Under Fire in Beirut by Robert Fisk

07/30/06 "The Independent" -- -- To Sidon. Ed Cody has found a cool, 120-mile-an-hour driver called Hassan - he has a black Mercedes which I nickname "Death Car" (because that will be the fate of anyone who gets in our way) and we zip down the coast road and turn east into the hills at Naameh, where the Israelis have just blown the bridge.

Thirty years ago, Cody was an Associated Press correspondent in Beirut and taught me how to cover wars. "Get in the car, drive to the battle and find out what the arseholes are doing," he used to say. Cody is from Oregon, a slim, brilliant, highly subversive journalist who is now Beijing correspondent for the Washington Post. A great guy to travel with, eyes sharp for F-16s, brave without being a poseur, fluent in Arabic, he understands the dirty war we are watching and thrives on cynicism.

"Look," he says, pointing to a blown-up highway interchange. "It's a terrorist bridge! And if you take the road to Zahle, you'll find a burned out terrorist flour and grain lorry!" If the world became a better place, I fear Cody would contemplate suicide.

Sidon is full of Shia refugees, and I hunt down Ghena Hariri, daughter of Sidon's MP and niece of murdered ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri. She is a Georgetown graduate and reckons three more Hizbollah buildings will be bombed in her city. The Israelis have just bombed a Hizbollah mosque. Cody and I mosey over to take a look at the crushed cupola, and the local Lebanese "Squad 112" - a kind of paramilitary police - arrive to shoo us away.

We race back to Beirut, joining the coastal highway south of the city. It is a bleak, desolate, empty road and we watch the sky, detouring round the airport, the air filled with smoke from burning oil tanks and the vibration of another massive Israeli bomb on the southern suburbs just as we pass.

Monday 24 July

To southern Lebanon on a humanitarian convoy. No problems as far as Zahle in the Beka'a - though we pass Cody's "terrorist" flour truck, a missile hole through the cab door - and then turn south towards Lake Qaraaoun. A bright, wonderful day of sun and fluffy clouds, and then the scream of high-flying jets. We watch the skies again. I'm becoming an expert on light and cumulus clouds.

In the middle of a field of tomatoes, I see a London bus. I turn to the driver. "Isn't that a London bus?" I ask, like the man who sees the sheep in a tree in Monty Python. "Yes, that's a London bus." It is. It's a bloody great bright red Routemaster double decker. In the Beka'a Valley. In Lebanon. During the war.

Seventeen miles south and the road is blown up, craters in the middle and narrow tracks on the edge for our vehicles to pass. One Israeli bomb has blown away most of the road above a 60ft chasm and it reminds me of that scene in North West Frontier where Kenneth More has to manoeuvre a steam locomotive over a blown-up railway bridge, on which the tracks are still connected but there's nothing underneath. More turns to Lauren Bacall and says: "Of course, it's one of my hobbies, driving trains over broken railway bridges."

We inch forward along the narrow section of road and the stones spit out beneath our wheels. The vehicle starts to lean to the right and I lean to the left. So does the driver. Then we are across and turn our heads like wolves to see how the second driver copes. North of Khiam, I can see fires burning in the forests of northern Israel and smoke drifting from Metullah, and hear the thump of shells into Lebanon. Great weather. Pity about the war.

Tuesday 25 July

I prowl around Marjayoun, the Christian town wedged between two slices of Hizbollah territory. This was the headquarters of Israel's brutal "South Lebanese Army" proxy militia, and there are still a lot of ex-SLA men here, all with Lebanese mobile phones, but a few of them, I suspect, with Israeli ones. No shells fall on Marjayoun - not yet - so the locals gather at Rashed's Restaurant (yes, there is a restaurant open in southern Lebanon, serving kebabs and cold beer) and watch the war. You can sit on the ridge and hear tank fire, Katyusha fire, bombs from jets and bombs from helicopters. Far across the valley, beside the old fort at Khiam, there is a UN post where four unarmed UN observers are watching the battle at first hand, reporting each shell burst.

Wednesday 26 July

Indian UN soldiers bring what is left of the four observers to the run-down hospital in Marjayoun. All day they had been reporting Israeli shellfire creeping closer to their clearly marked position. An officer in the UN's headquarters at Naqoura phoned the Israelis 10 times to warn them of their fall of shot, and 10 times he had been promised that no more shells would fall close to the Khiam post.

But the four soldiers did not run away - as the Israelis presumably hoped they would - and so yesterday evening an Israeli aircraft flew down and fired a missile directly into their UN position, tearing the four brave men to pieces and flattening their building. I notice that they are brought to the hospital in unwieldy black plastic bags, apparently decapitated. One of the Indian soldiers is wearing a turban, painted the same pale blue as the UN flag.

The schools of the region are now crammed with refugees, white flags on the roofs. I go to a classroom where 15 Shia families are squatting on the floor. The lavatories are blocked, the place stinks of urine. "What are you doing to us?" a dark-haired man with a heavily lined face asks me quietly. How should I reply? Well, my Prime Minister doesn't think it's time for a ceasefire just yet, but he promises to give you acres of freedom and lots and lots of democracy and a new dawn later on. But no truce right now, I'm afraid. In other words, you've had it, chum. No. I just remain silent and say "Haram" in Arabic. It means shame or pity, depending on the context, which I am happy to leave vague.

