Robert Fisk shows how our media completely misrepresent the situation in Palestine and the Middle East generally. The media's aim is to please the US-Israeli war machine by repeating their lies and propaganda, thus facilitating further Israeli conquest of Palestinian lands - such as levelling Arab homes and building new Jewish settlements on Arab lands, and generally oppressing the Arab citizens of the Israeli-occupied territory.  With their discreditted Abbas regime now installed in the Western Bank, the US-Israeli war machine, and their media can portray it as ' the Government' . They can now increase their war on the popular elected Hamas-controlled Gaza by aiding the Abbas regime militarily, and  oppressing the Arab citizens of the Hamas-controlled area. As Washington's Israeli-influenced neocons might say, from now on it's going to be a 'cakewalk' to gain complete Israeli control of the area.

Welcome to 'Palestine'

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

The Battle of Gaza

In less than 24 hours of fierce street-fighting, Bush's proxy-army in Gaza was routed by armed units of Hamas. It was a stunning defeat for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and for US-Israeli policymakers who have done everything in their power to overturn the “free and fair” election of the Hamas government. For now, Hamas has reestablished its authority in Gaza although Abbas is still working frantically with Bush and Olmert to consolidate his power in the West Bank. ...
The forces that Bush has put in motion will inexorably lead to the decline of “superpower rule” and the dismantling of the US imperium. The transition is already visible. The battle of Gaza is just a macrocosm of a much larger phenomenon which now extends from Mogadishu to Kabul.

After Lebanon, What's Left?

As the month-long war between Hezbollah and Israel draws to a close—albeit with a high risk that it will reignite, or even worse, spark a new Lebanese civil war—American policymakers who supported Israel's decision to go to war should understand its long-term impact on moderates in Lebanon and in the Arab world.
Ever since 9/11 brought the Middle East to the center of U.S. foreign policy, . . .

Impeachment Or World War III?

Hezbollah has gained immensely in strength and resolve as a result of the current unprovoked and unjustified carnage planned and executed by Israel against a peaceful Lebanon.  These horrific war crimes perpetrated by Bush USA and Israel, two of the axis-of-evil nations, were supplemented by the distraction provided by the third AOE nation in manufacturing yet another phony false-flag terrorist plot.  I didn't even bother to familiarize myself with the long array of descriptive details, which as of yet haven't even been invented.  I trust nothing either my government or the governments of the other two criminal nations have to say through their harlots in the "American" MSM.

... The cost? Hundreds of Lebanese civilians and Hezbollah soldiers killed and wounded and some hundred Israeli soldiers. Billions of dollars worth of Lebanese property and infrastructure by Israeli bombs.. And the captured Israeli solders?
Still held by Hezbollah.

In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive. “It’s a moment of clarification,” President George W. Bush said at the G-8 summit, in St. Petersburg, on July 16th. “It’s now become clear why we don’t have peace in the Middle East.” He described the relationship between Hezbollah and its supporters in Iran and Syria as one of the “root causes of instability,” and subsequently said that it was up to those countries to end the crisis. Two days later, despite calls from several governments for the United States to take the lead in negotiations to end the fighting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that a ceasefire should be put off until “the conditions are conducive.”

....Rather than welcoming Hezbollah's important shift away from the use of terrorism to advance its political agenda, however, the Bush administration and Congress?in apparent anticipation of a U.S.-Israeli assault against the group and its supporters?instead became increasingly alarmist about the supposed threat posed by this Lebanese political party. And, given the refusal by the Lebanese government to ban the political party and their inability to disband the militia, the United States has given Israel the green light to attack not just Hezbollah militia, but the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon as well."

...While Hezbollah's ongoing rocket attacks on civilian targets in Israel are indeed illegitimate and can certainly be considered acts of terrorism, it is important to note that such attacks were launched only after the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on civilian targets in Israel began July 12.

Every day it becomes clearer that the U.S. and Israel are engaging in a joint war on Muslim countries in the middle east. Israel's assault on Lebanon is the latest example. Bush & Co. are acting for Israel diplomatically, justifying all it's atrocities, while blocking an effective U.N. resolution and action.
Today, Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert called on all Jews to unite behind Israel "which was fighting for it's life" and prepare for more sacrifices.
How could anyone believe such falsehoods? Israel is the strongest power in the middle east with enough nuclear firepower to annihilate any state that dared attack it. With it's 200-500 nuclear weapons, Israel could destroy most of the world. Nevertheless enough people will believe this pro-war rubbish and propaganda and support Israel's war. This will make it possible for Olmert to continue his unprecedented barbarism.

An open letter to the American president :
Dear Mr. Bush,
We heard you express your regrets regarding the casualties of Israel's ravaging war against my country, Lebanon.
I hope you have been furnished with a true profile of the atrocities being perpetrated in my country. You pose as being at war with terrorism. Let me honestly tell you: Charity starts at home.

Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. He frequently travels and offers reflections on organizing and the state of America's soul....

George Orwell's book ":1984" has become reality in Israel.    More and more Israel is practising a form of ethnic cleansing on Palestinian and Lebanese civilians calling it part of Bush's "war on terrorism".

.....I'm so frustrated I can't think straight. I'm full of rage against Israel, the US, Britain, Iran and most of Europe. The world is going to go to hell for standing by and allowing the massacre of innocents. For God's sake, 34 children???

