families.

[A reader writes:

' Given the 15 or so deaths of Turkish soldiers and police at the hands of Kurd "terrorists" over the past few weeks - and the inability of the Government of Iraq to control these "terrorists" - I wonder if U.S. officials believe that Turkey has the right to defend itself by bombing the Baghdad airport, destroying bridges and roads in Iraq, and generally smashing the hell out of Kurdish territory. Probably not. '

That kind of broad gauge approach is not allowed by the modern laws of warfare. If you have good reason to think that a truck is carrying weaponry to Hizbullah, you can bomb it. But just bombing any old civilian truck is a war crime.

So, the Israelis could have attempted to surveil trucking and where they had good reason to think that a truck was transporting weapons, they could have hit it. But just blowing up random trucks is criminal.

Israel has fought a lazy war, both morally lazy and militarily lazy. It is work to surveil enemy shipments. So, you just blow up the airport and the ports and roads and bridges, regardless of whether you have reason to believe that any of them is used by Hizbullah for their war effort. Just in case. It is a just in case war. You bomb Shiite villages intensively, just in case they have military significance to Hizbullah. Maybe they don't, and you've just blown up a civilian neighborhood and killed whole families. Where blowing up things has no immediate and legitimate military purpose and harms innocent civilians, it is a crime. It can be prosecuted, especially in Europe.

Louise Arbour of the UN High Commission on Human Rights made this point Wednesday, according to the Daily Star story linked to above:

' UN human rights chief Louise Arbour suggested Wednesday that the military operations being carried out in Lebanon, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories could be considered war crimes. The obligation to protect civilians during hostilities is entrenched in international law, "which defines war crimes and crimes against humanity," Arbour said in a statement. "The scale of the killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control," she added. '

Here are the relevant statutes according to the Big News Network:

' The Fourth Geneva Convention, prohibits "collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism ..." (Article 33). According to Article 147 of the Convention, "extensive destruction ... not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly," hostage-taking and "torture or inhuman treatment" are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and constitute war crimes. All state parties to the Convention are required to search for and ensure the prosecution of perpetrators of grave breaches of the said Convention.

Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions codifies the principle of distinction, a customary rule of international humanitarian law: "In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operation only against military objectives." (Article 48). International Humanitarian Law strictly prohibits attacks against civilians and civilian objects. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) includes as war crimes: "Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities", and "Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects" (Article 8 2 (b) (i) and (ii)). '

But the same article also conveys the Israeli response

' The Israeli chief of staff, Brig.Gen. Dan Halutz, noted in public remarks that senior Hizbullah leaders live and work in southern Beirut, and said Beirut could be targeted if Hizbullah continued to fire rockets into northern Israel. "Nothing is safe [in Lebanon], it's as simple as that," Halutz said. '

That is collective punishment. It is holding millions of innocents hostage and threatening them with death. It is state terror. I don't think the Israelis get it.

Meanwhile Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora had this to say:

' "As I speak, the trauma, the desperation, the grief and the daily massacres and destruction go on and on. The country has been torn to shreds.

"Is the value of human life in Lebanon less than that of the citizens of other countries? Can the international community stand by while such callous retribution by Israel is inflicted on us?

"Will you allow innocent civilians, churches, mosques, orphanages, medical supplies escorted by the Red Cross, people seeking shelter or fleeing their homes and villages to be the casualties of this ugly war?
http://www.dailystar.com.lb

"Is this what the international community calls self-defense?

"Is this the price we pay for aspiring to build our democratic institutions? Is this the message to send to the country of diversity, freedom and tolerance?

"Only last year, the Lebanese filled the streets with hope and with red, green and white banners shouting out: Lebanon deserves life!

"What kind of life is being offered to us now?

"I will tell you what kind: a life of destruction, despair, displacement, dispossession, and death.

"What kind of future can stem from the rubble?

"A future of fear, frustration, despair, financial ruin and fanaticism.

"Let me assure you that we shall spare no avenue to make Israel compensate the Lebanese people for the barbaric destruction it has inflicted and continues to inflict upon us, knowing full well that human life is irreplaceable.

"You want to support the government of Lebanon? Let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, no government can survive on the ruins of a nation.

"On behalf of the people of Lebanon, from Beirut, Baalbek and Byblos, to Tyre Sidon and Qana, to each and every one of the 21 villages at the Southern border, declared a no-go zone by Israel, to Tripoli and Zahle, to every other town, I call upon you all to respond immediately without reservation or hesitation to this appeal for an immediate cease-fire and lifting of the siege, and provide urgent international humanitarian assistance to our war-stricken country. '

Fouad, I just wouldn't hold my breath while waiting for Bush and Condi to respond, if I were you. You aren't really their friend, you were just a prop in an exhibit designed to get Republicans elected. You and your country are expendable from their point of view.

Tom Hayden gives some insights on why.

Hospitality or the Abyss

Patrick McGreevy writes from Beirut:

Hospitality or the Abyss

West Beirut seems like a different place today. Shi’ite men and black-clad women have flooded into Hamra—the neighborhood near American University of Beirut that was once known as the most secular place in the Middle East. They are sleeping in crowded and sweltering school buildings with inadequate bathroom facilities. AUB held a meeting today to coordinate volunteer support efforts for local refugees. The university will create a fund to provide food, water, cleaning supplies and medical assistance (if you are willing to contribute contact John Bernson at sbernson@aub.edu.lb).

When a catastrophe like this comes to any land, it can inspire crazy rumors and speculations. In a place that has recently experienced fifteen years of hellish chaos, the various ways of descending into the abyss immediately come to the surface. Is this post-traumatic stress or healthy fear? The worst fear is that the deep Arab commitment to hospitality—to any and all without a single question—will invert, that Lebanese groups will turn on each other and on the foreigners who choose to live among them. Do Israeli leaders hope for this? There is absolutely no trace of it yet, but how does one dissever 2006 from 1984?

The problem with fear is not only that it obscures the present situation, but that it paralyzes constructive action. Lebanon will be whatever its people make of it: there is no inevitable slide into an abyss. The immediate problem, like almost everywhere else in the region, is the economic plight of the most disenfranchised citizens. Recognizing this, Hezbollah has attended to the needs of these ones and created a remarkable faith-based system of support. The best way now to avoid the abyss is for the citizens of Beirut—whether Muslim, Christian or secular (and the wider world to which it is connected)--to be very attentive to the human suffering of these refugees. Hospitality must transcend all difference.

And what of those who are raining bombs on Lebanon? Today a water-drilling truck in the Christian Achrafieh neighborhood, another truck transporting medicine, civilians dying everywhere. The targeting strategy errs on the side of overkill—the tactic of terror. But what does it yield? What does the Warsaw Ghetto tell us? Both Hezbollah and the Israeli leaders, despite the asymmetry of their power, assume this is a macho game about dignity, about facing down one’s enemy. Look in the mirror habibi. Look into the abyss.

Patrick McGreevy

Letter from Rasha in Beirut; and the Israeli Siege Notes

From Rasha [a young woman] in Beirut:

"Dear All,

I am drafting this entry in this unusual diary at 11:30 pm. I have about half an hour before the generator shuts down. Most of Beirut is in the dark. I dare not imagine what the country is like. Today was a relatively calm day, but like most calm days that come immediately after tumultuous days, it was a sinister day of taking stock of damage, pulling bodies from under destroyed buildings, shuttling injured to hospitals that have the capacity to tend to their wounds more adequately. The relative calm allowed journalists to visit the sites of shelling and violence.

The images from Tyre, and villages in the south are shocking. Images from Haret Hreyk (the neighborhood in the southern suburb that received the most "focused" shelling) are also astounding. The number of deaths is yet uncertain, it increases by the hour as bodies are pulled from the landscape of destruction. In the southern suburbs, some people may be trapped in underground shelters under the vestiges of their homes and apartment buildings. And yes, there is a problem of space in morgues in the south and the Beqaa, because none of the towns and villages are equipped to handle these numbers of deaths. The IDF has destroyed almost entirely the village of 'Aytaroun. Some of the surviving wounded are Canadian citizens. Like the 8 Canadians who died in the building in Tyre (a building that housed the red cross and civil rescue), the Canadian government has had very little regard for them.

Evacuations, Privilege, Solidarity

Today was a particularly strange day for me because I was granted an opportunity to leave tomorrow morning. I hold a Canadian passport. I was born in Toronto when my parents were students there. I left at age two. I have never gone back, for lack of opportunity and occasion, no other reason. I have the choice to sign up for the evacuation, but the European and North American governments have been so despicable, so racist that I don't want to subject myself to a discrimination of that sort. The Swedes, the Danes and the Germans have evacuated their patriots with blond hair and blue eyes. The immigrants that were given shelter to their countries "out of the kindness" of their governments have been systematically left behind; and the guest workers who stayed to enliven their economies and their babies who adjust the dynamism of their demographies, were left behind to fend for shelter under the shells. But I digress. The point I set out to make is that I refuse to be evacuated as a second tier denizen. I had the opportunity to leave tomorrow by car to Syria, then to Jordan and from there by plane to wherever I am supposed to be right now.

For days I have been itching to leave because I want to pursue my professional commitments, meet deadlines and continue with my life. For days I have been battling ambivalence towards this war, estranged from the passions it has roused around me and from engagement in a cause. And yet when the phone call came informing me that I had to be ready at 7:00 am the next morning, I asked for a pause to think. I was torn. The landscape of the human and physical ravages of Israel's genial strategy at implementing UN Resolution 1559, the depth of destruction, the toll of nearly 250 deaths, more than 800 injured and 400,000 displaced, had bound me to a sense of duty. It was not even patriotism; it was actually the will to defy Israel.

They cannot do this and drive me away. They will not drive me away. This is one of the most recurring mistakes that the IDF makes. This is how we see things: THEY have destroyed this country, THEY are taking an opportunity to turn it to rubble and to usher us into oblivion, if there is ambivalence vis-a-vis the wisdom of Hezbollah's capture of the two soldiers, there is unambiguous, unanimous solidarity to stand in the face of Israel's barbaric arrogance. Some people see more in this war, some people see a moment where the logic/values of the policies of the Moubaraks, the Abdullahs of the Arab world, i.e. the defeatist, pragmatic, corrupt sell-outs will be humiliated as well. And I am sure, other people see other things as well.

The roads to Damascus are not safe. Its many different ways are shelled every day. Drivers know what "calculated" risks to take, I am assured, but one never knows. Every day the way out becomes more difficult. I decided to stay, I don't know when I will have another opportunity to leave. The first contingent of Britons was evacuated early this evening. There are two ships, but the evacuation will take place over 3 days. Same for the French and Americans, their evacuations will last for 2 days. While the evacuations are taking place, there was relative quiet. A welcome lull. There was activity in the street, even on the Corniche along the seaside.

Refugees from the south, displaced from their homes and provided shelter in public schools strolled in Hamra, looking for a breath of fresh air. A break from the confinement in schools and other makeshift shelters. Imagine the horror, the sad, sad horror: we are on borrowed time and the only reason we are not under threat, under any serious threat is because the passport holders of some of the G8 countries are evacuating to safer harbors. With this relative calm, the sense of impending doom becomes almost palpable; time, space, light and movement are subsumed in an eerie stillness. It feels vaporous and fills the air. As it wafts from room to room, from apartment to apartment, as it turns a corner and moves to another neighborhood, every gesture, every act, is a little delayed, slowed, surreptitiously lethargic, every thought lingers too long in the unfinished or inchoate state. This eerie stillness numbs the passage of time and the cognitive perception of things material. Objects seem both familiar and unfamiliar. They are familiar in that they were there the day before and seem not to have moved from their place. They are unfamiliar because they seem to belong to another time, another life.

There was another life, I had another life that seems distant and foreign now. The morning is different, noon is different, sunset is different. Another Beirut has emerged. War time Beirut. War time Lebanon. War time mornings, war time noons. Siege time Beirut, siege time morning, siege time sunsets. Everyone else in the world is going about their day as they had planned it or as it was planned for them. The shakers and movers of this world, the fledgling middle classes of the developping world, the 11 million child workers in India, the good-doers and the evil-doers. We are in a different geography of time, of agency, we are besieged, captive, hostage. No chance of Stockholm syndrome this time. Our every move is monitored: every moving vehicle delivering food, fuel, or medicines is monitored, every phone call is listened on, every email read, every dream snarled at, every desire crushed. Israel has the right to explode it to smithereens. The shelling has not really let, don't get me wrong. It still goes on but it's more occasional, there are more "blank spaces" in between now.

Hezbollah

These "siege notes" have been receiving a number of reponses from Israelis. I have to say that most are of the annoying sort. First, they always begin by noting that I am intelligent and I get commended for my intelligence like Colin Powell gets commended for his English language speaking skills and you wonder what those making these observations expect from you and the world in the first place. Second, they systematically mistake expression of dissent and critique of Arab regimes and official discourse as some sort of favorable disposition towards Israel. In other words there is, falsely, a tautology between regarding Israel as an enemy country and endorsing radical ideologies of Islamic fundamentalism or rabid nationalism. As if being a democrat, an egalitarian and a feminist implied that one could not have even more profound grounds for being critical of Israel and regarding that country as an enemy country that has sponsored and produced nothing but war, violence, wretched- ness, misery, banditry and usurpation. And they [Israelis] are so heartened by my ambivalence towards this war they recommend that more conversations should take place between Israelis and myself. Of course, most propose that I make the effort to seek those Israeli interlocutors out. This extreme form of Habermas-mania, that assumes that deep conflicts can be "talked through", is the sumum of hubris.

The experience of the peace process is telling: it is clear that Israelis cannot cannot cannot accept Palestinians as human beings whose humanity is of equal value as their own. This is the bottom line. And until that bottom line is changed, there is nothing that a member of a society that builds walls around itself to shut itself off from the world and shut the world from itself can tell me. Punto final. One of my impromptu (Israeli) commentators, warned of my candor, despaired at my position vis-a-vis Israel, and took generous time and space to explain to me that Hezbollah must be crushed because if they were to win, they would destroy Israel and me, because of my values and lifestyle. This view, along with other views salient in western media (particularly American) of Hezbollah betrays ignorance. It is fatal ignorance. The most gross miscalculation Israeli strategists are making is based on the assumption that Hezbollah is a) not a legitimate political entity in this country, b) its base is made up of extremists and c) its "elimination" would leave the Lebanese construct unscathed. In point of fact, pushing the Lebanese population to "rise up" against Hezbollah, or the scenario of a Lebanese implosion, is the worst case scenario for all regional "parties", because the country would then become the jungle of violence and killing that Iraq is today. Because I am a staunch secular democrat, I have never endorsed Hezbollah, but I do not question their legitimacy as a political actor on the Lebanese scene, I believe they are just as much a product of Lebanon's contemporary history, its war and postwar, as are all other parties. If one were to evaluate the situation in vulgar sectarian terms, when it comes to representing the interests of their constituency they certainly do a better job than all the political representatives presently and in the past. It would be utter folly (in fact it would be murderous folly) to regard Hezbollah as another radical Islamist terrorist organization, at least in the ideological and idiomatic vein of the American intelligentsia and punditry. (There is something about a stubborness to misunderstand that betrays an intent in the US to see a crisis linger or even escalate. If Americans feel better being misguided idiots, Israelis should know better.

If the Israeli intelligentsia wants to play deaf like Americans the only outcome will be an Iraq scenario, although I reiterate that Lebanon is not Iraq and the Lebanese are not and will not be Iraqi and will not be manipulated into the barbaric sectarian horror. We've tried that before and it does not work, and we are tired of fighting each other.) Hezbollah is a mature political organization (that has matured organically within the evolution of Lebanese politics) with an Islamist ideology, that has learned (very quickly) to co-exist with other political agents in this country, as well as other sects. If Lebanese politics were a representation of short-sighted petty sectarian calculations, the lived social experience of postwar Lebanon was different. Sectarian segregation was extremely difficult to implement in the conduct of everyday social transactions, in the conduct of business, employment and all other avenues of commonplace life. And that is a capital we all carry within ourselves, there are exceptional moments when the country came together willingly and spontaneously (as with the Israeli attacks in 1993 and 1996), but there are other smaller, less spectacular moments that punctuate the lived experience of the postwar that every single Lebanese can recall where sectarian prejudice was utterly meaningless, experienced as meaningless. When former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated, the country seemed divided into two camps; the consensus was overwhelming, however, that we will not revert to fighting one another, to eliminating one another. If Israel plans to annihilate Hezbollah, it will annihilate Lebanon. Hezbollah and its constituency are not only Lebanese in the perception of all, they are also a key, essential element of contemporary Lebanon. Moreover, the specifics of UN Resolution 1559 may have regional implications, but at heart and in essence they can only be resolved within the Lebanese consensus. Israel CANNOT take it upon itself to implement that UN resolution. There is off course sinister folly that Israel should implement any UN resolution considering its stellar record of snarling, snickering and shrugging at every single UN resolution that did not suit its sensibilities. Hezbollah are not al-Qaeda. Israeli and US propaganda will portray them as much, and that is the downfall of public opinion, that is the tragedy at the root of the consensus that agrees to watching Lebanon burn. In more ways than can be counted they are different political ideologies, groups and movements. First, they are not suicidal. Second, they are not anti-historical. Third, they are a full-fledged political agent at the center of a dynamic polity. Their ideology is not an ideology of doom; they represent as much petty interests of their constituency as they are imbricated in the fabric of regional politics.

Israel, and Channel 2

I was watching Lise Doucet on the BBC interview one of Olmert's underlings yesterday after the speech. This is the folly of the Israelis, and I believe it will be their downfall, ultimately. He was lamenting that Hezbollah hit the "peaceful" city of Haifa, an Israeli city that he described as exemplar of coexistence between Jews, Christians and Muslims. Haifa! An Israeli city? Haifa? The name is Arabic. The jewel in the crown of Palestinian cities... A peaceful haven of coexistence between Jews, Muslims and Christians? My God! It took DECADES for Christians and Muslims to appear on the roster of "human beings" in the ledgers of the Israeli government. Decades of struggle, riots, pain and suffering. And they are still second class citizen, and they are still unwelcome, pushed out, day after day, crushed by the Israeli machine. This eloquent underling was making the argument that Hezbollah wanted to destroy the city of "coexistence". Off course, he does not care that the city the IDF has currently under siege, the city they are bombing to rubble, the city where the Red Cross and civil rescue headquarters were shelled to the ground, Tyre, is itself a gorgeous jewel on the Lebanese coast. That it is a GENUINE city of coexistence amongst Christians, Shi'ites and Sunnis. And the delightful town of Marja'yun is also a city where sects and religions co-exist, and Zahleh... and so on and so on... But no matter, the Israelis have always done this, and eventually, it catches up with them, and in the end, they realize that their narrative is so far removed from reality they have to backtrack. The key to understanding Israeli's relationship to our humanity lies in a text by David Grossman, one of Israel's foremost novelists, essayists and writers. He wrote it around the time of the First Intifada. Israel was then beginning to come into reckoning that the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was no longer tenable or sound strategy for the well-being of its democracy.

