ETHNIC CLEANSING IN THE AGE OF RUBBLE
ISRAELI WAR CRIMES AND LIES CONTINUE UNABATED
Christopher Bollyn
American Free Press
Author's Note: This article was submitted to American Free Press on July 26, 2006 before the latest Israeli massacre of 60 innocent women and children in Qana (Cana) in Galilee (Lebanon).
The barbaric Israeli aggression against Lebanon is based on lies and accompanied by a series of war crimes in which it has been actively aided and abetted by the United States.
The Israeli aggression against Lebanon is a monstrous war crime in which the Zionist state has been aided and abetted by the U.S. government. The vicious Israeli assault on Lebanon has been accompanied by a host of lies that have been dutifully parroted by the Bush administration and the Zionist-controlled mass media.
After two weeks of fighting, at least 422 people, mostly civilians, had been killed in Lebanon and thousands more injured, while in Israel, 18 Israeli civilians were reportedly killed. Certainly, many more Lebanese dead will be found beneath the rubble of the many flattened residential buildings of south Beirut and southern Lebanon. The Israeli aggression drove some 800,000 Lebanese from their homes creating a new refugee crisis. Israel's ethnic cleansing of south Lebanon is now a fact.
The controlled media lies about the Israeli aggression in Lebanon are similar to its propaganda about the terror attacks of 9/11. In both cases a gross deception has been foisted upon the public causing widespread misunderstanding of the facts and the identity of the guilty party.
A poll conducted by USA Today and Gallup found that 53 percent of the U.S. population blamed Hezbollah for the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and the popular Shi'ite resistance group based in south Lebanon. Hezbollah, which was formed in 1982 as a local resistance movement to challenge the Israeli occupation, is increasingly popular today throughout the Arab and Muslim world because of its ability – and willingness – to confront Israel.
The Gallup poll reveals how successfully the media has deceived the American public about the current crisis in Lebanon. The poll found that 39 percent of respondents blamed Iran, while 29 percent blamed Syria. Lebanon, the beleaguered and devastated victim, was blamed by 27 percent while Israel, the party most clearly responsible for the criminal destruction of Lebanon, was only blamed by 15 percent of those polled. These results reveal the degree of Zionist mind-control over American perceptions of the Middle East. Obvious truths become lies and Zionist lies become truth.
The poll, which was conducted as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice departed for the region, found that 67 percent of the population does not think the Bush administration has a clear and well thought out policy in the Middle East, although whatever policy it does have is obviously crafted to support the Zionist agenda of the Jabotinsky extremists Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
ISRAELIS CAPTURED IN LEBANON
In the controlled press, Hezbollah, branded as a "terrorist" group by the United States and Israel, is blamed for having sparked the crisis by having "kidnapped" two Israeli soldiers from Israeli territory on July 12. Iran and Syria are usually blamed for being the powers behind Hezbollah. The initial news reports, however, indicate that the two Israeli soldiers were not kidnapped at all. They were reported to have been captured – inside Lebanon – after having crossed the border and entered the Lebanese village of Aitaa al-Chaab.
That the Israeli soldiers were captured inside Lebanon was initially reported by a number of leading international press services, including the German news agency (DPA), AP, AFP from France, and UPI Arabia.
"The Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement announced Wednesday that its guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon," the DPA reported from Beirut on July 12.
"Implementing our promise to release the Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, our strugglers have captured at 9:05 a.m. two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon," the Hezbollah statement said.
The BBC, usually quite precise, translated the Hezbollah statement as having said "captured two Israeli soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine."
Lebanese police said the two Israeli soldiers had been captured as they "infiltrated" into the Lebanese town of Aitaa al-Chaab, which lies near the fortified border with Israel.
Early in the day, Joseph Panossian of the Associated Press reported that Hezbollah "captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them."
"The two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanese territory, in the area of Aitaa Al-Chaab, near to the border with Israel, where an Israeli unit had penetrated," the Agence France Presse (AFP) reported from Aitaa al Chaab and Beirut.
On July 13, the DPA reported that Israel vehemently denied reports by Lebanese police that the two soldiers had been captured inside the Lebanese border. Israel said the soldiers had been on patrol on the Israeli side of the border fence. The Israeli version that the soldiers had been "kidnapped" is now repeated by nearly every media outlet, including Robert Fish of The Independent, as fact.
