ACTION ALERT: STOP ISRAELI WAR CRIMES IN LEBANON AND GAZA.

URGENT! CALL AND SEND A LETTER TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVE NOW!


U.S. CAPITOL SWITCHBOARD 202.225.3121

click here or copy to browser: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/CFLWeb/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=4650

CALL THE U.S. CAPITOL SWITCHBOARD 202.225.3121 AND ASK FOR YOUR HOUSE AND SENATE REPRESENTATIVES.

Please copy, e-mail and distribute as widely as possible. Also, please tell those without Internet access.

*In the past weeks Israel has killed hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians—in many cases wiping out entire families—in clear violation of international law. I am dismayed that, despite the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas, the U.S. has stifled any attempts to bring the matter to the United Nations in hopes of reaching a resolution. I demand that my representatives speak out against the war crimes taking place in the Middle East right now.

* Tell your representatives that you support an end to aid to apartheid Israel until it learns to live in peace with its neighbors. The events taking place now did not occur in a vacuum. Israel occupied Lebanon in the early 1980’s and imprisoned thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian nationals. This is merely a continuation of that conflict.

*There are 9,000 political prisoners, including women and children as young as 9 years old, who have never been charged with a crime and have in some cases been sitting in Israeli prisons for decades.

EMAIL AND OR CALL THE WHITE HOUSE WHITE HOUSE COMMENTS LINE: 202-456-1111 WHITE HOUSE SWITCHBOARD: 202-456-1414 WHITE HOUSE FAX: 202-456-2461 ============================== Citizens for Fair Legislation http://www.cflweb.org

JOIN US IN THE FIGHT AGAINST ISRAELI APARTHEID TERRORISM

Take Action, sign up for http://www.cflweb.org political action alerts and tell Congress to stop using your tax dollars to support Israeli terrorism. For further political action and information see http://www.cnionline.org and http://www.endtheoccupation.org and http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/ and http://www.voicesofpalestine.org/

SPOON-FED NEWS CAUSES BLINDNESS

FOX and CNN 24 / 7 propaganda machines are undermining objective media. Take action: Call your cable provider and tell them to carry the Al Jazeera Channel on “basic cable”. “If everybody watches CNN, what does CNN watch? The Al Jazeera Channel.” Friends of AlJazeera http://www.friendsofaljazeera.org/ http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage

Please copy, e-mail and distribute as widely as possible.

Did You Know?

Know the Real Terrorists!

A few things the Media hopes that you never learn about the terror state of Israel:

