The Crime of Lebanon and Palestine - Are Iran and
Syria Next?

by Stephen Lendman

By any interpretation of international law, Israel
today is committing massive and egregious war crimes
and crimes against humanity against the defenseless
people of Palestine and Lebanon. It’s doing it with
the full support and encouragement of the US and
willful compliance of the West, most of the Arab
world, the UN and the dominant corporate media
worldwide acting as cheerleaders for the mass killing,
crippling destruction, and immiseration of innocent
civilians in Lebanon and the Palestinian Occupied
Territories.  Israel falsely claims its duel assaults
are in response to Hamas’ capture of an Israel Defense
Forces (IDF) soldier near Kerem Shalom crossing,
southeast of Rafah, on June 25 and Hezbollah’s
cross-border incursion on July 12, killing eight IDF
soldiers in the exchange that followed and taking two
others prisoner. 

The three soldiers were captured, not “kidnapped” as
falsely reported. But nearly 10,000 Palestinian and
Lebanese civilians were forcibly abducted, are now
held in indefinite detention in Israeli prisons, many
administratively without charge, and are grievously
abused or tortured according to Amnesty International
and B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights monitoring
group.  Amnesty, in fact, reported in 1998: “By
Israel’s own admission, Lebanese detainees are being
held as ‘bargaining chips;’ they are not detained for
their own actions but in exchange for Israeli soldiers
missing in action or killed in Lebanon (during the
Israeli occupation there).  Most have now spent 10
years in secret and isolated detention (and many are
still there or have been replaced by other
abductees).” The “civilized world” rails about the
three IDF prisoners of war, yet is unconcerned about
10,000 Arab victims because they’re Muslims, not white
enough, and no criticism of Israel is allowed or
tolerated publicly for whatever it does.  Still, no
nation claimed it had a right to declare war on Israel
to free its prisoners unjustifiably held nor would the
world community tolerate it if one did.

But that’s just what Israel did and is getting away
with it with the full support of the US and world
community.  Clearly the events of June 25 and July 12
in no way justify Israel’s right to wage all out
retaliatory war, and in doing it Israel is grievously
violating international laws and norms.  Nonetheless,
it’s known Israel planned to wage them long before it
got the pretexts to do it.  Both “wars” were planned
well in advance, Israel intended to wage them all
along and only needed an excuse to do it in each case.
Had not Hamas and Hezbollah obliged (insignificant as
their provocations were), Israel would have
“manufactured” pretexts as it’s done in the past to
execute the plans it had in mind.  The result since
has been the mass suffering and death of innocent men,
women and children (in numbers far greater than
reported as they always are) who always pay the
greatest price when conflicts begin. 

But that’s part of Israel’s plan as their strategy is
always to deliberately inflict great pain on the
civilian population of its targets hoping the people
affected will blame their ruling authorities for it
and turn against them.  In Palestine and Lebanon that
means Hamas and Hezbollah that Israel intends making
every effort to destroy.  The strategy never worked
before, and it won’t now as evidenced by how events
are now unfolding.  Instead of turning the people in
the Occupied Territories and South Lebanon against
Hamas and Hezbollah, both these authorities are
gaining support in response to Israel’s extreme and
unjustifiable reign of terror that eventually will
come back to haunt it and its US ally as it always
does.

Israel’s Plan Is to Wage a Scorched-Earth Reign of
Terror Similar to What the US Is Doing in Iraq

Israel responded quickly and overwhelmingly to the
Hamas and Hezbollah provocations.  It initiated
“Operation Summer Rain” against Hamas and the
Palestinians and “Operation Change of Direction”
against Hezbollah and the people of Lebanon.  Both IDF
assaults continue unabated so far through intensive
attacks from the air and on the ground.

