h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

kAZ <SMILEY>



http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/880D485C-1805-44CE-9D17-AF64D6E375F9.htm

Syria threat to shut Lebanon border






Wednesday 23 August 2006


Syria has told Finland's foreign minister that it will close its border with Lebanon if UN peacekeeping troops are deployed there.


"They indeed do not want this and they announced they will close their borders if this takes place," Finland's Erkki Tuomioja said after meeting Walid Al-Moualem, Syria's foreign minister, in Helsinki on Wednesday.



Israel has asked the UN to station peacekeeping troops at Lebanon's border-crossings with Syria so that Hezbollah cannot break the ceasefire by importing weapons.



Syria is the only country which has an open border with Lebanon. Lebanon also borders Israel but the two countries do not have diplomatic or trading relations as Beirut does not recognize the existence of Israel.



The UN is trying to put together a force of 15,000 to monitor a truce in southern Lebanon after a month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim militia. Finland holds the European Union's revolving presidency.



Bashar Al-Assad, the Syrian president, had said on Tuesday that the deployment of international forces on the Lebanese-Syrian border would constitute a "hostile position".



Lebanon responds



Fuad Siniora, Lebanon's prime minister, has responded to Syria's threats by saying that Lebanon was capable of taking care of itself.



"I have heard the remarks of the Syrian president and I respect his opinion but Lebanon acts with all means at her disposition to preserve her sovereignty, her independence and her interests," Siniora said on Wednesday.



Relations between Lebanon and Syria must be based on "mutual respect" because "we have no interest in being in disagreement with Syria while Syria has no interest in being in disagreement with us", he said.



Thousands of Syrian soldiers were based in Lebanon until 2005. They left after over a million Lebanese rallied in central Beirut to call for their departure.




Many Lebanese believe that Syria has used Hezbollah - which it helps fund and arm - to fight a proxy war against Israel in the hope of pressuring Israel into returning to Golan Heights which it captured from Syria in 1967.



If Syria closes its border, Lebanon would find it even more difficult to recover from the recent conflict.



Not only would trade would be harmed but the small country would also have to import its food, building materials and other goods exclusively by air or sea.



UN troop plea



The UN has continued trying to persuade countries to contribute peacekeeping troops to enforce and monitor the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah southern Lebanon.



EU ambassadors and military experts met for more than four hours in Brussels on Wednesday to prepare for a meeting on Friday of ministers and Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, who wants Europeans to play the lead role in the force.



So far only Italy has agreed to contribute substantial numbers of soldiers - up to 3,000 ground troops.




France, which initially wanted to lead the UN mission, has only offered 200 non-combat troops to support the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil).



However, after meeting with Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, in Paris, Dominique de Villepin, the French prime minister, said France might send more soldiers in Lebanon if the UN gives its soldiers a wider mandate to defend themselves.



"Today we're the country that's the most committed and present on the ground. We want to go further once conditions are fulfilled," Villepin said.



"It is extremely important for France - with our strong experience in Lebanon, with international experience in other arenas - that all guarantees can be supplied for an effective deployment of Unifil on the ground," he said.



The UN has hoped to have 3,500 extra troops on the ground by the end of August.

*takes cap locks off*

" kAZ <SMILEY>"

should be:

Kaz

One bowl serves many
By Rachel Shabi

Tuesday 16 May 2006

Work by Osama Zatar. The organisers hope to tour the show

Israeli and Palestinian artists have joined forces to send a message of reconciliation.

Their exhibition, which opened on Saturday, drew more than 2,500 people to at the Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan, in suburban Tel Aviv.

Offering Reconciliation showcases the work of more than 130 Israeli and Palestinian artists, who took part in the project for the Bereaved Families Forum for Peace, Reconciliation and Tolerance.

The group hopes to spread its message to a wider audience through art.

"To reach a different people, you need different mediums," says Aziz Abu Sarah, one of the forum directors. "Even people who disagree with our message were able to come to the exhibition and see what we are doing."

The exhibition features artists such as Menashe Kadishman, Dani Karavan and Mohammad Said Kalash alongside emerging talents.

One bowl

Each artist was given an identical ceramic bowl from which to create their work.

Work by Mohammad Said Kalash

"The bowl is connected with the basic gesture of feeding, or giving," says Dafna Zmora, one of the exhibition curators. "It is something that contains – a message or an idea."

Some artists smashed the bowl and presented a work from its pieces. Others built sculptures with the bowl as a base or used the bowl as a canvas for paintings.

"They each took the commission in a personal direction, each with their own interpretation of the reconciliation narrative and the elements that derive from it – co-existence, pain and loss, fracture and unity," says Orna Tamir Shastovitz, who led the initiative.

"Each one of the artists is presenting a special bowl of reconciliation, a bowl of peace and hope, of art instead of animosity."

Aliza Olmert, wife of the Israeli prime minister, contributed to the show. Her plate is painted black, with the Hebrew words: "Jews do not evict Arabs do not evict Jews do not evict..." in a continuous loop covering the bowl.

A work by Dalia Reisel

Dalia Riesel, an Israeli artist, sculpted a pair of human hands emerging from coiled rope onto a blood-red bowl. The hands are trying to grasp olive leaves, the symbol of peace, which are scattered on the plate.

"The piece is a woman's womb, covered with rope, with the hands emerging and trying to reach the olive leaves," says Riesel. "The leaves are just out of reach, but hopefully the hands will get there one day."

Political message

Jalal Kamel depicts a Palestinian man chiseling the word "peace" in three languages on to a large stone.

The stone is intended as a symbol of Palestine – representing its buildings and its famous export, Kamel says.


A work by Kamel Jalal who was
stopped from reaching the show

"The message is very clear. The man is writing peace on the stone, a solid thing in the ground that nobody can take out – no force, no state can remove it," the Bethlehem artist says.

Kamel was one of the many Palestinian artists who could not attend the exhibition. He was not granted a permit to enter Israel.

Abu Sarah says only about 20 Palestinians attended the opening.

"That's the sad part," he says. "The government claims to want a peaceful solution, and then fights the peaceful attempts of people such as ourselves."

Future moves

The organisers plan to take the exhibition on tour, in Israel and Palestine and then overseas.


Work by Dani Karavan

The original idea had been to auction the pieces to raise funds for the project – taking reconciliation workshops into Israeli and Palestinian schools.

However, James Wolfensohn, who stepped down recently as the special envoy to the Quartet to the Middle East, donated money to the forum so the works could remain together.

The bereaved families forum started in 1994 and is made up of hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved ones in the conflict.

The forum has organised study days and seminars for adults and dialogue meetings and summer camps for children.

Just after the start of the second intifada, the group took 1,200 fake coffins bearing Israeli and Palestinian flags to the UN office in New York.

"We wanted to show that people dying is not just a number," says Abu Sarah.

At the opening of this latest show - which, according to the museum drew one of its largest attendance figures - visitors crowded to see the display of bowls, often lingering over a particular piece.

"When I heard that there are people who were willing to sit and speak and work together, I had to come and see their exhibition," says Sarah Breitberg-Semel, a curator and lecturer from Tel Aviv.