· Did you know that Israel have killed more that 8 hundred Palestinian children in the past four years?
·
· Did you know that Israel has devastated about three hundred houses in just four years thus making thousands of Palestinians homeless?
·
· Did you know that 90 years ago the Arabs of Palestine owned 97.5% of the land, while Jews (native Palestinians and recent immigrants together) owned only 2.5% of the land? And that now the Jews own more than 80%?
·
· Did you know that Palestinians have the highest ratio of PhDs per capita in the world?
·
· Did you know that the former Prime Minister of the Zionist entity, Sharon, was on the list of war criminals for killing thousands of innocent Palestinians?
·
· Did you know that four prime ministers of Israel, Begin, Shamir, Rabin, and Sharon have taken part in either bomb attacks on civilians, massacres of civilians, or forced expulsions of civilians from their villages?
·
· Did you know Sharon was held responsible for the massacre of more than 2, 750 Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. The UN qualified the massacre by Sharon as GENOCIDE.
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· Did you know Did you know Sharon's commando unit in 1953 razed the Palestinian village of Qibya killing all its citizens and bombed all the houses, mosque and schools.
·
· Did you know that non-Jewish Israelis can not buy or lease land in the Zionist entity?
·
· Did you know that Palestinian license plates in Zionist entity are color coded to distinguish Jews from non-Jews?
·
· Did you know that Israel allots 85% of the water resources for Jews and the remaining 15% is divided among all Palestinians in the territories? For example in Hebron, 85% of the water is given to about 400 settlers, while 15% must be divided among Hebron's 120,000 Palestinians?
·
· Did you know the United States awards Israel over $5 billion in aid each year?
·
· Did you know that yearly US aid to Israel exceeds the aid the US grants to the whole African continent?
·
· Did you know that the Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?
·
· Did you know that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections from its sites?
·
· Did you know that Israel currently occupies territories of two sovereign nations (Lebanon and Syria) in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions?
·
· Did you know that Israel has for decades routinely sent assassins into other countries to kill its political enemies?
·
· Did you know that high-ranking military officers in the Israeli Defense Forces have admitted publicly that unarmed prisoners of war were executed by the IDF?
·
· Did you know that Israel refuses to prosecute its soldiers who have acknowledged executing prisoners of war?
·
· Did you know that Israel routinely confiscates bank accounts, businesses, and land and refuses to pay compensation to those who suffer the confiscation?
·
· Did you know that Israel blew up an American diplomatic facility in Egypt and attacked a U.S. ship in international waters, killing 33 and wounding 177 American sailors?
·
· Did you know that the second most powerful lobby in the United States, according to a recent Fortune magazine survey of Washington insiders, is the Jewish AIPAC?
·
· Did you know that Israel stands in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council Resolutions?
·
· Did you know that today's Israel sits on the former sites of more than 400 now-vanished Palestinian villages, and that the Israeli’s re- named almost every physical site in the country to cover up the traces?
·
· Did you know that it was not until 1988 that Israelis were barred from running "Jews Only" job ads?
·
· Did you know that the Israeli Foreign Ministry pays two American public relations firms to promote Israel to Americans?
·
· Did you know that Sharon's coalition government includes a party -- Molodet -- which advocates expelling all Palestinians from the occupied territories?
·
· Did you know that Israel’s settlement-building increased in the eight years since Oslo?
·
· Did you know that settlement building under Barak doubled compared to settlement building under Netanyahu?
·
· Did you know that Israel once dedicated a postage stamp to a man who attacked a civilian Palestinian bus and killed several people?
·
· Did you know that recently declassified documents indicate that David Ben-Gurion approved of the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948?
·
· Did you know that torture by Shin Bet interrogators on Palestinian prisoners is more brutal than what happened in Abu Ghreeb in Iraq?
·
· Did you know that Palestinian refugees make up the largest portion of the refugee population in the world?
·
· And finally do you know who the real terrorist now is?

Quiz yourself on Israeli Democracy:


http://www.palestineremembered.com/index.html

Are you aware that:

· Prior to the 1948 war, Palestinian Christians and Muslims were a two-third majority of the population of Palestine, who owned and operated 93% of Palestine's lands?
·
· Prior to the 1948 war, most Israeli Jews were persecuted and dispossessed European Jews who made a one-third minority of the population?
·
· For Israel to become a "Jewish majority" it opted to expel and dispossess the two-third Palestinian majority?
·
· 80% of the Palestinian people were dispossessed from their homes, farms, and businesses and have been kept out for the past 54 years?
·
· 95% of Israel's lands (which is mostly owned by Palestinian refugees) is open for development to Jews only?
·
· Israeli-Palestinian citizens live almost in segregated communities (or ghettos) because development is strictly limited outside their villages? Ironically, the word "ghetto" was invented to describe the living conditions of Eastern European Jews in Tsarist Russia!
·
· For just being "Jewish" you gain an automatic citizenship in Israel? Plus tens of thousands of dollars in subsidies too.
·
· Palestinian Muslims or Christians refugees, who were born in the country and later expelled, cannot gain Israeli citizenship? Of course, unless they convert to Judaism first!
·
· Pretending to be Jewish in Israel is punishable by law with up to one year's imprisonment? On the other hand, if you pretend to be a Muslim or Christian the law does you no harm!
·
· When the Palestine problem was created by Britain in 1917, more than 92% of the population of Palestine were Arabs and there were at that time no more than 56,000 Jews in Palestine? That Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Palestinians at that time lived in peace with each other?
·
· Palestinians in the early 20th century owned 97.5% of the land, while Jews (native Palestinians and recent immigrants together) owned only 2.5% of the land?
·
· Close to 4 million Palestinian Muslims and Christians are being subjected to Israeli laws that are different than the laws governing the 4.5 million Israeli Jews? Is this a "democratically" elected apartheid, or not, that is the question?
·
· In the occupied West Bank there are "Jewish Roads" and "Non-Jewish Roads"?
·
· Israel issues national identity cards where the religion of the card holder is clearly shown in bold type?
·
· Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza drive vehicles with license plates that have different coloring than the cars driven by Israeli settlers?
·
· Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza hold ID cards that are of different colors than the cards held by Israeli settlers?
·
· The only form of Judaism recognized by the "Jewish state" is Orthodox Judaism, so most US Jews could not get married in Israel. Furthermore, the only conversion to Judaism recognized is Orthodox, so most US converts aren't Jewish enough.
·
· Just prior to the 1948 war, Jews owned under 7% of Palestine's land, and to increase their share after the war, they passed the "Absentees' Law" which dispossessed the Palestinian majority land owners who later became "absent". What is even more tragic was the passage of an oxymoron law, called "Present Absentees' Law," which dispossessed the Palestinian-Israeli citizens who became internal refugees in Israel. It is worth noting that the internal Jewish refugees were not dispossessed as a result of this racist law.
·
· The U.S. funneled into the Israeli economy over 130 billion dollars, which is almost twice the amount devoted to rebuilding Western Europe after WW II!
·
· Israeli democracy is a facade for "Jewish Democracy?"
·
· Israel has nuclear weapons, and it was close to dropping one on Cairo in 1973?
·
· Israeli soldiers use human shields in battle to minimize their casualties?
·
· Israel killed over 20,000 Lebanese and Muslims (90% of whom are civilians) with American made and paid for weapons?
·
· Ariel Sharon was under indictment in Belgium for war crimes against Palestinian civilians?

