What kind of weapons used in Lebnon ?

Bush could stop Israel in its tracks with a snap of his fingers. But why would he? Israel is doing his bidding.

7.26.2006 -- On Friday morning, as I traveled north on Interstate 5, I passed two tractor-trailers heading south toward the 32nd Street Naval Station in downtown San Diego. Each vehicle carried about 10 unmarked bombs; each bomb was approximately 15 feet long. Two military helicopters hovered low above each tractor-trailer, providing overhead escort. I wondered where these bombs were headed. They must have been in a big hurry because they usually ship their bombs more covertly.

Israel had just put out an S.O.S. to the United States government to rush over several more bombs. "The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration," according to the New York Times. Although always well-equipped with sophisticated U.S.-made weapons, Israel was evidently running out of munitions to drop on the Lebanese people.

Washington loses no opportunity to scold Iran and Syria for providing weapons to Hezbollah. Yet during the Bush administration, from 2001 to 2005, Israel received $10.5 billion in foreign military financing -- the Pentagon's biggest military aid program -- and $6.3 billion in U.S. arms deliveries. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign military assistance.

The U.S. Arms Export Control Act stipulates that foreign countries receiving weapons from the United States must use them solely for defensive purposes or to maintain internal security. During the last major Israeli incursion into Lebanon, in 1981, the Reagan administration cut off U.S. military aid and arms deliveries for 10 weeks while it investigated whether Israel was using weapons for "defensive purposes."

Last week, both houses of Congress, mindful of the importance of retaining Jewish votes and campaign contributions, passed resolutions stating that Israel was acting in self-defense. The vote in the Senate was unanimous; the House vote was 410 to 8. Walking in lockstep with Bush, neither resolution calls for a ceasefire. The Senate resolution praises Israel for its "restraint" and the House resolution "welcomes Israel's continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties."

U.S.-provided Israeli bombs have killed nearly 400 Lebanese, of whom the overwhelming majority were innocent civilians. The bombing has displaced half a million people and caused an estimated $1 billion in damage.

After Israel ordered people in southern Lebanon to evacuate their homes, several vehicles filled with evacuating Lebanese civilians were bombed by the Israeli military. An Israeli helicopter fired a missile at a white minibus carrying 19 people fleeing Tairi. Three people were killed and several wounded.

A green Mercedes with a family fleeing Mansuri was struck by an Israeli missile. Three lay dead, while others were severely injured. Eight-year-old Mahmoud Srour's face was burned beyond recognition.

As Zein al-Abdin Zabit evacuated with his wife and four sons, his white Nissan was hit by an Israeli missile. "It's nothing more than revenge, revenge on civilians," Zabit said as he lay in bed with broken ribs.

Human Rights Watch confirmed yesterday that Israel is using artillery-delivered cluster munitions in populated areas of Lebanon. "Cluster munitions are unacceptably inaccurate and unreliable weapons when used around civilians," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "They should never be used in populated areas."

The use of cluster munitions in populated areas of Iraq caused more civilian casualties than any other factor in the U.S.-led coalition's major military operations in March and April 2003, killing and wounding more than 1,000 Iraqi civilians, HRW reported. HRW photographed U.S.-produced/U.S.-supplied cluster bombs among the arsenal of Israel Defense Forces artillery teams stationed on the Israeli-Lebanese border during a July 23 research visit.

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail reported that the Lebanese Ministry of Interior has confirmed the Israelis have used the incendiary white phosphorous gas. This is a chemical weapon, much like napalm, that can burn right down to the bone. The U.S. military used white phosphorous in Fallujah, Iraq.

Article 35 of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions prohibits the use of weapons "of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering." Cluster bombs and white phosphorous fall into this category.

Bilal Masri, assistant director of the Beirut Government University Hospital, told Jamail, "The Israelis are using new kinds of bombs, and these bombs can penetrate bomb shelters," Masri added. "They are bombing the refugees in the bomb shelters!" Masri also said that 55 percent of the casualties are children under 15 years of age.

It is a violation of the laws of war to target civilians. "A fundamental rule of international humanitarian law is the obligation to distinguish between civilians and civilian property on one hand and military targets on the other," Nada Doumani, Middle East spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross told Aljazeera.net. "Under no circumstances can civilians and public and private property be deliberately attacked. All parties in the conflict have to abide by these rules."

Doumani quoted ICRC Director of Operations Pierre Krahenbuhl, who said: "The high number of civilian casualties and the extent of damage to essential public infrastructure raise serious questions regarding respect for the principle of proportionality in the conduct of hostilities."