"It is so much the opposite of what is happening on a political level. I can't tell you how much of a strong impact that has on me."

Photos by Ilan Amichai


http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/78593CAF-9021-447E-AC5C-A64C96B356F4.htm

Soldiers killed by left-over weapons


Wednesday 23 August 2006

Unexploded Israeli weapons have been found across Lebanon

Three Lebanese soldiers and one Israeli have been killed by unexploded weapons left after the month-long conflict in southern Lebanon.


The three Lebanese soldiers, including one officer, were dismantling a missile near the village of Tibnine when they were killed, security officials said on Wednesday. It is unclear if the missile was from Israel or Hezbollah.

The Israeli soldier died and three others were wounded by a landmine their army had planted to stop Hezbollah fighters. Lebanese security officials said the soldiers' tank drove over the mine, but Israel said it could not confirm that.

Another Israeli soldier was shot in the head during a military operation in the border village of Taibeh, Al-Arabiya television reported. Israel would not immediately comment on that report.

Israeli soldiers entered Rub Thalatheen and kidnapped two residents, Lebanese security officials said. Lebanon's national news agency said they were brothers, Hassan and Mohammed Abed al-Hussein. It was unclear if they had any links to Hezbollah.

Shebaa Farms shelling

Meanwhile, exchanges of fire were reported near the disputed Shebaa Farms area - where the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet - but officials gave differing accounts of the clash.

The Israeli military said it fired artillery into its own territory as a means of deterrence.

Lebanese security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israeli troops fired across the border into the Lebanese village of Shebaa. The shelling lasted for three hours and hit near Lebanese army positions, they said.

Lebanese troops entered Shebaa last week for the first time in nearly four decades as part of a deployment under the UN-brokered ceasefire.

The ceasefire allows Israel to launch "defensive" military action in southern Lebanon. Hundreds of Israeli troops remain in positions they occupied during the conflict as they wait for a UN peacekeeping force to arrive.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/EFE5CF1E-26EE-40B4-A413-F847B10756A1.htm

Lebanese Army expands new presence in South


Compiled by Daily Star staff
Wednesday, August 23, 2006


BEIRUT: Lebanese Army troops have continued their historic deployment to South Lebanon, taking over positions handed to UN peacekeepers by withdrawing Israeli forces, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon said Tuesday. "Yesterday, the Lebanese Army deployed to areas taken over by UNIFIL from the Israeli Army the day earlier" south of the village of Beit Yahun in the central sector, a statement said.

As of Monday, forward army positions stretched from Buyut as-Siyyad near the Mediterranean coast east to Majdalyoun, Zabqine, Yater, Rashaf, Tiri, Kunin, Mheibib, Shaqra, Majdal Selm, Qabrikha, Ghanduriya and Frun, it added.

In the eastern sector of the border area, army troops had reached Burj al-Muluk, Khiam, Kfar Shuba and Shebaa, the Lebanese military said, adding that troops had yet to deploy along the frontier itself.

The army also dispatched several troop carriers to Mari and Rihanat Beri.

According to the National News Agency, Israeli forces are still lodged on the Sarde Hill, west of the village of Wazzani. The force was reported to be composed of about 20 soldiers and at leat one Merkava tank.

The NNA's correspondent in the Southern city of Tyre said the Israeli forces have yet to lift yet their land, air and water siege on the region, indicating that enemy soldiers set up their bases in Yarin, Marwaheen, Zaloutieh, Boustan, and Alma Shaab in the qada of Tyre.

According to reports, the Lebanese Army is still waiting in the Qleileh area to deploy in Naqoura and Labbouneh.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz warned Sunday that troops would remain in strategic positions inside South Lebanon until a beefed-up UN force had been deployed alongside Lebanese Army troops, adding Lebanese troops would not be allowed to deploy within 2 kilometers of the border until the UN force had deployed.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb

The deployment of government troops to Hizbullah's longtime bastion in the South for the first time in decades was a key requirement of a UN truce resolution that came into force on August 14 to end 34 days of devastating conflict between Israel and the Shiite resistance group.

A statement released by the Lebanese Army Command announced that on Monday the Israelis recorded six violations of Lebanese airspace, thus breaching Resolution 1701.

The overflights were over the areas of Sidon, Tyre, Marjayoun, Nabatieh, Jezzine, Tibnin, and Beirut between 7:25 a.m. and 9:05 p.m.

NNA Hasbaya correspondent Said Maalawi reported Tuesday that Israeli planes flew at a low altitude over the areas of the South, the Western Bekaa, and Iqlim al-Tuffah.

Another NNA correspondent in Hasbaya said the Israeli Army fired flares over the occupied Shebaa Farms and contiguous Arqoub villages at dawn.

A series of explosions were also heard inside Shebaa, accompanied by roars from the reconnaissance jets flying over the areas of Arqoub, Hasbaya and Marjayoun.

The Lebanese Army set up 60 outposts along the north-eastern border with Syria to control illegal passageways. Outposts already there were beefed up starting with the Arida passageway up to the Kabir River in the North, passing by the areas of Summakieh, Hokr al-Daheri, Tal Hmeira, Sheikh Ayyash, Abboudieh, Jani, Hokr Janin, Nour Tahta, Dbabieh, OUweinat, Shadra, Bekaaieh, Wadi Khaled, Qarha, Kneisseh, and Akroum. - With AFP
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=74959

I'm still checking in on things too. Keep the faith and know we are thinking of you and your family.

Hi Lady C There is so much going on at the moment, that I am just trying to keep track of nuances I am finding it very scary, to be honest. In the meantime, there is plenty more stuff to file away in here...


August 25, 2006

The Home Front
How Lebanese Civilians Thwarted Israel's War Plans
By JAMES MARC LEAS

By simply returning to their homes Lebanese civilians played a key role thwarting Israel's plans in its most recent war in Lebanon. As the Associated Press reported on August 14, immediately upon the start of the UN sponsored cease fire tens of thousands of Lebanese families defied orders from Israeli commanders, took to the roads, and returned to their villages in southern Lebanon . Their courageous action stifled any hope the Israeli government may have had for accomplishing its grand vision for southern Lebanon with this war.

As the Los Angeles Times reported in an article, "Old Feud over Lebanese River Takes on New Turn," August 10, 2006, three of Israel's founding fathers, Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, and Moshe Dayan, all favored occupying and annexing southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. Israel launched massive attacks on Lebanon in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996, and now in 2006, each time ultimately failing.

Features of Israel's most recent attack reveal a military plan similar to that used in the 1967 war to acquire the Golan Heights from Syria. The massive bombing of Hezbollah positions along the border was designed to weaken or destroy Hezbollah's ability to resist Israel's coming ground attack. The bombing of population centers and civilian infrastructure in this region was designed to frighten and drive out most of the civilian population that would support the guerrilla fighters. The mobilization of 30,000 reserve soldiers meant that Israel intended to invade and occupy the region south of the Litani with sufficient ground troops to drive out remaining civilians and isolate surviving Hezbollah guerrilla fighters from support and resupply. Then those ground troops would destroy all remaining isolated guerrillas, entirely clearing the land between Israel's northern border and the Litani River. Finally, fully replicating Israel's successful depopulation and repopulation of the Golan Heights, Jewish settlers would be brought in to secure Israeli control of the land and guard against return of Lebanese villagers so Israel could ultimately annex the region.