It’s not the purpose of this article to document the
carnage inflicted thus far in each conflict area.
It’s been brutal, unrelenting and excessive involving
suspected use of illegal weapons including chemical
agents, depleted uranium (DU) munitions that will
leave deadly irremediable toxic radiation forever over
the areas struck and beyond, and white phosphorous
bombs and shells, known as Willy Pete, that burn flesh
to the bone and can’t be extinguished by water that
only makes it worse when used.  The IDF is also
reportedly testing in real time some new terror
weapons, possibly for the first time.  One of them is
a thermobaric bomb reported being used freely across
Lebanon.  This bomb contains polymer-bonded or solid
fuel-air explosives in its payload.  It also has a
fuse munition unit (FMU) used on the nose of Israeli
artillery shells able to penetrate buildings,
underground shelters and tunnels creating such a blast
pressure that all the oxygen is sucked out from the
spaces and the lungs of anyone in the vicinity.  The
Lebanese, and likely the Palestinians as well, are
their lab rats with consequences to them too horrible
to imagine. 

Much of this is being well covered daily with graphic
pictures of destroyed bodies (including of young
children) in the alternative media online, in print,
on Aljazeera and in other independent media sources
uncorrupted by their governments or corporate
affiliations.  Sadly, as usual, it’s impossible to
have any understanding of what’s going on or why
through the US corporate media, so-called US National
Public Radio and TV that have sunk as low as Fox News
in their corrupted one-sidedness, and the “vaunted”
and “venerable” BBC that’s about as bad.  As it always
is, especially in time of war, the first casualty is
truth that’s being suppressed in the mainstream and
replaced with Israel and US-friendly propaganda.

Nonetheless, those seeking alternative sources of news
and information to learn and understand the truth know
that Israel’s response to two minor incursions against
it has been disproportionate in the extreme.  But it’s
part of Israel’s long-standing strategy to provoke
conflict deliberately, to get the PLO in the past and
Hamas and Hezbollah today to respond, falsely label
them “terrorists” for doing it, and then claim a
justifiable right to strike back with brute force in
“self-defense” that’s, in fact, an act of aggression.
It’s always done to avoid a political solution with
them which Israel has no intention of accommodating
ever.  In executing its current plan, the IDF has now
maliciously and willfully attacked innocent civilians
in Palestine and Lebanon and created a humanitarian
disaster in both countries.  The world response to
these atrocities has been tepid, shameless and
disgraceful, and hundreds of thousands of defenseless
people are paying a dreadful price as a consequence.
Israel is being allowed and even encouraged to get
away with murder and mass destruction, and most world
governments through their acquiescence are, de facto,
willing co-conspirators.  As a result, nothing is
being done to help the innocent victims whose
suffering continues daily with no letup.

Israel’s assaults on the Occupied Territories and
Lebanon were planned well in advance with the full
knowledge and approval of the US.  It was reported
earlier this year in Israel’s Maariv daily that the
events now underway in Gaza and the West Bank were in
the works for months.  It was explained in an
interview the paper did with IDF Southern Command
General Yoav Galant, responsible for Gaza, who said
that “we (Israel) have a plan to (re) occupy the
Strip” (and) “We are in advanced states of preparing
forces for readiness” to do it in response to
“increased (Palestinian) attacks.”  Another IDF
official confirmed what the general said and added
that the IDF completed its training to reenter Gaza
and informed its soldiers to prepare and be ready for
orders to move in.  Neither the general or other IDF
official explained, however, that the Palestinian
“attacks” were with crude weapons and only in response
to Israel’s daily assaults against them with the most
sophisticated weapons the IDF has other than its
nuclear ones.

The story in Lebanon is very similar and the
predictable outcome from Hezbollah’s justifiable
responses to Israeli instigated intermittent conflict,
cross-border incursions, freewheeling abductions, and
repeated violations of the country’s airspace.  It’s
brought us to where we are now and Israel’s plan and
intent to destroy Hezbollah as a political entity as
well as the military strength it’s built up since the
IDF withdrew from South Lebanon six years ago. 

