"I know I will die fighting them, then I will go to
my God. But I will go to my God fighting like a lion. I will not be slaughtered
like a lamb." Ahmed (last name withheld) �Destruction, Death and Drastic
Measures� --Dahr Jamail
The assassination
of Lebanese businessman Rifik Hariri now looks like the hoax that many
suspected from the very beginning. Israeli newspapers� have already admitted
that the current invasion had been planned for over a year, so how can anyone
still believe that Syrian agents killed Hariri?
Syria had nothing
to gain by killing Hariri and everything to lose. Israel, on the other hand,
could use the murder as an excuse to push Syrian troops out of Lebanon, invoke
UN resolution 1559 to attack Hezbollah, and bomb the country into submission
annexing the south according to a Zionist scheme that dates back more than 60
years.
Game. Set. Match.
The UN
investigation, which was led by American-stooge Detlef Mehlis, was a pure,
unalloyed fraud that never produced a shred of evidence despite the relentless
media innuendo and the finger-pointing at Damascus.
Consider the extent
to which American NGOs and Israeli intelligence must have worked together to
topple the Emile Lahoud government, force Syrian troops from Lebanon, foment
the �made-for-TV� Cedar Revolution, and catapult the blubbering
�Israel-friendly� Fouad Siniora into the presidency. The scope of the
conspiracy is mind-boggling, but it gives us some grasp of the impressive level
of collaboration between the Washington imperialists and the Tel Aviv Zionists.
The calculated destruction of Lebanon is the polluted vision of both parties;
they are equally culpable.
So far, the only
obstacle to Israel�s plan has been Hezbollah, an organization that has remained
steadfast in its preparedness for the inevitable Israeli onslaught. Under the
guidance of Hassan Nasrallah, the group has stubbornly refused to be �disarmed�
by the American-run United Nations or to evacuate their homeland south of the
Litani River. That has forced US/Israel to scrap the pretense of
�democracy-building� and resort to the �always reliable� carpet-bombing
strategy.
After four previous
invasions and countless border skirmishes, Nasrallah was wise enough not to
trust his war-mongering neighbor to the south. And, of course, events
have now proven that he was right. Israel stormed Lebanon with 10,000 troops,
following a withering month-long bombing campaign, but has had to scratch and
claw for every inch of Lebanese soil it has taken, incurring heavy losses
in the process. So far, Hezbollah has held fast, giving up less than 8 km of
ground to the most technologically-advanced army in the Middle East. It�s been
a major �black eye� for the IDF.
Israel has been
limited to doing what it does best; pelting unarmed civilians with
American-made ordinance from 30,000 feet. Fortunately, Lebanon is not Gaza
where 1 million people are corralled in a desert-gulag waiting for Israel to
lob bombs into their midst.
The Olmert regime
has already decimated most of Lebanon; setting the nation�s infrastructure back
20 years, triggering an environmental catastrophe on the coast (an 80-mile oil
slick), and creating a humanitarian disaster. Still, Israel�s ground-offensive
has sputtered to a near standstill, unable to overcome the ferocious resistance
of a handful of well-disciplined, fierce-fighting guerillas who are willing to
die defending their country. Their performance has been an inspiration to the entire
Arab world.
There�s no doubt
that Hezbollah is the de-facto National Lebanese Army and the only military
force that is willing to defend Lebanese sovereignty. In Beirut, the simpering
President Siniora has become a regular embarrassment to his people with his
weepy appeals to the international community and Israel. His sniveling recital
may be welcome in Tel Aviv, where Arabs are already considered untermenschen,
but it detracts from his ability to mobilize his people for the struggle ahead.
Siniora would be better off replicating Arafat�s �Kalashnikov-waving�
performance at the United Nations some years ago, when he offered the world a
choice between the olive branch or endless war. Instead, he persists with his
clownish hand-wringing that only gratifies his adversaries and undermines his
cause.
Show a bit of
spine, man.
Siniora�s task is
crystal clear; demand an immediate withdrawal of all Israeli forces, deploy his
70,000 troops to the south, and order the immediate conscription of all
combat-age men between 16 and 65 years old. These are the same expectations we
would have of our leaders in the United States if we were under siege.
