"The Israeli air force has been ordered to hit 10 [multi-storey] buildings in south Beirut - where Hezbollah has its headquarters - for every rocket the group fires at the Israeli port of Haifa" (reported by Al-Jazeera).

For collective punishment, that ratio has a precedent: the Nazi one. The most infamous of many such involving Nazi mass vengeance and retaliation against civilians is the massacre of 335 civilians in Rome's Fosse Ardeatine (24 March 1944) for the ambush and killing of 33 German troops (23 March 1944) -- the extra five having been thrown in the bargain �by mistake.�

That military ethics have reached such a level of moral degradation in the 60 years after WW II makes you wonder who won the war: The liberal democracies or the fascist axis? That such massacres as the Nazi perpetrated against defenseless civilians in WW II should be replicated by Israel's erstwhile victims through its ersatz state proves that Nazi ideology endures and has been ironically internalized by their victims.

That the Israeli military establishment can proclaim "purity of arms" while ordering indiscriminate murder of civilians is a testament to the power of self-delusion in the pursuit of genocide and aggression. That the Israeli state continues to proclaim "never again" the subjugation and genocide of Jewish people by racist regimes while mimicking the genocidal policies of that criminal regime, which welcomed European Jews to Nazi death camps with the sneering motto that "work makes one free," is a truly astounding feat of the Israeli state's legitimization and identification with their would-be butchers.

Condoleezza Rice's claim that the savaging of Lebanon by the Israeli military is evidence of "birth pangs" of a new Middle East is likewise proof that Israel's sponsor is linked to Nazi ideology -- that death is the midwife of life.

They're murderously, certifiably crazy -- dangerous enemies of humankind. And they're right to ask if we are either with them or against them, because it's really high time that we decide whose side we're on before more innocent blood is spilled.