I don't know what Americans are seeing on their television, but what I have just seen on Italian TV is appalling. Qana, the city where the Jesus of the Christians had attended a famous wedding, transforming water into wine, is today a heap of rubble: 60 dead, 37 of them children in a bombing raid by IDF forces that launched 80 missiles between 3 and 5 a.m. yesterday morning.

As the camera crews approached, there wasn't a single Lebanese soldier or fighter in sight, not a single mechanical digger -- only men digging with their hands and their peasants' shovels. There are no stretchers, no sheets left to carry the lifeless bodies. I see a man carrying in his hands the corpse of a little girl.

"We had no money to leave," said the father who lost his whole family. "Besides, where would we go?" As the villagers were digging with their hands ("There are three children under this rubble!"), Israeli planes hissed in the sky above, and everyone turned to look up: they were going to bomb the next village. Two more villages have been ordered by the Israeli to clear out.

Back to digging, a villager said, "My whole family is underneath here. The first missile sucked all the air out of the building. The second destroyed it. Tell the world -- Bush, Mubarak, the Europeans -- what was done here."

A few days ago, Jordanian relief planes left with no Lebanese on board. They had come to offer the injured transfer to Jordanian hospitals for limb replacements. They got a curt refusal. Even a man who lost both legs refused to go -- in a sign of contempt for the complicity that Arab leaders bear in the destruction of Lebanon.

Jordan had sent tents for a field hospital to Beirut. They remained unoccupied. This is the level of radicalization of national sentiment that the Israeli onslaught, Bush support, European cowardice, and Arab-League complicity have effected in the Lebanese people!

In Beirut, thousands of enraged people attacked the offices of the UN, holding up signs, "We will destroy you, murderers," smashed doors and windows. Lebanon's head, Siniora, praised Nasrallah as the protector of the country and called the Qana massacre "a war crime."

In Jerusalem, Israeli leaders said they were sorry for the death of civilians, but they needed two more weeks for completing the military operation.

Arriving in Israel, Italian foreign minister Massimo D'Alema said that the "international community" could not send troops in a war zone. "Either we have a cease-fire or we have war. The international community does not intend to participate in a war."

In Iran, the Pasdaran are told to prepare to "fight the Israelis."

Alone in the world, the government of the United States continues to support the Israeli "operation." Blair's cabinet is rebelling.

Can anyone tell me what madness drives the Bush apostasy from the global consensus for an immediate cease fire?