Quotations from Israel’s leaders:

"We must expel Arabs and take their places."
-- David Ben Gurion, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.

"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."
-- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

"There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?"
-- Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp. 121-122.

"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."
-- David Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.

"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country."
-- David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky's Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan's "Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.

"If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel."
-- David Ben-Gurion (Quoted on pp 855-56 in Shabtai Teveth's Ben-Gurion in a slightly different translation).

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people... It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist."
-- Golda Meir, statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."
-- Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.

"Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen."
-- Golda Meir, 1961, in a speech to the Knesset, reported in Ner, October 1961

"This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy."
-- Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971

"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!"
-- Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.

"[Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat."
-- Yitzhak Rabin (a "Prince of Peace" by Clinton's standards), explaining his method of ethnically cleansing the occupied land without stirring a world outcry. (Quoted in David Shipler in the New York Times, 04/04/1983 citing Meir Cohen's remarks to the Knesset's foreign affairs and defense committee on March 16.)

"[The Palestinians] are beasts walking on two legs."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the 'Beasts,"' New Statesman, June 25, 1982.

"The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized .... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever."
-- Menachem Begin, the day after the U.N. vote to partition Palestine.

"The past leaders of our movement left us a clear message to keep Eretz Israel from the Sea to the River Jordan for future generations, for the mass aliya (=Jewish immigration), and for the Jewish people, all of whom will be gathered into this country."
-- Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir declares at a Tel Aviv memorial service for former Likud leaders, November 1990. Jerusalem Domestic Radio Service.

"The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that simple."
-- Yitzhak Shamir, Maariv, 02/21/1997.

"(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls."
-- Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) Yitzhak Shamir in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

"Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories."
-- Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.

On the day of the 9-11 attacks, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked what the attacks would mean for US-Israeli relations. His quick reply was: "It's very good…….Well, it's not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel)"

"The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more"....
-- Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post August 30, 2000

"If we thought that instead of 200 Palestinian fatalities, 2,000 dead would put an end to the fighting at a stroke, we would use much more force...."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoted in Associated Press, November 16, 2000.

"I would have joined a terrorist organization."
-- Ehud Barak's response to Gideon Levy, a columnist for the Ha'aretz newspaper, when Barak was asked what he would have done if he had been born a Palestinian.

"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."
-- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours...Everything we don't grab will go to them."
-- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.

"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online

Occupied Jerusalem: 3 October, 2001 (IAP) -- According to Israel radio (in Hebrew) Kol Yisrael, [Shimon] Peres warned [Ariel] Sharon Wednesday that refusing to heed incessant American requests for a cease-fire with the Palestinians would endanger Israeli interests and "turn the US against us."
At this point, a furious Sharon reportedly turned toward Peres, saying "every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it."
The radio said Peres and other cabinet ministers warned Sharon against saying what he said in public because "it would cause us a public relations disaster."

