MB Civic

Two nights ago, the Senate was set to vote on a resolution defending
Israel’s attacks on Lebanon.  That vote was blocked by Senate Armed
Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-VA).  Warner noted the
following on the Senate floor:

“I urge those…to make sure there is not an ambiguity there because the
people of Lebanon are suffering enormously at this time, as are the people
in Gaza. Many of those people are not aligned with either Hezbollah or
Hamas.

“There is no mention in the resolution of some perhaps 25,000 Americans
who are trapped or engulfed in one way in this conflict. How best do we
address this conflict to help protect those 25,000 persons? That is an
essential part of this debate.

“Now we see today that so many nations say the United States must take a
stronger role in trying to work our way through this conflict, yes,
supporting Israel but at the same time trying to bring about some
resolution to spare the life and limb and suffering in Palestine, Lebanon,
and Israel, to see that it not spread to other areas.

“I conclude our support for Israel is very strong, Mr. President, but it
cannot be unconditional.”

Senator John Warner (R-VA)

Sad to say, the resolution passed today, and is attached.  It was
sent to me by an old friend, with this introduction:

—– Original Message —–
From: Anthony Saidy
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2006 11:23 AM
Subject: Zionist Senate’s Resolution

As one-sided as can be! Find the single phrase in the whole resolution
implying that Israel should kill fewer civilians. Oh, yes, we await a bill
transferring all of Israel’s $4 billion in aid to Lebanon, the country
that it destroys once per generation.  Don’t hold your breath. -AFS

***

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13978.htm

From my home, I saw what the ‘war on terror’ meant

By Robert Fisk

07/14/06 “The Independent” — — All night I heard the jets,
whispering high above the Mediterranean. It lasted for hours, little
fireflies that were watching Beirut, waiting for dawn perhaps, because it
was then that they descended.

They came first to the little village of Dweir near Nabatiya in
southern Lebanon where an Israeli plane dropped a bomb on to the home of a
Shia Muslim cleric. He was killed. So was his wife. So were eight of his
children. One was decapitated. All they could find of a baby was its head
and torso which a young villager brandished in fury in front of the
cameras. Then the planes visited another home in Dweir and disposed of a
family of seven.

It was a brisk start to Day Two of Israel’s latest “war on terror”, a
conflict that uses some of the same language – and a few of the same lies
– as George Bush’s larger “war on terror”. For just as we “degraded” Iraq
– in 1991 as well as 2003 – so yesterday it was Lebanon’s turn to be
“degraded”.

That means not only physical death but economic death and it arrived
at Beirut’s gleaming new £300m international airport just before 6am as
passengers prepared to board flights to London and Paris.

From my home, I heard the F-16 which suddenly appeared over the newest
runway and fired a spread of rockets into it, ripping up 20 metres of
tarmac and blasting tons of concrete into the air in a massive explosion
before a Hetz-class Israeli gunboat fired on to the other runways.

Two of Middle East Airlines’ new Airbuses were left untouched but,
within minutes, the airport was deserted as passengers fled back to
their homes and hotels.

The flight indicators told the whole story: Paris no flight, London,
no flight, Cairo, no flight, Dubai, no flight, Baghdad – from the
cauldron into the fire if anyone had chosen to take it – no flight.
Someone was playing “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina” over the public
address system.

Then the Israelis went for the Hizbollah television station, Al-Manar,
clipping off its antenna with a missile but failing to put the station off
air. That might be a more understandable target – “Manar”, after all,
broadcasts Hizbollah propaganda. But was it really designed to find or
recover the two Israeli soldiers captured on Wednesday? Or to take revenge
for the nine Israelis killed in the same incident, one of the blackest
days in recent Israeli Army history although not as black as it was for
the 36 Lebanese civilians killed in the previous 24 hours..

An Israeli woman was also killed by a Hizbollah rocket fired into
Israel. So, in the grim exchange rate of these wretched conflicts, one
Israeli death equals just over three Lebanese; it’s a fair bet the
exchange rate will grow more murderous.

And by afternoon, the threats had grown worse. Israel would not “sit
idly by”. It ordered the entire population of the southern suburbs –
home to Hizbollah’s headquarters – to flee their homes by 3pm.

Save for a few hundred families, they stubbornly refused to leave.
Everywhere in Lebanon could now be a target, the Israelis announced. If
Israel bombed the suburbs, the Hizbollah roared, it would fire its
long-range Katyushas at the Israeli city of Haifa. One of them had
apparently already damaged an Israeli air base at Miron, a fact concealed
at the time by Israeli censors.

It certainly frightened Lebanon’s Gulf tourists who packed the roads
from Bhamdoun in their 4x4s, fleeing for the safety of Syria and
flights home from Damascus. Another little economic death for Lebanon.

But what did all this mean, this ranting and threatening? I sat at
home in the early afternoon, going through my files of Israeli
statements. It turned out that Israel had threatened not to “sit idly by”
(or occasionally “stand idly by”) in Lebanon on at least six occasions in
the past 26 years, most famously when the late Israeli prime minister
Menachem Begin promised that he would not “stand idly by” while Christians
were threatened here in 1980 – only to withdraw his soldiers and leave the
Christians to their bloody fate three years later.

The Lebanese are always left to their fate. Israel’s Prime Minister,
Ehud Olmert, says he holds the Lebanese government responsible for the
attacks on the border that breached the international frontier on
Wednesday.

But Mr Olmert and everyone knows that the weak and fractious
government of the Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora isn’t capable of
controlling a single militiaman, let alone the Hizbollah.

Yet wasn’t this the same set of Lebanese political leaders
congratulated by the United States last year for its democratic
elections and its freedom from Syria? Indeed, a man who sees Bush as a
friend – perhaps “saw” is a better word – is Saad Hariri, son of the
ex-Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri who built much of the
infrastructure that Israel is now destroying and whose murder last year –
by Syrian agents? – supposedly outraged Mr Bush.

Yesterday morning, Saad Hariri, the son, was flying into Beirut when
America’s Israeli allies arrived to bomb the airport. He had to turn
round as his aircraft skulked off to Cyprus for refuge.

But it was the undercurrent of terror-speak that was particularly
frightening yesterday.

Lebanon was an “axis of terror”, Israel was “fighting terror on all
fronts”. During the morning, I had to cut across an interview with an
Australian radio station when an Israeli reporter stated – totally
untruthfully – that there were Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon and
that not all Syria’s troops had left.

And the reason why the Israelis had attacked Beirut’s infinitely
secure and carefully monitored airport, used by diplomats and European
leaders, a facility as safe as any in Europe? Because, so said the
Israelis, it was “a central hub for the transfer of weapons and supplies
to the Hizbollah terrorist organisation.” If the Israelis really want to
know where that hub is, they should be looking at Damascus airport. But
they do know that, don’t they?

And so it is terror, terror, terror again and Lebanon is once more to be
depicted as the mythic terror centre of the Middle East along, I suppose
with Gaza. And the West Bank. And Syria. And, of course, Iraq. And Iran.
And Afghanistan. And who knows where next?

—
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“Our German forbearers in the 1930s sat around, blamed their rulers, said ‘maybe everything’s going to be alright.’ That is something we cannot do. I do not want my grandchildren asking me years from now, ‘why didn’t you do something to stop all this?” –Ray McGovern,  former CIA analyst of 27 years, referring to the actions and crimes of the Bush Administration