Hezbollah publicly admitted receiving military aid
from Iran and Syria in the Arab press, and the Syrian
defense minister confirmed his country helped supply
some of it.  This was just reported on July 21 by
Matthew Kallman of the San Francisco Chronicle Foreign
Service - a most unexpected venue.  Kallman quotes
Israeli professor Gerald Steinberg of Bar-Ilan
University who said: “In a sense, the preparation (for
the Lebanon assault) began in May, 2000, immediately
after the Israeli withdrawal, when it became clear the
international community was not going to prevent
Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking
Israel.  By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to
last about three weeks that we’re seeing now had
already been blocked out and, in the last year or two,
it’s been simulated and rehearsed across the board.”
The professor forgot to mention that Hezbollah attacks
were justifiable and in response to frequent Israeli
cross-border ones against them, the Lebanese people
and the Palestinians, as explained above.  It’s called
self-defense, but not by the Western media or this
Israeli professor.

Kallman reported further that over a year ago a senior
Israeli IDF officer (unidentified) began giving
“PowerPoint presentations” off the record to US and
other officials and unnamed journalists and think
tanks explaining the plan now underway “in revealing
detail.”  The officer described a three week campaign
to destroy Hezbollah’s “long-range missiles,” rocket
launchers and weapons stores, its command and control
centers, and disrupt transportation and communication
in the country.  He said IDF ground forces in large
numbers would then invade Southern Lebanon in the
third week of the campaign to destroy targets
identified through reconnaissance but not to remain on
a long-term basis.  It turned out the IDF did it after
10 days and are now in the south of the country.

Kallman also quoted Eran Lerman, a former colonel in
IDF intelligence who said the Israeli military debated
how to accomplish what it’s now undertaken.  There
were two sides. “One is the air power school of
thought, the other is the land-borne option…...the
air force concept is very methodical….and slower to
get results.  A ground invasion that sweeps Hezbollah
in front of you is quicker, but at a much higher cost
in human life and requiring the creation of a presence
on the ground.”  Moshe Marzuk, former head of the
Lebanon desk for Israeli Military Intelligence, added
“Israel has learned from past conflicts in Lebanon,
the West Bank and Gaza…..that a traditional military
campaign (on the ground) would be counter-effective.
A big invasion is not suitable here.  We are not
fighting an army, but guerrillas…..If we are to be
on the ground at all, we need to use commandos and
special forces.”  So far, the script outlined above is
playing out about as planned.  But Kallman was also
told what any military observer knows well.  The best
of plans don’t always work out as intended which the
daily Haaretz military analyst, Daniel Ben-Simon,
indicated when he said: “I have no idea how this movie
is going to end.”

No one does, but it’s the purpose of this article to
address why these operations were undertaken, what
Israel and its US ally hope to achieve by them, and
what may follow next, hard as that may be to know.
Still, it’s important to try as the danger of an
expanded conflict is possible with untold consequences
should it happen.

Israel’s Intent and Goals and Those of Its US Ally

The US is always fully aware well in advance of any
significant operation Israel intends to undertake.  As
that small but powerful nation’s paymaster and
benefactor, Israel wouldn’t dare under most
circumstances not keep its most valued ally fully in
the loop and most concerned about having its full
compliance.  That’s rarely ever a problem though as
both nations share a common interest in the Middle
East.  For Israel it’s primarily security against
potentially hostile neighbors, its intent to assure
pro-Israeli regimes in the region, and its ability to
expand its undeclared borders beyond where they now
are to wherever it’s able to do it and get away with
it.  Israel already controls the choicest parts of the
West Bank, the Syrian Golan Heights it captured in the
1967 war and never returned, and the 25 square
kilometer Shebaa Farms area of South Lebanon it never
relinquished after seizing it as well in the 1967 war.
It’s maintained its occupation of both areas after
the end of hostilities with Syria nearly 40 years ago
and its withdrawal from Lebanon in May, 2000, 22 years
after it first invaded this defenseless country.