It is appaling what Israel is doing. They ask for all the shit that they get, 5then cry about it when the predictable and inevitable happens.

ou woman in Beirut films bombing at night near her house
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bl0XT7H6TA0&search=Lebanon

Home video of bombing of S Lebanon:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=De2lCJJ36YU&search=Beirut

Escape from Lebanon: Video blog from French national trying to get out of Lebanon
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hU72G_iRPQw&search=Beirut

Mother and children separated by Israelis
http://youtube.com/watch?v=BOkNISOP43w&search=Lebanon

Slideshow and music: Lebanon...one more time!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QE4YNBi4BH4&search=Beirut

Images and music of current war
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RiaC44RsR5g&search=Lebanon

Images and music from current as past wars in Lebanon
http://youtube.com/watch?v=OUy15Zv-2ig&mode=related&search=Lebanon

Apocalypse in Lebanon TV clips mixed with video
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vkY4Q3jj-9M&search=Beirut

Images of how beutiful thinsg were before the bombings and then how things look now:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=taFpwRyMVlA&search=Beirut

Punk music and images and TV clips from current and past wars:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=m7CV5NoKPiI&search=Beirut

Driving Through Beirut before the current war
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zvzV5O-IT1s&search=Beirut

TV News Report: Tyre still under heavy bombardment
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Wm-t7BdxPxA&search=South%20Lebanon

Kevin Sites - Israeli Terror Attack on Tyre - Aftermath
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5-j4rmu_X88&search=Tyre%20Lebanon

Ambulances are hit by Israeli forces
http://youtube.com/watch?v=p7wroSYRXJo&search=Tyre%20Lebanon

Middle east crisis Residents flee southern Lebanon
http://youtube.com/watch?v=cC8FtRymjRc&search=Tyre%20Lebanon

Kevin Sites - HotZone - More Israeli Murders
http://youtube.com/watch?v=joZpAvxDYZw&search=Tyre%20Lebanon

Protocol 1, Article 51, Parag. 7, which forms an integral part of the Geneva Conventions, states clearly:

“The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations.”

"And there was no doubt of the missile which killed all those children yesterday. It came from the United States, and upon a fragment of it was written: "For use on MK-84 Guided Bomb BSU-37-B". No doubt the manufacturers can call it "combat-proven" because it destroyed the entire three-storey house in which the Shalhoub and Hashim families lived. They had taken refuge in the basement from an enormous Israeli bombardment, and that is where most of them died." -- Fisk PLUS: Photographic Evidence of Crimes against Humanity

Photo:
A rescuer carries the body of a toddler victim


Robert Fisk: 'How can we stand by and allow this to go on?'

Published: 31 July 2006

They wrote the names of the dead children on their plastic shrouds. " Mehdi Hashem, aged seven ­ Qana," was written in felt pen on the bag in which the little boy's body lay. "Hussein al-Mohamed, aged 12 ­ Qana", "Abbas al-Shalhoub, aged one ­ Qana.'' And when the Lebanese soldier went to pick up Abbas's little body, it bounced on his shoulder as the boy might have done on his father's shoulder on Saturday. In all, there were 56 corpses brought to the Tyre government hospital and other surgeries, and 34 of them were children. When they ran out of plastic bags, they wrapped the small corpses in carpets. Their hair was matted with dust, most had blood running from their noses.

You must have a heart of stone not to feel the outrage that those of us watching this experienced yesterday. This slaughter was an obscenity, an atrocity ­ yes, if the Israeli air force truly bombs with the " pinpoint accuracy'' it claims, this was also a war crime. Israel claimed that missiles had been fired by Hizbollah gunmen from the south Lebanese town of Qana ­ as if that justified this massacre. Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked about "Muslim terror" threatening " western civilisation" ­ as if the Hizbollah had killed all these poor people.

And in Qana, of all places. For only 10 years ago, this was the scene of another Israeli massacre, the slaughter of 106 Lebanese refugees by an Israeli artillery battery as they sheltered in a UN base in the town. More than half of those 106 were children. Israel later said it had no live-time pilotless photo-reconnaissance aircraft over the scene of that killing ­ a statement that turned out to be untrue when The Independent discovered videotape showing just such an aircraft over the burning camp. It is as if Qana ­ whose inhabitants claim that this was the village in which Jesus turned water into wine ­ has been damned by the world, doomed forever to receive tragedy.