But Israeli bombing went much further than the region south of the Litani. Israel also intensely bombed residential apartment buildings, schools, power plants, bridges, roads, and hospitals in most other parts of Lebanon, including in densely populated Beirut.

The bombing of the civilians and the civilian infrastructure south of the Litani succeed in driving out 3/4 million people, nearly emptying that region. But Israel aroused world wide condemnation for the part of its bombing campaign that focused on civilians, particularly the seemingly gratuitous part of the bombing extending far beyond the border region that seemed way out of proportion. That civilian targeting could only be explained by an Israeli goal that was far more sinister then Israel's stated goal of retrieving its captured soldiers or driving Hezbollah from Israel's northern border region. The devastating bombing of houses, apartment buildings, power plants, fuel storage, roads, and bridges as far away as Beirut, and the killing of over one thousand civilians, was seen as intentionally directed toward civilians throughout Lebanon. Its purpose appears to have been to demonstrate such a level of ruthlessness as to discourage villagers from returning to their homes in southern Lebanon once the expected UN cease fire was finally imposed.

While the depopulation portion of its bombing in southern Lebanon succeeded, Israel found that its first two weeks of bombing did not dislodge Hezbollah rocket launchers or substantially weaken Hezbollah's ability to resist the coming ground assault. Thus Israel was forced to delay the ground offensive while extending the bombing campaign. When Israel finally launched its big invasion on August 11, intensely negative worldwide public opinion had already forced the UN Security Council to impose a cease fire and only three days remained before that cease fire took effect. Despite the month of bombing Israel found that its tanks and infantry met fierce resistance from Hezbollah which inflicted heavy losses and kept most of the Israeli ground troops locked in a region close to the border. Only by airlifting troops with helicopters could Israel expand its presence to the region near the Litani River but not in a sufficient numbers and not with sufficient supplies and equipment to have any hope of both protecting themselves from guerrillas and guarding the river to stop returning civilians.

Perhaps it was the inspiring ability of Hezbollah to withstand the bombing and continue to resist. Perhaps tens of thousands of civilians just knew that if they hesitated after the cease fire, like the Palestinians, they would become long term refugees. Whatever the reason, despite the pulverizing bombardment for 33 days, amazingly the civilian population was not so shocked and awed that they were immobilized. By the tens of thousands a flood of Lebanese civilians boldly took to the roads in an enormous act of civil disobedience to the occupying Israeli troops.

Hezbollah's well executed guerrilla strategy combined with the massive display of civilian courage crushed all hopes for Israel of getting any benefit at all from this war. The nearly solid Israeli support for the war shattered immediately after the cease fire began, and a powerful wave of criticism exploded, especially among returning soldiers, many of whom announced refusal to remain in the reserves. Extreme right wing factions called for resuming the war with even more devastating strategies for dealing with Lebanese civilians. For example, an editorial in the August 20 right wing Gamla newsletter states, "The IDF could have crushed the resistance within days. It is true that instead of 600-800 civilian deaths, there would have been much more. But when you have in your hands the very future of our people, you cannot think about how things will 'look' or what they will say to you in the mainstream media."

Stopping the next war, whether it is again directed at Lebanon or whether it is directed against Syria or Iran, will require a sustained world wide campaign calling on Israel to immediately withdraw all its forces from Lebanon and abide by the cease fire. Whether the next war can be prevented depends on the ability of people all over the world to deny Israeli and US attempts to find pretext to destroy the cease fire and resume or expand the war. Because Israeli troops continue to occupy southern Lebanon and blockade its ports and because elite Israeli commandos continue military attacks in defiance of the cease fire resolution, Israel provides ample grounds for building this worldwide campaign. Lebanese civilians have already played a crucial role. Now its up to the rest of us.

James Marc Leas is a patent lawyer in South Burlington, Vermont. He is a member of the National Lawyers Guild and is a board member of the Refuser Solidarity Network. He has long been active with Jewish peace groups opposing the Israeli invasions of Lebanon and occupation of Palestine.
http://www.counterpunch.org/leas08252006.html

Lebanese oil slick hits ancient Phoenician port
Thu Aug 24, 2006 12:15 PM BST
Email This Article | Print This Article | RSS [-] Text [+] By Gideon Long

BYBLOS, Lebanon (Reuters) - The Lebanese port of Byblos has survived the Romans, the Crusades and the armies of Alexander the Great but now it faces a 21st century menace, brought to its shores on a tide of war -- oil pollution.

A slick caused by Israel's bombardment of a power plant last month during its conflict with Hizbollah guerrillas has spewed a black tide along a 140-km (87-mile) stretch of the coastline.

Few places have been hit harder than Byblos, which dates back 7,000 years and lies 35 km (22 miles) north of Beirut.


Thick black oil laps against the ancient stone wall of the harbour under the shadow of a 13th century watchtower. Workers use a mechanical digger to scoop it from the water and dump it into plastic tanks on the quayside.

From here it is taken to Beirut to be mixed with gravel and stone to make building material. Much of it will be used to patch up roads blown apart by Israeli bombs during the war, which ended with a United Nations-backed truce on August 14.

"Since we started, we've dredged over 100 tonnes of oil from these waters," said Nabil Saad of the Byblos town council. "We still have several more days' work to do."

A mile down the coast, around 100 volunteers are shovelling blackened sand from once-white beaches.

Israeli strikes on fuel storage tanks at the Jiyyeh power plant south of Beirut on July 13 and 15 led to a leaching of an estimated 10,000-15,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil into the Mediterranean Sea, according to U.N. and Lebanese estimates.

cont'd. .../

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=reutersEdge&storyID=2006-08-24T111756Z_01_NOA440504_RTRUKOC_0_MIDEAST-LEBANON-SLICK.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage4

I know this is back in Gaza, but it illustrates the attitudes. A reuters car was hit after being identified as suspicious. The Israeli army say it was not marked as a press vehicle, although looking at the picture, its hard to see how they missed it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5289984.stm

What got me though was the last line "The campaign was sparked by the capture of an Israeli soldier on 25 June." I may have it wrong but the capture of the soldier was sparked by the breaking of the ceasefire, which killed a family on a Gaza beach. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5065008.stm

You have to look at the objectives... It is no longer a case of saying 'he started it' or 'we are only retaliating' This is going on in a mad loop now for decades...

Here's an interesting twist... another case of the US shooting itself in the foot in terms of world politics:

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-08-27T093801Z_01_L27806324_RTRUKOC_0_UK-MIDEAST-USA-LEBANON.xml&archived=False


Key U.S. legislator says will block aid to Lebanon
Sun Aug 27, 2006 By Adam Entous
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A key U.S. legislator said in Israel on Sunday he would block aid President George W. Bush promised Lebanon and free the funds only when Beirut agreed to the deployment of international troops on the border with Syria.