By the second or third of these "siege notes", the emails reached Israel and Israeli blogs. A journalist from Israel's Channel 2 contacted me by email and asked for an interview. I was uncomfortable with the idea at first, for fear that my words be distorted and my genuine, candid sentiments quoted to serve arguments I do not endorse. Exposing oneself with transparency has its charm and price. That journalist seems like a nice person, but I have no reason to trust her and she understands my misgivings. My only defense is transparency. She sent me the set of questions below for me to an swer so she can air them on TV or use them for some report. I decided to share them with you all.

Q: How your day looks like from the morning. What you did today? did you have coffee? how do you get the news - television? radio? internet?

A: The routine of our days is totally changed. We now live under a regimen of survival under siege. Those of us still not wounded and not stranded do whatever needs to be done to survive until the next day. Coffee, yes, I have coffee in the morning, and at noon and in the afternoon. Perhaps I have too much coffee. The passage of time is all about monitoring news, checking everyone's OK, and figuring out what has to be done to help those in distress. News are on all the time. All the time, whatever media works. There is a great need for volunteers to tend to the hundreds of thousands displaced now.

Q: Can you describe the neighborhood you live in?

A: So it will be bombed? No thank you. I live in a very, very privileged neighborhood, far from the southern suburbs. After the evacuation of foreign nationals (and bi-nationals) is complete, everyone is expecting doom and if Israelis decide to give us a dose of tough love as they did in the southern suburbs my life will probably be in serious danger as my family's and everyone who has decided to stay here.

Q: Can you say something about yourself - like what you do for living, if you can say.

A: I organize cultural events and I am a free-lance writer. I used to live in New York city and moved to Beirut Tuesday July 11th. I have no life at the present moment. I try to do a few things over the internet, but that's increasingly difficult.

Q: Are you Lebanese or Palestinian?

A: Both, and it gets more complicated. I have Syrian blood, too. And Turkish and Bosnian. I am the product of the Ottoman empire, and I say it with pride. I know it ires a lot of people. But I am VERY proud to claim my lineage. My father was expelled from Jerusalem in 1948. He and his family lived in a gorgeous home in Talbiyeh. I think it is a day care school now. We own property in old Jerusalem as well and the Atlantic Hotel which was bombed by your "valiant" paramilitary pre-national militias in 1946.

Q: In Israel our leaders think that by targeting Hezbollah and other places in Lebanon will make the rest of the local population against them. Is this true?

A: It is pure folly, but even if it were true it is a terrible strategy, an imploded Lebanon is a nightmare to all, not only the Lebanese but to everyone. Does Israel want an Iraq at its doorstep? There seems to be consensus now in Israel over the military campaign. It is because Israelis are not yet pressing their leadership and military with smart questions. Do you actually believe it would be possible to eliminate the Shi'i sect from Lebanon, and that it would go down easy in the region? If the Americans are advising you, duck for cover or move. Need I list their record of wisdom and foresight recently? Vietnam, Central America, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq? If you need to listen to imperialists, find less idiotic ones, at least who have a sense of history. Gold help us all if Rumsfeld is also in charge of your well-being. This war will bring doom to all. Stop, cut everybody's losses. Wars can be stopped before the body count is "intolerable" or an entire country has been reduce d to rubble.

Q: What is the atmosphere in the streets of Beirut, if you can tell.

A: Beirut is quiet, dormant, huddled. We are caged, but there is tenacious solidarity. You have to understand that we see ourselves under an unwarranted attack from Israel. The capture of two soldiers DOES NOT justify Israel's response. There has been a status quo for the past 6 years that was well managed. Hezbollah was not in an impasse, the Olmert government was in an impasse. He ran on a campaign to solidify the "new" (illegitimate) borders, finish the wall and finalize the enclave and withdraw into the boundaries of that enclave. The Olmert government did not have the maturity or intelligence to know how to deal with the Hamas government. Your government was guided by arrogance. We, you and us, are here today because your political class is not up to the challenge. I am sorry, but the Hamas government was elected democratically, and there were myriad ways to deal with them. MYRIAD. But this is the stage of your destiny that you have reached: you build walls around yourselves (you to whom the Massada is a foundational trauma/myth!), and you chase barefoot, toothless, illiterate, hungry people with a state of the art military arsenal. And you insist that you are victims, and you insist that you are on the right side of history. All this bulllshit will catch up with you.

Q: What is the atmosphere among your friends?

A: The consensus is solidarity. Our country is under attack. Otherwise, we are an exceedingly plural society every one has a theory and a point of view, and we co-exist. Humoring one another. What do you do when you are under siege? Do you eat one another, cannibalize on one another, or stand in solidarity to weather the storm?

Q: Can you go to work, or do you have to stay home? (because some of the workers in the north of Israel did not go to work today)

A: The largest, largest majority do not go to work. Although it is a form of resilience. If the war goes on for longer, life will have to evolve a different routine. A large part of the work force is impaired from movement. And then there is the random shelling, it's also dangerous to go out. This has gone on from the first day of the siege. The south is now sinking in a humanitarian crisis. Beirut will soon. (The new regulation by your glorious IDF this morning is to shoot at all moving vehicles larger than SUVs. One was just shelled in Ashrafieh. New danger, new things to look out for.)

Q: Whatever crosses your mind.

A: Let's not go there... It's dark now, and I am too traumatized. I just want this to be over. I am waiting for a ceasefire. Are you? Is that too unmanly for your society? What do you need to see before you cease your fire? You want to hear me expire? You take down Hezbollah, and I am going down with them. Do you know when Hezbollah was born? 1982. Where were you? Has it been an exciting summer for you?

Q: I, for example, went to my gym class this morning. I am at home now, listening to the radio on one side, writing mails on the other side. Air-condition is on, since it is extremely hot and humid in Tel Aviv. I live in the center of the city. Later I will go to the office. I think life in my city continues but in a lower volume.

A: Life as it was, or as previously understood, in my city has stopped. No gym classes, and I am accumulating cellulite, hence chances of finding a second husband are lessened (can I make the IDF pay for that?). Air-conditioning is dependent on electricity or generator working. Power cuts are the rule now and the generator works only on a schedule. I like it when Israelis report their weather, it ought to have some cathartic virtue, because it's like a reality check --- one of the few reminders they are in this region and not in Europe. So yes, without air-conditioning and with power cuts, my "semitic" curls produce an unruly coiffe and I have to admit, I am enduring siege with bad hair.

I am on email, but that's intermittant between two bouts of "breaking news".

I hope you will wake up to the nightmare you have dragged us into. I hope you will want to have fire ceased as soon as possible. I hope you will deem our humanity as valuable as your own.

Best, Rasha. '

Letter from a Young Lebanese-American Woman

Yasmina Kamal wrote this to an email acquaintance of mine and I am reprinting:

I now feel compelled from within to voice my own views of the recent bloody conflict. Since I have many close friends on either side of the issue, and since I grew up in a largely rural area with very little racial diversity, I understand many people may not have considered what is happening from a non-violent Lebanese-American perspective. I cannot, in good conscience, remain silent during this critical battle in my father's homeland.

My Lebanese family, entirely unaffiliated with the terrorist group of Hezbollah, lives in the southern region of Beirut, Lebanon, in neighborhoods inhabited by the Shiite, which serve as potential hideouts and headquarters for Hezbollah leaders. Their area has been shelled steadily for five days now, and we here in America watch the live footage from Beirut with dread, waiting to see members of our family racing through the crumbling streets or being carried away on ambulance stretchers.

In my opinion (and the opinion of many around the globe), the US is at fault today for not using its its powers of leadership to intervene- we are the only country who has any real influence over Israel (we sent them some $2.22 billion in military aid last year); theLebanese prime minister Fuad Siniora was in tears (as I have been, for days), appealing to the US, Israel, and the members of the G8 summit to do something to restrain the Israeli army from targeting Lebanese civilians (207 dead; more than 20 of whom are children). And yet President Bush and his administration has tried to block the G8's plan to call for a ceasefire. Of the eight countries in the G8 summit, he was the only one to oppose a peaceful resolution for both sides.

It should be known that being Lebanese does not mean that my family or I support the actions or the philosophy of the Hezbollah in any way; they are supported by Syria, using Lebanon only for its closer proximity to Israel. This terrorist group has an arm in both the military and the government, and the newborn Lebanese army (many of whom were Syrian and left the country last year when Syria withdrew from its borders) is no match for Hezbollah's money, political power and military strength. What Israel expects the Lebanese government to do is the impossible: rid its southern border of Hezbollah's influence.

With the knowledge that Hezbollah was actually born under Israeli occupancy of Lebanon to fight the Israeli Defense Forces, it is a hypocritical demand to expect the hopelessly weakened Lebanese government (now without many roads and bridges and military bases, bombed by Israel) to do in a couple of days what the Israeli government could not do in their 18-year occupation of Lebanon.

As a Lebanese-American, I oppose terrorism in all its forms. Along with most of the living and deceased civilians in Lebanon, I would like to see Hezbollah leave my father's native country. However, an anti-terrorism agenda does not give any nation the right to disregard innocent human life. We Americans do not send missiles to upstate New York to rid its southernmost cities of dangerous gangs. If military might and all-out war in the face of terrorist threats worked to end terrorism, Israel would be a peaceful country by now. Soldiers stationed in Iraq would not face the threat of violent insurgents. Afghanistan would be rid of its Taliban. These strongarm military tactics are not the most effective ways to abolish terrorism, especially in countries with weak governments and divided religious populations. Such attacks on countries ravished by extreemist groups only foster wider and more fervent support for these groups, and desire for revenge against the invading nation.

US Ambassador John R. Bolton's statement of "moral equivalence" in the Lebanon/Israel issue was a huge disappointment to me. I can't describe my horror at reading his words: "There’s certainly no moral equivalence between an act of terrorism directed at civilian population... and the tragic loss of civilian life as a consequence of military action."

That a fellow American, especially a US Ambassador with such influence and power, should be so ignorant of the Western world as to assume the responsibility of appointing moral values to slaughtered civilians, made me physically sick. If major politicians are making statements like that on live television, the American people must be in danger of developing dreadfully biased notions of this Middle Eastern crisis. In defense of my own community, I am challenging such influential and ignorant notions.

It has become painfully obvious that the precautions that Israel claims their army is taking to avoid attacks on civilian life are untrue. After all, Israel's weaponry and militarytechnology is far more advanced than that of Hezbollah, and the Israeli army has the abilityto aim their missiles to exactly pinpoint their targets. It is completely possible to avoidcivilian life in the crossfire. Of the 227 people reported killed in Lebanon, 20 areLebanese army soldiers (unrelated to Hezbollah) and only two are Hezbollah guerrillas. Thiscrisis began with two military captures (not civilian abductions) by the Hezbollah army, inmilitary-based retaliation for the hundreds of illegally-jailed Arab civilians by Israel.

What has ensued is an all-out attack on Lebanese civilian infrastructure.

The battle between Israel and Lebanon is grossly unbalanced (227 Lebanese and 25 Israeli casualties, according to many sources), and I do not believe our major American media channels are doing an unprejudiced job of reporting it. After thousands of letters, speeches, emails, blogs and reactions of hurt and injustice over their blatant omission of Lebanese civilian death counts in their news updates, channels such as CNN have finally made a point of mentioning the numbers on both sides. But in center stage, Anderson Cooper is actually reporting from Israel, and that is where most of the reports and footage takeplace. Obviously the "American viewpoint" is on the side of Israel's engagements. I understand the human instincts of revenge and self-righteousness, and I do not expect everyone to automatically take the side of Lebanon on my account. However it is vital that Americans, whose country has such a major influence in the outcome of this current crisis, become aware of the non-violent, anti-Hezbollah Lebanese perspective, which resonates even from within our own border.

I ask that the people in this country consider the innocent civilian lives that are being claimed by rash military reactions between old neighbors.

Every day we in my family jump when our phone rings, anticipating that terrifying news:

that our family is among the civilian death count. Let this violence cease.

Yasmina Kamal

Call Congress!

I got this from the CNI. I agree. Please let Congress know that Israel's Total War on Lebanon (they hit the Saint Therese Hospital today) is unacceptable. Please take a moment to call or email your congressional representatives. There is a link on the right to congress.org or the below message gives a link.

Update: I am told that the vote was postponed. All the more reason to call and express your views. Ask them why we had to evacuate 25,000 Americans if civilian non-combatants are not being put in extreme danger by indiscriminate Israeli bombing?

Also, support the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee. (Warning: More graphic photos).

ACTION ALERT
Call Your Representative Now!

Oppose Unbalanced Resolution Supporting Israel's Attacks on Lebanon and Gaza
House Vote Scheduled for Today


The Council for the National Interest has learned that the House of Representatives will vote sometime today on an unbalanced resolution on the current crisis between Israel, Lebanon and the Palestinians. The bill, H.Res. 921 [apparently this number is incorrect], includes no criticism of the month of Israeli attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon, which have been carried out with American-made weapons paid for with U.S. taxpayer money. A Senate version of the bill passed by a voice vote (meaning there was no recorded vote) yesterday.

The Council for the National Interest encourages its members to call their member of Congress immediately to express their opposition to this bill for its lack of balance. You can reach your Representative's office by calling the main House switchboard at (202) 225-3121 or by looking of the number at this website:

The House is scheduled to start at least two hours of debate on the resolution shortly, which you can watch live on C-SPAN.

TALKING POINTS


Israel's attacks on innocent civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon are a violation of U.S. law, specifically the U.S. Arms Export Control Act and the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act. The U.S. Arms Export Control Act restricts the use of U.S. weapons to legitimate self-defense and internal policing; U.S. weapons cannot be used to attack civilians in offensive operations. The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act prohibits U.S. aid of any kind to a country with a pattern of gross human rights violations.

Israel's attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon are examples of collective punishment, which are prohibited under the Geneva Conventions.

Continued Israeli actions against the civilian population of Gaza and Lebanon are not only against U.S. laws and the Geneva Conventions, which Israel has reportedly been given a "green light" to continue for another week by the Administration, but they are destroying the American ability to fight the war on terror. They are also destroying Israel's ability to make peace with her neighbors through negotiations, the only real road to security for the state of Israel.

Council for the National Interest Foundation
1250 4th Street SW, Suite WG-1
Washington, District of Columbia 20024
202-863-2951
www.cnionline.org/.

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.

70 Iraqis Killed on Tuesday
Massive Bombing at Kufa

I thought I'd check in with Iraq news, for which I don't have as much time because I'm following Lebanon. Bad idea. Very bad scene.

Already mid-morning on Wednesday, Reuters was reporting these incidents:

' BAGHDAD - Five civilians were killed and 22 wounded, including three policemen, when a car bomb and two roadside bombs exploded in quick succession near central Baghdad's Technology University, police said.

KIRKUK - Four people were killed and 16 wounded by a bomb planted near the entrance of a cafe in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen shot dead Major General Fakhir Abdul Mohsen, a legal adviser in the Interior Ministry, as he left his house in the western Mansour district of the capital, police said. '

The three bombings on Wednesday morning are dwarfed by the events of the two previous days.

Guerrillas attempting to provoke an escalation in the Iraqi civil war bombed laborers in Kufa on Tuesday, killing 59 and wounding 134. The guerrillas lured the Shiite workers at a crowded market into a minivan with promises of employment and then detonated it. Kufa is a stronghold of Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army, and is in the vicinity of revered Shiite shrines, so this attack was extremely provocative with regard to sectarian sentiments.

Reuters reports that in the aftermath:

' Protesters gathered around the blackened mangle of vehicles. Blood-stained clothes lay amid the debris. "We want the Mehdi Army to protect us. We want Moqtada's army to protect us," screamed a woman dressed in a black abaya gown. Others chanted to the police: "You are traitors!" "You are not doing your job!" "American agents!" '

It would not have been good to be a Sunni Arab in Kufa on Tuesday. Maybe not to be an American there, either. I don't get the sense that people in Kufa like us very much.

Al-Hayat says that the Iraqi clans or "tribes," vast kinship networks with some political cohesion, are being drawn into the sectarian war, which may thus add a tribal and volatile element to the struggle. The persons massacred in Mahmudiyah on Sunday were mostly Shiites, and their relatives and clansmen have been flooding into the city and vowing tribal revenge. The tribes are notorious for long-lived feuds, and apparently they are increasingly convinced that the Iraqi government is feuding with them.

Reuters says that another 14 dead bodies were found in Mahmudiyah on Tuesday, in the wake of the market massacre early Monday. It also reports other scattered violent incidents that reveal a country in profound crisis.

Guerrilla violence killed 2 US troops on Monday and Tuesday.

Borzou Daragahi reports that the killing of 130 people in two days in faith-based massacres in Mahmudiyah and Kufa has, in the view of many Iraqi observers, pushed the country indisputably into civil war. Some 6,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in May and June.

Earlier hopes that the Kurdish peshmerga paramilitary might be deployed in Baghdad to help restore order have been dashed. The Kurdish leadership has taken a look at the idea and decided to pass.

Turkey is threatening to send troops into northern Iraq if the Kurdish PKK terrorist organization does not stop hitting Anatolia from bases in Iraq.

On being an imperial defeatist, at Salon.com.

Bush to Siniora: Drop Dead

Israeli war planes struck Lebanese army targets on Tuesday: "Israeli warplanes pounded an army barracks east of Beirut in an overnight raid in which 11 troops, including four officers, were killed and 40 injured, an army statement said Tuesday."

That wasn't a Hizbullah barracks. That was the regular Lebanese army, the one the Israelis say they would trust to patrol the Lebanese border with Israel, and which they wish would take on Hizbullah. So why are they bombing the Lebanese Army?