Hezbollah Chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said he would only return the captured soldiers through "indirect negotiations and an exchange of prisoners."
"This is the only available way to release" Lebanese prisoners held in Israel, he said. "The Israelis always first say they do not wish to negotiate but eventually they accept."
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert denounced the "kidnappings" on as an "act of war" by one sovereign country against another.
Olmert said "Lebanon will bear the consequences of its actions," and warned of a "very, very, very painful" response.
The Israeli response has also been criminal. It has been both disproportionate and illegal in its use of U.S. supplied precision-guided weapons, cluster bombs, and phosphorus weapons to target civilians and civilian infrastructure.
The obvious falseness of the Israeli military claim that it does not target civilians was plain to see from the front page of The New York Times on July 22.
The lead story reported that the Bush administration was rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel while the large color photograph next to the article showed some of the coffins of 86 civilians who had been killed in Tyre.
Reports on National Public Radio described how Israeli planes and helicopters had targeted civilian vehicles fleeing from their homes and villages in south Lebanon. One family's car was struck just feet from the hospital in Tyre. In another case 23 of the 27 civilians in one truck were killed by an Israeli missile. An Israeli helicopter machine gunned a civilian vehicle killing all 9 civilians.
As Israel is wont to do, a number of Red Cross ambulances were targeted. "Israeli missiles had clearly pierced the very center of the red cross on the roof of each ambulance," Robert Fisk wrote on July 26.
Meanwhile, U.S. war planes arrived at Israeli airbases carrying weaponry and military equipment. The American planes came from Gulf States including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, according to the Al Manar newspaper. The newspaper reported that five U.S. planes had landed in three Israeli airbases, bringing more weapons and "vacuum bombs of many sizes."
"We are aiding and abetting war crimes," Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, said about the U.S. weapon shipments to Israel. "This has been planned for quite some time," Boyle added.
ISRAEL'S BOLD-FACED LIES
On the same day that U.S. war planes delivered weapons to Israel, Israeli bombs struck a "well known and clearly marked" United Nations observer post in Lebanon, killing 4 UN monitors from China, Austria, Finland and Canada.
Despite 6 hours of urgent calls from top UN officials in New York and its officers on the ground to the Israeli mission and the Israeli military protesting repeated firing on the UN station at Khiam, the base continued to come under fire and received a total of 21 strikes from the air, 12 of them artillery rounds.
Jane Lute, the assistant secretary general for peacekeeping operations, told an emergency meeting of the Security Council that no Hezbollah firing was taking place in the area during the period.
UN General Secretary Kofi Annan said the Israeli attack on the Khiam base "apparently deliberate." China strongly condemned the Israeli air strike and summoned Israel's ambassador in Beijing to demand an apology.
Asked about the attack on the UN base, Boyle said, "They do it all the time; it's a power thing." Israeli officials are demanding an apology from Annan for his comments.
Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, rejected claims that the Israeli military had intentionally targeted the UN peacekeepers. "We want it to be clear it was not a deliberate attack because Israel would never target a UN force. It is not part of our policies; it is not part of our values," Livni said.
Livni's statement is a nothing but another Israeli bold-faced lie. Israel does indeed target UN bases. On April 18, 1996, during the Israeli "Grapes of Wrath" aggression against Lebanon, then prime minister Shimon Peres (now vice premier) ordered the precision-guided artillery shelling of the UN base at Qana (Cana) in which hundreds of Lebanese had sought shelter. More than 106 Lebanese civilians, most of them children, were killed in this previous deliberate attack on a UN base.
Exposing the Zionist lies:
Map showing the location - inside Lebanon - where the 2 Israeli infiltrators were captured on July 12. Aitaa al-Chaab is the location where the Lebanese police reported that the Israelis had been captured. It is clearly a village inside Lebanon. This was reported by the AP, DPA, AFP, and UPI. I have not seen or heard a single report that provides a precise location on the Israeli side of the border where these soldiers were supposedly "kidnapped."
Why? If Hezbollah fighters came through the border and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers (highly unlikely even in the best of times), why have we not been shown the place - and the evidence - where and how it occurred?
Answer: Because it is a fat, juicy Zionist lie repeated by the Zionist-controlled media.