Thursday 27 July

I sit with a French friend on a small hill, looking across southern Lebanon at dusk, watching aircraft swooping like eagles on to patches of scrub and blasting rocks and trees into the air. To our left, Israeli artillery is ranged on to a house this side of Khiam. The first shell bursts in a bubble of flame and there is a double report, then a barrage - a pillonage, as my friend calls it in his more powerful French - of fire consumes the house and we can see bits of it high in the air, then more bubbles and eventually a grey cloud of smoke covers the wreckage.

"My God, I hope there was no one in there," my friend says. We may never know. All over southern Lebanon, the dead are sandwiched between the floors of bombed houses. We discuss the language of war, and discover that most of the French words for battle and death are feminine.

To Nabatea at lunchtime, a few shops bravely open amid the rubble of houses on the main road, a market blasted across the fields (a terrorist market, I hear Cody's spirit announcing) and then, just by Arab Selim, a plane puts a bomb on the bridge in front of our vehicle and we beat a hasty retreat from this unpleasant ambuscade and return to the sanctuaire of our little house on the hill. Mosquitoes at night, a bare mattress on the marble floor, a dirty pillowcase to sleep on.

Friday 28 July

At 3am, a huge bombardment starts across the valley over Beaufort Castle, the massive Crusader keep to the west. Captured by Saladin in 1190, handed over to the Knights Templar - the neo-conservatives of their age - in 1260, besieged on one occasion by a Muslim army which asked to negotiate with Beaufort's commander and then tortured him in front of its defenders, it looms over us as 46 shells ripple across the next-door village of Arnoun.

My mobile phone rings. An American journalist is walking south of Tibnin towards the Hizbollah-Israeli battle at Bint Jbail - a wise precaution because all cars are now prey to Israel's eagles - and has found two wounded Druze men lying by the road. One of them cannot stand. She has no car. Can I help? I am 15 miles away. "Can I tell them they will be rescued?" Don't lie to them, I say. Tell them you will try to get help. I promise to call the Red Cross.

I phone Hisham Hassan at the ICRC in Beirut and tell him the precise location. Both men are lying by a smashed roadside stall with an orange flag in the ground, a kilometre past a road sign which says "Welcome to Beit Yahoun" and next to a huge bomb crater. Hisham promises to call the Tibnin Red Cross ambulance centre. Ten minutes later, I get a text message: "Red Cross on the way." Angels from heaven.

I start my way back to Beirut on another convoy, grinding back over the same dangerous roads and past the same bomb craters. There are new ones, and a man shouts that we must detour down a dirt track. "Big rocket on road," he says, and that's good enough for me. We trail past an old, tree-shrouded cemetery. Three hours later, we stop for sandwiches in a Christian town, among people who traditionally despise Hizbollah. I find that they are all watching Hizbollah's station, and when I talk to them, an old man says he believes Hizbollah tells the truth.

Saturday 29 July

Home. I shower and sleep in my own bed and hear the wash of the Mediterranean on the rocks below my window. Fidele has recovered her courage and has returned to clean and cook. I receive a call from a Turkish journalist to talk about the 1915 Armenian genocide - a lot grimmer than this little war - and do an interview with a New Zealand television crew who are about to set off for southern Lebanon with "TV" written in giant silver letters on the roof of the car. I don't think it will help them.

A call from DHL. Proofs of the paperback edition of my book have arrived from London. Someone drove them and DHL's other parcels from Amman to Damascus and then - beneath the jets - across the Beka'a to Beirut. I get a bill for $30 for the extra risks involved in the freight transit. Then go through my notes of the week for this diary. I find that my handwriting briefly collapsed after the air attack on Thursday. I was so frightened that I could hardly write.

I sit on the balcony and read Siegfried Sassoon. Cody also reads to calm himself in war. But Cody reads Verlaine.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Graphic images of brutality in Lebanon

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------

From: Ya Basta!

Date: Jul 30, 2006 8:13 PM
----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------

From: El Nuevo Hombre!!!!
Date: Jul 30, 2006 4:46 PM

I'll just tell u this much, let the pictures speak:

At least 57 civilians are dead in the town of Qana, the site of a similar massacre of civilians by Israel a decade ago. (In 1996, an Israeli air strike on a United Nations compound in Qana killed more than 100 civilians who had sought shelter there.) Lebanese officials said the majority of the dead in today's attack were children. Hundreds of Lebanese civilians have been killed in previous Israeli attacks.

Israel usually claims that militants use citizens as "human shields". This is a lie and an excuse to justify their state sponsored terrorism.

Israeli airstrike kills dozens of civilians

Read the story below - from Canada's biggest news agency. Other reports confirm this story and report that at least 37 of the victims were children. Notice Israeli excuses itself by saying they told civilians to leave. Imagine that, leave your town or we will kill you. This is the basis behind ethnic cleansing. Military analysts have also reported that Israel is using bigger and more destructive bombs than they need to for this operation - which is illegitimate anyway. They could use heavier but less destructive bombs that would take out one building at a time. Instead they are using 20-ton bombs that take out entire blocks. They are just destroying the country - indiscriminate killing. No history of suffering can justify inflicting this kind of suffering on other people. Two wrongs does not make a right, and this is WRONG.

CBC News: Israeli airstrike kills dozens of civilians

Last Updated Sun, 30 Jul 2006 12:46:17 EDT
CBC News

At least 57 people, many of them women and children, were killed early Sunday in an Israeli air strike on the southern Lebanese town of Qana, Lebanese security officials said.