As for the government in charge of the army, it was pleading pretty pitiably. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora (a Sunni Muslim businessman) pleaded for an immediate internationally-sanctioned cease-fire on Tuesday. Xinhua reports:

' Siniora vehemently condemned Israel's continued aggression against the battered country, saying the international community must have been aware that Israel was committing massacres against Lebanese civilians, including children, women and elders. He said that Israel was acting to destroy "everything that allows Lebanon to stay alive". He added that the Israeli troops continued its bombing attacks on Tuesday, targeting Lebanon's gas stations, civilian residences, roads, army barracks and posts, food processing mills and vehicles carrying foodstuff. '

Siniora came to power as part of an anti-Syrian political movement supported by the Bush administration, dubbed by the American press "the Cedar Revolution."

Here is what George W. Bush said about Siniora in April of this year:

' PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, we just had a really interesting discussion. I told the Prime Minister that the United States strongly supports a free and independent and sovereign Lebanon. We took great joy in seeing the Cedar Revolution. We understand that the hundreds of thousands of people who took to the street to express their desire to be free required courage, and we support the desire of the people to have a government responsive to their needs and a government that is free, truly free . . .

We talked about the great tradition of Lebanon to serve as a model of entrepreneurship and prosperity. Beirut is one of the great international cities, and I'm convinced that if Lebanon is truly free and independent and democratic, that Beirut will once again regain her place as a center of financial and culture and the arts.

There's no question in my mind that Lebanon can serve as a great example for what is possible in the broader Middle East; that out of the tough times the country has been through will rise a state that shows that it's possible for people of religious difference to live side-by-side in peace; to show that it's possible for people to put aside past histories to live together in a way that the people want, which is, therefore, to be peace and hope and opportunity.

And so, Mr. Prime Minister, we're really glad you're here. I want to thank you for the wonderful visit we've had, and welcome you here to the White House.

This is the first sentence of a news item today: "George W. Bush on Tuesday warned Syria to stay out of Lebanon as he signalled to Israel that it would have more time to carry out its military campaign . . ." I swear to God, it really says that. Then comes this gem: "He said Israel had been asked to ensure that the government of Fouad Siniora survived, but the White House declined to comment on repeated Israeli strikes against Lebanese army units."

What you have to admire most about W. is how he stands by his friends.

Israel's Maximal Option

My article on the political and military aims of the Israeli government and of Hizbullah is out at Salon.com.

Excerpt:

Israel has a range of options. It has already made one raid into the south. It could pull back at any point. But the maximal option would be to change the human geography and military posture of the Lebanese south. The next stage could be a calibrated Israeli incursion into the south, reminiscent of its Operation Litani in 1978. Israeli Maj. Gen. Uzi Adam told reporters at a news conference of his advice to Lebanese in the south: "We recommend that they leave their villages and homes and go to the north of the country ... We are going to heavily attack the south of Lebanon.'' Those Israelis who favor the maximalist option hope that turning the militarized south into central and northern Lebanon's problem will set the Maronite Christians, Sunnis and Druze leaders even more resolutely against Hezbollah and provoke them to use the Lebanese army to rein in or destroy the Shiite paramilitary.

Israeli Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter insisted that Hezbollah rocket launchers be cleaned out of the area between Israel's northern border and the Litani River, creating a sort of demilitarized Zone on the model of the Koreas. He added ominously that the Israeli army "should be instructed to operate without a time limit and without a limit of means to apply heavy pressure on the residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate northwards, thereby applying pressure on the center of the Lebanese government." Dichter's statement appears to envisage an Israeli attack on south Lebanon that will have as its goal the displacement of tens or hundreds of thousands of Lebanese Shiites into Beirut, burdening the city with a massive refugee problem. A military spokesman said that a ground invasion was not being planned; instead, Israel would attack with airstrikes and artillery fire.

Tens if not hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have already been displaced. UNICEF's representative in Lebanon told Agence France-Press that "The situation is both alarming and catastrophic. There are about 500,000 people displaced already."

If it comes about, the forced transfer of the Shiites of the south would have several advantages for the Israelis. The depopulated territory would make it easier to search for and destroy all the Katyusha emplacements and the heavier missiles of which Hezbollah boasted on Sunday. With Hezbollah's approximately 5,000 fighters deprived of civilian cover, it would be easier to kill them. The Israelis clearly anticipate that a refugee crisis in Beirut will put pressure on the Lebanese government to turn on Hezbollah decisively and to intervene against it militarily. Finally, they expect Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, in the aftermath, to send the Lebanese army south to take up positions along the border and so form a buffer between Hezbollah and Israel.

How good is the maximalist plan enunciated by Israeli military and government spokesmen? Ethically, it is monstrous, involving war crimes on a vast scale insofar as it targets a civilian population for forcible relocation. And practically, any such plan is doomed to abject failure. '

Read the whole article.

See also Aluf Benn and Rami Khouri at Salon on this issue.

As usual, I urge readers to subscribe to Salon.

Evacuation of the American University in Beirut

Patrick McGreevy writes from Beirut:

' Friends,

In the early evening, we watched from our apartment balcony as a huge white cruise ship glided past west Beirut toward Cyprus. Aboard were several groups of evacuees, including a number of US students from American University of Beirut. A few minutes later, another colossal cruise ship came by in the opposite direction; we heard it was a French ship that would be taking out more evacuees tomorrow. It looked like time for a Caribbean festival. At our apartment were gathered a group of about 10 AUB faculty and staff, and one young Filipino woman. The phone rang: it was an AUB official who needed immediate answers. The time had arrived: each of us had to decide whether to stay or go. Some had made their decision already. For others, it came to them on the spot. And for a few, the matter of having to choose seemed the greatest violence of all. Beirut had gotten under everybody’s skin. One man, who had just decided to take the boat, said he had decided that Beirut was the place he wanted to spend his life. Perhaps he will have that choice. On this, the 6th day of the Battle of Lebanon, very little seemed certain.

The AUB hospital sent out an urgent call for blood donations. Others were organizing aid to refugee families housed in schools and other make-shift shelters. A protest against the Israeli bombing has been scheduled for Thursday at 11 am in the city center. Will anyone be listening and watching? Lebanon has only words and pictures with which to fight. As Khalil Gibran wrote, “your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” By now, Lebanon must be the wisest of nations. Not everyone finds it easy to transmute pain into wisdom like Gibran’s Prophet. “Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.” I fear that, for most, pain creates a reservoir of revenge: a pool of hatred in which to baptize another generation of killers. Does terror ever really work? And what becomes of the bombardier’s soul? In the film Fog of War, former US Secretary of Defense McNamara admits that, had the Japanese won World War II, he would have been convicted of war crimes for his involvement in the firebombing of Japanese cities in World War II. But who gave him, or anyone else with the power to win and write history, the license to kill?

Are the weak and the losers reduced to a mere muffled cry? Plenty of wisdom: plenty of blood. Is Lebanon’s cry audible?

Patrick McGreevy

Email from Beirut

A friend writes from the American University in Beirut:

' The university has fuel (and power) for only 12 days; after that we will have a real crisis at the hospital which is already stressed with many wounded people. Refugees from the southern suburbs are now visible in Ras Beirut.

I spoke to X in Saida [Sidon]. The city is almost completely cut off, and it is flooded with refugees from the south. X is volunteering to help distribute food and clothing to these people who are now in schools and shelters. Food seems to be running low.

Last night there were many loud explosions in Beirut and the air was thick with smoke. Beirut is rife with rumors, conspiracy stories, and panic. But so far, there is absolutely no sign of Lebanese people turning on each other. While many are disturbed that Hezbollah's actions seem to have triggered this war, the brutality of the Israeli attack has united the country. People are speculating on what the endgame will be. '

- Patrick McGreevy

Israel Invades Lebanon;
Ongoing Airstrikes Kill Dozens of Lebanese Civilians;
Hizbullah Rockets Wound 11 in Haifa

Israel invaded Lebanon on Monday, sending ground troops into the south. Israeli leaders say that they do not intend a long-term occupation. But then war is unpredictable.

[UPdate: The Israeli land force briefly went over into Lebanon but then withdrew.]

Israel's government killed another 42 Lebanese civilians in aggressive airstrikes on targets mostly unrelated to Hizbullah on Monday.

Thousands of innocent Lebanese have been forced from their homes by the bombings, especially in the South, and have headed up to Beirut (which the Israelis are also indiscriminately bombing). Some 100,000 Lebanese have fled to Syria, though Israeli bombing of roads and bridges has not made it easy for them to get out. Although, because of widespread Western racism, very few over here care about these displaced persons, they face a desperate situation. Roads have been bombed out, and bridges are gone. Lebanese television reported on numerous villages bombed. Rescue teams attempting to take an injured woman to a better hospital with more supplies were blocked when they found the bridge destroyed.

If the reports coming out of Lebanon can be believed, the Israelis are only sometimes striking known Hizbullah safe houses or facilities or missile emplacements. A lot of their bombardment appears aimed at punishing civilian populations and forcing them north to Beirut. Such an approach would help explain the high number of civilian casualties. That is, there may be an element of ethnic cleansing in Israeli tactics.

The Irish Times reports:

' The civilian toll continued to mount in Lebanon yesterday as Israeli planes struck dozens of targets. Nine civilians, including two children, were killed when they were hit by a missile that struck a bridge in the southern port city of Sidon . In the southern city of Tyre , rescue workers pulled nine more bodies from the civil defence building that was hit on Sunday in an Israeli strike. Close to 200 civilians have been killed in Lebanon since the Israeli offensive began last week, when Hizbullah attacked an Israeli border patrol, killing three soldiers and capturing two. Five more soldiers were killed when they gave chase into Lebanon .'

Hizbullah sent rockets on Israel again Monday, with four hitting Haifa, including a strike that collapsed a building and injured 11 persons. Since the outbreak of the fighting last Wednesday, 24 Israelis have been killed, 12 soldiers and 12 civilians.

The Guardian complains that the world leaders again did nothing on Monday to stop the massive Israeli assault on Lebanon.

I should explain to The Guardian about spheres of influence. Great Powers have them, and other Great Powers respect them if they do not want a war. That is why the US did nothing about the Soviets in Hungary 1956 or in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Soviet sphere of influence.

The Levant is now a joint US-Israeli sphere of Influence. Egypt and Jordan both have peace treaties with Israel and are non-NATO allies of the US. So they won't do more than politely disagree that Israel's wholesale destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure is useful. Turkey is part of the joint US-Israeli sphere of influence, with close military ties to both countries. Iraq is now working the American training wheels, in Bush's parlance, and although it has not formally joined the full US-Israeli sphere of influence, it has no military to speak of and basically its legs are broken. The Gulf monarchies have more or less acquiesced in the situation as well.

Syria and Iran are the only two significant dissenters. Syria is weak and isolated, having been expelled from Lebanon and having lost its Soviet patron a decade and a half ago. Iran is distant from the scene and although it might give some rockets and training to a group like Hizbullah, it does not have a history of direct military intervention in other countries anyway. The Lebanese should not hold their breath expecting succor from either quarter.

The European Powers all ceded the Levant to the US-Israeli sphere of influence a long time ago. They will not get out ahead of the US. They mostly deeply dislike the Apartheid policies of Israel in the Occupied Territories, but they also deeply dislike and fear Hamas and Hizbullah, having their own large Muslim populations that they don't want radicalized.

They probably realize, as David Clark wrote yesterday that Israel's policies are antithetical to the interests of Western governments. But they decline to challenge the US-Israeli sphere of influence because they believe it would cause them even more trouble to do so.

So, basically, the Palestinians and the Lebanese are screwed. The Lebanese might not have been in such a vulnerable situation if they had not kicked out the Syrians, though the Syrians were there in 1982 the last time Israel invaded.

That is why there is terrorism in the Middle East. The Israeli occupation of the Occupied Territories has been barbaric and intolerable. It produced Hamas. The Israeli occupation of South Lebanon was barbaric and intolerable. It produced Hizbullah. A wise Great Power can walk back such bad situations, as the US did in Europe and Japan after World War II. Unwise Powers get stuck with the Tar Baby.

But terrorism is a weapon of the weak and should not be over-estimated as a deterrent for Great Powers. Mostly they see it as a cost of doing business, and even where the Powers suffer from it, it has the advantage of rallying home populations behind militaristic policies.

At some point the Europeans may find a way to step in. The elements of an eventual resolution of the current Israeli war on Lebanon are becoming clear in international diplomacy. Italian PM Romano Prodi of Italy is already thinking about how to round up 10,000 UN peacekeepers to insert in the Lebanese south as a buffer between the Israeli army and Hizbullah. Russia agrees and is willing to participate.

Chirac and Blair are also on board with this plan, which will go to the UNSC from the G8 summit.

My advice: don't send the blue helmets unless you authorize them to shoot back when attacked.

On the other hand, the Irish Times report above says that Israeli officials reject a UN deployment and insist instead that the Lebanese army must be stationed along the border.

It is probably the Olmert government's hope that this posting will set the Lebanese army against Hizbullah, producing intra-Lebanese fighting that serves Israeli interests.

Israel, however, does not always get its way. We'll see. Peacekeeping is a ways off. The Israelis will fight their war first.

=====

PS: A reader writes:

' I hate to be picky and pedantic, but can anyone explain to me why, if one of Israel's three conditions is for the Lebanese army to occupy southern Lebanon, it is attacking Lebanese military bases? Don't bother answering--I know there is no rhyme or reason but couldn't help pointing out the discrepancy. The MSM is too dumb to point out even simple things like this.'

Bush: Lean on Syria

I cobbled the Bush-Blair exchange on Israel and Lebanon, accidentally caught at the G8 on mike, together fromWaPo and ABC News.

BUSH to Blair: "I think Condi is going to go (to the Middle East) pretty soon."

BLAIR: "Right, that's all that matters, it will take some time to get that together . . . See, if she goes out she's got to succeed as it were, where as I can just go out and talk."

BUSH: "See, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hizbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over."

BLAIR: "Who, Syria?"

BUSH: "Right . . . What about Kofi? That seems odd. I don't like the sequence of it. His attitude is basically ceasefire and everything else happens."

BLAIR: "I think the thing that is really difficult is you can't stop this unless you get this international presence agreed." . . .

BUSH: "I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen. We're not blaming Israel. We're not blaming the Lebanese government."

So, the whole blow-up is Syria's fault, for putting Hizbullah up to making mischief. No reference to Israeli actions in Gaza. No reference to, like, the wholesale destruction of Lebanon by the Israeli air force. And no blame for the Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora. And Bush thinks that Nasrullah of Hizbullah takes direct orders from Damascus. And he thinks that if Bashar al-Asad orders Hizbullah to stop firing its little katyushas and give back the two Israeli soldiers, everything will suddenly settle down.

It is an astonishingly simple-minded view of the situation, painted in black and white and making assumptions about who is who's puppet and what the Israeli motivations are. Israel doesn't appear as a protagonist. It is purely reactive. Stop provoking it, and it suddenly stops its war.

Since Israel is just being provoked and has no ambitions of its own, in this reading, it is useless to begin with a ceasefire. That treats the two sides as both provoking one another. Here, only Hizbullah matters, so you lean on Syria to lean on it, and, presto, peace breaks out.

It is a little window into the superficial, one-sided mind of the man, who has for six years been way out of his depth.

I come away from it shaken and trembling.

----

PS More from from Billmon.

Israel Widens Airstrikes; 140 Civilians Dead since Weds;
Nasrallah Threatens Haifa with Worse Attacks

Israel may be planning a ground incursion into southern Lebanon, according to The Guardian.


Photos of Lebanon courtesy Al-Safir.

An Israeli air strike on a south Lebanese town on Sunday killed 8 Canadians and wounded 6; several were from a single family on vacation there.

Israel struck at large numbers of targets on Sunday, and early Monday morning, that had nothing to do with Hezbollah. The far north of Lebanon is Sunni, as is the port of Tripoli, where the Israelis killed a Catholic Lebanese soldier. They also hit factories in north Beirut, not a Shiite area. They bombed a village near Zahle, a notorious center of Greek Orthodox, killing 3 civilians. The Israelis are either not very good shots, since they have murdered 140 civilians since Wednesday and only managed to kill about 17 Lebanese military personnel. Or they just don't give a damn.

Aljazeera reports that Israeli air strikes on the civilian areas of southern Beirut have resumed. Hezbollah has offices in that area, and is widely supported there, but it is a heavily populated civilian area.

[PS: I just heard a comment by a reporter on CNN that Israelis are claiming that they are taking rocket fire from south Beirut. This is a lie and simple war propaganda. Hizbullah's rockets have to be fired from the far south because they are short range. No rocket is being fired into Israel from Beirut. Whatever reporter fell for this is uninformed and not doing his or her job.]


Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert conveyed to Lebanon through Italian PM Romano Prodi his conditions for ceasing hostilities against Lebanon. As also reported on CNN they are:

1. The return of two captured Israeli soldiers held by Hizbullah

2. A withdrawal of Hizbullah to the Litani River, 30 mi. or so north of the Israeli border deeper into Lebanon.

3. Cessation of rocket attacks on Israel

It is worth noting that if this is what Israel wants, two of the three could have been gotten without reducing the entire country of Lebanon to rubble. They could have traded 3 Hizbullah members in their custody for the 2 Israeli soldiers. And, if they hadn't gone wild bombing everything in sight it is unlikely Hizbullah would have shelled them on this scale in the first place.

As for the demand that Hizbullah withdraw (presumably this means its paramilitary fighters) to the Litani, that talking point will inspire the profoundest fear in the Lebanese that Israel is essentially attempting to move its border north and make the Litany the new border, thus staking a clear claim on the waters of the river, which Israelis have coveted since 1948. It is a non-starter politically, though whether it can be attained with violence is yet to be seen.



[Ar.] Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbullah (Hezbollah), gave a televised speech on Sunday explaining his own strategy. He said in an eerily calm and calculating voice that he had aimed his rockets only at military targets, not at Israeli settlements "in Occupied northern Palestine" (i.e. Israel). In contrast, he said, the Israeli military had from the beginning targeted civilians. (In fact, Nasrallah's katyushas are impossible to aim with any precision and in loosing them on Israel, he inevitably killed and wounded civilians; likewise in Haifa. His opening statement is a self-serving lie.)

