Category: Archive

Israel, Iran and the US: Who Will be Blamed for Nuclear War?

admin /24 July, 2006

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060724&articleId=2807

by Prof. Jorge Hirsch

The war on Lebanon [current flare-up between Israel and Hezbollah] may well escalate to the point where the US will use nuclear weapons against Iran , in what would be the first use of nuclear weapons in war since Nagasaki. And the world may well blame the Jewish State [1] , [2] .
 
Israel’s bombing campaign is causing immense suffering , is in blatant violation of the Geneva conventions , and deserves the strongest of condemnations. It is especially important for the Jewish community today to distance itself from Israel’s immoral government policies and US’s support for them . Many Jews are doing this [1] , [2] , [3] , [4] , unfortunately, many are not. "Thousands of American Jews clogged the streets" in New York and elsewhere in the US [1] , [2] , [3] , [4] , [5] , [6] , [7] , [8] in support of Israel’s actions , reports the Jerusalem Post. Both Houses of the US Congress have just passed solidly backed bipartisan resolutions supporting Israel’s actions in Lebanon [1] , [2] , to "solidify long-term backing of Jewish voters" according to the Washington Post.
 
The irony is, Israel’s war crimes are going to be dwarfed in comparison to the crime against humanity that would [will] take place if the US uses nuclear weapons against Iran . Israel, by its disproportionate reaction and by accusing Iran (without proof) of being behind Hezbollah’s actions [1] , [2] , [3] , [4] , will be seen as having played a key role if the conflict escalates to engulf Iran and the United States. Yet the motivation for those that want this to happen [1] , [2] is not to ensure Israel’s hegemony in the Middle East , rather it is to ensure US hegemony in the world .

A Protracted Colonial War

admin /24 July, 2006

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0720-25.htm

by Tariq Ali
 
In his last interview – after the 1967 six-day war – the historian Isaac Deutscher, whose next-of-kin had died in the Nazi camps and whose surviving relations lived in Israel, said: "To justify or condone Israel’s wars against the Arabs is to render Israel a very bad service indeed and harm its own long-term interest." Comparing Israel to Prussia, he issued a sombre warning: "The Germans have summed up their own experience in the bitter phrase ‘Man kann sich totseigen!’ ‘You can triumph yourself to death’."

In Israel’s actions today we can detect many of the elements of hubris: an imperial arrogance, a distortion of reality, an awareness of its military superiority, the self-righteousness with which it wrecks the social infrastructure of weaker states, and a belief in its racial superiority. The loss of many civilian lives in Gaza and Lebanon matters less than the capture or death of a single Israeli soldier. In this, Israeli actions are validated by the US.

Will Turkey Follow Israel’s Lead?

admin /24 July, 2006

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/berga.php?articleid=9393

by Ann Berg

Anyone who has spent time in Turkey will find its people civil, generous, educated, and open-minded. Just don’t mention the Kurds. The day after I zigzagged through a sloped, ramshackle enclave to reach the ancient Alexandrian fort of Kadifekale overlooking the port city of Izmir, I received a stern lecture on this sinister group. While waving at little boys greeting me from the escarpment, I had wandered unwittingly into a ferment of terrorism.

Although the struggle has claimed 30,000 civilian and military deaths mostly in southeastern Turkey over the last 15 years, the Kurds are not just an internal problem. From Turkey’s perspective, they are an Iraqi problem. Kurdish rebels use Iraq as a springboard for their terrorist activities, causing Prime Minister Erdogan to line up 250,000 troops, a number nearly twice as large as the American contingent, along the Iraq border. Last weekend, 14 soldiers were killed by Kurdish guerillas. And now, eyeing the Bush doctrine at work in the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, Erdogan strains at the bit to enter the war.

US Complicit In Israel War Crimes In Lebanon

admin /24 July, 2006

http://DahrJamailIraq.com
By Dahr Jamail

An acquaintance of mine in Lebanon just sent me this email:

"A friend of mine just called and told me of a massacre: civilian building destroyed in Tyre by Israeli aggression. There, Zouhair Edde’s mother has been killed. Rayaan Qudsi has been killed along with her two daughters. This is a conservative number of martyrs thus far. This building is where refugees typically hide."

This is but an infinitesimal example of what is being carried out by the Israeli military apparatus against the civilian population of Lebanon on an hourly basis.

Is It Time for a Third World War?

admin /24 July, 2006

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=SCH20060724&articleId=2806

by Danny Schechter

This incisive article by Danny Schechter on media disinformation was published almost a month prior to the bombing of Lebanon.

Elements of the U.S. intelligence “community” (which have done such a fine job in Iraq) and their Israeli counterparts, along with the cadre of paid and unpaid cheerleaders in the TV punditocracy, seem to have decided that what the world needs now is another world war.

And they are not shy about saying so.

Lebanon left for dead

admin /24 July, 2006

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HG21Ak01.html
By Pepe Escobar

Lebanon is mired in a terrifying labyrinth of death and destruction. Beirut’s airport is bombed. Israel has imposed a sea blockade. Other than privileged Westerners who are being evacuated by air or sea, people have overnight become refugees. They are plunged into an exodus of hundreds of thousands crammed on rickety rural trucks, overcrowded buses, Red Crescent convoys and even Mercedes with Saudi license plates on a mad dash through Lebanese back roads to Syria.

Israel’s lethal bombing is ubiquitous – raining hell over family homes in the Bekaa Valley, over the Liban Lait milk factory on the road to Baalbek, over a Greek Orthodox church, over civilian trucks carrying rice and sugar near the Christian village of Zaleh, over a civil-defense building in Tyre, over a paper mill, over a packaging firm, over a pharmaceutical plant, over the Lake Qaraoun dam, over bridges, water reservoirs, electric plants, gas stations, ambulances, even over Beirut’s main Christian neighborhood.

Among the 300-plus killed so far in Lebanon, Israel has killed Canadians and Brazilians of Lebanese ancestry. None of these "targets" are military; this means the Lebanese could prosecute Israel for war crimes. Roberto Laurenti, the United Nations’ man in Beirut, had to scream that the situation is "both alarming and catastrophic. There are about 500,000 people displaced already. The situation is extreme."

So where is the much-vaunted "international community"? It is not listening.