Hezbollah supporters, furious over Sunday's Israeli air strike in Qana, storm their way into the main UN building in Beirut. (Ben Curtis/Associated Press) Hezbollah supporters, furious over Sunday's Israeli air strike in Qana, storm their way into the main UN building in Beirut. (Ben Curtis/Associated Press)

Those who died were inside a building that had collapsed. Video footage showed at least 20 bodies wrapped in white sheets at the scene.

Lebanese officials said the civilians killed had taken refuge in the basement of the building when bombs fell before dawn.

Israeli officials said the neighbourhood was targeted based on intelligence that Hezbollah fighters had used it to launch rockets at northern Israel, including 40 that landed earlier on Sunday.

They also said civilians were warned several days ago to leave Qana.

In 1996, Israeli shelling killed 102 people in Qana. Most of the victims were women and children in that incident, as well. They were taking refuge in a United Nations building during an earlier Israeli offensive against Hezbollah.

In response to the latest Israeli bombing raid, a crowd of men ransacked the main United Nations building in Beirut. Hezbollah supporters scaled fences, threw rocks and smashed windows before entering the ground floor of the building.

Rice cancels trip to Beirut

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cancelled a planned visit to Beirut on Sunday, hours after the air strike.

Rice told a press conference in Jerusalem that during a meeting with the Israeli defence minister, she reiterated the U.S. stance that Israel should be more careful in its targeting to minimize civilian casualties.

She said she is "deeply saddened by the terrible loss of innocent life," but insisted the United States was working hard to achieve a ceasefire.

"In the wake of the tragedy that the people of Lebanon are facing today, I have decided to postpone my trip to Beirut," Rice said. "In any case, my work today is here [in Israel]."

Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said he himself had requested that Rice not travel to the Lebanese capital in light of the Qana attack.

"There is no place at this sad moment for any discussions other than an immediate and unconditional ceasefire as well as international investigation of the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now," he told reporters.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed "great sorrow" for the airstrikes but said Hezbollah was to blame for using the area to attack Israel.

Rice is making her second trip to the Middle East since the crisis began two and a half weeks ago. Among the items Rice is seeking is an international agreement on a UN-mandated multinational force that offcials hope will provide stability in the region.

Hezbollah DOES NOT have nukes

I just wanted to forward this bulletin and drop you a common sense comment or two.

(1) In order to nuke a city, you must have nukes. Who has nukes? Not Hezbollah - they have crude missiles. Therefore, Hezbollah poses no nuclear threat. Israel has nukes. US has nukes. They are both REAL nuclear threats. Never forget that the ONLY COUNTRY that has used nukes is the US. US used nukes on civilians in Japan - Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
(2) Hannity and Colmes make stuff up all the time. Don't buy it.

Ayanna

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: Alex Jones
Date: Jul 27, 2006 10:38 AM



Fox News Says Hezbollah 'Certain' To Nuke Major City

Following the ceaseless bombing of Lebanon, Fox News has gone thermonuclear in its mission to drive fear into the hearts of Americans by insisting that Hezbollah's use of a nuclear device in a major US or Israeli is inevitable and that only increased surveillance of Americans can stop it.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2006/270706hezbollahnuke.htm

You Can Not Kill Us All - Yes, they will survive despite us

If you are brave, take a minute to listen to Tina Naccache talk about the attempted genocide of her people in Lebanon. She too reads the news in the NY Times and Washington Post and sees the US government authorize more bombs, more jet fuel in order for Israel to kill her people. Think about how she feels knowing that we, YOU, paid for the deaths of her friends and family.

Tell me you have not felt the same way, except you feel this way even when no one has tried to eradicate your town, your family, your people. The US and Israel have tried to eradicate her people, but it seems they cannot eradicate her soul.

From Tina Naccache, a strong Lebanese woman with a lot to say

Caricatures that speak the truth about the war

For those who prefer a less graphic and brutal visual take on information you need to hear and see:

See more here

Combatants for Peace

Watch the video here or read the transcript below
---------------------------------------------

"You know, it's one of the hardest things, because there is so much ignorance here, and seeing what your government is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and all over the world, you don't have so much hope. But sometimes you must do something in order to still have a reason to live and to wish in this world, and I also believe that if we can put some pressure on European leaders that are a bit less ignorant than your government, maybe we can make something."

* Yonatan Shapira-Former Captain in the Israeli Air Force Reserves. In 2003 Yonatan initiated the group of Israeli Air Force pilots who refused to fly attack missions on Palestinian territories. He is the co-founder of Combatants for Peace.

Bassam Aramim-Former member of Fatah, who served a 7 year prison sentence after being arrested in Hebron when he was 17 years old. He is currently a member of Combatants for Peace.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: Today, we're joined in studio once again by Yonatan Shapira. He is a military refuser. Yonatan is a former captain in the Israeli Air Force Reserves. In 2003 he initiated a group of Israeli Air Force pilots to sign a declaration refusing to participate in aerial attacks on the Palestinian territories. Yonatan is also a co-founder of the group Combatants for Peace. He was with us Friday, and we welcome him back to Democracy Now!

YONATAN SHAPIRA: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. On Friday, we had a debate between you and a spokesperson for the Young Meretz, a peace party in Israel around Lebanon. But I wanted to step back today to talk about how you arrived at the conclusions you did, for you, Yonatan, to talk about your personal story. Tell us how you became a soldier in Israel.

YONATAN SHAPIRA: Okay. In Israel, its quite obvious that if you are finishing your high school studies, you join the military. I was growing up in a family in military bases. My father was a squadron commander in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. And my dream was to be a pilot. So, for me it was obvious that I will achieve this dream and I will also contribute to the security of my country.