"The international community must use all our available means to stiffen Lebanon's spine and to convince the government of Lebanon to have the new UNIFIL troops on the Syrian border in adequate numbers," said Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives' International Relations Committee.

Lantos said he was putting a legislative hold on Bush's proposal to provide $230 million (122 million pounds) in aid for Lebanon in the aftermath of the 34-day war between Israel and Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas.

As the top Democrat on the International Relations Committee, Lantos has the power to hold up legislation.

"It is very much my hope that I will be able to lift the hold when the reasons will no longer be present," he said at Israel's Foreign Ministry, where he met Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni after talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

"My purpose is not to withhold aid from Lebanon, my purpose ... is to persuade the government of Lebanon that the closing of the Lebanon-Syria border to arms smuggling from Iran and Syria is in the prime national interest of Lebanon and the Lebanese people."

Syria has threatened to shut its border with Lebanon if U.N. troops deploy there. Israel says it will not lift a sea and air blockade of Lebanon unless a U.N. force helps ensure that no new weapons reach Hizbollah in the south.

In response to the dispute between Israel and Syria over the deployment, Lebanon undertook on Thursday to prevent smuggling.

The United Nations has approved an expanded force of up to 15,000 troops to beef up the 2,000-strong UNIFIL contingent that has been in south Lebanon since 1978.

The Lebanese government has estimated that the damage from the war will cost $3.6 billion to repair and Bush administration officials have expressed concern that Hizbollah was gaining an early advantage in rebuilding shattered south Lebanon.

Lantos, from California, said he would introduce bipartisan legislation to provide more aid to Israel, which already receives more than $2 billion annually in assistance from the United States.

"Lebanon will get help from both Europe, the Arab world and the United States. Unless the United States provides some aid to Israel, Israel receives no aid," Lantos said.

He did not provide any estimate of how much money he would seek for Israel.

Finally found out for certain what happened in Rachaya:

http://www.rachaya-al-foukhar.com/

I clicked on 'news' and got a bit more than I bargained for.

He was right, my kebab shop guy. The church *was* bombed... and 'twasn't the only one.

You put some great news items up here, they often make me despair though. US aid being denied and the grocer being held, makes me wonder what next? I looked at some of those photos, tragic. Kofi Annan has been looking at the damage, which is good at it keeps it in the news, we shouldn't forget.

Kaz. I can't work out what is actually going to happen next. No matter how much I read. For the moment, I am just posting stuff here for the record, I am glad it is useful to you.

Here's an awful one

UN: Israeli cluster bombs 'immoral'


Thursday 31 August 2006, 0:37 Makka Time, 21:37 GMT


Cluster bombs have caused 59 casualties since the ceasefire



Related:
Israeli bomb wounds children
Israeli bombs keep on killing
Cluster bombs await returning citizens



Tools:
Email Article
Print Article
Send Your Feedback



The UN's humanitarian chief has described Israel's use of cluster bombs in south Lebanon during the final three days of the conflict there as "shocking" and "immoral".


Jan Egelund said on Wednesday that thousands of Lebanese civilians remain at risk from unexploded cluster bombs dropped there.



"What's shocking and I would say completely immoral is that 90 per cent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict when we knew there would be a resolution, when we knew there would be an end."

Egelund said that the UN had assessed "nearly 85 per cent of bombed areas in south Lebanon" and identified "359 separate cluster bomb strike locations that are contaminated with as many 100,000 unexploded bomblets".

In Geneva, Chris Clark, head of the UN Mine Action Service in southern Lebanon, said there had been a total of 59 confirmed casualties, including 13 deaths, caused by the explosives since the end of hostilities on August 14.

Egelund said the bombs may have been manufactured "in a number of places", including the United States.

"Those places who made those bombs should have a serious talk with Israel on the use of such bombs that are making our lives so miserable trying to help the Lebanese people.

"I hope the US will talk to the Israelis on that, because it is an outrage that we have 100,000 bombs among where children, women, shopkeepers and farmers are now going to tread," Egeland said, adding that he had not been able to get an explanation from the Israelis so far.

Egeland said he would launch an appeal for more money for mine clearance when he attends Thursday's conference in Stockholm on Lebanon's reconstruction.

Representatives of more than a dozen organisations are also expected to attend the one-day meeting, the first donors' conference to be held since the Lebanon ceasefire two weeks ago.

The United Nations has asked Israel to provide a list of sites targeted during its month-long offensive in Lebanon, something which is crucial for the clean up.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/08158F32-7C46-45D8-9D62-7131B69D84C7.htm

I'm still reading, Wilma - it's scandalous that the Brits and Americans have armed both sides while claiming the moral high ground

Armed both sides? What on earth do you mean Skankyrich? It seems to me that principally the US and the west have armed Israel and Iran and Syria, Hezbollah.

There was a big piece in the Guardian last week, saying that the Israelis had found shells in Hezbollah positions that had been made by British arms companies. Evidently they had been sold to Iran for 'policing' and 'customs' if I recall correctly, and sold on by the Iranians to Hezbollah.

Eh, it's all weird, guys. Don't expect to find out that anyone 'plays by the rules' in the Middle East..

On a positive note:

Yesssss! *snoopy dance*
until the next crisis and exposed lie, at least...


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5304682.stm

Syria 'to enforce arms embargo'

Mr Annan is in Syria ahead of a visit to Tehran
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says he won a pledge from Syria to increase border security with Lebanon and take steps to stop the flow of arms.

Mr Annan announced the move after talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He said Mr Assad had given his full support to the UN resolution that ended the fighting between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

But Mr Assad has expressed objections to Israel's call for a UN presence on the border between Syria and Lebanon.

He says any such move would be a hostile act. The foreign minister has threatened to cut all road links to Lebanon if that happens.

Mr Annan was in Damascus as part of a Middle East tour that on Saturday will take him to Iran, Syria's main regional ally which is also accused of backing Hezbollah.

During his hour-long meeting with Mr Assad, Mr Annan also asked for Syria's help in securing the release of two Israel soldiers whose capture by Hezbollah sparked Israel's month-long offensive.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cook08312006.html

Israeli Myths
By JONATHAN COOK

Nazareth.

In a state established on a founding myth -- that the native Palestinian population left of their own accord rather than that they were ethnically cleansed -- and in one that seeks its legitimacy through a host of other lies, such as that the occupation of the West Bank is benign and that Gaza's has ended, deception becomes a political way of life.

And so it is in the "relative calm" that has followed Israel's month-long pounding of Lebanon, a calm in which Israelis may no longer be dying but the Lebanese most assuredly are as explosions of US-made cluster bombs greet the south's returning refugees and the anonymous residents of Gaza perish by the dozens each and every week under the relentless and indiscriminate strikes of the Israeli air force while the rest slowly starve in their open-air prison.

Israeli leaders deceive as much in "peace" as they do in war, which is why it is worth examining the slow trickle of disinformation coming from Tel Aviv and reflecting on where it is leading.