He complained at length about Israeli airstrikes against civilian targets. He linked hitting the Israeli warship to Israel's airstrikes on Baalbak [where they hit a Husayniyah or Shiite mourning center].

He added,

"We arose to strike at the city of Haifa, and we know the importance and grave significance of this city. Had we targeted with our missiles the chemical and petrochemical factories, an enormous catastrophe would have ensued for the inhabitants of that area. But we deliberately avoided those factories, which were in the sites of our missiles, since we were eager not to push things toward the unknown and were eager that this weapon be a weapon not of revenge but of defense . . . a weapon that would return the crazies in the Olmert government to a modicum of reason and save them from a grandiosity complex, or, I might say, the stupidity whereby they distinguish themselves . . . But because we set those targets aside this time does not mean that we we always adopt this position. At any point where we consider that we are involved in defending our nation and our people and our families, we will resort to all means we can in pursuit of that defense . . . "

(-my translation)

He also denied that there were any Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon or that he had had Iranian help. He said people were always putting down the Arabs and saying they could not accomplish anything, but, he said, look at the Israeli warship in flames. That was an Arab accomplishment.

Uh, wouldn't an Arab accomplishment be more like, oh, inventing something or building up something nice? Destroying things and killing people is not an accomplishment.

I watched in horror as this maniacal speech unfolded in which Nasrallah actually threatened the Israelis with releasing chemical gas from local factories on civilians in Haifa. Despite fighting them for all those years, he clearly does not understand the Israelis' psyche or the trauma of the Holocaust. A threat like that. The Israelis don't like being caught in a quagmire any more than the next person, which is why Nasrallah could get them to leave southern Lebanon. But his victory appears to have given him megalomania, and he has now gone too far.

Hizbullah's attacks on Israeli civilians are war crimes. The killing of the civilians in Haifa at the train station was a war crime. And threatening to release chemicals from factories on civilian populations is probably a war crime in itself, much less the doing of it.

Obviously, I do not accept that Hizbullah's actions justify the wholesale indiscriminate destruction and slaughter in which the Israelis have been engaged against the Lebanese in general. But they do have every right to defend themselves against Nasrallah and his mad bombers.

Phalange leader Karim Pakradouni says that Israel might well destroy Lebanon, but it cannot destroy Hizbullah. He said that the Israelis are making the same mistake now with regard to the Shiite party as it did in 1982 with regard to trying to destroy Yasser Arafat's PLO. Padradouni said that the Phalangists, who once maintained a significant paramilitary, would not remilitarize and were supporting Lebanese President Emile Lahoud. Lahoud, an ex-general and a Maronite Christian, is pro-Syrian and soft on Hizbullah.

More from the Pope. A Vatican statement said:

"As in the past, the Holy See condemns both the terrorist attacks on the one side and the military reprisals on the other." It stated that Israel's right to self-defence "does not exempt it from respecting the norms of international law, especially as regards the protection of civilian populations."

[PS: See James Wolcott on the conundrum of rightwing US Catholics who don't care for the Pope's even-handedness on this issue.]

Taylor Marsh on Bush's religion and his ineffectual role in the current crisis.

Electronic Lebanon.



Gilbert Achcar on Israel's dual onslaught on Palestine and Lebanon.

A Blog transmitting poetry and impressions from Lebanese.

Iraqi PM, Parliament Condemn Israel;
Massive Bombings in Tuz Khurmato, Mahmudiyah

Guerrillas in Mahmudiyah killed 42 Iraqis in a market bombing early Monday.

On Sunday, a horrible cafe bombing in Tuz Khurmato killed 25. This link to Reuters also rounds up the rest of Iraq's violence on Sunday.

There were mortar attacks on the British troops in Basra. One British soldier was killed and another wounded in a raid on militants.

The Iraqi parliament and prime minister roundly condemned "Zionist aggression" against Lebanon on Sunday.

Some Iraqi Shiites are talking about going to Lebanon as volunteer fighters against Israel.

Condi Rice said on Sunday that it was "grotesque" to suggest that "policies that confront extremism" actually "cause extremism." She was referring to George Stephanopoulos's point that the Bush administration kept promising that invading and occupying Iraq would make the Middle East more peaceful (!).

The logical fallacy here is to describe a unilateral war of aggression and then a botched occupation with the euphemism of "confronting extremism." Of course the former can cause extremism. And did. That's not grotesque, that's just the fact of the matter.

Foreign Affairs roundtable on "What to do in Iraq?"

Israel Kills Children in Convoy Bombing; Dozens Dead;
Hizbullah bombs Akka, Haifa; Wounds, Kills Civilians

The Guardian reports of Israeli's continued war of attrition on Lebanon on Saturday:

' Israel steeply escalated its military campaign against Hizbollah in Lebanon yesterday with a series of air strikes that left more than 35 civilians dead, including a single strike on a convoy of families fleeing the fighting in a village near Tyre in the south of the country that killed more than 20 people, most of them children. '

Graphic pictures of dead Lebanese children are at Angry Arab's site.

Israeli warplanes bombed Lebanese civilian neighborhoods in southern Beirut again, killing non-combatants, and hitting an electricity plant. They also targeted Lebanon's ports, including the port of a Christian area, and hit Tripoli in the north.

Aljazeera reported early Sunday morning that Hizbullah is officially denying that its leader Shaikh Hasan Nasrullah, was wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a party HQ.

The channel also reported from Haifa and Akka that Hizbullah was bombarding both of those cities Sunday morning. Early reports gave 20 Israeli wounded and 6 killed according to Aljazeera's monitoring of Israeli radio. Aljazeera is showing videotape, presumably from Israeli television, of rockets landing in the heart of the city.

Lebanon charged that the US blocked a UN Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire. If so, it is contemptible.

Saad Hariri, leader of the reformist bloc in parliament, signalled Saturday that the Israeli policy of trying to get Lebanese to fight Lebanese (i.e. Sunnis, Maronites and Druze in the reform bloc should take on Hizbullah themselves, creating a new Lebanese civil war). Hariri insisted that national unity would come first.

The USG Open Source Center translates a broadcast on July 15 of Voice of Israel Network B:

' Commander of the Home Front Command Yitzhaq Gershon assesses that Tiberia and Haifa are not the most southerly targets Hizballah can hit. In a briefing by the Home Front Command, Major General Gershon also said that an exceptional opportunity has been created for the operational actions to achieve their aims. We are not prepared to return to the situation we faced over the past five years, he said. He added that most of the people wounded by katyushas did not carry out the orders of the Home Front Command . . .

In the afternoon, katyushas were fired at Zefat, Nahariyya, and Kabri. Nobody was hurt. Earlier, dozens of missiles were fired, and over 60 casualties arrived at the government hospital in Nahariyya from Karmi'el, Kisra, Ma'alot-Tarshiha, Peqi'in, Rama, Ben Ami, Majd-al-Kurum. Four were lightly hurt by shrapnel and ricochets, and the others suffered shock.

A senior military source said that at this stage, it would not be right to bring Syria into the battle. The Syrians are a negative element, but they are not the key to the solution. On the issue of the kidnapped soldiers, the senior source said that Israel's working assumption is that they alive. According to the source, Israel is ready for indirect dialogue with anybody, including one of the international elements not identified with the sides."

Despite the darkness of the moment, Gershon's comments are encouraging in several regards. Hizbullah's rocket attacks on civilian targets in Israel on Saturday did little damage, and most of those reported wounded seem to have been suffering from shock, though there were some light injuries from shrapnel. (Unfortunately, this picture changed on Sunday). Then, Gershon said it would be unwise to widen the war to Syria at this point. And, he said that the Israelis would talk indirectly to anyone.

More on what young Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said Friday about the Israeli attack on Lebanon.

' "Eyes are shedding tears, and the heart feels pain and sadness for our people in Lebanon due to the bombing, terror and clear aggression that the Zionist enemy conducts and that is shielded by a number of countries, including the United States," Sadr said in the statement. "Let it be known to everybody that we in Iraq will not sit by with folded hands before the creep of Zionism," the statement continued. "It will enslave us if we keep silent."

The Nation points to the illogic of the Bush administration in having pushed Syria out of Lebanon and now demanding that it rein in Hizbullah. If Syria has been reduced to having almost no influence in Lebanon, how exactly would it do that?

5,000 Indonesians protested in downtown Jakarta on Saturday against Israeli military moves against Gaza and Lebanon.

Billmon analyzes the miserable corner into which the Israelis have painted themselves.

50 Kidnapped in Baghad

There were large numbers of bombings and assassinations in Iraq on Saturday.

The most horrible incident Was the abduction of up to 50 Iraqis.

The USG Open Source Center paraphases briefly highlights from the Iraqi press for July 15:

Al-Adalah runs on page 2 a 1,200-word text of a statement by SCIRI denouncing Harith al-Dari's recent statements accusing Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr of feeding terrorism in Iraq.

Al-Adalah publishes on page 2 a 200-word report on a founding conference for the Tribes and Dignitaries Council in Al-Diwaniyah, which demanded the multinational forces refrain from interfering in the work of local authorities, endorsed the National Reconciliation Initiative, and urged the Al-Diwaniyah Governorate Council to improve public services. . .

Al-Adalah carries on page 3 a 1,400-word report on a meeting between Abd-al-Aziz al-Hakim and Maysan districts' local council members to discuss the political and security situation, federalism, public services, and other issues. . .

Al-Mashriq carries on the front page an 80-word report citing the Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister revealing that Syrian security forces arrested over 50 persons from various Arab nationalities who were trying to enter Iraqi territories via Syria.

Al-Mashriq carries on the front page a 1,000-word report on the Israeli attack against Lebanon. The report says that the Iraqi parliament has condemned the attack and demanded the Iraqi people stand beside Lebanese people.

Al-Mashriq carries on page 2 a 60-word report that Ahmad al-Chalabi is still the head of the de'Ba'thification Commission.

Al-Mashriq carries on page 4 a 300-word report that women have demanded to change item number 41 of the Iraqi permanent constitution. . .

Al-Basa'ir on 12 July carries on the front page a 300-word report on the statement issued by Iraqi National Troops group condemning US 'occupation' forces' crimes in Iraq.

Al-Basa'ir on 12 July runs on page 2 a 500-word report on Statement 288 issued by Association of Muslim Scholars denouncing Iraqi and 'occupation' forces for imposing a tight siege around Arab Jubur and other villages in Al-Muqdadiyah District and the random arrest of dozens of Sunnis.

Al-Basa'ir on 12 July publishes on page 2 a 500-word report on Statement 293 issued by Association of Muslim Scholars condemning sectarian militias for attacking Sunni mosques in Al-Ghazaliyah and Al-Durah Districts.

Al-Basa'ir on 12 July carries on page 2 a 500-word report entitled 'Association of Muslim Scholars Condemns 'Occupation' Forces for Taking Over Al-Ramadi Public Hospital. . .

Al-Mashriq carries on the front page a 600-word report citing Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr accusing Sunnis of failing to respond to his calls to better Sunni-Shiite relations. . .

Al-Mashriq carries on page 3 a 450-word report that hundreds of university professors are leaving the country to save their lives from assassination. . .

Al-Sabah carries on page 2 a 110-word report on a statement by the cabinet that security forces in Dhi Qar arrested a gang trying to smuggle oil in the governorate. . .

Al-Basa'ir on 12 July runs on page 3 a 200-word report citing a medical source in Tikrit confirming the discovery of nine bodies.

Al-Basa'ir on 12 July carries on page 3 a 230-word report entitled 'Civilian Killed and Three Injured in Large-Scale Military Operation in Al-Ramadi.'

Al-Basa'ir on 12 July publishes on page 4 a 400-word report entitled 'Defense Ministry Official Holds Interior Ministry Responsible for Hay al-Jihad Massacre.' . . .

Al-Zaman publishes on page 5 a 1,000-word report entitled 'Merchant and His Sons and Grandson Assassinated in Mosul; British Patrol Release Hostage and Arrest Kidnappers in Basra.'

Al-Mashriq carries on the front page a 400-word report that about 50 families have left al-Jihad quarter in Baghdad to stay in tents installed on the airport road. . .

Al-Mada runs on the front page a 30-word report on the release of 29 detainees from al-Sadr trend. . .

Al-Sabah carries on page 3 a 200-word report citing an official source at Health Ministry saying that the morgue received 1,600 bodies in June. . .

Al-Sabah carries on page 14 a 200-word report citing legal professors criticizing the Red Crescent International Committee's decision to withdraw its employees from Iraq.

Al-Sabah carries on page 15 a 700-word report citing an official source at Health Ministry saying that over 8,000 persons, most of whom are children, need to be treated abroad. . .

Al-Basa'ir on 12 July carries on page 8 a 1,200-word report citing Association of Muslim Scholars confirming the distribution of aid to displaced families in Al-Fallujah.

Al-Basa'ir on 12 July publishes on page 8 a 600-word report on the difficult humanitarian situation in Al-Muqdadiyah District due to its siege by Iraqi and 'occupation' forces. . .

Al-Adalah runs on page 4 an 800-word report on the role of terrorist attacks in decreasing the number of Iranian tourists to Al-Najaf Governorate. . .

Al-Adalah carries on page 3 a 500-word article by Dr Ali Khulayf criticizing Harith al-Dari for his seditious statements that encourage sectarian violence. '

Global Protests at Indiscriminate Israeli Bombings of Lebanon

The Associated Press puts the Israeli offensive against Lebanon on Friday succinctly:

' Israel again bombarded Lebanon's airport and main roads in the most intensive offensive against the country in 24 years. For the first time, it struck the crowded Shiite neighborhood of south Beirut around Hezbollah's headquarters, toppling overpasses and sheering facades off apartment buildings. Concrete from balconies smashed into parked cars, and car alarms set off by the blasts blared for hours. The toll in three days of clashes rose to 73 killed in Lebanon and at least 12 Israelis, as international alarm grew over the fighting, and oil prices rose to above $78 a barrel. The U.N. Security Council held an emergency session on the violence, and Lebanon accused Israel of launching "a widespread barbaric aggression." In addition to the fighting in Lebanon, Israel pressed ahead with its Gaza Strip offensive against Hamas, striking the Palestinian economy ministry offices early today.

Courtesy al-Anwar.

Israel bombed the HQ of Hizbullah leader Shaikh Hasan Nasrullah, probably hoping to kill him, but he survived and launched more retaliatory strikes on Israeli targets. More Katyusha rockets rained down on northern Israel, forcing many residents to flee. And Hizbullah used a drone to attack an Israeli warship, setting it aflame and forcing it to return to port. Four sailors are missing.

The Israeli attacks may well inflict long-term damage on the limping Lebanese economy.

Israeli spokesmen are saying that they want to finish off Hizbullah. But you can't finish off a mass movement among 1.35 million people. Besides, there wouldn't be any Hizbullah if Israel had not invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the south for 18 years. Israel's grabby occupation radicalized and helped mobilize the Lebanese Shiites. They aren't going to become less radical and less mobilized as a result of the current hamfisted Israeli assault.

On Friday, thousands of protesters rallied in Cairo, Amman, Gaza City, and Baghdad, as well as throughout Turkey, to protest massive Israeli attacks on Gaza and Lebanon. There was also a demonstration in Dearborn, Michigan. There are 25,000 Americans in Lebanon, now in severe danger from Israeli bombings. Most of the demonstrations in the Middle East not only condemned Israel but also the United States.

Americans have to understand that when Israel goes wild and bombs a civilian airport and civilian neighborhoods in Beirut, a lot of the world's Catholics (Lebanon is partially a Catholic country) and its 1.4 billion Muslims blame the United States for it. Israel is given billions every year by the United States, including sophisticated weaponry that is now being trained on the slums of south Beirut. It should also be remembered that Bin Laden said, at least, that he started thinking about hitting New York when he saw that 1982 Israeli destruction of the skyscrapers or "towers" of Lebanon. How many future Bin Ladens are watching with horror and rage and feelings of revenge as Israel drops bombs on civilian tenement buildings? When will this blow back on Americans? (I mean blow back in other ways than an already painful further spike in petroleum prices).

The Vatican called Israel's assault on Lebanon an "attack on a sovereign and free nation."

Reuters reports on the reaction of French President Jacques Chirac:

'He said Israel's offensive in Lebanon following the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of eight more by Hizbollah guerrillas was "completely disproportionate". "One can ask oneself whether there isn't a sort of desire to destroy Lebanon," he said. But he also condemned Hizbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas, which abducted a third Israeli soldier, as "totally irresponsible" for the attacks which provoked Israel's response. '

Italian Premier Romano Prodi said,

"We deplore this escalation and the serious damage to Lebanon's infrastructure and the civilian victims that these raids have caused."

The USG Open Source Center translates from Text of report by Spanish national RNE Radio 1 on 14 July in Spain this statement by the Spanish prime minister:

(Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero) "In my view, Israel is mistaken. Defence is one thing, it is legitimate, and another is launching a counter-offensive of general attack in Lebanon, in Gaza, which will surely bring nothing but a stepping up of the violence."

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said his

'government condemned both the militant group Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers on Wednesday and the Israeli reaction to it.' He added "We also condemn the Israeli attacks against Lebanon, including the bombing of the airport in Beirut and the naval blockade of Lebanese waters," Støre said. "This is completely unacceptable, and amounts to a dangerous escalation of the situation."

----
PS

For a view from the ground of the situation by refugee workers, see this link.

And see Dennis Perrin.

30 Dead in Mosque Bombings, Other Violence


Civil War violence left at least 30 dead in Iraq on Friday, says AFP. It writes,

'In Baghdad, where a massive security crackdown is on since last month, at least seven worshippers were killed after Friday prayers in a bombing outside a Sunni mosque, a security official said. Five people were also wounded in the bomb attack against the Ismail al-Qubaisy mosque in Al-Qahira, a mixed neighbourhood that lies between the Sunni stronghold of Adhamiyah and the Shiite radical bastion of Sadr City. '

The mosque bombings are extremely worrisome, since they attest to an ongoing faith-based conflict that has been growing in intensity.

South of Kirkuk, guerrillas ambushed and killed 13 Iraqi soldiers. There were also several violent incidents in Mosul and in the troubled province of Diyala.

AP reports that the Iraqi military is having trouble retaining Sunni Arab troops.

Iraqi preachers and politicians on Friday condemned Israeli operations against Gaza and Lebanon.