And there was no doubt of the missile which killed all those children yesterday. It came from the United States, and upon a fragment of it was written: "For use on MK-84 Guided Bomb BSU-37-B". No doubt the manufacturers can call it "combat-proven" because it destroyed the entire three-storey house in which the Shalhoub and Hashim families lived. They had taken refuge in the basement from an enormous Israeli bombardment, and that is where most of them died.

I found Nejwah Shalhoub lying in the government hospital in Tyre, her jaw and face bandaged like Robespierre's before his execution. She did not weep, nor did she scream, although the pain was written on her face. Her brother Taisir, who was 46, had been killed. So had her sister Najla. So had her little niece Zeinab, who was just six. "We were in the basement hiding when the bomb exploded at one o'clock in the morning,'' she said. "What in the name of God have we done to deserve this? So many of the dead are children, the old, women. Some of the children were still awake and playing. Why does the world do this to us?"

Yesterday's deaths brought to more than 500 the total civilian dead in Lebanon since Israel's air, sea and land bombardment of the country began on 12 July after Hizbollah members crossed the frontier wire, killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others. But yesterday's slaughter ended more than a year of mutual antagonism within the Lebanese government as pro-American and pro-Syrian politicians denounced what they described as " an ugly crime".

Thousands of protesters attacked the largest United Nations building in Beirut, screaming: "Destroy Tel Aviv, destroy Tel Aviv," and Lebanon's Prime Minister, the normally unflappable Fouad Siniora, called US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and ordered her to cancel her imminent peace-making trip to Beirut.
No one in this country can forget how President George Bush, Ms Rice, and Tony Blair have repeatedly refused to call for an immediate ceasefire ­ a truce that would have saved all those lives yesterday. Ms Rice would say only: "We want a ceasefire as soon as possible,'' a remark followed by an Israeli announcement that it intended to maintain its bombardment of Lebanon for at least another two weeks.

Throughout the day, Qana villagers and civil defence workers dug through the ruins of the building with spades and with their hands, tearing at the muck until they found one body after another still dressed in colourful clothes. In one section of the rubble, they found what was left of a single room with 18 bodies inside. Twelve of the dead were women. All across southern Lebanon now, you find scenes like this, not so grotesque in scale, perhaps, but just as terrible, for the people of these villages are terrified to leave and terrified to stay. The Israelis had dropped leaflets over Qana, ordering its people to leave their homes. Yet twice now since Israel's onslaught began, the Israelis have ordered villagers to leave their houses and then attacked them with aircraft as they obeyed the Israeli instructions and fled. There are at least 3,000 Shia Muslims trapped in villages between Qlaya and Aiteroun ­ close to the scene of Israel's last military incursion at Bint Jbeil ­ and yet none of them can leave without fear of dying on the roads.

And Mr Olmert's reaction? After expressing his "great sorrow", he announced that: "We will not stop this battle, despite the difficult incidents [sic] this morning. We will continue the activity, and if necessary it will be broadened without hesitation." But how much further can it be broadened? Lebanon's infrastructure is being steadily torn to pieces, its villages razed, its people more and more terrorised ­ and terror is the word they used ­ by Israel's American-made fighter bombers. Hizbollah's missiles are Iranian-made, and it was Hizbollah that started this war with its illegal and provocative raid across the border. But Israel's savagery against the civilian population has deeply shocked not only the Western diplomats who have remained in Beirut, but hundreds of humanitarian workers from the Red Cross and major aid agencies.

Incredibly, Israel yesterday denied safe passage to a UN World Food Programme aid convoy en route to the south, a six-truck mission that should have taken relief supplies to the south-eastern town of Marjayoun. More than three quarters of a million Lebanese have now fled their homes, but there is still no accurate figure for the total number still trapped in the south. Khalil Shalhoub, who survived amid the wreckage in Qana yesterday, said that his family and the Hashims were just too "terrified" to take the road out of the village, which has been attacked by aircraft for more than two weeks. The seven-mile highway between Qana and Tyre is littered with civilian homes in ruins and burnt-out family cars. On Thursday, the Israeli Army's Al-Mashriq radio, which broadcasts into southern Lebanon, told residents that their villages would be "totally destroyed" if missiles were fired from them. But anyone who has watched Israel's bombing these past two weeks knows that, in many cases, the Israelis do not know the location in which the Hizbollah are firing missiles, and ­ when they do ­ they frequently miss their targets. How can a villager prevent the Hizbollah from firing rockets from his street? The Hizbollah do take cover beside civilian houses ­ just as Israeli troops entering Bint Jbeil last week also used civilian homes for cover. But can this be the excuse for slaughter on such a scale?

