If the US miscalculated on Israel’s “precision intervention,” the Jewish State over-estimated their capacity to bomb Hezbollah into submission. The Israeli regime proceeded to launch a land war, which is extremely costly in the mountainous zones of South Lebanon. For the first time there were large-scale Israeli military casualties, which mounted; the dying was not only among innocent, unarmed Lebanese families killed by Israeli planes and helicopters. Hezbollah’s action in attacking and capturing two Israeli soldiers was to come to the humanitarian aid of the besieged Palestinians of Gaza, suffering the hammer blows of Israel’s invasion and daily assassinations. Neither Syria nor Iran had any influence on Hezbollah’s decision to take Israeli pressure off the Palestinians. According to several Iran experts, “Iran has taken a pragmatic approach in its foreign policy and does not want to get into a serious confrontation with Israel,” (Financial Times July 18, 2006 p 3). Another expert argued “Iran was not looking for a crisis in Lebanon at a critical moment in the nuclear diplomacy,” (FT ibid). An expert on Hezbollah pointed out “it was inconceivable that Iran had ordered Hezbollah to take Israeli soldiers prisoners. Hezbollah leaders are not the types to take orders from elsewhere,” (FT ibid). In addition Israel was holding numerous Lebanese political prisoners, some for over a decade and Hezbollah sought to secure a prisoner exchange, as well as to free Lebanese territory still under Israeli occupation.

Israel, by attacking Lebanon and focusing on Hezbollah, sought to further isolate the Palestinian government and to continue its policy of bombing its people into a “voluntary” exodus. During the first two weeks of the Lebanese bombing, Israel continued its assassination and bombing campaign in Gaza and the West Bank, killing and maiming scores of civilians, children and resistance fighters. Perversely, Israel by raising the death (nearly 500), destruction (an estimated $2 billion dollars) and forced exodus of at least 750,000 civilians in Lebanon, has effectively distracted the philo-Israel mass media focus from the daily murder and injury of dozens of Palestinians. Mass media coverage of Israeli genocide in Lebanon is at its worst: the television media – CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and National Public Radio and the respectable press not only repeat the Israeli propaganda about ‘precision-guided missiles…destroying Hezbollah bunkers,” but focus on the handful of Israeli deaths and injuries as opposed to the thousands of Lebanese civilian deaths and injuries and the million who are homeless, without electricity or water and subject to 5-ton bombs looking for ‘bunkers’ but locating multi-storied apartment blocks. “At least one third of Lebanese casualties are children,” according to the UN’s Jan Egeland after a field inspection. Less than one-tenth are Hezbollah fighters. Faced with massive civilian bombings, US Secretary of State Rice referred to it as “the birth pangs” of a new order just as her predecessors in the Third Reich justified the bombing of London during World War Two.

On July 24, 2006 the Daily Alert, the news sheet of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations published and re-published articles written by apologists for Israel’s bloody invasion. Not a single criticism of the flight of at least 750,000 refugees, not a word of the destruction of apartments, not even a passing mention of the murder of over 100 children. Quotes from President Bush opposing a ceasefire, of ultra rightist “Israel Firster” Ambassador Bolton (US Ambassador to the UN) defending Israel’s terror bombing arguing that the destruction of Lebanon is less consequential than the few small rockets falling in Israel with deaths but not effect on the infrastructure…Op-Ed articles in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and New Republic support Israel’s bloodbath. Editorials in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Miami Herald closely follow the Lobby’s lines.

 Save as PDF