Sadr al-Din al-Qubanji of Najaf said, ' "What Israel is doing is unacceptable and unjustified . . ." ' Al-Qubanji is a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Young Shiite nationalist clerical leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, called 'on Iraqis to stand behind Lebanon to fight a "common enemy", Israel. ' Several thousand protesters rallied in Sadr City (East Baghdad).

Condi told by Olmert to Back off?

Steve Clemons reports that the Israelis have told US Secretary of State Condi Rice to back off her calls for Israel to exercise restraint in its responses to Hizbullah.

Iraqis Condemn Israeli Attacks

Both Sunni and Shiite clerics and politicians condemned the Israeli attack on Lebanon on Friday. The Friday sermons were thunderous. Money and resources will likely flow to Hizbullah and the Palestinians. More later.

Is the Arab Spring turning to Dust under Israeli Bombardment?

Petroleum hit $76.70 a barrel on Thursday, a record high price, in reaction to the new Middle East crisis. (Though in real terms, the 1980 post-Iranian revolution crisis price was probably $80 a barrel in today's dollars). To those of you in the Gen-X and younger generations, let me welcome you to the late 1970s. The only pleasures of that day of which you are now denied are standing in long lines just to fill up your tank and stagflation or combined high inflation with economic stagnation. If George W. Bush's wise stewardship of the world continues in this brilliant fashion, you may yet have those joys, as well.

Nicholas Blanford reports on Israeli bombing of Lebanon, which killed 50 civilians, including entire families. The Israelis also bombed the runway at Beirut airport, blockaded Beirut port, and bombed the road on the way from Beirut to Damascus. Ordinary Western tourists and Lebanese who were blocked from getting out by the airport (and who could have been killed there by Israeli bombs) were then endangered again by the Israeli air force when it blasted the only other way out of the country, the road to Syria.

Hizbullah got off dozens of katyusha missiles in reply, which they would not have been able to do if the Israeli airforce had been hitting katyusha missile emplacements in the deep south instead of attacking the whole Lebanese economy up at Beirut. The missiles killed two Israeli civilians. One was said to hit the outskirts of Haifa, but Hizbullah denies that one and ordinary katyushas do not have that kind of range. Hizbullah's attacks on Israel during the past two days have been despicable.

As the Saudis pointed out, Hizbullah's latest actions are a form of ill-conceived adventurism that has plunged the region into greater crisis. On the other side, Condi Rice called on the Israelis to exercise restraint in their response in Lebanon. Given the power of the Israel Lobby in Washington, this statement is about as close as you would get nowadays to a denunciation of disproportionate Israeli attacks on the whole Lebanese people for the actions of a handful of Shiite guerrillas in the far south of the country.

Yes, I am saying that Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and the Bush administration Secretary of State are the adults in all this.

Bush is aware that the "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon, of which he and the Wall Street Journal were so proud last year, is in danger of being undone. He politely asked the Israelis please not to bring down the Lebanese government, but that is probably as far as he dares go in an election year, given the support for Israel of his evangelical base.

But of course there was always a severe contradiction in the Bush position on the 2005 Lebanese elections, which were the freest and fairest in some time-- given the departure of Syria's military from the country. Those elections brought to power a government in which the hard line Shiite fundamentalist party, Hizbullah, had cabinet posts for the first time. The US under Clinton had consistently warned Beirut not to admit Hizbullah to the government, and even the Bush administration had adopted that position as recently as January of 2004.

A Lebanon with no Syrian troops and Hizbullah in the government was inherently unstable. All the other parties but Hizbullah had disarmed, so it alone had its own paramilitary. With Syria gone, Hizbullah filled a security vacuum and also was less restrained in its policies. While in the country, Syria supported the party, but also curbed its adventurism.

So this was Bush's big success in the Levant. It was as though a chef baked a lopsided wedding cake with a ticking bomb embedded in it, and declared it a culinary breakthrough. Now the bomb has gone off.

People are speculating that the timing of Hizbullah's attack on Israeli troops had something to do with the crisis at the UN over Iran (i.e. it might be a diversionary move). But these events are usually localistic and planned for some time and it would be unwise to tie them too closely to such an immediate context. It seems to me much more likely that Hizbullah is flexing its muscles as, increasingly, the most important political force in Lebanon. Lebanon used to have a Christian majority, but Christians are probably down to only 30% of the population, and Shiites, most of whom support Hizbullah, may be 45%. They have large families and are poor and many are rural, and they are likely to be a majority in a decade or two.

Israel is apparently hoping, by bombing the Beirut airport and other irrelevant targets, to put pressure on the rest of the Lebanese to turn against Hizbullah and curb it themselves.

The Lebanese government is split. President Lahoud and Hizbullah are allied with the Syrians, but the majority of the cabinet is anti-Syrian and is often critical of Hizbullah. The cabinet recalled the Lebanese ambassador to the US when he seemed to support Hizbullah's call to negotiate over a prisoner exchange.

But even anti-Syrian, anti-Hizbullah cabinet members like Walid Jumblatt are blasting Israel's "brutal aggression."

If the cabinet breaks with Hizbullah, the government might well fall. There are 128 seats in the Lebanese parliament, so the government needs 65 to survive a vote of no confidence. Given that there are pro-Syrian Sunnis and pragmatic Christians in the legislature, I'm not sure the reform government would have 65 votes if the Shiites, with their 29 seats, pulled out. Even if the government of Fuad Seniora didn't fall, Lebanon could be torn apart again if the Shiites pulled out or were excluded. Bush, who is cleverer than most give him credit for, knows all this and that is why he is afraid that Israeli aggression and over-reaction will reduce the Cedar Revolution to mere ashes.

Some press reports suggest, moreover, that a lot of Lebanese, seeing their capital under attack from Israel, are rallying behind Hizbullah. Even many formerly pro-American Christian Lebanese are deeply upset that Bush seemed to say it was all right for the Israelis to bomb their civilian airport and blockade the whole country. If the country goes to new elections, the results could be quite different this time.

Mashhadani: Jews the Source of all Iraq's Problems

And, remember how the Bush administration trumpeted the December 2005 elections in Iraq and the joining in of the country's Sunni Arabs as a great advance? In fact, of course, what really happened was that hard line Sunni fundamentalists not much different from Hamas got 44 seats in the Iraqi parliament, joining hard line Shiite fundamentalists not so far removed from Lebanon's Hizbullah. Iraqi Speaker of the House, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, on Thursday drew back the curtain on the hothouse ideologies installed in Baghdad by the Neocons when he blamed "the Jews" for the violence in Iraq. But I guess the rightwing Zionists and Israeli hawks are unlikely to threaten to wipe Iraq off the map for al-Mashhadani's bizarre outburst, in contrast to their reaction to the equally looney tunes and morally shameful anti-Israel pronouncements of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Some reports are saying that as many as 25 Iraqis died from civil war violence on Thursday, A reduction in the massive death toll of the past few days.

The Iraqi government Now controls one whole province.

Ruth Rosen on Iraqi women and sexual terrorism in Iraq.

Muqdadiyah Massacre of Shiites
Baghdad Sunni Neighborhoods Organize Militias

At Muqdadiyah, a mixed Sunni-Shiite town north of Baghdad, guerrillas came to a bus station, separated out 24 or more Shiites from the other passengers, and took them to a nearby village where they killed most of them (al-Zaman says they murdered 22). The massacre is a continuation of the tit for tat "identity killings" that began last Sunday when Shiite militiamen massacred Sunnis in al-Jihad district of Baghdad. This tactic has brought the low-intensity civil war in Iraq to the boiling point.

In addition to the massacre of the Shiites at Muqdadiyah, another two dozen or so Iraqis were victims of guerrilla violence on Wednesday. Among several bombings and killings in the capital, the worst was a suicide bombing in a restaurant in largely Shiite East Baghdad, which killed 7 and wounded 20. Bombings were also reported in Haswa, Hilla and Tikrit. The latter killed the wife of the governor of Salahuddin Province late Tuesday.

In a rare outbreak of brutal candor, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki revealed on Wednesday that the daily violence in West Baghdad has not been random, but rather derives from a concerted plan by the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement to take over West Baghdad politically. He insisted that their advance in Karkh district had been repulsed, whereby they were attempting to move north.

My guess is that a key objective of the guerrillas is to surround and besiege the Kadhimiyah district of north-central Baghdad, which lies to the west across the river from Adhamiyah, a Sunni Arab stronghold. Kadhimiyah is the site of a very major Shiite shrine, that of Imam Musa al-Kazim,the seventh Imam or divinely-guided dynast of the House of the Prophet. The middle-class Shiites there are more or less behind enemy lines and isolated from the lower-class Shiites of East Baghdad (Sadr City). The guerrillas already have demonstrated that they can plunge Iraq into the fires of Hades by blowing up a shrine. I am sure that everyone in authority in Baghdad knows all this, but I don't have any confidence that Kadhimiyah is properly protected. It has been the site of many horrific bombings.

Eyewitnesses to the massacre at the al-Jihad District are now saying that the Shiite militamen who undertook the killings had with them long lists of ex-Baathists who had held office under the old regime but had been purged by the Debaathification Committee. The Debaathification Committee has been dominated by Ahmad Chalabi, and much of the documentation for its work was turned over to Chalabi by Donald Rumsfeld's Department of Defense. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki also played a central role in the Debaathification Committee. How have these lists leaked to local militias.

Al-Zaman/ DPA say that Sunni Arabs in the West Baghdad districts of Amiriyah, Khadra, Jihad, Ghazaliyah, Sayyidiyah and Al-Dura (Dora) have formed emergency neighborhood patrols for fear that Shiite militias from nearby Shiite-dominated districts to the east will make further raids into their areas. Muezzins or callers to prayer in the Sunni mosques of the Khadra district used amplifiers to call for volunteers, and dozens of young men responded by taking up arms. They especially hastened to do so after armed militiamen attacked the Muluki Mosque in al-Amiriyah District near Karkh late on Wednesday. They set up concrete blocks as barriers barring entry to the Khadra District. As soon as the callers to prayer broadcast the attack on the Muluki Mosque, shopkeepers and merchants in the commercial district closed their establishments.

This narrative of innocent Sunni Arabs policing their neighborhoods from predatory Shiite attacks on mosques obscures those other processes that PM al-Maliki described, whereby the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement is trying to take over these districts politically and extend its sway to Karkh. In a civil war, disentangling offense and defense is no easy task.

Arianna Huffington rightly makes fun of Rumsfeld's fatuous pronouncements in Baghdad.

Riverbend is touching on the loss of a friend in the al-Jihad massacre.

PS
About all those health centers supposedly built in Iraq with our $20 bn. in US tax money. Not so much.

The Beginning of a New War?
Will it Spill over on Iraq?

All hell broke loose on Wednesday in the Mideast, with a Hizbullah attack on the Israeli army and Israeli reprisals, and the Israeli dropping of a 500 pound bomb on Gaza. I roundly condemn Hizbullah's criminal and stupid attack on Israel and escalation of a crisis that is already harming ordinary Palestinians on a massive scale.

Likewise, the Beirut airport is not in south Lebanon and for the Israelis to bomb it and neighborhoods in south Beirut is a disproportionate use of force. The Israelis are actually talking about causing "pain to the Lebanese." That is despicable.

One thing is clear. This crisis will not leave the fabric of Lebanese politics untouched, and the danger of an unraveling is acute. And, it is clear that the withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon has given an opening to Israeli hawks to invade Lebanese territory again. It will not be good for Israelis if Lebanon collapses into a failed state again.

Rejectionists on both sides are to blame. The Oslo Peace Process could have forestalled all this violence, as Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin understood. But on the Israeli side, the then Likud Party of Bibi Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert derailed it. On the Palestinian side, Hamas rejected it. Had there been a peace process, prisoners would have been released in return for a cessation of hostilities, and there would have been no motivation to capture Israeli soldiers.

The lesson is that if you refuse to negotiate a peace, then you are likely to have to go on fighting a war.

I continue to worry that this outbreak of war in the Levant will exacerbate tensions in Iraq and get more US troops killed. Iraqi Sunnis generally sympathize with the Palestinians. And hard line Shiites like the Sadr Movement and the Mahdi Army are close to Hizbullah. Israel's wars could tip Iraq over into an unstoppable downward spiral.

Of Mushrooms and Peak Experiences

The magic mushrooms really do work. Depending on what you mean by "work."

I suspect that these mushrooms were used to make the soma of the ancient Hindu scriptures, and the haoma of ancient Iran.

The mushroom-produced drug induces feelings of oneness with the universe and afterwards, a sense of well-being. These experiences were called "peak experiences" by psychologist Abraham Maslow. His critics claimed that the experience itself is ethically neutral, and it can become a form of selfishness in itself. But these experiments seem to suggest that the experience is not in fact neutral, that it produces a weeks-long sense of well-being that is noticed by the people around one.

Drugs of all sorts can affect mental states, and mystics were always masters at using those states for self-betterment and self-exploration. Starbucks addicts may be interested to know that Muslim Sufi mystics probably started up the practice of drinking concentrated coffee, in the 1400s in Yemen, as a way of staying up late praying and seeking . . . peak experiences.

But the experience itself is not wisdom and wouldn't make a person wise. It is not the insight or nirvana of the Buddha or the moksha or liberation of the yogis or the fana' or self-effacement of the Sufis. That comes with a genuine discipline and a practical philosophy of life.

The human mind has the capacity to feel the oneness of things, to put aside selfish ego and the violence, psychic and physical, that it promotes. The drug just demonstrates that the capacity is there. This was known. The question is, what one does with it. A peak experience can just be an experience. Or it can be the beginning of a more fulfilled, kind and giving life. The drug by itself is no more important than a parlor trick. As with anything in life, it matters what is done with it. And, the true mystic does not need mushrooms to have peak experiences.

More exciting than the mystical high induced by this drug is the possibility that a processed form of it may help combat depression. For a lot of people, the existing depression drugs don't work or are unpleasant. The longer I live, the more I become convinced that most of the nasty things people do to one another come out of various psychopathologies, including their own depression. Less depression in the world would be all to the good. Also less selfishness, and more of an ability to empathize with others, even one's putative enemies. That's the peak of the peak, and I doubt it has anything to do with mushrooms.

190 Dead in Mumbai Train Bombings

The likelihood is that the sophisticated coordinated attack on the trains in India's western commercial hub of Mumbai (Bombay) was carried out by al-Qaeda-linked groups seeking the independence of Muslim-majority Kashmir from India.

It is also possible that they are seeking, as Peter Bergen suggested on CNN, to encourage Hindus to attack Muslims, which will stampede the Muslims of India into the embrace of radical Islam (not a taste most of them have had in the past). Frustrated extremists are always trying to think up ways to make others feel their frustration and join their cause.

In other words, the best counter-terrorism India could do in this instance is to practice restraint and, after a decent interval, to go back to the negotiating table with Pakistan over Kashmir.

Al-Qaeda and its like thrive on cowboy diplomacy and reprisals.

Over 60 Dead as Faith-Based Killings Continue
Kurds to the Rescue?

By my count, nearly 200 Iraqis have been killed in civil war violence during the past 3 days, dozens of them murdered for having the wrong religious identity (Shiite or Sunni).

The Associated Press reports that bombings and shootings took the lives of 60 Iraqis on Tuesday. There were more than twelve bombings, mostly in the Baghdad area. AP writes,

' "Suicide bombers struck across the street from Baghdad's heavily guarded Green Zone, killing up to 16 people - the deadliest attack in a wave of bombings and shootings that threatened to shatter confidence in Iraq's new government. In all, about 60 people died in more than a dozen bombings, shootings and ambushes - mostly in the Baghdad area, police reported. The dead included 10 Shiite Muslims slain by gunmen who fired on their bus as it left the capital for a funeral in southern Iraq, police said. '

Reuters' early report also rounds up some of the violence but the casualty count is lower than it became later in the day.

A lot of people in Baghdad, Washington and London are uttering a lot of brave words about this descent into mass slaughter. 200 Iraqis dead on the basis of being Sunni or Shiite is equivalent proportionally to 2,200 Americans dead, killed because they were Catholic or Protestant. September 11 killed less than 3,000 Americans, and the Iraqis are often having a death toll on that order every few days.

PM Nuri al-Maliki says that the Iraqi security forces can handle it, which is clearly just not true. US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad is taking heart from the existence of Iraqi institutions and the participation of Sunni Arabs in the government (the Iraqi Accord Front announced an end to its suspension of participation.)

But behind the scenes these officials and others know exactly what is happening. The Iraqis are at the brink of hot civil war again. It is one thing for people to be blown up indiscriminately by car bombers. It is quite another for neighborhood- or mosque-based militiamen to set up checkpoints in a nearby district and pull people out of their cars and homes, examine their identity cards for tell-tale family names and places of birth, and shoot them dead on the spot for being from the wrong sect of Islam. How many days like Sunday would you have to have for it to equal a Srebrenica? Answer: 16. There are a lot of days in the year.

So everybody is worried to death, but what to do? US troops apparently simply cannot get hold of security in those Baghdad neighborhoods. They actually announced a security sweep in Adhamiyah and elsewhere fairly recently, but security is not better. They have limited options. If they let neighborhood militias police the localities, they might cut down on car bombings. But strengthening and ensconcing local militias might encourage them to raid rival neighborhoods and do a little ethnic cleansing.

So Al-Hayat reports that PM al-Maliki and Massoud Barzani have had an epiphany while meeting in the north.

What if Kurdish troops were deployed in Baghdad under an Iraqi military command? The Kurds are not Arabs at all. They might be able to function as honest brokers between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs. It is true that most of them are Sunnis. But most Kurds aren't Islamists and a lot of them belong to mystical Sufi orders or to socialist political parties. So their Sunnism isn't of a sort that would make them favor the Sunni Arabs. And, they had suffered a lot from some high Sunni Arabs in the Saddam regime. On the other hand, they are unlikely to tilt toward a hyper-Shiite group like Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

But would the Kurds do it? A spokesman for the Kurdistan Democratic Party is saying, "yes." He said that the deteriorating security situation in the capital "provokes the anxiety of the Kurdish parties, who fear that this escalation will lead to the widening of the scope of sectarian violence, will affect the situation in Kurdistan."

Adnan Dulaimi of the (Sunni fundamentalist) Iraqi Accord Front said only that the suggestion needed to be studied. It is clear that the Sunni Arabs would prefer the Kurdish troops to the special police commandos of the Interior Ministry, whom they consider little more than death squads. Bringing the Kurds in under the rubric of the Iraqi army would strengthen the Sunni Arab minister of defense and weaken the Shiite minister of the interior.