Like Israel, the US also has a clear interest in the
Middle East that’s elementary to a grade schooler with
any intelligence.  The region has about half the
world’s acknowledged oil reserves and for over half a
century has been viewed by US officials as a treasure
of almost unimaginable strategic and economic value.
That view has prevailed at least since the historic
meeting on the USS Quincy in early 1945 near the end
of WW II between Franklin Roosevelt and Saudi King ibn
Saud to begin a relationship that would later assure
US access to Saudi oil and the beginning of its
dominance in the region in return for this country’s
agreeing to provide security for the monarchy. 

Ever since, the US has pursued a policy to establish
and support client states in the region and to conduct
hostile covert actions or wage war to install them in
nations important enough like Iraq where they didn’t
exist.  Despite our rhetoric concerning the Middle
East or anywhere else, this country has no interest
whatever in removing dictators or establishing
democracies.  It’s only interest everywhere, but
especially in countries with great strategic
importance, is to have in place client states run by
leaders subservient to US wishes and aims.
Independent-minded leaders like Saddam, the Iranian
Mullahs and President Mahmoud Armadinejad, Syrian
President Bashar Al-Assad, and three-time
democratically elected Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez, beloved by the great majority of his people,
are prime targets for regime-changing removal by force
if necessary - only because they chose to run their
countries independently of US authority.  Imperial
powers like the US never tolerate that.

Israel’s well-planned actions against Hamas and the
Palestinians and Hezbollah and the people of Lebanon
are part of the same regime-changing strategy.  In the
Occupied Territories it’s to destroy Hamas as an
independent-minded political entity and replace it
with a compliant one like Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas
willing to serve Israel’s interests and not those of
the Palestinian people.  In South Lebanon, it’s
essentially the same thing - to destroy Hezbollah as a
political and resistance force, remove its resilient
threat to Israeli hegemony in the region, and replace
it with an Israel-friendly Lebanese government in full
control of the country.

The Evolution of Israeli-Hamas Relations

Israel wasn’t always hostile to Hamas it now views as
an enemy it intends to destroy.  In the 1980s, the
Israeli government lent it support to check the
growing authority and legitimacy of the PLO that had
suspended retaliatory attacks and wanted to pursue a
political solution with Israel that Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir at the time explained Israelis would
never agree to and, in fact, said he went to war with
Lebanon in 1982 to prevent.  But once established,
Hamas rose in prominence largely due to its well
organized and effective social service network that
provides such essential services as food assistance,
health care, education, daycare and other charitable
aid to Palestinians in great need of them.  But Hamas
also has a military or resistance wing that has
engaged in attacks against Israeli soldiers and
civilians in retaliation for Israel’s war of attrition
against the Palestinian people that’s caused decades
of immiseration with little relief or outside support
to offset it.

Because of that, Israel was horrified when the
January, 2006 election didn’t turn out the way it
thought it had carefully arranged and Hamas won a
clear majority of the seats in the Palestinian
Legislative Council (PLC).  Without the larger than
life figure of Yasser Arafat to lead it, the
Palestinian people finally rejected the dominant Fatah
party and its post-Oslo history of corruption and
subservience to Israeli authority.  From the start, it
was clear Israel had a single aim - to destroy Hamas
as a political entity by any means.  The Ehud Olmert
led Kadima government planned it, the IDF trained in
preparation for it, and it just awaited a convenient
pretext to initiate what began on June 25.