Many of Israel's war lies have already been deeply implanted in Western consciousness by the media:

* that Hizbullah "started" the war by capturing two Israeli soldiers rather than that Israel maintained a hostile and provocative posture for the previous six years by daily sending its warplanes and spy drones into Lebanese airspace;

* that Hizbullah's launching of rockets into Israel was an act of aggression, even though they were fired after, and in response to, Israel's massive bombing of civilian areas in Lebanon;

* that Hizbullah, unlike Israel, used the local civilian populaton as human shields, even though Israel's continual and comprehensive aerial spying on south Lebanon produced almost no evidence of this;

* that Hizbullah, not Israel, targeted civilians, despite a death toll that suggests the exact opposite;

* and that Hizbullah's arming by Iran is entirely illegitimate, even though the weapons were used to defend Lebanon from a long-prepared Israeli attack, while Israel has an absolute and unchallengeable right to receive its arsenal from the US, even though those armaments have been used offensively, mostly against Lebanese and Palestinian civilian populations.

Similar deceptions are now being sown after the fighting.

For example, it now appears to be accepted wisdom that Hizbullah's rocket attacks on Israel led to one million Israelis being made refugees. The most senior commentator with Israel's Haaretz newspaper, Yoel Marcus, made exactly this point the other day in an op-ed in Britain's Guardian newspaper, when he observed that "about a million Israeli refugees" had been forced to leave the north. Marcus appears to take an extremely liberal view of the meaning of the word "about".

In fact, it is impossible that one million Israelis could have been made refugees, as a quick calculation proves. There are approximately 1.2 million Israelis living in the north, with the population divided equally between Jewish and Arab citizens. Hardly any Arabs left the north during the Hizbullah rocket attacks, either through a residual fear that their homes might be taken by the state, as were those of Palestinians who fled or were terrorised away during the 1948 war, or because they had nowhere else to go. Most assumed, probably rightly, that the Jewish population in the country's centre would not welcome them as refugees.

It is also reported that 300,000 Israelis sought sanctuary in bomb shelters. Such shelters were open only in the north, and do not exist in the country's Arab areas, so those using the shelters must have been the north's Jewish citizens. Which means that if 300,000 of the 600,000 Jews in northern Israel were in shelters, there can have been at most -- assuming all other Israeli Jews fled -- 300,000 refugees.

Why does Marcus want us to believe that one million Israelis were turned out their homes? Because it helps Israel portray the threat posed by Hizbullah in a more terrifying light and because it makes more convincing the claim that Israelis suffered as much as the Lebanese, one million of whom really did end up as refugees.

It also conveniently glosses over the fact that most of the 300,000 (or fewer) Israeli "refugees" were staying with relatives or friends 100km or so further south in spare rooms and out of harm's way. They were not, as were the Lebanese, fleeing for their lives -- their convoys under fire from warplanes -- and living in the open air without shelter, food or water and still within range of missile attacks.

Outside of Kiryat Shmona, close to the border with Lebanon, almost all of Israel's "refugees" returned to untouched homes, whereas tens of thousands of Lebanon's refugees have found their houses turned to rubble, and amid that rubble cluster bombs that threaten to kill and maim them.

But again, that is not what the Israeli government wants us to believe, which is why it published a report this week claiming that 12,000 buildings had been damaged by Hizbullah rocket attacks. That seems a strangely large figure given that the Israeli army says only 4,000 rockets were fired into Israel and that a substantial proportion supposedly landed in open ground. The same report also says more than 400 bush fires were started by the rockets.

So how and why did the government reach the figure of 12,000 buildings? That would mean that each rocket that hit a structure damaged at least another three buildings. Anyone who has seen the destruction inflicted by a Katyusha rocket (Hizbullah's main weapon) will known that it does little more than punch a hole in whatever surface it hits. The spray of shrapnel, however, does minor damage to neighbouring structures (though much worse harm to human beings), such as piercing the rendering on homes or breaking windows. In other words, most of those 12,000 "structures" -- and of course none of us can know what Israeli officials are including as a structure (individual apartments, garages, dog kennels?) -- suffered minor damage that can be fixed in an afternoon.

So why the need to promote that inflated number? Because Hizbullah is reporting that 15,000 buildings were destroyed: that is, wrecked beyond repair by Israel's missile attacks. As is the tradition in Arab society, many of those several-storey buildings were home to multiple families, meaning that probably many more "homes" than 15,000 have been destroyed. Some Lebanese sources estimate that more than 100,000 homes have been ruined. But for Israel the goal is to make it look as though its own people's suffering is the same as that of the Lebanese.

Interestingly, the estimates of economic damage inflicted on Lebanon by Israel's onslaught stand at about $5 billion, a figure which again Israel says neatly fits with its own assessments of its losses. It seems that each time one of those American-supplied munitions was dropped it did as much harm to Israel's defence budget as it did to the place where it exploded. The point presumably is that, if and when the reparations account is being settled, Israel will claim its own losses cancel out those of Lebanon's.

Many of Israel's deceptions are also being used domestically to determine who will benefit -- and who will be excluded -- from the government's largesse as it plans the north's "reconstruction". No suprises about which way the wind is blowing.

Government ministers, for example, have been claiming in the war's aftermath that Arab -- not Jewish -- municipal leaders fled from their communities to avoid the rocket fire. For example, after a tour of the north, the interior minister, Ronnie Bar-On, argued that the failings in some towns and villages to cope with the war stemmed from the fact that local leaders "ran away, at the highest levels". Asked to name the mayors and local councillors who had fled, Bar-On would only say: "Those people I am referring to I can say that in their towns I saw no synagogues."

Why make this claim, even though all the evidence suggests that the Arab populations of the north stayed put during the fighting while, as we have seen, a large number of Jewish citizens did flee? There are two reasons.

First, the government has been embarrassed by reports that nearly half of the civilians killed by rockets were Arab, and by suggestions that the reasons for this were the state's long-standing failure to protect Arab communities by building public bomb shelters, providing air raid sirens and disseminating advice from the civil defence authorities in Arabic. Better to shift the blame on to their elected leaders.

And second, the government is amassing huge sums of money for the reconstruction effort from Jewish groups in America and Europe and is looking for an excuse not to fund work in Arab communities. Another senior politician, Effi Eitam, leader of the National Religious Party, has accused Arab authorities of "pretending to be deprived". The north's Arabs will most likely be cut out of tasting the reconstruction pie. Certainly there is no discussion of building public bomb shelters for Arab towns, even though few in Israel appear to believe the ceasefire with Hizbullah will hold long.

Similarly, the environment minister Gideon Ezra has stated that Arab communities in the north should not receive money to rehabilitate their separate and grossly deprived education system, on the grounds that during the war "the residents there behaved as per usual, as if nothing had happened" -- a reference that sounds like they are being penalised because they did not flee. His reasoning appears popular, among the public and in the cabinet, because Arab citizens generally opposed Israel's war.

A related deception being promoted by the government is that it is committed to compensating workers and businesses in the north who lost income during the war. But the list drawn up by the finance ministry of areas eligible for compensation reveals that all Arab communities have been excluded, apart from four Druze villages (the Druze serve in the army and are treated by Israel as a national group separate from the rest of the Arab population). Most of the money, millions of dollars, is being made available only to Jewish citizens, even though Arab citizens comprise half the population of the north. What a contrast to Hizbullah's non-discriminatory policy of compensating all Lebanese harmed by the fighting, whether from its own Shia community or Christian, Druze and Sunni Muslims.