Nearly every report from the corporate media seeks to find symmetry in this war. When an outlet covers the massive devastation in Lebanon and increasing numbers of Lebanese civilians killed by Israeli bombs, it is careful to juxtapose reports of Hezbollah rockets fired into Israel.

Jan Egeland, the United Nations emergency relief chief, however, called the "disproportionate response" by Israel to Hezbollah's actions "a violation of international humanitarian law." Egeland, who characterized the devastated areas of Lebanon as "horrific," said Israel is denying access to relief operations.

At least 384 people have been killed in Lebanon, including 20 soldiers and 11 Hezbollah fighters. Israel's death toll is at least 40, with 17 people killed by Hezbollah rockets and 23 soldiers killed in the fighting.

On Monday, a high-ranking Israeli Air Force officer told reporters that Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, had ordered the military to destroy 10 buildings in Beirut in retaliation for every Katyusha rocket strike on Haifa by Hezbollah.

Last week, several Jewish organizations and Christian Zionists lobbied the White House to support Israel. Bush complied, giving Israel at least another week to continue slaughtering the Lebanese people.

While Bush stood by and watched the humanitarian catastrophe Israel is wreaking in Lebanon, Condoleezza Rice traveled there and met with Fuad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister. Rice's visit was an "important show of support for the Lebanese public and the Siniora government," a U.S. official said Monday. The official told reporters traveling with Rice, "The fact we are going to go right into Beirut after all that has happened is a pretty dramatic signal to Lebanon and their government."

It would be much more dramatic for Bush-Rice to call a halt to the carnage. When Helen Thomas asked White House spokesman Tony Snow why the president opposed a ceasefire, he rudely thanked her for her "Hezbollah view."

Bush could stop Israel in its tracks with a snap of his fingers. But why would he? Israel is doing Bush's bidding -- redrawing the map of the Middle East to facilitate U.S. domination. Bush began that task with Iraq; Israel is following suit with Palestine and Lebanon. Indeed, Bush is hoping Israel's next stop will be Iran or Syria.

A July 21 list of talking points from the White House Office of the Press Secretary referred to a Los Angeles Times op-ed by Max Boot titled, "It's Time to Let The Israelis Take Off the Gloves." The White House release contained this quote from Boot's piece: "Our best response is exactly what Bush has done so far -- reject premature calls for a cease-fire and let Israel finish the job."

That quote was preceded by this language: "Iran may be too far away for much Israeli retaliation beyond a single strike on its nuclear weapons complex. (Now wouldn't be a bad time.) But Syria is weak and next door. To secure its borders, Israel needs to hit the Assad regime. Hard. If it does, it will be doing Washington's dirty work."

We turn a blind eye at our peril.

Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich were guests on the FOX News Sunday talk show on August 6, 2006. Sam Husseini joined the media stake-out outside the studios and questioned both men alongside other journalists on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

DA: Well, I wouldn�t give too much credence to this Human Watch � can you hear me now? I would say this report that you quoted is just something out of this earth. I mean, I don�t know where they live. It�s a �

DA: I don�t know who they have. We�re also � we�re also in Lebanon. And if you see the difference is, you see the Hezbollah targets civilians and only civilians. They use this indiscriminate Katyusha rockets, which have been converted, their warheads have been converted into a terror weapon with all this ball-bearings just to kill civilians. Now they use it from apartments, they use it from mosques and from schoolyards. On the other hand, we are using only precision munitions, even at the compromise of achieving our mission fast. Many of our soldiers get killed because we are being very careful. So this report, I don�t know what credence, it�s absurd and it�s totally false and I must say, I would question the motivations of them and who wrote it.

DA: No, not at all.

DA: Well it�s not very respected to me anymore if they come up with such ignorant remarks which do not represent the truth and they don�t know what�s going on if they write these things. I mean, it is quite obvious that we have a situation here of a terror organization who embeds itself.. Tell me, do you see of any Hezbollah camps in Lebanon?

DA: Does Human Rights see � can the Human�

DA: Were they there? Were they there? They�re writing� no�. yes, I was there. We were there. Israeli soldiers were there. No, no, no, I�m sorry.

DA: I�ll ask you a simple question and for the Human Rights. Can they direct us, you or me, or the international community to a single base of Hezbollah? Does Hezbollah have bases? No.

DA: Yeah. Do they have bases? No

DA: Hezbollah fires from� Hezbollah fires from mosques�Hezbollah fires� I�m telling you.

DA: And they fire from schoolyards and they fire from UN positions.