The Hezbollah Story

The Hezbollah story is quite similar.  It was born out
of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the
oppressive occupation that followed.  Hezbollah was
formed to resist the occupation, expel the Israelis,
and it remained an effective opposition force to
Israel ever since.  It’s major base of support is in
the Southern Lebanon Shiite region and Northern Beka’a
valley it controls that’s up to one-third of the
population.  It’s also likely supported by the
estimated 400,000 Palestinian refugees in the country
who live in overcrowded camps, struggle to achieve
their basic needs, have no legal rights, and get no
government aid or protection.  Hezbollah is also a
major political force and is represented by 11
lawmakers in the Lebanese Parliament and has two
government ministers in the country’s cabinet.  But it
also maintains a military wing as a needed deterrent
to Israeli oppression that up to now has been the only
effective force against it in the region.  That’s why
Israel’s aim has always been to eliminate Hezbollah
and now initiated on July 12 what looks like all out
war, the reinvasion of Lebanon that followed on July
22, and possible occupation of the country ahead if it
decides that’s what’s needed to achieve it.  It never
was able to do it before and likely won’t succeed now
whatever strategy it follows.  But Israel is
determined and seems intent to follow the strange and
doomed to fail policy of “always wrong but never in
doubt.”  It won’t be any different this time, but once
again Israel appears to be repeating past mistakes and
making its victims pay the harsh price for them.

Throughout Israel’s occupation of Southern Lebanon in
1980s and 90s that price was severe indeed, but
Hezbollah’s committed resistance nonetheless finally
succeeded in getting the IDF to withdraw from the
country in May, 2000.  After 22 years of failing to
subdue a resilient South Lebanon, it’s hard to believe
Israel is once again willing to try and in so doing
inflict mass death, suffering and destruction on the
innocent people throughout this country that are no
match for the IDF militarily in a head-on
confrontation.  But it goes unreported and undiscussed
in the mainstream that if Israel really wanted to end
retaliatory attacks against its territory and people,
the easy sure way to do it is to stop provoking the
Palestinians and Hezbollah by attacking them first.
The fact that it hasn’t done it shows it won’t and
doesn’t want to because in a state of peace and calm
it would be unable to avoid the political solution it
never intends to negotiate in good faith.

Israel instead prefers to continue the policy it began
against Lebanon in 1968 when the IDF conducted terror
raids and military aggression against the country that
included attacking the Beirut airport and destroying
13 civilian planes on the ground claiming it was in
retaliation for an attack by Lebanese trained
Palestinians targeting an Israeli airliner in Athens.
IDF incursions into Lebanon continued in the 1970s
against the PLO including the major invasion into
Southern Lebanon, the “Litani River Operation.”  It
was launched in March, 1978 to establish an occupation
zone that Israel put the Christian South Lebanon Army
(SLA) in place to man when it withdrew its forces
weeks later. 

But Israel reinvaded the country in June, 1982 in
force with intent to stay, remaining until Hezbollah
forced it to withdraw in May, 2000.  Before it did,
however, the IDF managed to kill about 18,000 mostly
innocent civilian Lebanese and Palestinians.  Yet,
despite the carnage, the IDF was unable to destroy
Hezbollah which resisted effectively including against
Israel’s April, 1996 17 day “Operation Grapes of
Wrath” that accomplished nothing but more death and
destruction.  Today, Hezbollah under its leader, Sheik
Hassan Nasrallah, is stronger than ever and is gaining
support beyond its Shiite base and near autonomy in
the South in response to the Israeli inflicted
atrocities committed in the current conflict.  It now
remains to watch and speculate where this conflict is
heading.

The Road from Palestine and Lebanon May Lead to Iran
and Syria

The US and Israeli plan may be to escalate the current
Palestinian and Lebanese conflicts and extend them to
Iran and Syria.  It’s a real possibility and the most
serious threat at this time with all its potentially
dreadful consequences.  Whether it will or won’t
happen only high-level insiders in both countries know
for certain, and even they may be unsure until the
current conflicts play out further.  If it’s
undertaken, this added escalation will have unknown
hazards for all involved combined with the increasing
out-of-control conflict in Iraq and the one in
Afghanistan fast heading in the same direction.  At
this time, whether the Washington neocons in charge of
things, the Pentagon and the Likudnik spin-offs in the
Olmert Kadima party are willing to risk going further
is anyone’s guess.