(Incidentally, according to Haaretz, in one court case being brought by an Arab engineer from the village of Fassouta who, unlike his Jewish colleagues, is being denied compensation for loss of income during the war, it is noted that he could not leave his home because the Israeli army was firing artillery batteries stationed on the edge of the village. So much for Israel's argument, adopted by the United Nation's representative Jan Egeland, that only Hizbullah was using civilians as human shields!)

Israel's post-war deceptions, of course, embrace the Palestinians living under occupation too. Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet secret service, is claiming that, inspired by the success of Hizbullah, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are turning Rafah into "the garden of Eden of weapons smuggling". Apparently Israel knows about 15,000 guns, 4 million bullets, 38 rockets, 10-15 Katyusha rockets, and dozens of anti-tank missiles that have entered Gaza through the Rafah crossing in the past year. Israel believes that just about everything bar tanks and planes is coming across the short border with Egypt it still controls. In a few years, says Diskin, Israel will face the same situation in Gaza as in south Lebanon. We will just have to take his word for that.

But there is a problem. Since November 2005, say human rights groups, the Rafah crossing has been almost continuously shut. Those weapons must have been smuggled in a stampede on the day or two when the crossing was open.

Further doubt is cast on Diskin's claims by a report in Haaretz this week that the blanket closure of Rafah crossing has continued since one of Israel's soldiers was captured by Palestinian fighters two months ago. The reason for the crossing's closure, recommended by Shin Bet, is also noted by Haaretz -- and it has nothing to do with weapons smuggling. The blockade was imposed as a way to put pressure on the Palestinians to release the Israeli soldier, a form of collective punishment illegal under international law.

Diskin's comparisons between developments in Gaza and south Lebanon are at best fanciful. How Gaza's resistance fighters will be able to build hundreds of underground bunkers in the Strip's flat, sandy terrain unknown to Israel as its planes and tanks freely roam the area, and as Military Intelligence operates its network of collaborators, is not explained. But Diskin's conclusions presumably will be used to justify Israel's continuing assaults on Gaza's civilian population. Better, the argument will go, not to wait to be caught out as in Lebanon.

The biggest deception of all, however, relates to the reasons for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's decision this week to reject the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry, headed by a judge, that would have been free to investigate all aspects of the war. Instead Olmert has set up two separate internal committees of investigation, one to examine government decision-making and the other the army's conduct. (A third watchdog body, under the government's state comptroller, is supposed to look at failings in civil defence.)

Most Israelis are deeply unhappy about what one commentator has called Olmert's "committee of non-inquiry". Separate investigations mean that the remit of each committee will be very narrow, focusing on technical issues and failings, and unable to look at the wider picture.

The members of the committee who will be investigating Olmert have been handpicked by him. All the judges approached to head the committee turned down the offer, as did the country's foremost constitutional law expert, Amnon Rubinstein, apparently aware that being party to a whitewash would permanently tarnish his reputation.

It will now be led by a former head of Mossad, Israel's international spy agency. Observers have speculated that 77-year-old Nahum Admoni's room for criticising the government will be extremely limited, given that he himself was admonished by the Kahan Commission of Inquiry that in 1982 investigated Israel's role in the massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Lebanese refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla. Admoni failed to give "an unequivocal warning about the danger entailed in the Phalangists' entry into the camps" that resulted in the slaughter of more than 1,000 Palestinians. Mossad was keenly involved with the Christian Phalangists, attempting to install them in power as a puppet regime.

Kahan took no action against Admoni, however, because he -- like Olmert now -- had only recently taken up his job. It will be hard for Admoni to treat Olmert more harshly than Kahan treated him two decades ago.

Why would Olmert want a discredited committee rather than a proper commission of inquiry, especially if, as he claims, the reason against the latter is that it will take years to report? By then, he may be out of office and never have to face the fall-out. The official reason, according to Olmert, is that such a delay would paralyse the army. But most commissions of inquiry have produced interim reports, making recommendations for reforms, within a few months and have then taken their time to produce a final report.

Other factors are at play, relating to the past and the future. The obvious one is that a powerful commission would almost certainly investigate the six-year build-up to the war following Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon. There is a real danger that its investigations might throw an uncomfortable light on Israel's motives for continuing provocative overflights by its war planes in Lebanon; on its refusal to hand over the maps of the minefields it planted in south Lebanon during its two decades of occupation; on its refusal to release the last remaining Lebanese prisoners in its jails, thereby perpetuating a state of hostilities; and its refusal to negotiate with Lebanon and Syria about an end to its occupation of the Golan Heights and with it a resolution of the disputed status of the corridor of land known as the Shebaa Farms, which Lebanon claims.

But there is an even bigger threat posed by the establishment of a commission. It might unearth evidence that the war against Lebanon was long planned, that it had nothing to do with the capture of two soldiers on the border, that it was coordinated with the United States, and that its ultimate goal was an attack on Iran.

Olmert, and Israel's political and military leaders, do not need another Kahan Commission -- or another embarrassment like its findings about Israel's involvement with the Sabra and Shatilla massacre. Israel needs a free hand to strike unchallenged when the next stage of the war on terror takes shape. Olmert admitted as much in his coded observation that a commission of inquiry would distract from the central goal: "to focus on the future and the Iranian threat".

A clue where Israel might be heading next emerged this week when Olmert's trusted international ambassador, Shimon Peres, "revealed" that Iran is trying to transfer its nuclear know-how to terrorist organisations. Peres did not name Hizbullah but it is only time before the link is made and a new casus belli established.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel.

Blimey!

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F9EC010A-AD18-4715-8CFF-BFE47FB8AF26.htm

Lebanon MPs in blockade protest

Saturday 02 September 2006

Lebanese members of parliament have started an indefinite sit-in to protest against Israel's continued blockade of Lebanon.


Some 100 MPs of the 128-member house were taking part in the protest at the parliament building in central Beirut that opened on Saturday with a minute's silence in memory of the 1,200 Lebanese, almost all civilians, killed in the offensive.

Nabih Berri, the parliament speaker, in a speech urged fellow Arab countries to defy the air and sea blockade by sending boats to Lebanon without seeking authorisation from the Israelis.

The international community, Berri said, should "take all necessary measures to lift the Israeli blockade which constitutes an extension of Israel's terrorist war".

Aljazeera quoted Berri as saying that Arab delegations should visit the ambassadors of the five permanent member states of the UN Security Council, as well as the ambassadors of the Arab countries which enjoy relations with Israel, to urge them to freeze relations as long as the siege on Lebanon remained.

Blockade

The blockade, in force since the war erupted after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12, was "not only being imposed on Lebanon but also the United Nations and (Security Council) Resolution 1701", he said.

The resolution brought a halt to 34 days of deadly clashes between Israel and the Hezbollah and called for the blockade to be lifted.

Berri, who called the sit-in during a visit on Thursday to south Lebanon, which bore the brunt of the fighting, told the mass-circulation daily An-Nahar that it would continue "night and day until the lifting of the blockade".