In history lessons, I didn't learn about the occupation. I learned those beautiful peace and bereavement songs. I learned about the beautiful values, about democracy, peace, justice, equality, freedom, and it took me many years to figure out and to know that at the same time that I was sitting in the classroom in school, learning all those beautiful values, my country, my military, was occupying and oppressing millions of Palestinians, millions of people that were living without all those beautiful values. We have so-called democracy for Jewish people or for Palestinians who are living within the 1967 border. But if you live in the Occupied Territories, it's completely apartheid.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you come to this realization?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: You know, it's a long, long process. And during this process, you suffer. You find out things that you do not want to believe. But if I have to point to a few events that really helped me to wake up and to connect all those threads to one understanding that I must say no publicly, not just going out and not participating in something, but also standing and shouting, We will not be part of it anymore! I can refer to two events that happened back in 2002. It was in the middle of the Second Intifada, Al-Aqsa.

The first event I was participating in, I flew a Black Hawk helicopter, and I was called. I was the first helicopter to come to a place where a terror attack took place and many Jewish kids, many Israelis were injured severely, and I flew them with a Black Hawk to a hospital in the center of Israel next to Tel Aviv. And all the helicopter was full of blood, and the paramedics and doctors tried to work on the patients. And while I was landing in the hospital, I saw underneath a wedding and people were celebrating with the chupa, and the groom --

AMY GOODMAN: This was an Israeli wedding?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: It was an Israeli wedding, and I was completely shocked: how can people be so much disconnected to reality?

AMY GOODMAN: And the kids, how had they been hurt?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: They had been hurt severely by a Palestinian fighter who got in their house and shot all the family. And maybe I will mention something that it's important. I am very much involved in the giving of support to terror victims in the Israeli side. I was volunteering in an organization named SELAH, which is the Israeli Crisis and Management Center. I saw a lot of suffering of my people.

And what happened a few weeks later after this event when I brought these children to hospital is that the commander of the Air Force and the government decided to assassinate the leader of the Hamas in Gaza Strip, Salah Shahade. And they ordered a F-16 with a one-ton bomb, that shot -- that dropped this bomb on the house of the Hamas leader in Gaza Strip, killing with him 14 innocent civilians, 14 innocent people, including nine babies. And although I didnt drop this bomb and I didn't shoot in my life anyone, but I felt that this, me being part of this system that is causing this harm and this suffering and this killing to innocent people, it's just the same like being a terrorist in another organization. And those kids who were killed by my fellow pilots and these kids that were killed by this Palestinian fighter are just the same.

And it took me a while to understand that not just these guys down in the wedding were disconnected to reality, but also in the cockpit here inside me was a lot of ignorance, a lot of things that I didn't know. And then you start to figure out and to learn and to find out all this half-side history lesson that you didn't get. And I realized that in order to change and not just to find a solution for myself, for my soul, for my being able to live with myself, I have to do something publicly. And I went from one pilot to another, used my connection to the Israeli Air Force military by, you know, people knew my father and I lived in a neighborhood with a lot of pilots, and I found more than a hundred pilots that agreed to cooperate by being silent about that. Just a few of them agreed to sign the petition that I wrote.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, being silent?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: It took us about three to four months to recruit all these co-signers on this letter. When you want to do something that will be strong enough, that will shake the Israeli public opinion and the government and the military, you want to find not just one or two pilots who are willing to refuse. So we found brigadier generals, colonels, Air Force squadron commanders, Apache pilots, F-16, F-15, Cobra, all kind of squadrons from the Israeli Air Force, and all these guys agreed to keep silent while some of us are willing also to put their names on this petition and to refuse publicly.

And as a result of this petition, there was a big uproar in Israel, and all the signers were called to an interview with the commander of the Air Force, General Halutz, who is now the commander of the Army who is actually leading these criminal attacks on Lebanon. And in this interview with him, he told me that he's going to discharge me from being a pilot in the Air Force, and I told him that actually Im willing to be charged by him. Don't just discharge me, but charge us all in charge of refusing to legal orders, because we are willing to sit in jail if they can show in court that these orders of killing suspects and, by that, killing innocent civilians, is legal. And, of course, they preferred just to let us go, and no one of us was in prison.

And since then, many of us became very active in the anti-occupation movement and in the anti-apartheid movement in Israel. And that's why Im here today talking to the American people, talking to the Jewish community, trying to convince them that it's us who have to lead these demonstrations around the world. It's us Jewish people and Israelis and former fighters, former combatants that took part in these wars, to lead these demonstrations who call for international pressure, who call for sanctions against the Israeli government who is doing these cruel things and brutal things in Lebanon. It will harm us Israelis, it will harm us Jewish people, if you will not wake up now, because it will not continue forever, and someone has to put an end to this.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Yonatan Shapira, a former captain in the Israeli Air Force Reserves, initiated the group of Israeli Air Force pilots who refuse to fly attack missions in Palestinian territories. We're going to go to break. When we come back, I want to ask you more about this one-hour meeting you had privately with the head of the Israeli Army currently in Lebanon, and we're also going to bring on a Palestinian fighter, a former Palestinian fighter, who is in the group that you have co-founded, Combatants for Peace. He was in an Israeli jail for some seven years.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We continue our conversation with the Israeli soldier, the former captain in the Israeli Air Force Reserves, Yonatan Shapira. In 2003, he initiated the group of Israeli Air Force pilots who refused to fly attack missions on Palestinian territories. He also co-founded the group Combatants for Peace. In a minute we're going to go to East Jerusalem to speak with a former Palestinian Fatah fighter who is in the group with Yonatan, but you mentioned this private meeting you had with General Halutz. We see him on the news a lot now talking about Lebanon. What transpires? Just you and him?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: Yeah, we were -- me and him -- in his commander's room, and he's a very charismatic person. Therefore, I think he's very dangerous. In that meeting, we discussed the whole issues and the situation in our country. I told him that I believe that these are war crimes and I do not want to participate in them and I think that he should, as well, not participate and not order any people to go to participate in those missions. I told him also that I believe that if Israel decided to occupy Palestinians, Israel is responsible for the life of the civilians, if Israel is responsible for the life, not just of the Israelis, but also the Palestinians. And then, in answering, he told me how he sees the different value of human beings, when Israeli citizens is on top, then Israeli soldiers, then Palestinian civilians and then Palestinian fighters.