Mr Siniora addressed foreign diplomats in Beirut yesterday, telling them that the government in Beirut was now only demanding an immediate ceasefire and was not interested any longer in a political package to go with it. Needless to say, Mr Jeffrey Feltman, whose country made the bomb which killed the innocents of Qana yesterday, chose not to attend.

They wrote the names of the dead children on their plastic shrouds. " Mehdi Hashem, aged seven ­ Qana," was written in felt pen on the bag in which the little boy's body lay. "Hussein al-Mohamed, aged 12 ­ Qana", "Abbas al-Shalhoub, aged one ­ Qana.'' And when the Lebanese soldier went to pick up Abbas's little body, it bounced on his shoulder as the boy might have done on his father's shoulder on Saturday. In all, there were 56 corpses brought to the Tyre government hospital and other surgeries, and 34 of them were children. When they ran out of plastic bags, they wrapped the small corpses in carpets. Their hair was matted with dust, most had blood running from their noses.

You must have a heart of stone not to feel the outrage that those of us watching this experienced yesterday. This slaughter was an obscenity, an atrocity ­ yes, if the Israeli air force truly bombs with the " pinpoint accuracy'' it claims, this was also a war crime. Israel claimed that missiles had been fired by Hizbollah gunmen from the south Lebanese town of Qana ­ as if that justified this massacre. Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked about "Muslim terror" threatening " western civilisation" ­ as if the Hizbollah had killed all these poor people.
Continued:
http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/10776513.html



Qana Massacre II - July 30, 2006: Photographic Evidence of Israeli Crimes against Humanity
http://fromisraeltolebanon.info/



CNN photos corroborating this monstrous criminality.
http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/world/0607/gallery.israeli.airstrike/frameset.pics.exclude.html



Pictures From Qana.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article14273.htm



This Is Israel - Qana Massacre, July 30, 2006.
http://www.bubbleshare.com/album/51546/1513878/overview



The Israeli "warning" myth
http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/10776284.html



Ari Berman: AIPAC's Dangerous Grip on Washington
http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/10774406.html



Today's Newswire
http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/2006/07/31/



MARC PARENT
CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS
http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/14409
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Katyusha rockets don't discriminate, but Israel does
Vivian Tabar, Electronic Lebanon, 31 July 2006


Relatives of Habib Awad, 46, mourn during his funeral in the Palestinian village of Iblin, northern Israel, 24 July 2006. Awad, a Christian, was one of the two Israelis killed on Sunday when a Katyusha rocket fired by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon hit his workplace in the city of Haifa. (MaanImages/Moti Milrod)

The world has yet again been made witness to Israel's crimes against humanity. The latest in Israel's long list of atrocities is a non-stop campaign of destruction, collective punishment and displacement, in a now three week military offensive in Lebanon ostensibly aimed at destroying Hezbollah.

In response to Israeli attacks in Lebanon, Hezbollah has launched daily rocket strikes at Israel. On Wednesday, July 19, a Katyusha rocket struck the Arab city of Nazareth, killing two brothers, Mahmoud and Rabie Talussi, ages 4 and 7. This was not the first time a Palestinian Arab town had been hit by a Katyusha rocket.

Immediately following the deaths, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz initially reported that two 'Israeli's' had been killed, as opposed to two 'Israeli Arabs'. Referring to Palestinians living within Israel as 'Israelis' may not seem out of the ordinary to most people; however, the mainstream has rarely ever done so. The media, state officials, and the average Israeli citizen only refer to Palestinians within Israel as 'Israeli Arabs'.

The terms 'Israeli' and 'Israeli Arab' do not mean the same thing. They are used to separate and differentiate Jew from Arab. The 'real' citizen as opposed to the unwanted 'other' that lives in the country while at the same time is relegated to a state of marginality.

After almost 60 years of being 'Israeli Arab' one has to wonder, why now consider Palestinian citizens of Israel 'Israeli'?