Before the closure is lifted, Israel insists on a significant deployment of foreign forces, as also called for by Resolution 1701, to curb arms deliveries to Hezbollah which has defied Security Council calls for its disarmament.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5BDF87FD-818F-4435-84DD-EF18297DD725.htm



When assumption trumps objectivity
By Habib Battah
Sunday 03 September 2006

After four weeks of devastating Israeli air raids across Lebanon, American news network NBC began its Nightly News bulletin with its anchorman, Brian Williams, asking: "Does the US really have any influence in this war?"

Hours earlier on sister network MSNBC, anchorwoman Chris Jansing seemed to be at a similar loss. "Can anything be done to stop the violence?" she asked.

But to an American audience, the thought of a Syrian or Iranian news anchor posing the same questions would be fit for a comedy skit.

After all, the Syrians and Iranians wield an obvious "influence" over the course of the conflict according to the NBC channels, which like CNN, Sky and many other Western new organisations reported relentlessly on claims that Hezbollah’s rocket imports were made possible through the help of its two "rogue" allies.

But where was the parallel analysis of multi-billion dollar weapons shipments bound for Israel from the United States? Most Western broadcasters reported religiously on the number of rockets fired at Israel each day of the month-long conflict, often comparing fresh figures with those of previous days and weeks, even peppering the audit with analysis and commentary.

Absent however was almost any accounting of the daily tonnage of US-manufactured munitions dropped from an unknown fleet of US-manufactured jets levelling an untold number of Lebanese homes and villages.

On American television screens, the US role in this conflict was a relatively sanitised one, pictured as diplomatic rather than military; seen across negotiating tables and in visits to foreign capitals — a far less sinister role than that repeatedly attributed to the Iranians and Syrians over allegations of their financial and logistical support.

In fact, so penetrating was the alleged connection that some channels, such as Bloomberg Television, began referring to Hezbollah on second reference as merely "the Syrian- and Iranian-backed group". But why did Bloomberg not choose to identify Israel, the largest official recipient of US foreign military assistance for decades, as "the US-backed state"?

Whether the decision was deliberate or unconscious, the prevailing notion of non-military US involvement is just one of many underlying assumptions communicated by the US media about the conflict between Israel and Lebanon, assumptions that were continually reinforced in comments made by anchors and by hired analysts.

Viewed as part of an overall package, the assumptions appear to reflect US foreign policy, particularly the relationship with Israel, much more than the pursuit of journalistic objectivity.

Of course it would be unfair to generalise by suggesting that the Western media did a poor job of covering this war. On the ground in the midst of air strikes, ground fire and naval attacks, American and European journalists, particularly those reporting from south Lebanon, genuinely risked their lives to tell the story.

The efforts of many Western reporters operating out of towns such as Tyre at a time when the Israeli military vowed to fire on any vehicle that moved were no less valiant than those displayed by their colleagues from the Arab media. However, a clear difference emerged between battlefield reporting and the animated conversations that went on thousands of miles away in air-conditioned studios. At some points it even appeared as if the two were completely contradictory.

Beginning with the war in Iraq, American media outlets developed an obsession with hosting former military personnel as analysts, so much so that it now appears as if large American networks have become a sort of retirement programme for the US military’s top brass. An inherent problem with this formula is a tendency to reflect the views and strategic interests of the US government rather than offer critical analyses that shed light on the complex realities of the battlefield.

Take coverage of the Israeli commando raid on Baalbeck during the third week of the conflict on August 2. The Israeli military had reported that it kidnapped five Hezbollah members, but MSNBC's reporter on the scene quoted local villagers who said those apprehended were "just nobodies".

Hezbollah also claimed that ordinary civilians, not fighters, had been kidnapped. Meanwhile Israeli newspaper Haaertz quoted Lebanese sources as saying that more than a dozen civilians were killed in the attack.

Details may still have been sketchy on the ground in the Bekaa valley but in MSNBC's East Coast studio, the view from its military analyst, Rick Francona, was starkly clear. Francona, a former lieutenant-colonel in the US Air Force, swiftly praised the attack as an "excellent raid" and "well done" on Israel’s part. He then began to postulate confidently about the motives behind the operation, saying "Israel obviously had intelligence of high-profile targets" and naming Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, as a possibility.

But even Israel’s chief of staff, Dan Halutz, appeared to be playing down the operation, with an article in Haaretz quoting him as saying "the soldiers had not aimed to take any individuals in particular, but rather to demonstrate that the IDF [Israeli military] could reach any part of Lebanon".

Not only does Francona manage to analyse the situation solely from Israel’s point of view, but his optimism even appears to exceed that of the Israelis themselves.

Weeks later, on August 23, the Lebanese press would post pictures of the Baalbeck captives returning home, indicating that all five men had been returned to Lebanon through the International Committee of the Red Cross, which served as a liaison with the Israeli military.

The chief suspect had been Hassan Nasrallah; not the leader of Hezbollah but an elderly village farmer that shared the same first and last name. "They wanted to use us for propaganda about the arrest of Hassan Nasrallah," the former detainee told Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper in a reference to the Hezbollah leader.

Among the other returned captives were relatives and friends of Nasrallah, the farmer that is.

Looking back at the initial coverage, one would wonder why MSNBC and countless others chose to report the claims of the Israeli military machine over those of witnesses on the scene.

The Baalbeck incident was by no means isolated. Time and again, the TV generals seemed so confident in Israel's stance that any talk of malicious activity was dismissed regardless of pending investigations.

Another case in point was Israel’s attack on a UN post, killing four observer troops, on July 26. Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, quickly condemned the strike as "apparently deliberate", noting "a co-ordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long-established and clearly marked UN post".

The Irish foreign ministry said one of its officers at the post had made at least six warning calls to the Israelis during their bombardment. Reports also emerged of email correspondence from a Canadian soldier giving warning that the Israelis had been striking near the UN position for "weeks upon weeks", according to the soldier’s wife who was quoted by Canadian TV as calling the Israeli attack "intentional".

Meanwhile UN officials quoted by Reuters said "the firing continued even as rescue operations were under way", while Annan called for a "full investigation" into the "disturbing incident".

But these multiple claims seemed to be of little consequence to the CNN military analysts back home. A retired US Air Force general employed by the station dismissed the controversy outright, saying the Israeli strike was simply "a screw-up, a major screw-up".

Assumptions over Israel’s intentions were not limited to analysts but also to senior journalists, such as Tim Marshall, Sky’s foreign editor, who confidently labelled the attack as "inadvertent" and "an accident waiting to happen" on the same evening as it had occurred. It was almost as if Marshall were pre-empting the Israeli government’s apology and denial of wrongdoing, which would not come until the next day.

Instead of adopting a cautious approach to a developing story - as any good journalist would - the authoritative voices from CNN and Sky seemed merely to reflect the views of Israel and its allies. Listening to a press statement from the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, it almost seemed as though the press outlets had become a conduit for official statements. "We take them at their word," Bolton said of the Israeli reaction. "There is no evidence to the contrary."