And as a Jewish person who is also from a family that suffered lots and lost a lot in the Holocaust, and I was raised to be aware and not to follow any kind of racist leaders, I think that now it's very important to be mentioned that these leaders, this guy, this specific commander, is so dangerous for us, and Jewish people from all around the world must wake up and understand that in order to support Israel, in order to make sure that Israel will continue to exist, we must stop these guys. We must stop them, because now they continue to lead soldiers.

Young soldiers are being recruited today, and I saw just in the news how the commander, the same commander, is receiving them and hugging them, and sometimes I feel like it's something like sacrifying some [inaudible], some kind of worshiping, and in some way -- if I can say just last thing about the Jewish community here in the United States, some people say that instead of worshiping God, the Jewish God, the Jewish community here -- not all of them, but some of them -- are worshiping Israel, and this is very dangerous.

AMY GOODMAN: You're talking about the Israeli Army Chief of Staff Dan Halutz?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: What was his response to the issues you raised privately?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: You know, he was sitting in front of me next to his desk. Under his hand was the newspaper from the last day, and the pictures of all the Israelis, both Palestinians and Jewish, who died in a terror attack in Haifa. It was back in October 2003. And he told me that he's trying to protect these people from dying, and Im just cooperating with the enemy. So I asked him if he can think how come that this young lawyer, who was this suicide bomber in this attack, decided to sacrifice his life and to kill innocent people. How does he think that, you know, people, civilians, become suicide bombers? Don't you think that maybe we have to think, maybe we created this crazy jail, while people don't have any other reason, and they just don't have reason to live, so they become suicide bombers? And he said, "You know what? I don't want to talk about this stuff," so what can I tell?

AMY GOODMAN: And the rationale of the Israeli government in Lebanon, that Hezbollah has been raining down missiles in northern Israel and that they have to protect the Israeli people and protect them for all time by routing out Hezbollah?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: You know, it's insanity, and it's a lie because my government now is refusing to cease fire. How can you in one hand cry about missiles that are attacking yourself, you, your family in Haifa, in Afula, in Kiryat Shmona, and at the same time refuse to cease fire? The same aspiration, the same idea that you can just kill and annihilate all of Hezbollah is the same logic of Nasrallah, that will kill all Israel or this kind of nonsense. And there is a lot of mental disorder issues here. And that's why I don't think that the solution for this situation will come from within the Israeli politics. That's why we have to work both from external pressure and internal pressure. The external pressure will be led by Israelis and Jewish people around the world with all the other human rights activists, and the internal pressure will be led by soldiers who refuse to participate in these war crimes.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a fighter, a Palestinian fighter who is with you in the group Combatants for Peace. Before we go to him in East Jerusalem, can you tell us about this group? Who's in it?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: We decided that it's not enough just to say no. We have to find out what do we say yes to, and actually my brother, who is also a refusenik, he was in the commando unit. He initiated this group with us and with several other Israeli refusers and Palestinian former fighters. We were all part of the violent struggle of our people, Israelis, as well Palestinians. And we decided a year and a half ago that we have to meet together and find a nonviolent way to struggle against occupation and against the circle of mutual violence, and we found out that these guys have a lot in common with us. We were meeting for about a year in secret meetings discussing our political views and our own process of transformation. And now after our launching event in last April, we decided that we are ready to go all over the world, in Israel, in Palestine, but all over the world to bring our message to the people.

AMY GOODMAN: Yonatan Shapira, let's turn now to Bassam Aramim, former member of Fatah, served a prison sentence of seven years, arrested in Hebron when he was 17 years old, speaking to us from East Jerusalem. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Bassam Aramim.

BASSAM ARAMIM: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about how you came to be in Combatants for Peace? In Fatah, you were a fighter in the First Intifada?

BASSAM ARAMIM: Yes, I was a fighter before the First Intifada. As you mentioned, from the Fatah movement and recently I'm involved in the new group with Israelis, Combatants for Peace, which is composed from both sides and it's open for anyone who looks for peace and settlement for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We have the main principles of our group, our courageous and moral group, first of all to put an end for Israeli military occupation to the West Bank and Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem; to be free from settlers and soldiers and walls and checkpoints; to replacement of killing and bloodshed by peace and reconciliation between the two peoples; to implementation of the two-state solution, living side by side in full cooperation and peace.

And we have an important message in this group. We want to say to the Israelis and to the Palestinians and to all the world that we have a partner. We are partners. And the Israeli government must stop saying that there are no partners, there are nobody to speak or to negotiate with in the Palestinian side.