Jalal al-Din Saghir of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Shiite) said that the United Iraqi Alliance has no objection to Kurdish troops in Baghdad, as long as their mission is keeping peace and order and as long as they behave within the law, and under the authority of the Iraqi government.

Al-Hayat reports that Mahdi Sabih, commander of security forces in Baghdad, told it aht the suggestion has not be studied inside the security establishment yet. He said he thought using peshmerga was better than using Arab or Muslim troops, as some had suggested.

These are desperate times, and call for desperate measures. There is a danger of the Kurdish troops producing a backlash that exacerbates Arab-Kurdish tensions. But if the consideration is holding the country together, well, it is already showing signs of deep fissure and that has to be stopped before anything else.

The Kurds want a referendum in Kirkuk Province in December '07 on whether oil-rich Kirkuk will accede to the Kurdistan regional confederacy. If the referendum is held, the province will certainly join. it is increasingly Kurdish in character anyway. Helping Baghdad is a way to build up good will so as to make the holding of the referendum a necessity. So anyway, Maliki promised them their referendum. Was he trading Kurdistan for security in Baghdad?

Gaza Crisis

The Israeli air force bombed a civilian Palestinian house that they said was being used to plot out terrorist attacks.

As a home, it contained innocent civilians including at least two now-dead children.

CSM gives further details of the humanitarian crisis into which Olmert's invasion and bombings have plunged the people of Gaza.

See Gaza in the Vise at the always invaluable Middle East Report. Subscribe. Send them money.

Israeli human rights groups protested Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's use of collective punishment against the Palestinian people.

Over 55 Killed, Including 25 in Sadr City Bombings
Iraq to Ask UN to Withdrew US Troop Immunity

Guerrillas detonated two huge car bombs in a Shiite neighborhood on Monday, killing 25 and wounding 41. The guerrillas set both off in the Talbiyah district of Sadr City, a stronghold of the Sadr Movement of Muqtada al-Sadr. Sunni Arabs accuse a Sadrist militia of having massacred 42 Sunnis in the al-Jihad district on Sunday.

Guerrillas set off two other bombs in the capital, as well. A bomb exploded outside a restaurant, killing 6 and wounding 28. A roadside bomb killed 5 policemen. Gunmen also killed two bodyguards of a judge.

Gunmen ambushed a bus in the Sunni Arab district of Amiriyah in the capital, killing 7 [late reports say 10].

That is 44 dead in the capital alone.

The Aljazeera report on the violence in the capital was particularly graphic and touching on Monday evening. You watched it and it was hard to see how this thing comes back together any time soon. You watched it and your heart broke.

CNN's report was less graphic but no less depressing. Scroll down or keyword search to "watch how sectarian killings"

There were also bombings in Kirkuk, Hilla and Baquba. In Baquba, a member of the Diyala governing council was assassinated. The bombing at a Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party office killed 5 and wounded 12. With bodies found in the river, and assassinations, the death toll for Monday in civil war violence was certainly more than 55.

Shaikh Mahmoud al-Sumaidaie of the Umm al-Qura Mosque (a hard line Sunni) has called for a summit and compact of honor among Iraq's clergymen, to be held at Mecca. He suggested that Sunni and Shiite clerics gather in the holy city and revive the tradition of national unity against foreign occupation that characterized Iraq in the 1920s. He put forward the names of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and Muqtada al-Sadr as potential attendees.

The same source says that 200 fired policemen attacked the offices of the governor of Muthanna Province in Samawah and beat up some of the employees. The fired police have staged a number of demonstrations.

The Aljazeera program "Al-Mashhad al-`Iraqi" on Monday evening featured a debate between Shaikh Muhammad Bashar al-Faydi of the (hardline Sunni) Association of Muslim Scholars and Abu'l-Hadi al-Darraji of the (hard line Shiite) Sadr Movement. Shaikh Faydi reviewed all the help that the AMS proferred the Sadrists when they were fighting the Americans in spring-summer 2004, and expressed regret that relations had soured. He said that the Mahdi Army had now started attacking Sunnis. Shaikh al-Darraji maintained that it wasn't the Mahdi Army that carried out massacres like that at the al-Jihad District, but possibly local militias or even (he hinted) foreign forces trying to divide Sunni and Shiite. He also said that he had not believed rumors that the 1920 Brigades guerrilla group was the armed wing of the Association of Muslim Scholars, and he was disappointed that Faydi had believed the rumors about the Mahdi Army. (Did Darraji just out Faydi?) Shaikh Faydi wasn't buying it. Al-Darraji invited him to hold joint Sunni-Shiite prayer services.

I took away from the program that the prospect of any genuine pan-Islamic union against the US military presence has receded enormously in the past two years since I broached the possibility. The guerrilla movement, which is mainly led by secular Arab nationalists, ex-Baathists or post-Baathists in the main, has been trying to set Sunnis and Shiites at each other's throats as a way of making the country ungovernable and forcing the US out. They seem to be on track to succeed in the former, at least. They won't like their success.

The new Iraqi military still isn't much of a force, mainly infantry with rifles and no heavy armor or artillery (or helicopter gunships). I don't know how the US expects the Iraqis to accomplish anything if they don't have any better equipment than the guerrillas.

Iraq will ask the United Nations to remove the immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts now enjoyed by US troops in Iraq. If it cannot get the UN Security Council to go along, the Iraqi government says it wants a major role in the investigation of the Mahumdiyah incident, where several US soldiers are accused of raping a 14 year old Iraqi girl, and killing her and her family after stalking her for a week.

A guerrilla group said it killed 3 US soldiers recently in revenge for the rape-murder.

The good news is that a majority of Jordanians considers Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to have been a terrorist, is glad to see him gone, and believes that it is unacceptable to offer his family condolences on his death. Only 15 percent view his organization as a legitimate resistance movement.

The bad news? Thirty percent of Jordanians are "angered" by his death, only 41 percent say that Bin Laden's al-Qaeda is a terrorist group, and 77 percent see US military operations in Iraq as "terrorism." Jordanian public opinion has shifted against the US with the bloody military occupation of Iraq and the Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip.

David Kaiser has some sobering thoughts about the likely consequences of a US strike on Iran being to mire America in an intractable asymmetrical struggle of the sort Israel faces in Gaza.

Food, Water Running out For Gaza's Children

The humanitarian crisis in a civilian Gaza under attack from Israel is worsening, according to United Nations agencies. They had already warned over the weekend that given that half of Gazans are children, that the adult unemployment rate is 40 percent, and that malnutrition had already been widespread, the further degradation of electricity, water and food delivery systems by Ehud Olmert threatened a humanitarian catastrophe.

Even the Jerusalem Post is reporting Tuesday morning:

' International aid organizations reported on Tuesday morning that basic foodstuffs, including flour, sugar and oil, will run out within a few days. The aid organizations submitted reports on the issue to the UN headquarters in New York. In addition, the organizations will report that water supplies are scarce due to the lack of electricity and that the sewage system was no[t] functional.

Palestinian 4-year-olds have not committed any crimes, to be deprived of food, water and medical care.

Dr. Mona El-Farra explains how bad the situation is.

See Sandy Tolan and Tom Englehardt on "Deja Vu in Gaza.".

These photos give a sense of the impact of conflicts like the current one on Gaza's children.

Rabbi Michael Lerner writes poignantly of his recognition that Israel has crossed a moral boundary in its latest collective-punishment policies toward ordinary Palestinians.

Black humor alert.

The Israeli military still hasn't stopped the Qassam rockets or found its kidnapped soldier, but it has located some Palestinian farms and orchards with dastardly anti-Israel olive trees and other crops that have now been destroyed before they can strike again.


I continue to challenge progressive bloggers to link and speak out on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is man-made and entirely avoidable. It is being deliberately created by Ehud Olmert.

There is a link on the right for writing your congressional representatives. Use it.

At least 80 Dead in Civil War Bloodbath
Government Forced to Depend on Local Gunmen

""We will complete the mission and I will make my judgments as to the troop levels necessary to achieve victory, not based upon political polls or focus groups, but based upon the measured judgment of our commanders on the ground . . . Make no mistake about it, there is a group in the opposition party who are willing to retreat before the mission is done . . . They are willing to wave the white flag of surrender and if they succeed the United States will be worse off, and the world will be worse off . . . We've got a plan to succeed, a plan for victory, a plan that will enable a new ally in the war on terror to govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself . . ."
- George W. Bush, June 28, 2006

Al-Zaman/ AFP say that Baghdad was the site Sunday of the worst wave of of faith-based violence ever perpetrated by its sectarian militias in one day. Eyewitnesses in the Iraqi capital said that elements of the Mahdi Army, loyal to young Shiite nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, killed at least 61, among them women and children, on the basis of their religious identity. [Official Iraqi and US sources said these numbers were exaggerated, and most American wire services gave the number of dead as 42.] They set up a checkpoint at the entrance to the Jihad quarter of Baghdad for this purpose. Eyewitnesses said that gunmen wearing civilian clothing set up checkpoint barriers in the streets beginning early Sunday morning and began stopping passers-by. They investigated their identities, and killed anyone whom they found to be Sunni Arab. The eyewitnesses also said that some gunmen entered a number of homes and shot down the inhabitants. Some then set the houses on fire.


Courtesy Al-Sharq al-Awsat

Al-Hayat says that local Baghdad television (a largely Sunni outlet) carried pleas from a Sunni eyewitness to the attack for the government and the American forces to intervene to rescue them, but that the pleas went unanswered.

Officials of the Sadr Movement denied any involvement in the killings. Some Iraqi government officials, according to al-Hayat, said that they believed the massacre was committed by Sunni Arab guerrillas attempting to provoke civil disturbances.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that a Mahdi Army spokesman said that the al-Jihad district was home to many terrorists who had killed and ethnically cleansed Shiites.

The Mahdi Army closed off the largely Shiite Shu'lah district of West Baghdad near the site of the massacre in expectation of reprisal attacks. Al-Hayat said that two Sunni prayer leaders were killed in Shu'lah, who belonged to the Association of Muslim Scholars. A major Shiite preacher in Najaf on Friday accused the AMS of having ties to al-Qaedah.

The massacre ceased when Iraqi police and army, and US troops, intervened, surrounding the al-Jihad district and imposing a curfew. The curfew is expected to last at least 2 days.

Eyewitnesses said that bodies littered the streets for hours before finally being carted off to a local hospital, according to al-Hayat.

An AFP cameraman said that Iraqi troops were seen Sunday afternoon cordoning off the Jihad district and some neighboring districts.

Shaikh Abd al-Samad al-`Ubaydi, the prayer leader at the Fakhri Shanshal Mosque in the al-Jihad district, accused the Mahdi Army of committing this crime. "Everything is clear, now," he said. He added, "When I left the mosque after the crime had been committed, I saw ten bodies of ten men, all of them killed with a bullet to the head, and all of them bearing signs of torture." He said many of the early-morning killings were carried out in front of the Husayniyah of Fatimah al-Zahra, a Shiite mourning center.

The prayer leader at the Fatimah al-Zahra Husayniyah, Shaikh Hamud al-Sudani, for his part told the AFP that the attacks were carried out by relatives of victims killed in the quarter during recent months. He said, "During the past 5 months, Shiites have been the victims of killings in and expulsion from the al-Jihad district." Guerrillas, presumably Sunni Arabs, had set off a bomb near the Fatimah al-Zahra center on Satuday evening, wounding 4, which Shaikh al-Sudani said was the straw that broke the camel's back.

The Sunni mosque in the region, the Fakhri Shanshal, had also been the site of a bombing, on Friday, which killed one person and wounded 3.

Sunni Arab guerrillas replied to the checkpoint massacre by detonating a car bomb in front of the Ahl al-Bait Husayniyah (a Shiite center for mourning their martyrs from the House of the Prophet Muhammad) in the al-Kisah district of the Adhamiyah quarter of Baghdad, killing 19 and wounding 35. (Late reports in the Australian press spoke of 25 dead).

Guerrillas also set off a bomb in al-Baya' district of West Baghdad, killing 5 persons and wounding 3.

The two bombings, targeting Shiites, are thought to have been revenge for the checkpoint murders in the al-Jihad district.

President Jalal Talabani uttered plattitudes about the dangers of sectarian violence devolving into "killings on the basis of identity".

His aide, Muwaffaq al-Samarra'i, according to Al-Hayat, said, "Iraq has truly entered into a sectarian civil war; the matter is no longer merely one of sectarian hatred."

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said that the situation was under control.

The party of the Sunni fundamentalist politician Adnan Dulaimi condemned the "criminal sectarian militias" that were trying to "drag Iraq into a civil war." The party said that the killings demonstrated the frightful impotence of the government, and warned that until the government intervened to stop such acts, the (Sunni) street could not be controlled by the party.

Al-Hayat said that neighborhood militias had closed off their city districts in several parts of the capital, especially those near al-Jihad district. It added, "Local gunmen spread themselves among police, army and militiamen, in an unprecedented move, amidst an affirmation that the security plan could not provide security to the inflamed capital.

Al-Hayat says that the Sunni Arab vice-premier, Salam al-Zawba'i, blamed "evildoers" among the police and army for the killings.

The same source reports that Abd al-Hadi al-Darraji, an aide to Muqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad, vehemently denied the allegations against the Mahdi Army. He said, "The Mahdi Army does not get involved in these sorts of incident. Outside parties are attempting to draw Iraq into a civil war through heaping accusations on the Sadr movement."

Australian Broadcasting has more.

Given the 30 dead or so in the afternoon bombings, and given that there were assassinations and deaths outside the capital (three in Karbala alone), even if one takes the estimate of 42 dead for the al-Jihad massacre, something like 80 Iraqis were killed on Sunday in sectarian warfare, and it could have been as high as 100. For my money, that's a civil war.

The guerrilla group holding MP Taysir al-Mashhadani captive has demanded the release of 25 prisoners in exchange for her freedom.

Children are dying in the dozens in southern Iraq because of lack of basic medical care and medicines. Reuters reports,

'"There's a lack of everything. Children are dying because of bleeding because there are no blood bags available," said Fernandez. "Antibiotics, Pentostam [an antimony compound used in the treatment of parasite infection], special milk for dehydrated children, and almost all medical material for emergency conditions aren't available." '

. Lack of security, corruption and the flight of middle class professionals have all contributed to the crisis.

European Union Condemns Israeli Predations
Israelis Kill Little Girl, Other Family Members
50,000 Turks Demonstrate

The Daily Telegraph Reports:

'Three Palestinian family members, including a six-year-old girl, were killed yesterday in an air strike near Gaza City as Israel rejected a call by Hamas Premier Ismail Haniya for a mutual ceasefire. The girl, her elder brother and her mother were killed in the air raid. Despite initial denials, the Israeli army later confirmed carrying out the strike in the neighbourhood of Sejayun. '

An estimated 50,000 Turks demonstrated in Istanbul on Sunday against the Israeli invasion of Gaza, which has left nearly 50

Courtesy Zaman

Palestinians dead. Zaman, a Turkish newspaper, writes,

' The protestors chanted slogans against Israel and the US, condemning the killing of innocent people and the inaction of the international community to protect innocent citizens. "Butchers of Pharaohs: Israel and USA", "Wake-up Muslims", and "Farewell to Sharon, Devotion to Hamas" were the main slogans chanted at the demonstration. The spokesman at the protest, which was organized by the pro-Islamic Happiness Party, said that world nations had turned a blind eye to the tragedy in the region as the Israeli army killed innocent people. '

Turkey has a secular constitution, and its military is allied with Israel, but the rise of political Islam in Turkey has put strains on the Turkish-Israeli relationship, and the Turkish public's disgust with Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories may become a factor in Turkish domestic politics. Islamists are the main beneficiary of the unresolved Palestine issue, which Kadima policies are exacerbating.

It goes without saying that the United States' own relations with the Turkish public, already damaged by the hugely unpopular Iraq War, are profoundly harmed by these Israeli crimes.

In Bahrain, the government allowed a demonstration on Friday. There is a US naval base in Bahrain.

Jordan cracked down on Islamist activists who tried to organize demonstrations in Amman.

Friday a week ago 3,000 Egyptians rallied at al-Azhar square in Cairo for the Palestinians, but the Egyptian government cracked down on further attempts by the Muslim Brotherhood to hold demonstrations.

If it weren't for authoritarian governments in the region, hundreds of thousands of people would be on the streets demonstrating as we speak. Since they can't demonstrate, they turn to Islamist politics and sometimes terrorism. Ironically, a sense of justice denied and outrage over human rights violations can actually turn people toward an acceptance of extreme measures.

The European Union on Sunday slammed Israel for plunging Gaza into a humanitarian crisis:

' ST PETERSBURG, Russia: The European Union accused Israel yesterday of a disproportionate use of force against Palestinians in Gaza and of making a humanitarian crisis there worse. It was the first time the 25-nation bloc had made such a sharp criticism of the Jewish state in the crisis triggered by the abduction of an Israeli corporal from a border post by Palestinian Islamic militants on June 25. “The EU condemns the loss of lives caused by disproportionate use of force by the Israeli Defence Forces and the humanitarian crisis it has aggravated,” Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said in a statement on a visit to St Petersburg. It was released after 23 Palestinians were killed in the bloodiest day of fighting since 2004 on Thursday in military operations designed to stop rockets being fired into Israel. '

As always, see the invaluable Helena Cobban on why "they started it" isn't a valid response.

Of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, already growing last winter, Israeli adviser to the prime minister's office Dov Weisglass joked, "It's like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die." Of course they will. Anything that makes the healthy thinner has the potential of killing the sick and the very young. And what kind of fascist "social-engineering" joke was that? Why hasn't this man been fired? Do US officials meet with him? Why?

There was already a severe health care crisis in Gaza before the Israeli government sat down and decided cold-bloodedly to destroy the Strip's only power plant a week and a half ago. You can't run a hospital without electricity. And a lot of medicines spoil without refrigeration. Even just keeping food for the patients from spoiling becomes a challenge without refrigeration-- so they end up getting gastroenteritis. For patients, babies and toddlers, this situation can be fatal. The United Nations Human Rights Council, including India and 28 other nations, have already demanded that Israel take steps to redress the humanitarian crisis.