At face value this may appear as an act of solidarity in a time of crisis. It could be an attempt to unite citizens who live within the same borders, despite religion and ethnicity, to bridge the gap between Jew and Arab. Maybe the exclusive character of the Israeli state, the prevailing notion that Israel is a 'Jewish' state, rather than a state for all of its citizens, has been abandoned.

By finally including Palestinians in the category of 'Israeli', the stage is actually being set for a broader, more strategic form of inclusion - 'us' vs. 'them'. It is us 'Israeli's' against those 'Arabs'. It is 'them' who are the enemy that threaten the safety and security of 'all Israelis'. It is a cunning way to manipulate the fears of Palestinians, to squash any sympathy for the people in Lebanon and any support for Hezbollah. It is the same old colonial legacy of divide and conquer. Pit the two Arab communities against each other. Make the Palestinians think they are at war with Lebanon as opposed to both the Lebanese and Palestinian people being under assault from the Israeli state.

It is important to note that this fad quickly died, as a more strategic partner to include in the category of 'us' was found.

The day after the attack, media coverage quickly changed. As opposed to the emphasis being on 'Israelis', the magic word became 'Christian' - the two boys that died were at once transformed back into Israeli Arabs. News reports (including those by the Western media) then stressed that Nazareth was a Christian town. Some outlets went to the extent of stating that Hezbollah had 'deliberately targeted a Christian site'. This was an attempt for Israel to further align itself with the U.S. led war on terror which claims to be defending Western Judaeo-Christian values against Muslim 'fundamentalists' who threaten 'western values and democracy'.

Claims that Nazareth is a Christian town are simply untrue. The population changed dramatically after the Nakba. During the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Nazareth remained untouched by Zionist terrorists who feared that destruction of the town would generate negative backlash from the West because of its important historical Christian heritage. Many Muslim refugees, expelled from neighboring relocated to Nazareth. As a result, Christians are actually a 40 percent minority to a 60 percent Muslim majority and half of its citizens are internally displaced.

Although Palestinians in Nazareth know that they are not the targets of Hezbollah rockets, and that if a rocket hits, it's a result of lack of precision rather than a deliberate attack, this makes their already subordinate position in the state more complicated.

Palestinians within Israel suffer from a violent form of discrimination that rips at every aspect of life - a form of discrimination that remains largely ignored by the mainstream. Palestinians remain the target of racist policies implemented by the state to confiscate more land and repress them socially and politically in order to cement their status as second class citizens. Israel's policy of 'Judaizing the Galilee', which aims at expanding Jewish settlements in areas with a high concentration of Palestinians and preventing any geographical contiguity between these areas, has had detrimental effects on Nazareth.

Upper Nazareth, also known as Nazareth 'Illit', is a Jewish settlement built on top of Nazareth with land confiscated from the already densely populated Arab town - the former is twice the size of the latter with half the population. The Jewish settlement effectively separates Nazareth from neighboring Palestinian villages, which probably would have joined to form one large town. Upper Nazareth serves as a structure that encircles and barricades Nazareth, preventing the town from expanding, despite the fact that the population has dramatically increased since 1948. As a result, Nazareth lacks sufficient space for economic development and residential planning and is extremely overcrowded.

On top of that, Arab towns receive far lower state funding than Jewish towns and almost 50 percent of Palestinians families live below the poverty line.

This underlying structure of racist policies and institutionalized discrimination becomes further exasperated when Arab towns are hit by rockets. To date, several rockets have hit Arab towns in the North. Unlike their Jewish neighbors, the Arab community receives little state protection, even in times of crisis.

In Jewish cities, air raid sirens routinely go off before a rocket attack to alert citizens to take cover, but unfortunately there was no warning siren to notify the Arab residents of Nazareth.

Even if there had been, where would the people go? Most homes in Jewish towns have built in bomb shelters, while homes in Arab towns do not. The people in Arab towns like Nazareth do not have the privilege of fleeing to safety in bomb shelters.

Palestinians lack a sufficient structure of proper state protection. These and other events like October 2000, when 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel were murdered by police officers (who to date, have not been punished), are indicative of the sad reality that the Palestinian Arabs possess a mere semblance of citizenship rights and are unprotected by the state that governs their lives.

As the world continues to watch Israeli atrocities in Lebanon and the occupied territories (West Bank and Gaza) unfold, it is important to keep in mind the violence that the state is committing within its own borders against its Arab citizens, who remain a minority that is unwanted and unprotected.