AMY GOODMAN: What is the response of other fighters and former fighters to you; for example, the people you served time in prison with? You served from 1985 to 1992. You were a leader in the Israeli jail?

BASSAM ARAMIM: Hmm?

AMY GOODMAN: What is the response of other fighters, people who -- and former fighters in Fatah, in Hamas, to what you are doing, calling for a nonviolent solution?

BASSAM ARAMIM: Yes, we have a big group. Almost we have 100, at least, Palestinians ex-fighters and ex-prisoners who believe in this new way, and they are very courageous. And I want to thank them. Also I want to thank the Israeli combatants or soldiers for their moral and courageous stand to refuse to be a part of Palestinian suffering to refuse to be a part of the occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe, Yonatan, your first meeting with Bassam?

BASSAM ARAMIM: Yes.

YONATAN SHAPIRA: Yeah,

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, Im asking Yonatan to describe his first meeting with you.

YONATAN SHAPIRA: We were a small group. It was at the beginning when we started to initiate this group, and we decided at each meeting we will start by one or two people from each side will tell their own story, so we'll start to create these bonds, this connection to each other. And it was very strong to hear what Bassam has to say and what Suleiman, another guy there, has to say. For them to listen to Israeli soldiers telling about, for example, one guy in our group was the commander of the Kalandia checkpoint, which is a horrible place where thousands of Palestinians are standing every day and being humiliated, and to see suddenly the commander of this checkpoint sitting with them as a refuser, as a refusenik, saying that he is going to work with them hand by hand, side by side, to put an end to this crazy situation was something very, very exciting and encouraging.

I just want to mention -- I know that we don't have too much time -- in October, an organization that was established by faculty, called Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, FFIPP, is going to bring Bassam and me to the States to a big national -- touring campuses, giving lectures and meeting students and meeting media and everyone that wants to listen to the message that we have to say. If people are interested to having us in their campus, they can contact this organization, FFIPP.

AMY GOODMAN: I will link -- at Democracy Now!, we'll link to that organization, and people could go to our website at democracynow.org.

YONATAN SHAPIRA: If I can mention last thing, if we still have one minute, there is the issue of normalization, and many Palestinians are afraid that when you create a dialogue group, you also have some kind of accepting the occupation, accepting your oppressor, but this group is different. Once you are creating a coexistent group, a group of people who are reconciling with each other, but also are extremely connected to the political call and to the political action, I think it's right and it has a right to exist now. We are not just solving our own problems and curing our own wounds. We also call for massive pressure against the Israeli government that continues this occupation, and this must be mentioned.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see that pressure building in the United States, as an Israeli who's been spending time here?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: You know, it's one of the hardest things, because there is so much ignorance here, and seeing what your government is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan and all over the world, you don't have so much hope. But sometimes you must do something in order to still have a reason to live and to wish in this world, and I also believe that if we can put some pressure on European leaders that are a bit less ignorant than your government, maybe we can make something.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. Yonatan Shapira, former captain of the Israeli Air Force Reserve. Also joining us from East Jerusalem, Bassam Aramim, a former member of Fatah, served in an Israeli jail for seven years, arrested when he was 17 years old.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Nuke Iran, Blame the Jews

Who Benefits from the Israel-Lebanon Flare-Up?
By Jorge Hirsch

07/24/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Members of the Jewish faith and others correctly point out that Jews are often blamed for the sins of others. They may be about to be proven right again, in a big way. The current conflict may escalate to the point where the US will use nuclear weapons against Iran, in what will be the first use of nuclear weapons in war since Nagasaki. And the world will blame it on the Jews.

Israel's hugely disproportionate response to Hezbollah's actions is causing immense suffering, is in blatant violation of the Geneva conventions, and deserves the strongest of condemnations. It is especially important for Jews today to distance themselves from Israel's immoral government policies and US's support for them. Fortunately some are doing this [1], [2], [3], 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 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.



Israel's Interests

It goes without saying that Israel would benefit from the destruction of Hezbollah. Yet it is hard to see how the indiscriminate attack against Lebanon that is taking place will achieve anything other than strengthening the already strong support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Arab world. Shmuel Rosner argues in a Haaretz OpEd that Israel is "America's deadly messenger", being used to promote Bush's "democracy agenda". It certainly appears that Israel's current actions are irrational and self-destructive. Unless their real aim is to draw Syria and Iran into the conflict, following directions from Washington. At the very least it is clear that Israel would not be doing this in the absence of a guarantee from the US that it will intervene if the conflict widens, which in any event Bush has already publicly announced.

If Iran enters the conflict and shoots a single missile against Israel, the US will step in and destroy the military infrastructure of Iran by aerial bombardment. As suggested by Seymour Hersh and others [1], [2], [3], [4], this is likely to involve the US use of nuclear "bunker busters".

It has been predicted that if the US or Israel attack Iran, Iran will unleash Hezbollah who will carry out devastating attacks against Israel. "Hizbollah was also seen as a means of tying our hands on the Iranian nuclear threat," says an Israeli official. Well, we are in the dress rehersal, and we are seeing that despite all the hype, Hezbollah is a paper tiger. Green light for the Iran attack.

Iran's Interests
What is really unusual about the current flare-up in the Middle East is the barrage of strident denunciations against Iran, from the Bush administration, politicians from across the political spectrum [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], and the mainstream media [1], [2], [3], [4], that uniformly accuse Iran (without presenting evidence) of being behind the Hezbollah actions. This has never happened before when there was conflict in Lebanon where Hezbollah was involved, why now?