Jon Alterman points out that the Bush-Olmert policy of dismantling the Palestinian Authority and creating chaos in the Occupied Territories (some of them now just Surrounded and Subjugated Territories) doesn't make any sense strategically for anyone. The policy certainly is fueling Islamist revivalism and will result in more terrorism. Mere fear of terrorism wouldn't be a reason to back down from a principled stance. But when violations of the Geneva Conventions also produce terrorism, then that is bad policy on two counts.


A boycott of corporations making possible Israeli expansionism, and of the products produced by colonial expropriation, is one of the few avenues civil society has to make some sort of feeble protest about the ongoing atrocities against the Palestinians. The Presbyeterian Church is leading the way in demonstrating ethical leadership on this issue.

Of course, it is wrong for the tiny Ezzedine Qassam brigades to fire their homemade little rockets at Sderot, and though they most often miss, they sometimes do harm individuals, which is terrorism. It is wrong for groups such as Hamas to conduct terrorist operations against Israeli civilians. It was wrong for three tiny guerrilla groups to kill 2 Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint and kidnap Cpl. Shalit. They must release him, now. Palestinians who make even more objectionable fascist social engineering comments than did Dov Weisglass are wrong and should be condemned. They should listen to Saudi Ambassador to the US, Turki al-Faisal, who called on them to turn to Gandhian nonviolence. None of these actions, however, remotely justifies the Israeli strangling of the entire Palestinian population of Gaza through attacks on the power plant, bridges and other infrastructure, the criminal kidnapping of scores of elected Palestinian politicians, or the interference with medical, food and other aid reaching people who need it. Or the stealing of more land in the West Bank.

Alain Gresh of Le Monde Diplomatique writes of Israeli war crimes [hat tip to Agence Global:

' The 1949 Geneva Conventions state, in article 54 of their additional protocol: “Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited”. It is also “prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population”. That means that the Israeli army’s latest offensive in the occupied territories amounts to war crimes; it includes the blockade of the civilian population and their collective punishment, the bombing of Gaza’s $150m power station, depriving 750,000 Palestinians of electricity in the intense summer heat, and the kidnapping on the West Bank of 64 members of the political wing of Hamas, including eight cabinet ministers and 22 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. On 5 July the Israeli government said it would expand its military operation in Gaza. Israel has violated another principle of international law in this offensive: proportionality. Article 51 of the protocol forbids “an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” Can saving one soldier’s life justify destruction on this scale? '

Israeli peace activist Dorothy Naor writes,

"I am speechless with grief, with frustration at not being able to do anything to stop Israel's atrocities. All I can do is to inform you and to ask those of you abroad to keep badgering your politicians wherever you live to stop Israel's government and military from continuing to commit war crimes and from Israel's senseless refusal to recognize that the Palestinians will not disappear, that they have rights, that they are human beings no less than are Israelis. Ask your politicians to recognize that Israel's government wants land not peace, that it must be made to realize that its continued wrongs and uses of force will not bring Israelis security any more than it will bring Palestinians to stop fighting for their freedom and rights and justice. The only way to stop Qasams is to recognize Palestinian rights. Force will not quell violence. Violence breeds violence-Israeli violence towards Palestinians breeds theirs towards Israelis."

Most Israel Lobby propaganda can be fairly easily refuted with three observations:

*Israelis are not above international law.

*Collective punishment is illegal according to the Geneva Convention.

*Two wrongs don't make a right.

National Unity Government on Verge
of Collapse As Sunnis Threaten Pull-out;
A Million Sadrists Prepare for Samarra Trek

Guerrillas killed 3 US troops and a female Iraqi translator for the US military on Saturday.

Guerrillas detonated a car bomb outside a Shiite mosque in Baghdad Saturday evening, killing 3 persons.

Also late Saturday evening, Iraqi troops backed by a US military force surrounded the Sadrain Mosque in Zaafaraniyah, which is loyal to Muqtada, and arrested 20 persons. The army received a tip that the mosque as a center of guerrilla activity.

Iraqis are speculating that the US was after Abu Deraa, known as the "Shiite Zarqawi" for his violence against Sunni Arabs. The Sadrists deny that he is connected to the Mahdi Army.

On Friday, Alex Rodriguez of the Chicago Tribune reported on Saturday,

' Adnan al-Unaybi, a top Mahdi Army leader, was arrested at his home near the central city of Hillah. Unaybi reportedly engineered two roadside bomb attacks against multinational forces this spring, spied for Iran and smuggled weapons into Iraq, including surface-to-air missiles, the U.S. military said. '

The Iraqi Accord Front (Sunni fundamentalist), with 44 members of parliament, suspended its participation in parliament last weekend over the kidnapping of one of its members, Taysir Mashhadani. Now it is considering withdrawing its cabinet members from the Maliki government (it only has 4), as a symbolic protest that the missing MP still has not been found. These Sunni religious parties enterain dark suspicions that Shiite militiamen took the female member of parliament. In any case, the so-called "national unity government" that took six months to cobble together appears to be on the verge of collapse.

Meanwhile, Dr. Salih Mutlak, leader of the (Sunni Arab) National Dialogue Party (secularists and ex-Baathists) tells al-Sharq al-Awsat that his prerequisite for national reconciliation is the abrogation of the laws passed by US civil administrator Paul Bremer. Mutlak's party has 11 seats in parliament, but declined to join the "national unity" government.

Al-Hayat says that Sadrists are complaining about the US military operations in their areas of Baghdad and the arrest of Sadrist leaders. Al-Hayat correspondents in Najaf reported that on Saturday, thousands of followers of Muqtada al-Sadr came to Najaf from East Baghdad, gathering before Muqtada's house and shouting his name, asking that he give the order for them to confront the American sources. Sadrist observers believe that the US is conducting the military operations against the Sadrists in order to put pressure on Muqtada, who has been vocally calling for them to depart Iraq on a short timetable.

Shaikh Sabah al-Saaedi, an MP and spokesman for the Fadhila Party, a rival Sadrist movement that is often critical of Muqtada, nevertheless blamed US forces for provoking a conflict and trying to draw the Sadrists into an armed confrontation. Al-Saaedi charged, "America wants to cause the Maliki government and the political project in Iraq to fail altogether, so that a government of national salvation can be installed."

Sources high in the Iraqi Ministry of Defense told al-Hayat that the American operation against the Sadrists in Baghdad had been launched without the knowledge of the Iraqi government and that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was not happy about it!

Al-Hayat also says that Sahib al-Aamiri, a spokesman for the puritanical Shiite Sadrist movement, is predicting that a million persons will head for Samarra next week to rebuid the Askariyah shrine, the tomb of the tenth and eleventh Imams or divinely-appointed leaders of Islam according to the Twelver Shiites. One third of these persons will guard the others from attack, one-third will do the rebuilding, and one-third will provide services to the rest. He said the that the funding and preparation for the project are secured. He maintained that the Iraqi government had not objected, but had rather offered protection to the volunteers. Samarra is a largely Sunni Arab stronghold where the guerrilla movement has been strong, so there is substantial risk of sectarian clashes if a million Shiites show up there.

The Los Angeles Times has a real scoop today, having gotten hold of 400 documents regarding the investigation of the Interior Ministry and the Iraqi police. They demonstrate extensive corruption and violations. Solomon Moore writes,

' Brutality and corruption are rampant in Iraq's police force, with abuses ranging from the widespread rape of female prisoners and the release of terrorism suspects in exchange for bribes to assassinations of police officers and participation in insurgent bombings, according to confidential Iraqi government documents detailing more than 400 police corruption investigations. '

A pro-Bush Iranian-American film-maker, Cyrus Kar, is suing Donald Rumsfeld and the Department of Defense over being held in detention in Iraq without charges for nearly 2 months, and sometimes abused. This lawsuit may be the first tangible outcome of the recent Supreme Court ruling that George W. Bush is not above the Geneva Conventions, which were signed into US law by treaty. Bush and his officials and lawyers argue that he has "inherent powers" to just arrest people on suspicion and hold them indefinitely, with only an occasional military "review" of the case. The 15,000 prisoners detained by the US in Iraq are likewise being held with no access to counsel, no formal charges, or any basic legal process, with some having been tortured, and some having been held in this way for a year.

Rash of Mosque Bombings
Samarra'i Demands Banning of Shiite Militias
Qubanji accuses AMS of al-Qaeda Ties

Reuters reports on the violence in Iraq on Friday:

'In the village of Tal Banat near Mosul, a car bomb outside a mosque killed six and wounded 46, police said. Around the same time, a mortar attack and a car bomb killed five people and wounded nine near two Sunni mosques in Baghdad. A roadside bomb near a Sunni mosque in Baquba wounded seven. '

Al-Hayat says that, in addition, [Ar.] one Sunni cleric was kidnapped and another assassinated.

The faith-based civil war toward which the guerrilla movement in Iraq has been working is beginning to roll along, though it is possible that some of these attacks were guerrilla provocations.

US troops also clashed with a splinter element of the Mahdi Army and captured "a high level" insurgent leader; it is unclear whether this was Abu Deraa.(-Update) Al-Hayat says that fierce fighting took place in Sadr City, with 40 persons wounded or killed. It says that Abu Deraa is accused of being behind the kidnapping of Taysir al-Mashhadani, the female Sunni member of parliament, last Saturday. It says that Muqtada al-Sadr had in the past imposed punishments on Abu Deraa for his disobedience and that the US suspects he has formed a splinter group.

Reuters has more details on the violence.

Al-Hayat reports that the Friday prayers preachers traded accusations. Shaikh Abdul Ghafur al-Samarra'i (Sunni) warned that "Baghdad will be consumed by a conflagration" if the government did not put an end to the Shiite militias. He reported that the prayer leader at the Ibn Taymiyah Mosque in West Baghdad, Shaikh `Ala', had been kidnapped, and that Iraqi security forces had opened fire on Shaikh Sa'id Muhammad Taha al-Samarra'i, the prayer leader at the Grand Mosque of Mahmudiyah, killing him, after they stopped him at a roadside checkpoint. He said that Mahdi Army elements had forced the prayer leader of the Halimah Saadiyah Mosque to flee for his life, leaving his house and all his possessions behind. He concluded, "What is happening on Iraqi soil, including massacres, and affronts to female honor, is unlike anything ever witnessed in history." (He was referring to the Mahmudiyah rape/murder case in which a US servicemean was chared). Al-Hayat said that his sermon was "severe in its tone."

In Najaf, SCIRI preacher Sadr al-Din Qubanji accused the (hard line Sunni) Association of Muslim Scholars of having links to Usamah Bin Laden, and he called on the government to open an investigation of this matter. [Al-Qubanji is being extremely provocative here, and there may be trouble about this.) Al-Qubanji said it was suspicious that Bin Laden called for the killing of Shiite clerics in Iraq, and other clerics cooperating with the new regime, but exempted from his condemnation the Sunni organization, the Association of Muslim Scholars, and, indeed, mentioned Shaikhs, al-Dhari, al-Kubaisi and al-Faydi by name.

Rod Nordland of Newsweek says that one reason the American public is so clueless as to how bad it is in Iraq is that the Bush administration is good at spinning news. Also, he says, the Pentagon is helping it by screening embeds for their past reporting and excluding those who've written critically.

Iraqi television is as splintered on sectarian grounds as its politics, according to CSM.

The plot hatched in internet chatter by al-Qaeda wannabes, which the FBI had been monitoring and which the New York Daily News revealed on Friday, had an Iraq dimension. Al-Qaeda sympathizers in Iraq and Pakistan were part of the internet chatting on attacking New York. The Arabic newspapers are speculating that the al-Zarqawi network (which had threatened to hit the US homeland in retaliation for its military actions in Iraq) was part of the plot.

BBC Monitoring praphrases the Iraqi press for July 6:

' Al-Sabah carries on page 1 a 300-word report citing Muqtada al-Sadr denouncing the recent statement by Bin Laden to fight the Shi'is. Al-Sadr also adds that he has suspended the work of his offices in Iraq. . . '

Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah carries on the front page a 420-word editorial by Muhammad Bahr-al-Ulum severely denouncing the US violations against Iraqi people, especially the rape of a girl and the killing of her and her family by US soldiers in Al-Mahmudiyah. . .


Al-Da'wah carries on the front page a 450-word report commenting on Nuri al-Maliki's successful visit to some Arab gulf countries. The report cites sources from Al-Sadr Bureau saying that Shi'i families are being displaced from Samarra, Diyala, and western Baghdad.

Al-Da'wah carries on the front page a 300-word report citing Nuri al-Maliki saying that Arab gulf countries have pledged to take tougher measures to prevent financing armed groups in Iraq. . .

Al-Da'wah carries on the front page an 80-word report citing Falah Hasan Shunayshil, leader of Al-Sadr Bloc in the parliament, saying that the National Reconciliation Initiative will succeed if "occupation" forces withdraw from Iraq. He added that he sides with any initiative to stop violence in Iraq. . .

Al-Istiqamah carries on the front page a 500-word editorial entitled 'No Alternative for Southern and Central Federal Blocs.' . .

Al-Sabah al-Jadid publishes on the front page a 300-word report entitled "Al-Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr Orders To Close Martyr Al-Sadr Bureaus in All Governorate". . .

Al-Sabah runs on page 3 a 100-word report citing Karbala Governor Aqil al-Khaz'ali accusing Facility Protection Service members of cooperating with gangs. . .

Al-I'tisam on 4 July carries on the front page a 100-word report that the security situation in Karbala is getting worse. The report adds that 95 bodies were found in the first half of this year. . .

Al-Sabah runs on pages 8 and 9 a 2,400-word report on the suffering of Iraqi youths because of unemployment.

Al-Zaman publishes on page 1 an 800-word report on the aggravation of the fuel crisis.

Al-Zaman carries on page 2 a 1,000-word report on the smuggling of Iraqi antiquities.

Al-Zaman runs on page 3 a 700-word report citing the comments of a number of Iraqi dealers on their inability to transport their goods to Iraqi markets due to security conditions. . . .

MESA & AAUP Condemn Violence Against Iraqi Academics

Professors’ Associations Decry Violence Against Academic Colleagues in Iraq.

Issued July 5, 2006

Washington, D.C., and Tucson, Arizona — The Middle East Studies Association and the American Association of University Professors jointly released the following statement, titled “Iraq: Higher Education and Academic Freedom in Danger,” on July 5:

' The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) express continuing concern about the dangers facing academic life in Iraq today.

Virtually every Iraqi institution of higher education is at risk. Universities, colleges, and research institutions operate under severe political duress and without adequate resources, transparent funding mechanisms, or the civil and legal protections to nurture and promote a vibrant intellectual climate and civil society.

Iraq’s intellectual and academic community, long oppressed by the highly restrictive and paranoid policies of Saddam Hussein’s government, have been unable to recover in the pervasive atmosphere of lawlessness and political violence that has followed the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of the country. All campuses and scientific institutions suffered heavily from the months of looting that followed the collapse of the former régime.

The present government of Iraq has done little to ensure the safety of academics since it took office. A significant portion of the current violence against academics has been perpetrated by sectarian militias affiliated with the ruling political coalitions. Professors have been threatened, harmed, kidnapped, and assassinated because of their actual or alleged political affiliations, or because they failed to respond positively to demands of students for special treatment. Communities of students are becoming politicized in a way that threatens the institutionalization of tolerance and the protection of intellectual diversity.

Moreover, the continuing generalized insecurity in the country has forced thousands of Iraq’s best-educated academics, doctors, and professionals to flee, taking with them the intellectual capital for building a stable, democratic, and free nation.

With this statement, we register our profound alarm at this state of affairs. With it, we also pledge our collective determination to take steps, together and with sister organizations, to promote programs and policies in Iraq and on behalf of the international community of scholars and researchers that will positively address this disturbing situation.

The American Association of University Professors is a nonprofit charitable and educational organization that promotes academic freedom by supporting tenure, academic due process, and standards of quality in higher education. The AAUP has about 45,000 members at colleges and universities throughout the United States.

The Middle East Studies Association of North America was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, MESA publishes the International Journal of Middle East Studies and has more than 2,600 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression, both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and elsewhere. '

Two Minutes of Silence for London

At noon on Friday, we should commemorate the deaths of the 52 persons in the 7/7 London underground bombings with two minutes of silence, as is being done (in a different time zone) in the UK itself.

We should remember that this atrocity killed Muslims as well as Christians and was not the work of Muslims or Islam, but of al-Qaeda. It seems increasingly clear that the cell that undertook it was recruited by Ayman al-Zawahiri through a Pakistani client organization, perhaps Jaish-i Tayyiba. Another farewell video by one of the four perpetrators has surfaced, introduced by al-Zawahiri (he also introduced the tape of Muhammad Siddiq Khan last summer). I noted at the time, last year, that the Arabic-language announcement of the operation, posted to the internet, seemed to me to have been written by an Egyptian Islamist, and I now think it was Zawahiri himself.

In his tape, Shehzad Tanweer said to the British: , "What you have witnessed now is only the beginning of a strain of attacks that will continue and become stronger until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and until you stop your financial and military support to America and Israel."

The young Briton, brainwashed by agents of Zawahiri, obviously did not understand his own country. The UK has never paid the slightest attention to such threats, and if he had wanted to reinforce the British public in the policies he mentioned, he could have found no better instrument to that purpose than to menace them with bombings.

Tanweer also did not live long enough to understand his own religion, which unreservedly condemns terrorizing people (hirabah) as a means to accomplishing one's objectives.

What I regret most of all is that our efforts in combatting al-Qaeda have been so inadequate as to leave Zawahiri free to corrupt minds and subvert souls, and to continue to sow terror.

The best commemoration of 7/7 will be his capture, and that of Bin Laden.

Israel's Failed-State Strategy: Cole in Salon

My essay on the crisis between Israel and the Gaza Palestinians is out in Salon.com.

Excerpt:

The actions of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seem intended to create a failed state in Gaza and the West Bank, thus rendering the Israeli claim that "we have no one to talk to" a self-fulfilling prophecy and allowing Israel to continue with its unilateral, annexationist policies, free of the need to even pretend to negotiate.

This shortsighted "strategy," which both the United States and, to a slightly lesser degree, the strangely docile Europeans have signed off on, is a recipe for continued hatred, extremism, bloodshed, injustice and festering grievances. Unless Israel and its patron summon the wisdom to take the long view and hammer out an agreement that will give the Palestinians a viable state, rather than simply trying to smash them into submission, the world's most dangerous conflict will continue to rage, with dangerous consequences for all.