Less than a week after the killing of the UN observers, the headlines shifted to another attack by Israel, this time in Qana where at least 28 civilians, including 16 children, were killed as a result of air attacks. Qana also happens to be the site of an attack by Israel in 1996 that killed more than 100 people - Israel denied responsibility at the time but subsequent UN investigations were inconclusive.

Israeli officials also denied responsibility for the more recent bloodbath, accusing Hezbollah of somehow staging the attack by firing from the area, using the civilians as human shields. Israel's UN ambassador, during a speech at the Security Council, even went so far as to entertain the possibility that Hezbollah "wanted and wished" for the mass killing.

American news outlets began to pick up the claim, despite the absence of ground reporting or any other kind of supporting evidence. As bodies were being carried out of the rubble, a CNN anchorwoman in Atlanta turned to an Arab media analyst and asked if Arab TV channels acknowledged Hezbollah's use of civilians as human shields. The analyst did not refute the claim but merely indicated that Hezbollah criticism was a taboo subject for regional news networks.

Later CNN military analysts would describe Hezbollah as a "terrorist organization" that breached Geneva Conventions by using human shields. Despite the lack of physical evidence in either direction, it seemed just as easy for the in-studio analysts to assume Israel's innocence as it was for them to assume guilt on the part of Hezbollah, even when the Israeli military did the actual shooting.

Israel’s third "accident" came on August 11 when six innocents were killed as its missiles struck a civilian convoy fleeing the bombardment in South Lebanon.

Three days later, when the smoke began to clear and a shaky ceasefire took hold, the Lebanese death toll had reached 1,100, the vast majority being civilians. On the Israeli side, the majority of deaths were military, 117 soldiers and 40 civilians, according to Reuters. (Hezbollah casualties were quoted as a separate figure with the group claiming no more than 80 and Israel claiming more than 500.)

The vast disparity between Lebanese civilian deaths and those of Israeli civilians remained formulaic throughout the war, but the TV generals seemed to tell a different story, constantly using the adjective "indiscriminate" to describe Hezbollah’s rocket attacks and "very accurate" in describing Israel’s tactics and weaponry.

In fact, on several occasions, Israeli officials interviewed by American broadcasters touted Israel’s policy of restraint and gave warning of the country’s ability to pursue a "scorched earth policy" in Lebanon.

Interviewers often accepted such a response either by ending the interview at that point or moving on to different questions. One can hardly imagine an American interviewer remaining silent if an Arab official spoke of flattening the Jewish state in such genocidal terms.

Few phrases were repeated more often during this war than that of "Israel’s war against Hezbollah" and "Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets" mainly in South Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The examples of this usage on NBC, CNN, Sky and many, many other channels were simply ubiquitous throughout the month of war coverage — the two phrases used many times a day as an introduction to the whole package of reporting, all framed as a war solely on Hezbollah. However, on the ground, there could not have been a more unrealistic assessment of reality.

According to a report released by Oxfam on August 14, the destruction across Lebanon included "7,000 homes, 160 factories, markets, farms and other commercial buildings, 29 water and sewage-treatment plants, electrical plants, dams, ports and airports, 23 petrol stations, 145 bridges and overpasses; 600 kilometres of roads".

The figures do not include damage to television towers, which were attacked in at least four different places across the country, disrupting signals and causing millions of dollars in damage to the Lebanese broadcasting industry.

Where were the TV generals to explain the threat of media coverage to Israel’s war on Hezbollah? Lebanon’s entire transnational road system was incapacitated by Israeli missiles, but when anchors rationalised this by speaking of "Hezbollah supply lines", where were the military men to explain that weapons could easily be smuggled through back roads and mountain passages?

Was it clear that Hezbollah did not have its own discreet transportations routes to begin with?

And when the Lebanese international airport was struck repeatedly, where were the generals to explain that rockets had traditionally been carried into Lebanese territory on flat beds and not commercial airliners?

The battlefield analysts seemed so transfixed on analysing Israel's invasion tactics that they rarely looked at the conflict from the opposite end of the map. So much airtime was devoted to Israeli commanders and military spokesman claiming victory, but Hezbollah representatives seemed to have been boycotted by the American press much as they had been boycotted by the American government.

In reality, Hezbollah was claiming victories of its own, but at times it seemed as if the American media were too busy reflecting their government’s viewpoint to have noticed.

The TV generals dutifully relayed Israel’s daily claims of destroying rocket launchers and medium-range missiles by shading overhead maps with digital pens. But rarely did they discuss Hezbollah's attacks on scores of Israeli Merkava tanks in what was seen as valiant effort at resisting one of the world's most powerful military machines.

If the shading of military maps proved too complicated for the American public to comprehend, broadcasters and commentators often broke down their assumptions in more basic terms. When Israel, for example, decided to launch a land invasion to claim all Lebanese territory south of the Litani river, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer simply referred to the attack as "what some are calling a new Normandy," and "Israel’s D-Day"; a reference to the Allied powers' invasion of Nazi territory in World War II.

When Blitzer began to discuss that day’s events on the battlefield, he, like dozens of other American broadcasters, spoke of Hezbollah rockets landing in "Israeli neighbourhoods". Israel on the other hand, retaliated by bombing "Hezbollah strongholds".

But in reality, these strongholds were also neighbourhoods and support among their residents for Hezbollah could not have been any less than Israeli citizens' support for their own military. If Hezbollah areas cannot be considered neighbourhoods, then why not refer to Israeli neighbourhoods as "Israeli military strongholds"?

After all, a recent report in the Guardian newspaper in Britain by Jonathan Cook alleged that Israel also built military installations and mortar batteries near residential areas. In any case, the lack of balance is problematic: it conveys humanity on the one side and vague militarism on the other.

As another example, Blitzer conducted one of two CNN interviews with the grieving wife of an Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hezbollah. But where were the parallel interviews with the families of Lebanese held by the Israelis? How could audiences really identify with the other side if all of its emotive, humanising details were repeatedly omitted?

In a show that aired on MSNBC during the first week of the conflict, Chris Matthews illustrated daily life in Haifa by comparing it with a city in California; "very modern", he explained. Cosmopolitan Beirut, on the other hand, where the nightlife rivals any capital in Western Europe, did not get a mention in the entire show.

Detail from Israel also entered the religious realm during a separate broadcast with Rita Cosby, an anchorwoman who qualified a report of rocket attacks on the city of Nazareth as an attack on the "home town of Jesus".

But where was the mention of Jesus’s wine-making miracle in the Lebanese town of Qana during the mass killings that took place there? And what of the many other biblical references across Lebanon, in Tyre and Sidon when the two cities were subjected to continuous Israeli shelling?

In the end, some broadcasters ditched the metaphors altogether. Tucker Carlson, an MSNBC talk-show host, actually criticised Israel’s tactics in fighting Hezbollah while interviewing an Israeli spokesperson. But he made no qualms with objectivity during his concluding statement. "I hope you succeed," he told the Israeli official. "And I hope you do it quickly."

Can one imagine an American broadcaster ever conveying such enthusiastic support to a Hezbollah official?



Habib Battah is the managing editor of the Journal of Middle East Broadcasters.