One argument is Ahmadinejad's stated animosity against Israel. However, that has been Iran's stated position since 1979.

The other argument is that Iran is trying to "divert attention" from the nuclear issue. That defies the most elementary logic. If Iran was really intent in getting nuclear weapons and destroying Israel, it would try to keep things as quiet as possible until it gets those nuclear weapons, several years into the future.

The reality is that, whether one ascribes to Iran evil or benign intentions, Iran draws no benefit whatsoever from the current turmoil in Lebanon. Neither does Syria. Consequently the rhetoric from the US and Israel suggests a deliberate attempt to draw Syria and Iran into the conflict.

The US's Interests
A US attack on Iran has been predicted by analysts for several years. The US policy vis-a-vis Iran is clearly directed towards confrontation rather than accommodation. There are many reasons for the US to attack Iran, including the control of energy resources, suppression of a regional power opposite to US and Israeli interests, etc. However I have argued for many months that the key reason for the US to seek a military confrontation with Iran is that it will "force" the US to cross the nuclear threshold and use low yield nuclear weapons against Iranian installations. And this is seen as essential to further US geopolitical goals.

The United States used nuclear weapons against Japan not because it had to. It did so to demonstrate to the world that it was in possession of a new weapon that packed the destructive power of thousands of bombing missions into a single one. To tell the rest of the world, beware.

Since then, it has spent over 5 trillion dollars in building up its nuclear arsenal, but nuclear weapons have become "unusable" after 60 years of non-use. America has achieved nuclear primacy but it is useless, until it shows that nuclear weapons are usable again.

Everything has been put in place. The US is likely to have obtained classified "intelligence" concerning hidden Iranian chemical and biological underground facilities. Low yield B61-11 nuclear bunker busters must have been deployed, just in case "surprising military developments" give rise to "military necessity". Once Iran is drawn into a conflict and shoots a single missile against Israel or US forces in the region, the US administration will argue that the next Iranian missile could carry chemical or biological warheads and cause untold casualties among Americans, Iraqis or Israelis. A low yield nuclear bunker buster will be touted as the most "humane" way to prevent further loss of life.



Why it may happen
In 1941, a vast military effort was started by the United States to create nuclear weapons, culminating in the Trinity test and subsequent bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The effort was shrouded in secrecy and any moral qualms were set aside. When it succeeded, it was argued that many American and Japanese lives had been saved by nuking Japan into surrender.

Any speculation during the period 1941-1945 that the United States had 100,000 people devoted to create a secret weapon million-fold more powerful than any known weapon would have been dismissed as the ultimate "conspiracy theory".

Similarly, much evidence indicates that a deliberate project, shrouded in secrecy, exists today that will culminate in the nuking of Iran, to "save lives". Many are privy to parts of the plan, as Seymour Hersh revealed, only a few know the plan in its entirety. Low-yield nuclear bunker busters will be used, untested but as reliable as the untested "Little Boy" that leveled Hiroshima. Americans will buy the "military necessity" argument because it will be true: American troops in Iraq will be sitting ducks facing Iranian missiles, with or without WMD warheads.

After the US uses nuclear weapons again, it will have established the usability of its nuclear arsenal against non-nuclear countries. It will be possible to wage war "on the cheap", saving many American lives in future conflicts. "Support the troops" is the one thing all Americans, no matter how diverse their views are, agree on.

It should not be allowed to happen. The President has sole authority to order the use of nuclear weapons against Iran. We know from previous actions of this administration what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are capable of. There have been radical changes in US nuclear weapons policies and in preemption "doctrine", and the Bush announcement that the nuclear option is "on the table". In response, there needs to be a strong groundswell call to restrict the absolute presidential authority of this President to order the use of nuclear weapons against Iran. By the general public, by "antinuclear" organizations, by scientific, political and professional organizations. To push Congress into action before it is too late. Without a "nuclear option", the US will be more interested in negotiation than in confrontation with Iran.

Cui Bono?

In the short term, Israel certainly will benefit from the destruction of Iran's military capabilities. But Israel will not enjoy peace as a result, because the nuking of Iran will create enormous animosity against Israel in the Muslim world and beyond. To the extent that the world buys the US fable that the nuking of Iran was required by "military necessity" and not premeditated, Israel (and Jews worldwide) will bear a heavier than deserved brunt for having contributed to "precipitate" these events.

The US will reap enormous benefits. Flexing its nuclear muscle, it will establish its absolute hegemony in the Middle East and Central Asia and beyond, and gradually squeeze China and Russia into nuclear disarmament and complete submission.

In the end of course we will all lose. Because the nuclear genie, unleashed from its bottle in the war against Iran, will never retreat. And just like the US could develop nuclear weapons in only 4 years with completely new technology 60 years ago, many more countries and groups will be highly motivated to do it in the coming years.

Think about the current disproportionate response of Israel, applied in a conflict where the contenders have nuclear weapons. 10 to 1 retaliation, starting with a mere 600 casualties, wipes out the entire Earth's population in eight easy steps. Who will be willing to stop the escalation? The country that lost 60,000 citizens in the last hit? The one that lost 600,000? 6 million?

As the nuclear holocaust unfolds, some will remember the Lebanon conflict and subsequent Iran war and blame it all on the Jews. Others will properly blame Americans, for having allowed their Executive to erase the 60-year old taboo against the use of nuclear weapons, first in doctrine and then in practice, despite having the most powerful conventional military force in the world. Others of course will blame "Muslim extremism".

And then the blaming will wither away as a three-billion-year old experiment, life on planet Earth, comes to an end.