DA: It�s just too bad that we work about something that you obviously don�t know and they obviously don�t know. I�m sorry about it. The fact that it�s written over there doesn�t make it true. I think the reality on the ground speaks for itself. And the reality on the ground is that they target civilians and we target Hezbollah. The fact that Hezbollah is embedded among Lebanese civilians is a problem, but go ask the Lebanese about it and they will tell you.

DA: What was specifically targeted was bridges that the Hezbollah used for redirecting supplies from Syria and Iran to them. And after we took out the Western bridges that cut off supply from Syria to Lebanon from the Damascus-Beirut road, they have come from the north in a different area and this is what we took out. Our aim is to cut off supply of this deadly weapons from Iran and Syria to the Hezbollah. This is, by the way, specifically what the UN Resolution calls for, an arms embargo, and somebody has to do it. We prefer that an international force is the one to do it, but until they are installed in place, we have to do it to protect ourselves and ultimately to save the Lebanese from the Hezbollah and bring Lebanon back to the Lebanese.

DA: Well, this is what the UN Resolution calls for, to honor the ceasefire meaning that you have to cease of course all hostilities, you have to return to Israel the kidnapped soldiers which are hostages and also to have in place a robust force to disarm the Hezbollah. By the way, this is not a new resolution, a new concept. 1559 from 2004 called for dismantling the Hezbollah� it was not done. 2000, May 2000, when Israel pulled out of Lebanon completely, fulfilling Resolution 425, called also for dismantling the Hezbollah. It was not done. 1989 The Tayf Agreement in Saudi Arabia called for the dismantling of the Hezbollah. It wasn�t done. So it�s time for the international community to show credibility not to make a mockery of its own resolutions, otherwise it�s going to have far-reaching consequences, adverse consequences, to Iran, North Korea, and anywhere else. This is a time to fulfill this resolution to the dot, letter and spirit and that it disarming the Hezbollah. It�s either an international force who will do it and until they can do it, we will have to do it and this is what we�re doing right now.

DA: Unless we have a robust international force that can take over and disarm them.

DA: Why are we in Lebanon? Were we in Lebanon three weeks ago? Why are we in Lebanon? Because we were provoked, we were attacked over international borders, they kidnapped our soldiers, they shelled our cities and our civilians. This is the only reason that we are there. It is a matter of self-defense, Article 51 of the UN Charter calls for self-defense, and I think the entire world justifies us for that.

DA: Not at all.

DA: Not at all. I think you have to read your history. I�m sorry, I�

DA: I think that�s quite ridiculous. I better not � get your facts.

DA: I wish there were more because now we see that we lack intelligence of the buildup.

DA: No. There were not.

DA: No. I�ll tell you why.

DA: No, there were not. I�ll tell you why.

DA: No. Who violated � who violated the integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon was the Hezbollah, Iran and Syria. So we had to � no � we had to defend ourselves from the Hezbollah, Syria and Lebanon � and Syria and Iran who were in Lebanon. If Iran wasn�t in Lebanon, if Hezbollah was dismantled according to 1559, if the Syrians were not shipping arms to Hezbollah, there were no needs of any self-defense measures by us including specific flights of IAF or anything else.

DA: Sir, you are talking and, uh..

DA: Who says we have nuclear possession? Have we ever said that? The only thing we said�

DA: The only thing we said, the only thing we said that Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East. This has been our position all along. Israel is the only country, unfortunately, who has been threatened. Its survival was at stake as countries in the Middle East are calling for its demise. So we have this what you call an ambiguous or policy of ambiguity as a policy of national defense.

DA: Is anybody threatening Iran�s survival? Did we say that Iran should be decimated? It�s Iran that says Israel should be decimated. So I think you have to get your facts correctly and sift them out. I�m sorry it�s just a futile conversation here.

DA: No we are not. We are not using anything which is not approved by the UN conventions and Charters.

DA: Lebanon has electric capabilities, which is running. They have running water. We are not targeting any of the infrastructures. We could have done a lot of damage which we are not doing specifically because we are very much concerned about the humanitarian conditions over there.

DA: Not at all. I think you mix up between resolutions which are enforceable, like UN Security Council, and general assembly resolutions.

DA: I�ll tell you why. I don�t know why you don�t read your history. It�s very recent history. We pulled out of Gaza completely dismantling 21�

DA: Yes, well in the West Bank also. We have offered to leave the West Bank. There was a Camp David summit in 2000 where Ehud Barak, Prime Minister, offered to give most of the West Bank to the Palestinians. They refused and attacked us, so it takes 2 to fulfill resolutions.

DA: Who said we will not? We are still working on that. Thank you very much.