To get away with terrorism, Israel uses the crimes committed against Jews by West Europeans to justify its acts of terrorism and vilify any criticism of its terror as “anti-Semitism”. Europeans have vehemently supported Israeli action, because Israeli action of playing victim remove the guilt and covers-up the existence of European crimes against Jews. In addition, any legitimate resistance to Israel’ terror is labeled “terrorism” in order to justify greater terrorism.

In playing victim, Israel manipulates and uses the mainstream (mass) media –inherently pro-Israel, and anti-Arabs and Muslims – in very sophisticated and efficient way to portray its acts of terrorism as “self-defence” and at the same time demonise its victims as “Untermenschen” or subhumans – in the same way Nazis demonised Jews – whose lives are cheaper than Jewish ones. The task is made easy by the fact that most of the mainstream media are own by either pro-Israel Jews or by pro-Israel Zionists concentrated mostly in the U.S. and in Britain with a global audience.

When Lebanese (or Palestinian) civilians are killed by Israel’s acts of terrorism, Israeli propagandists and Western media immediately exonerate Israel by blaming resistance fighters of using civilians as “human shields”. As it is happen in the current Israeli aggression against Lebanon. Israeli and Western media are deliberately distorting the facts and blaming the Hizbullah resistance fighters of hiding among the civilian population. However, reports from the ground in Lebanon consistently show that Israeli claims are always false. Firstly, knowing that they risk being betrayed by collaborators, Hizbullah’s fighters go to great length to avoid contacts with civilians and stay as far away from civilians as possible. Secondly, rockets and missiles are fired from open spaces and could not be fired from built-up areas.

Furthermore, Israeli soldiers are well-known and publicly use Palestinian children to shield them when attacking Palestinian resistance. In fact the currents Israeli aggression on Lebanon – a defenceless nation – is designed to coerce not only the Lebanese people to rise up against Hizbullah, but also to blackmail other nations and to use the war as a rehearsal for a region-wide war against Iran or Syria.

Such is the case on Sunday 30 July 2006. When Israeli war planes (U.S.-made F-16s) bombed a shelter housing refugees in the village of Qana – the site of a 1996 massacre of more than 100 Lebanese civilians by Israeli forces – killing more than 60 innocent civilians, including at least 40 children, a war crimes by any standard, Israeli propagandists and Western media tried to exonerate Israel by claiming that Hizbullah were firing rocket from the site.

Also ignored by the media are Israel’s indiscriminate bombings of civilian infrastructure and population centres, using banned weapons such as Cluster bombs and incendiary white phosphorous bombs against defenceless population in contravention of international humanitarian laws. According to conservative estimate, the current Israeli act of terrorism on Lebanon killed at least 800 innocent Lebanese civilians, although journalists on the ground put the figure much higher, injured more than 4000 and caused the displacement of a million people. As always, more than a third of the victims are innocent children. Be Lebanese or Palestinians, Israel dose not discriminate between civilians and combatants, a flagrant violation of the Geneva and The Hague Conventions.

Like Israel’s previous acts of terrorism, the pretext to justify the current terrorism attacks against Lebanon is that Israel was allegedly provoked by the Lebanese resistance crossing into Israel and capturing two Israel soldiers. However, contrary to Israel’s propaganda which is becoming a global propaganda, the Israeli soldiers were captured and taken prisoners on Lebanese side of the border in purely heroic operation. The other Israeli soldiers were not killed by Hizbullah’s fighters, but rather because their tank rolled over a landmine – planted by Israel – while pursuing Hizbullah’s fighters. In sharp contrast from earlier Israel’s response to previous tit for tat skirmish between Hizbullah and the Israeli army, Israel held the Government of Lebanon responsible and instigated a total war against the entire state of Lebanon.

The current Israeli aggression against Lebanon is a U.S.-Israel engineered war planned long time ago. It is a premeditated U.S.-Israel aggression aimed at imposing a “New Middle East”, where Lebanon, like Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and today’s Iraq would be under U.S.-Israeli domination or hegemony. To use Antonio Gramsci’s conception of hegemony, where an oppressive power structure, in which the domination is concealed through an Arab façade and the consent of the oppressed, is not coerced; rather it is consensual and the oppressed are complicit in their oppression. The dominant ways have become naturalised and normalised. The same form of power was tried during Fascism’s occupation of Europe.

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