Siniora should
ignore the UN. The US-British-French ceasefire is nothing more than a
�neo-colonial� scheme to divide Lebanon by conceding the southern
portion to Israeli occupation.
The international
community did nothing to discourage Israel�s 18-year occupation of Lebanon
(1982 to 2000) and they�ll do nothing now. It is a meaningless debating society
meant to provide international cover for imperial adventurism and war crimes,
nothing more.
Siniora should
resign and hand-over Lebanon�s army to Hezbollah. At least Nasrallah
understands what needs to be done when the country is at war.
The Art of Ethnic Cleansing Israeli-style
Can killing
innocent people be justified if it saves the lives of countless others?
Isn�t this what
happened at Qana?
Israel was warned
repeatedly to stop firing on the UN facility at Qana, but continued its assault
until the building was eventually leveled by an American-made bomb that killed
57. The attack was clearly �deliberate� (as Kofi Annan said) and produced the
reaction in the media that would have been expected from such an obvious
atrocity.
Did the Israeli
high-command know what the public reaction would be when they bombed the
building or do they simply take these things in their stride?
Qana was the most
successful Israeli operation to date.
Why?
Because it spread
fear and terror throughout the south just as it was designed to do;
precipitating an immediate and massive migration of some 750,000 mostly poor
Shias.
It was the most
carefully calculated, precisely executed act of terror since 9-11.
No one in the
Western media would ever dare to accuse Israel of terrorism, but the facts are
hard to deny. By pulverizing Qana (as well as by bombing a few fleeing
mini-buses full of civilians), Israel triggered a stampede which drove the
entire indigenous population northward over the Litani River. At the same time,
Israel managed to keep casualties below 1,000, which is a nearly a miracle
given the immensity of the devastation.
Wasn�t that
Israel�s plan from the beginning: to evacuate the people but keep the death
toll down?
When historians
reflect on the IDF maneuverings in the Lebanon war, they will certainly credit
Olmert and his staff with the most successful ethnic-cleansing operation in
history.
This is "new
world," high-tech ethnic cleansing, not the messy Darfur-type, where
carnage is splattered all over the screen and terrified villagers are seen
scurrying from their homes in a hail of artillery-blasts.
NO, no, no; this is
the fully sanitized, meticulously executed military operation intended to purge
the land of its unwelcome occupants and expand the perimeters of Greater Israel.
Israel has elevated
ethnic cleansing to an art form. The mass exodus was carried out with
Germanic-precision and less than 900 total casualties. That must be a record,
for those who care to document such dubious achievements.
Civil War on the Horizon
Israel understands
Lebanon�s ethnic dynamic as well as anyone. By thrusting 750,000 Muslim
refugees into Christian and Druze areas, we can anticipate that traditional
antagonisms will resurface leading eventually to another civil war. The
blistering attack on the south and cutting off humanitarian aid creates the
perfect laboratory setting for incubating a new round of sectarian violence.
This is what Israel wants. In fact, the new world order requires endless cycles
of internecine Muslim on Muslim violence. As Henry Kissinger said, �I hope they
all kill each other.� American-Israeli foreign policy has never evolved beyond
Kissinger�s callous axiom. In fact, it is an apt summary of the racist themes
and homicidal doctrine which animates the entire war on terror.
Bush and Olmert
agree that the �real enemy� is Arab nationalism and Muslim solidarity; the two
vital threats to the US/Israeli occupation strategy. The same solution applies
to Lebanon as Iraq: divide and conquer; pit one group against the next until
the whole society is torn apart in a paroxysm of bloodshed.
Will Israel succeed
in inciting chaos and civil strife or will it have to jump-start the process by
packing explosives in the trunks of cars and detonating them in marketplaces
and mosques like counterinsurgency operations in Iraq? We�ll have to wait and
see.
Lebanon is at the
beginning of a long descent into hell. Every opportunity for peace has
been foreclosed by the Bush administration. The failures in Iraq and
Afghanistan have done nothing to slow the machinery of state terror. The
ghastly specter of mutilated corpses crushed beneath the twisted iron and
powdery debris of bombed-out buildings only whets the appetites of the imperial
warlords. They won�t be happy until the fire they started in Iraq consumes the
entire Middle East in a pyramid of flames.
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com.