The Threat to Iran

The future is uncertain, but what is known is that a
number of reports circulated earlier this year and in
2005 that the Bush administration signed off on a
“shock and awe” nuclear attack against Iran to destroy
its entirely legal commercial nuclear program based on
the unproved claim Iran is using it to develop and
produce nuclear weapons.  Among other places this was
reported by journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker
magazine recently.  Hersh went further saying Israel
has called Iran a “major threat” that “must be
stopped” from developing these weapons.  In a
subsequent article Hersh then reported these plans are
off the table because of strong resistance to them
inside the Pentagon.  But it’s hard to believe this is
so given the position of the hard-liners in charge in
Washington and Israel determined to pursue regime
change in both Iran and Syria and replace the current
leaderships there with pro-Western ones who’ll
dutifully serve their obedient role of subservient
client states.

Israel also has long had designs on Iran that have
been known at least since October, 2003, when the
German weekly Der Spiegel reported that the Mossad
(the country’s intelligence gathering and covert
action and counterterrorism agency) had marked six
Iranian nuclear facilities as targets for an Israeli
pre-emptive air strike.  It added that then Israel
Prime Minister Aeriel Sharon called Iran “the greatest
danger to Israel” and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz
said “Iran calls for Israel’s annihilation (and) We
must do our utmost under US guidance to delay or
eliminate the prospect of the extremist regime (in
Tehran from) securing weapons of this sort.”  It went
on to report “a special unit of Mossad received an
order…to prepare a detailed plan to destroy Iran’s
nuclear sites Mossad believes (have) reached an
advanced stage…..” The completed Mossad plan was
then “delivered to the Israeli Air Force, (to) carry
out the strike.”

As far as we know, the US is also making plans and has
since 2004 been committing hostile acts against Iran
by flying unmanned aerial surveillance drones across
its airspace and has infiltrated special forces
reconnaissance teams secretly into the country “to
collect targeting data and to establish contact with
anti-government ethnic minority groups” according to
Seymour Hersh in his reporting.  The Iranians are well
aware of these activities and are likely doing all
they can to thwart or counteract them.  They also
understand quite well what’s at stake for them - that
the US and Israel are planning regime change by
whatever means they think will work and are using the
falsely claimed threat of Iran’s perfectly legal
commercial nuclear program as the pretext to pursue
it.  The rest of the world so far seems willing to go
along with this duplicitous scheme as well as the
dominant corporate media once again dutifully
performing their customary cheerleading role of
support for whatever operations the US and Israel
intend to conduct, legally justified or not.  The
public as usual is largely in the dark and has no idea
what’s going on or what’s at stake.

Target Syria - Also under Threat

Syria, along with Iran, is also part of the same
apparent US - Israeli scheme to escalate the Middle
East conflict further.  Both countries are Hezbollah
allies and, as mentioned above, are known to have
provided it arms, something no nation does more of
than the US and often to empower unstable,
undemocratic regimes that jeopardize global security.
But that’s portrayed as perfectly acceptable when it’s
done by the world’s only superpower and for whatever
reason it has in mind.  It’s another story, entirely,
however, when a smaller nation does it, especially if
that country is not a US client state and the arms it
supplies goes to a source the US and its allies wish
to keep them from, even if their intended use is only
for self-defense.

Thus, while there’s a vast world arms trade for legal
and nefarious purposes the public generally hears
little or nothing about, it’s another story when the
arms suppliers are Iran and Syria, their transactions
or aid are quite proper, but the recipients are
Hezbollah and Hamas, sworn enemies of the US and
Israel.  The US claims Iran and Syria are state
sponsors of terrorism and says Hezbollah and Hamas are
terrorist entities.  It doesn’t matter if it’s true or
not, just that the US says it is to justify whatever
action it and its Israeli ally have in mind.  There’s
now a systematic demonization campaign under way to
claim both countries have armed Hezbollah to conduct
“unprovoked terror attacks” against Israel and thus
provide justifiable cause for Israel and the US to
retaliate.  Again, truth is not the issue, only what
the US and Israel say is true.

