With Syria out of Lebanon, Washington secured a one-sided UN resolution calling for the disarming of Hezbollah, without any military or territorial concession from Israel (such as the return of Israeli occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms) or the return of Lebanese or Hezbollah prisoners languishing in Israeli prisons for up to 10 years. That UN resolution, probably the only one Israel abides to for obvious reasons, subsequently provided part of the cover for Israel’s invasion as they bombed Lebanon into a miserable state more like Afghanistan than a vibrant Mediterranean republic. Israel’s strategy was transparent: it sought to isolate Hezbollah in the world, securing UN support via Washington and pressure from the Lobby on the Bush Administration, and to promote an internal conflict in Lebanon between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government, in which the US/UN would intervene in favor of its favored Beirut clients.

Failing on both counts, Israel decided, in consultation with Washington, to launch a frontal murderous assault on Lebanon on the pretext of the captured soldiers and attacking Hezbollah. Washington saw in the Israeli military attack several favorable possibilities apart from destroying the anti-imperialist Hezbollah. One was to isolate and create a pretext to attack Syria and Iran if they exerted any efforts on behalf of the Lebanese. Secondly Washington saw the Israeli invasion as a means to distract the horrified world opinion away from the US genocidal occupation of Iraq. Thirdly the Bush administration sought to secure the Jewish Lobby’s continued powerful media influence in support of the US occupation of Iraq when a majority of US citizens were increasingly hostile. Finally, in supplying Israel with weapons of mass destruction, like five-ton bombs, the Republicans and Democrats sought to secure campaign funding from their millionaire and billionaire Jewish political supporters.

For Israel, the military attack was directed toward destroying all of Lebanon, converting it into an economic wasteland, with the idea that by ethnically cleansing the Lebanese civilians from southern Lebanon, they would have an easier time in declaring the country a “free-fire” zone – to be bombed at will killing any Hezbollah sympathizers, activists, social workers, medics and fighters. The strategy was to “empty the pond (southern Lebanon and south Beirut – perhaps 40% of the country’s population) to catch the fish (Hezbollah).” (Hezbollah is a mass political and social movement with a mass base of 1.1 million Lebanese). In the process, Israel seeks to create a client regime in Lebanon and to cut off the moral and material support, which Hezbollah gives to the democratically elected Hamas government in Palestine.

In the course of events, Israel’s and the US’s assumptions failed. Israel’s massive terror bombing undermined the pro-US Beirut regime and turned the great majority of Lebanese in favor of Hezbollah. In the total absence of the Lebanese government, it was Hezbollah, which rushed victims to hospitals, provided food, evacuation convoys and a modicum of relief to all Lebanese – regardless of affiliation. Washington’s precautions to the Israeli’s to respect Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure were brazenly ignored by the Jewish state from the start, knowing full well that the Jewish Lobby in the US would ensure Washington’s complicity in mass murder and the undermining of their own client regime.

There was never any question that the White House facing a choice between defending a conservative, recently installed Lebanese regime or supporting Israel’s total war, the Lobby and Tel Aviv would be supported – hands down.

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