D.U. weapons radiation, being spread by the US and UK in Iraq, and now in Lebanon, has a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
Wind currents will carry it around the world. The more DU weapons are used the more people will become radiated, diseased and die - not just in the countries where it is directly used - but eventually it will contaminate and kill everywhere.. The Pentagon assures everyone it is safe. They are fully aware that they are lying. Without doubt this is one of George Bush's most terrible war crimes. .

Adding to the horrors of the current offensive into Lebanon, with Afghanistan close to anarchy and Iraq drifting into civil war, Bush is now rushing depleted uranium (DU) bombs to Israel. This supports their colossal act of homicide and will increase further global contamination by radioactive DU particles.

This article examines and helps explain the pathology of Israeli irrational and brutal behaviour toward Lebanon and Palestine.
Many Israeli intelligentsia are making a similar diagnosis of Israeli society. With some 200 to 500 nuclear weapons and U.S. support Israel thinks it is invulnerable. It believes it can bomb the UN and ignore UN resolutions. It makes excuses to justify grossly disproportionate aggression and expansion.. It doesn't want independent UN witnesses in Lebanon. Israeli extremism matches that of the Bush Administration. That's one reason Bush's U.S. supports and funds anything Israel does.

The Pathology Of Israeli Power

As we witness the unfolding spectacle of ferocious, indiscriminate violence, destruction, and brutality in Gaza and Lebanon, it's difficult to resist the conclusion that there is something terribly wrong with the Israeli state and society. It's as though all moral and psychological constraints and boundaries have been breached, deviancy normalized. Not that state terrorism, deliberate aggression, extreme disproportionate force, and massive violations of international humanitarian law are new to the Israeli state: from 1948, the list is long, the evidence widely available.

As indicated in Uri Avnery's article and the comments that follow, the Israeli attack on the people of Lebanon is part of pre-planned attack and will probably be expanded with U.S. financing and participation to make wars on Syria and Iran - long the targets of Bush's neocon administration.
As planned, nuclear weapons will probably be used, and a global nuclear disaster could soon be the result. It's time for Americans and others to wake up and take political action before the extremists destroy our world.

It is the old story about the losing gambler: he cannot stop. He continues to play, in order to win his losses back. He continues to lose and continues to gamble, until he has lost everything: his ranch, his wife, his shirt.
The same thing happens in the biggest gamble of all: war. The leaders that start a war and get stuck in the mud are compelled to fight their way ever deeper into the mud. That is a part of the very essence of war: it is impossible to stop after a failure. Public opinion demands the promised victory. Incompetent generals need to cover up their failure. Military commentators and other armchair strategists demand a massive offensive. Cynical politicians are riding the wave. The government is carried away by the flood that they themselves have let loose.

I would rate Israel's false propaganda among the most deceptively effective in the world. Israel manages to get top politicians singing it's song.
The facts do not seem to matter much. Opposition to Israeli aggression in Western countries is sporadic and misinformed. This is at least partly due to Israel's success in embedding their ban, that opposition to Israeli aggression is equivalent to "anti-Semitism" "anti-Zionism" "anti-Israeli prejudice" etc.

This week I had the pleasure to appear on American radio, on the Laura Ingraham show, pitted against David Horowitz, a "Semite supremacist” who most recently made his name under the banner of Campus Watch, leading McCarthyite witch-hunts against American professors who have the impertinence to suggest that maybe, just maybe, Arabs have minds and feelings like the rest of us.

For a more comprehensive understanding of U.S. policy on Iran, and Iran's offers of concessions to meet U.S. concerns, the following May 27 article is essential reading.

Iran experts at the State Department had been working throughout 2001 on increasing relations with Mohammed Khatami's Iran. Post 9/11, they immediately realized the strategic value of working with Iran against a common enemy?al-Qaida.

.... If only they would tell their readers about the PNAC papers that called for U.S. domination of middle east oil resources.

Sidney Blumenthal's latest article claims that the NSA is working with Israel to "monitor whether Syria and Iran are supplying new armaments to Hezbollah." He describes his source as "a national security official with direct knowledge of the operation."

Israel planned to make war on Lebanon for at least a year. Their strategy of mass bombing of civilian men, women and children and the Lebanon infrastructure and claiming they were after Hezbollah is just their justification. The captured Israeli soldiers are a convenient excuse which Israel and the U.S. use to justify this mass bombing and invasion. Any opposition to U.S.-Israeli rule in the middle east is demonised by their propaganda machines, so that they can justify further aggression.

sraeli war planes hit the cities of Sidon, south Beirut and Baalbak on Saturday and Israeli ground troops fought a hard battle to take over the village of Maroun al-Ras, said to be a Hizbullah rocket-launching site. The Israeli bombing of Sidon hit a religious complex linked to Hizbullah. The BBC reports that 'The UN's Jan Egeland said half a million people needed assistance - and the number was likely to increase. One-third of the recent Lebanese casualties, he said, appeared to be children. '

The following 3 articles provide an account of the issues and background to the Israeli offensive against Lebanon.
As the New York Times reported, the Bush Administration has sent Israel a large order of precision bombs to use in this offensive. Bush also blames Hezbollah for the huge Israeli assault, because they captured 3 Israeli soldiers. He justifies this grossly disproportionate Israeli response and the invasion of Lebanon and blocks any effective international action to stop it.

Israel Violates U.S. Law On Weapons In Mideast