Also, in March, 2006 the UN Security Council took the
unprecedented step, aimed at Syria, of approving a
resolution to establish a hybrid tribunal for a
political crime.  It will consist of 2 Lebanese and
three international judges to try the killers of
former Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri that will allow
an international judgment to take precedence over
Lebanese law.  From the start, the finger of guilt was
pointed at Syria, but so far there’s been no evidence
uncovered to prove it. 

But by unjustifiably associating Syria with the Hariri
killing and accusing it of supplying Hezbollah with
arms for claimed “terror” attacks, the US and Israel
have now put the mark of Cain on this nation making it
easier to attack it.  It’s never hard finding a
pretext to act when there’s enough determination to do
it.  Both the US and Israel have had lots of practice
finding them where they exist or inventing or
provoking them when they don’t.  The recent Iraq “now
you see ‘em, now you don’t” WMDs come to mind as an
invented one that destroyed a nation.  Iran and Syria
are quite aware of this and are doing all they can to
ward off a similar fate.  Still they know full well,
if the US and/or Israel act against them forcibly,
they and their people will pay a painful price.  And
the region will as well if the Arab street explodes as
one or two more countries in it go up in flames to
further the imperial aims of two rogue terrorist
states allowed to go unchecked by a complicit world
community hoping to benefit from the scraps left for
it in the carnage or too timid to stand up for what’s
right.

What May Lie Ahead - The Potential Danger Is Great

There’s much at stake in the Middle East for both the
US and Israel including the very real possibility that
the duel Israeli offensives with US support and aid
may make an already impossible situation even worse.
It also seems strange to some that the most extreme
elements in the US administration, Congress and among
their influential supporters now appear to see a
chance to undo or at least ameliorate the political
and military disaster the US has suffered in Iraq and
likely one ahead in Afghanistan as that country is
rapidly descending into a growing out-of-control
conflict as well.  The alternative and more sensible
view unheard in the mainstream is that two or three
wrong decisions don’t make a right one.  But that’s a
consideration those in charge in the US and Israel
probably never thought of, and it’s not the role of
their corporate media allies to tell them.  Their job
is only to report what government officials say.

It’s clear at this time of great potential danger, a
lot more than that is needed.  The Arab street in the
region and Muslim one around the world may be ready to
explode if two more of its states are attacked by the
US and/or Israel with support or compliance of the
West and its own leaders.  It will be even more likely
to happen if nuclear weapons are used which is now
planned against Iran to destroy targeted facilities
below ground.  Whatever the perceived gains may be
from this aggressive adventure, the potential dangers
of undertaking it seem so daunting and the odds for
ultimate success so long, it’s hard to understand why
any sensible leader would risk taking them.  But it’s
quite possible George Bush and Ehud Olmert intend to
try.  No one knows how this will play out if they do,
but the world now holds its collective breath waiting
to find out. 

There’s no need for breath-holding to know one
near-certain outcome of this conflict and another
likely one.  Just as Hezbollah was born out of the
rubble of Lebanon in the 1980s, so too will one or
more new resistance groups rise out of Lebanon’s
carnage today and the daily killing, destruction and
intensified immiseration in Palestine.  It’s a simple
law of physics - Newton’s Third Law that there’s no
action without reaction.  And it follows that the more
extreme the action, the more proportionally similar
the reaction.  Israel is sure to achieve its goal to
incite the continued conflict and violence it needs to
avoid the political solution it won’t now tolerate.
But in the long run, this high risk strategy may prove
Israel’s undoing as no nation can survive and prosper
on conflict and war without end or for just cause.
Unless the Jewish state can find a way to coexist
peacefully and justly with its Palestinian people and
Arab and Persian neighbors and abandon the sure to
fail path it’s now on, it’s very survival is in doubt
and so is that of those it targets.  Time for more
breath-holding.  Stay closely tuned.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  Also visit his blog
site at sjlendman.blogspot.com