All the metrics I have for measuring these things find that my readers mostly aren't very interested in Arab-Israeli issues, certainly as compared to how interested they are in Iraq or in US party politics.

I think ignoring it is a big mistake. It is part of what got the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon bombed, and it came into the Fallujah crisis in Iraq in 2004. A lot of Iraqis think of US troops in their country as essentially Israelis and call them al-yahud, "the Jews." Like it or not, this conflict helps shape our lives and our image in the world. I know that rightwing Zionists are typically ruthless in trying to squelch any discussion of the topic, and I've had lots of readers write me that they are afraid of being labelled "anti-Semites" for speaking out. But if you aren't a bigot, why be afraid of being called one? The charge would be self-evidently untrue to anyone who knew you, and why should we care what people think of us, who don't know us? The irony is that the virulence of the racism of most rightwing Zionists toward Arabs is mind-blowing.

Anyway, I know-- all too well-- that taking a position on this matter is costly in American society. But after 9/11, we cannot continue to go on allowing ourselves silently to be caught in the cross-fire between the followers of Jabotinsky and the followers of Sayyid Qutb. So please read the article. And do progressive people a favor and subscribe to Salon.com. Not very many magazines in the US would have been willing to publish this essay.

In the course of commenting on the Mearsheimer/Walt controversy, by the way, Philip Weiss makes some fascinating comments on how the internet is replacing the book as a nexus of public debate. He points out that Stephen Walt had published in a book many of the same points he made in the "Israel Lobby" paper that went up on the London Review of Books web site, but the book went unremarked while the online version provoked a fire storm.

PS: See Robert Bryce in Counterpunch on the Israeli destruction of the Gaza power plant and its dire consequences for the Palestinians there.

See also the discussion of the silence of the blogosphere on this issue by Robert Wright and Matthew Yglesias at bloggingheads.tv.

And here's a link to Vermonters for Just Peace in Israel and Palestine.

50 killed, as a Raft of Bodies are Found in Baghdad
Muqtada Begins Vigilante Movement
to Repair Samarra Shrine

Aljazeera is reporting clashes between US troops and Mahdi Army elements in East Baghdad early Friday morning, with some attendant deaths. The puritan Shiite Mahdi Army follows Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Hayat reports that [Ar.] Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki admitted Thursday that there were big problems in the Iraqi police force, even to the point where some of the police were "partners in murder."

Meanwhile, young Shiite nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr began a campaign to get people to volunteer to rebuild the golden-domed Askariyah shrine in Samarra, and then to guard the refurbished building. The move has provoked fears that it will exacerbate sectarian tensions (Samarra is largely Sunni and a center of a vigorous guerrilla opposition to the new, Shiite-dominated government).

Thousands of Sadr's followers gathered in front of his offices in Najaf, pleading to be sent to samarra to protect the shrine. Shaikh Ahmad al-Saffar, who is close to grand ayatollahs like Ali Sistani, said that Iraq at the moment is unstable, and "we fear sectarian turmoil." He called on Muqtada to postpone this campaign.

In contrast, Sadrist leader Sahib al-Aamiri said that the Mahdi Army would be armed when it headed for Samarra, and would be under government protection, to which the government had already agreed.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP report that [Ar.] Muqtada al-Sadr has also frozen all the activities of the offices of the Martyr Sadr II movement for two weeks, renewable. This move was intended to free up organizational capacity for the project of restoring the bombed shrine in Samarra.

Scott Peterson of CSM gives some surprising reasons for which one young Shiite man joined the Mahdi Army. It is to protect the weak and do good-- almost as though he were Clark Kent becoming Superman.

Joshua Partlow and Saad Sarhan of the Washington Post report some sad details about Thursday's events in Iraq.

First, with regard to the blowing up of the Iranian pilgrims at Kufa, they say:

A few hours after the explosion, members of the Mahdi Army, a powerful Shiite militia controlled by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, arrived at the scene and tried to cordon the area. A tense standoff ensued between the militia and local police, who fired their guns into the air. Eventually, the police left and the Mahdi Army remained.

Kufa is admittedly Muqtada al-Sadr territory, and if the Mahdi Army could assert itself anywhere it would be there. But still, the incident is not a testimony to the ability of the police to stand their own against militias.

Young rickshaw drivers who ferry pilgrims around Najaf, many of them orphaned boys, take their lives in their hands according to Reuters.


Courtesy Baztab

Then they say:

At least 35 bodies turned up in various parts of Baghdad, about half of them in Dora, one of the most violent areas of the capital, police said. Eight more people died after two car bombs reduced several shops in the Washash market in western Baghdad to charred wreckage.

Thirty five bodies!? And two car bombs? Wasn't there supposed to be a US and Iraqi sweep of dangerous neighborhoods to stop car bombings and faith-based reprisal killings?

The Maliki cabinet decided Thursday to ban political activity on Iraqi college campuses. Sunni-Shiite tensions are running high, and Sunni Arabs are afraid of reprisal killings against students or professors that Shiites charge were members of or sympathizers with the Baath Party. On the other hand, I'm not sure the decree is constitutional. If students and professors are of legal age to vote, how can you stop them from being engaged in politics? I think what could be banned is only violence or the immediate advocacy of it.

I was watching al-Arabiya satellite television on Thursday afternoon, and they had a segment on the Iraqi economy. This channel tries to be supportive of the new government and the Americans. But they had to admit that the Iraqi stock market, which is very lightly capitalized and only has a couple of dozen companies, fell by five percent this week. An analyst named Tabatabai admitted that the reason was that major investors pulled out in light of the continuing bad security situation. We are always told here in the states that we should trust the wisdom of the market. Well, it isn't saying that things are going well in Iraq. They cast around for at least some good news and reported on a glass factory that was doing good business. Then they admitted that some of it was replacing the windows that keep being blown out by the car bombings.

The oil majors are giving Iraq a miss as long as security is so bad. AP reports,

' "We are interested and they are interested. But we need those conditions in place to take it to the next level," Shell Oil Co. President John Hofmeister told The Associated Press. "It's too soon to make a judgment on how close we are. I suspect we could be a few years away." '

A few years away. That is the estimation of a man who surely is champing at the bit for some Iraq oil contracts. A few years away. The market knows.

Don't miss this interview with Nir Rosen, who--unlike most American observers--knows Arabic fluently and has been on the ground all over Iraq. He is deeply disappointed by what journalists are not telling the US public about how bad it is there. He is also reconsidering whether for the Americans to just up and leave altogether would be the best thing for Iraqis at this point.

See also Rosen's important recent piece in Salon.com, "Did the invasion make things worse in Iraq?".

Tom Engelhardt is illuminating on the destabilization game, and has some comments on the recent tiff over Iraq of Rice and Lavrov.

13 Dead in Pilgrimage Bombing, 40 wounded
Maliki Reconsiders US Troops' Immunity

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki pledged Wednesday to reconsider current Iraqi policy, of allowing US GIS to enjoy a form of extraterritoriality and to be tried by the US for crimes commited while in uniform in Iraq. His remarks were sparked by public outcry in Iraq over the rape-murder of a 15-year-old girl and the killing of her family by a US soldier. The issue could become a major irritant in the relations of the Americans to Iraqis.

Early Thursday morning, guerrillas hit busloads of Iranian pilgrims to the Shiite shrines in Kufa and Najaf. Reuters reports that:

' A suicide car bomber blasted two coach-loads of Iranian pilgrims outside a Shiite Muslim shrine in Iraq at dawn on Thursday, killing [13] people and wounding 40, police and hospital sources said. The bomber drove his car between the two coaches as they arrived at the Maithem al-Tamar shrine in Kufa, a religious center on the outskirts of the main Shiite holy city of Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. '

Later reports up the tally to 12 dead, while Aljazeera is giving 13 dead, 5 of them Iranian pilgrims.

The Shiite community of Iraq will be very upset about this attack, both on religious and secular grounds. Religiously, Iranian Shiites are their coreligionists and the act of pilgrimage is highly valued. But in addition, anything that harms the flow of pilgrims from Iran to Najaf hurts the Iraqi Shiites there financially.

The Najafis are seeking a multi-million dollar airport to fly in the pilgrims.

On Wednesday, bombings and shootings had left at least 18 dead.

Guerrillas set off a big car bomb in the Washash District of Baghdad near a mosque, killing 6 and wounding 18. Guerrillas staged two other major bombings in the capital.

Guerrillas also set off bombs in Mosul and Kirkuk, clearly seeking to inflict damage on the nascent Iraqi security forces.

The kidnappers of MP Tayseer al-Mashhadani have made specific demands, including a timetable for US withdrawal, the release of Iraqis detained by the US, and an end to US military raids on Husayniyahs or edifices used by Shiites to commemorate the martyrdom of their Imams.

If this claim of responsibility is accurate, the kidnappers sound like splinter or militant Mahdi Army guerrillas.

============

PS

RSS readers will now have to go to Feedburner at this new URL address for Informed Comment. I've been having some trouble with RSS syndication at blogger and I think I've fixed it but feedburner unhelpfully burned the feed at this new address. Oh well.

Maliki's Basra Security Initiative Fails
25 Bodies Found in Baghdad, Basra

Al-Zaman/ AFP say that a firestorm of protest is building in Iraq over the alleged rape and killing of a 15 year old Iraqi girl in Mahmudiyah, and the murder of her family, by a US GI. MP Safiyah Suhail, a woman representative from the National Iraqi List in parliament, demanded that PM Nuri al-Maliki and Interior Minister Jawad al-Bulani present themselves to parliament for questioning in the matter. She demanded that the Iraqi government be involved in the investigation. She said that this was a matter that touched on the honor of the Iraqi nation and the female MPs had a special role to play in demanding an accounting.

Suhail is former ambassador to Egypt of the new Iraqi government and stood against the imposition of Islamic law on Iraqi women. That a secular person is so stirred up about this suggests to you what the Sunni and Shiite fundamentalists are thinking. For most Iraqis, honor is bound up in the chastity of their women, at least in public, and a foreigner raping an Iraqi girl is a profound humiliation for the entire country. This matter is not going to go away quietly and if the Bush administration thinks it is just a matter of disciplining unruly troops, it has another think coming. Entire colonial empires have been shaken by such incidents in the past.

Al-Zaman reports that 21 bodies were discovered in Baghdad, and another 4 in Basra. Typically these are victims of faith-based ethnic cleansing campaigns.

Al-Zaman also reports 3 other incidents:

1. US troops for the fifth day surrounded the town of Ratba, such that no one could leave or enter without stating his business, and the situation with regard to health and medicine within is deteriorating.

2. US troops invaded the party headquarters of Adnan Dulaimi, a meber of parliament, in Tikrit, arresting guards and confiscating even licensed firearms. Dulaimi leads the Iraqi Accord Front in parliament, with 44 seats out of 275. At the moment, his bloc has suspended membership, to protest the kidnapping of one of their members on Saturday in a Shiite area controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.

3. Gunmen assassinated 4 persons in Karbala, including 2 Baathists.

The deputy minister of electricity, Raad al-Haris, and 19 of his bodyguards were kidnapped in east Baghdad on Tuesday, held for several hours, and then released.

The Iraqi government is studying a request by Sunni Arab guerrilla groups for arms so that they can fight foreign elements on behalf of the government they had been trying to overthrow. I know. I can't understand it either. Sounds to me like insurgents figuring out a way to have the government pay for their insurgency. There aren't that many foreign fighters in Iraq, anyway.

With Italy and Japan withdrawing their troops, the British are feeling increasingly isolated in southern Iraq, where they have 8,000 troops to provide security to several million Iraqis. Tony Blair signalled Tuesday that there is a limit even to his patience (and longevity), and that the US can't count on this level of UK support past late 2007.

The bad news is that many Iraqis themselves in the south believe that the British pull-out from Maysan and Muthanna provinces is premature. Muthanna's police chief has just resigned, and the province's governor has tendered his resignation, though he will stay on for a bit.

For some strange reason, the governing council took it into its head to fire 300 policemen in Samawa. This desperate action, exactly the wrong thing to do as the British depart, suggests that even provinces in the oil-rich south are strapped for cash. The fired policemen are not going quietly, and are demonstrating. One of them even broke into the house of a council member and beat him up. The governing council members complain that they have no security. (Then why did they fire 300 policemen?) If this kind of chaos is going to attend the British withdrawal over the next 18 months, it is not a good sign.

And, from what Nancy Youssef of the McClatchy Newspapers group reports about Basra, chaos is not likely to go away any time soon. She concludes that PM Nuri al-Maliki's security initiative in Basra has simply failed. The 10th Army Division troop presence and checkpoints faded quickly, and militia and tribal violence and in-fighting proceeded apace, as did the ethnic cleansing of Sunni Arabs and assassinations of Sunni intellectuals and a major cleric.

Raheem Salman and Borzou Daragahi of the LA Times confirm this picture, likening the key oil exporting port in the south to gang-ridden Chicago of the 1920s. They say that the violence is driven by turf wars over oil smuggling. If this allegation is correct, that Iraq is again producing 2.5 million barrels a day of oil is irrelevant to the country's security. The real question is who is capturing these profits (apparently there is no functioning audit that would answer the question). Smuggling apparently amounts to $4 billion a year, not chump change. The major Shiite party-militias in Basra are competing for this money, including the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq/ Badr Corps and Fadhila (the Virtue Party). It appears to be the case that Marsh Arab tribes are also involved in the competition.

Salman and Daragahi write,

' "Not only is Basra falling apart, but the means to reverse the trend are disappearing. As conditions deteriorate, the educated middle classes — the people who know how to run the city — are leaving Basra in droves. Nearly 60 university professors have left out of frustration, officials said. "There are no technocrats in the government," said Shara, whose party is deemed one of the principal players in Basra's political drama. "If there were such specialists, they could address reconstruction and we would have improved services." '

Progressive groups launched a 24-hour fast on July 4 for US withdrawal from Iraq.

World leaders are making suggestions for resolving the Iraq imbroglio. Indian PM Manmohan Singh says that a full restoration of sovereignty to the Iraqi people is necessary. (He doesn't seem convinced that the elected Iraq parliament and cabinet is actually sovereign). Spanish President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said that 'his government does not support presence of foreign troops in Iraq and had thus withdrawn the country's forces from there. "Iraq should be food for thought. It should be a lesson," he said. . . . He said he would prefer UN forces in Iraq to present multilateralism. '

Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats in the UK, is also convinced that we need to bring the United Nations in.

I agree about the UN, providing it is recognized up front that this is a hot war and the blue helmets would need to be authorized to do active peace enforcement, not just passive peace keeping. There isn't any peace to keep. It will in any case have to wait until January of 2009, since the very clever but very shallow man now in the White House can't imagine not winning all on his own.

Al-Zaman in English reports that 190 physicians employed by the Iraqi Ministry of Health have been killed since April, 2003, and 400 kidnapped. An Arabic report said that in toto, 590 physicians have been kidnapped, and 1,000 have fled the country in fear (see below)

The USG Open Source Center paraphrases highlights of the Iraqi press for July 4; excerpts:

'. . . Al-Adalah publishes on page 6 a 1,100-word article by Sadiq al-Rasafi strongly condemning an Iraqi writer for publishing an article in Al-Quds al-Arabi praising Al-Zarqawi.

Al-Ittijah al-Akhar on 1 July carries on page 31 an 800-word article by Mahmud al-Mifraji commenting on Al-Zarqawi's death. The writer says that terrorism will not be stopped in Iraq as long as United States remains in Iraq. . .

Tariq al-Sha'b publishes on the front page a 1,100-word report entitled 'Iraqi and Chinese Communist Parties Meet To Discuss Ways To Enhance Relations between Two Countries and People. . .

Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah carries on the front page a 180-word report citing Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani saying during his meeting with parliament member Jalal-al-Din al-Saghir that the conspiracy targeting Iraqis is being planned outside Iraq. . .

Al-Bayyinah publishes on page 1 a 300-word report citing an unidentified security source saying that the Ba'th Party is planning to kindle sectarian strife by assassinating Muqtada al-Sadr and Jalal-al-Din al-Saghir and dominating Baghdad's Al-Karkh neighborhood. . .

Al-Bayyinah runs on page 4 a 250-word report on the comments of workers in the Bayji Oil Refinery on quitting their work because of terrorist threats.

Al-Muwatin carries on the front page a 140-word report citing a spokesperson for British forces in Basra confirming the discovery of weapons and cars in a raid by joint Iraqi-British forces in Safwan District yesterday, 3 July. . .

Tariq al-Sha'b runs on the front page a 120-word report citing a security source confirming that five people, including two police officers, were injured in clashes with demonstrators demanding the resignation of Al-Shamiyah administrator and Municipality Council. . .

Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah carries on the front page a 200-word report citing Husayn al-Bahrayni, secretary general of Oil Derivatives Distribution Company as saying that employees at the ministry are involved in smuggling fuel in collaboration with the National Guards. . .

Al-Bayyinah al-Jadidah carries on page 5 a 1,000-word report citing tribal shaykhs and citizens in Babil commenting on the security deterioration in the governorate and calling for the dismissal of Babil Police Director Qays al-Ma'muri.

Al-Da'wah carries on the front page a 90-word report citing tribal shaykhs in Diyala Governorate calling for the dismissal of Mujahidin-e-Khalq Organization members from the governorate for its role in Iraq's instability. . .

Al-Mada runs on page 2 a 120-word report that the governor of Diyala has escaped an assassination attempt. . .

Al-Zaman runs on page 4 a 300-word report on a commemoration ceremony by the Health Ministry for physicians killed by terrorists. The report cites officials in the ministry saying that 590 physicians have been killed and kidnapped and 1,000 migrated . . .

Al-Sabah carries on page 9 a 2,000-word report on the spread of heart diseases and the shortage of medical care and medicines in Iraq.

Al-Sabah runs on page 15 a 1,000-word report citing Red Cross Organization Spokesman Nada Dumani commenting on the organization's efforts to provide humanitarian aid in Iraq.

Al-Bayyinah publishes on page 5 a 3,000-word report on the suffering of Iraqi children and mothers due to security disorder and economic conditions. . .

Al-Adalah publishes on page 3 a 600-word report citing an official source at Labor and Social Affairs Ministry confirm