Jorge Hirsch is a Professor of Physics at the University of California at San Diego, a fellow of the American Physical Society, and organizer of a recent petition, circulated among leading physicists, opposing the new nuclear weapons policies adopted by the US in the past 5 years. He is a frequent commentator on Iran and nuclear weapons. Email to: jorgehirsch@yahoo.com.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Democracy Now! Independent journalist reports from Beirut

Read more at Democracy Now!
Lebanon Under Seige

"I spoke with one student earlier from the American University of Beirut, which is nearby my hotel, and he said that he is very much against Hezbollah and always has been and is more now than ever because of what this has caused his country. But he said he's very much opposed to this Israeli reaction to what happened, and he said -- he told me that he very much hates the fact that the U.S. is supporting Israel 100% in everything that they do here now, and even though his dream was to go to the United States, as he's a business student at the university here, now he said that he hates the United States, and so it's very easy to say -- not just after talking with this man, but several other people today, as well -- that the level of anti-American sentiment is really through the roof, because people are extremely -- theyre acutely aware of the U.S. green-lighting this ongoing Israeli aggression against their country."

------------------------
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Please look at these images of the war in Lebanon

These images represent the reality of war. Please try to imagine yourself, a ten year old child, holding your mother as she dies, and for what? Imagine yourself waking up, getting a coffee, going shopping and realizing suddenly that you must flee RIGHT NOW with nothing because your country has been invaded.

There is something that people never point out about this conflict:

(1) Here is the real sequence of events:

a) Israel kidnaps a Palestinian doctor and his brother on June 24 - no one knows still what has become of them
b) In retaliation, Hamas kidnaps an Israeli soldier on June 25
c) Israel attacks Gaza claiming that they are only fighting for the release of their soldier but they never mention that they have kidnapped the Palestinians first, as well as several members of the Palestinian government previously
d) Hezbollah captures 2 Israeli soldiers. Israel and Hezbollah have been in conflict since the 1980s. This is par for the course, meaning that Hezbollah and Israel regularly do prisoner exchanges. At this point, Hezbollah HAS NOT fired any rockets into Israel. NONE.
e) Israel launches a full scale attack on Lebanon. They openly target the civilian population of South Lebanon.
f) AFTER these attacks by Israel, Hezbollah retaliates by launching crude rockets into Israel. Many of them land in civilian areas, few of them kill civilians. As of now, about 40 Israelis have been killed, most of them soldiers. About 400 Lebanese have been killed, MOST OF THEM CIVILIANS. Moreover, thousands have been injured and about 900,000 Lebanese have been forced to flee. The population of Lebanon is almost 4 million. That means that 25% of the Lebanese population has been displaced.

(2) Israel continues to occupy Shebaa Farms and this is one reason that Hezbollah fights with Israel. If Israel would just relinquish this land, Lebanon's land, then there would be no conflict

Fighting to keep their land and way of life - Shebaa Farms

The region was captured by Israel from Syria during the Six Day War of 1967 and remained under Israeli control after the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in 2000. The Lebanese refer to the ridge at the northern end of the Shebaa Farms area as the Kafr Shuba Hills, an area that Israel refers to as Har Dov. This ridge, also partly within Lebanon, is east of the Lebanese village of Kafr Shuba.

Most Shebaa Farms land owners and farmers lived in the village of Shebaa, in undisputed Lebanese territory, and are no longer able to farm the land.[1][2] The Lebanese claim to this area is one reason for Hezbollah's continuing conflict with Israel and resulting cross border attacks.[3]

70 trillion dollars stolen by Bush and Clinton crime families.

From OurSpace

Former Ambassador Leo Wanta giving Fed's illegal blockage of settlement until July 31 to release money or he will pursue the entire 70 trillion stolen by Bush and Clinton crime families. Money now being held in Bank of America in Richmond, Va., as media continues to cover-up story of the century which could turn around the American economy.
By Greg Szymanski
22 July 2006
President George W. Bush received a letter on July 14 from AmeriTrust Groupe, Inc. and former Ambassador Leo Wanta, advising him of a massive 4.5 trillion dollar settlement earmarked for the U.S. Treasury. The letter was addressed to Secretary of the Treasury, Henry M. Paulson, Jr., asking him for his prompt attention in releasing the repatriated offshore funds. Wanta on June 12 entered into a negotiated settlement with U.S. authorities ending his quest to recover an estimated 27.5 trillion in funds first generated by Wanta on behalf of President Ronald Reagan at the end of the Cold War.

After Reagan left office, the money was earmarked for the American people with Wanta as legal trustor, but instead he was backstabbed and the money hijacked by President George H. Bush and President William Jefferson Clinton in an elaborate offshore banking scheme to enrich their own pockets and the pockets of a select group of elite friends.

The Arctic Beacon is one of the only news outlets covering the explosive Wanta story, which if followed up properly, could lead to indictments to Bush and Clinton, as well as many other co-conspirators who have defrauded the American people out of trillions of dollars while, at the same time on paper, supposedly bankrupting the country.

In England, the International Currency Review has been the only British outlet following the story. Here is what this British internet source had to say about the Wanta story, which also has been reported and verified by the Arctic Beacon:

"Leo Wanta, an honourable and upright man (rare in the intelligence environment), refused to accommodate demands from two US Presidents for Trustor funds to be diverted for their own ultimate personal benefit, and annotated a Federal Reserve transactions print-out to the effect that George (Jorge) Bush Sr. is in breach of crucial US statutes in connection with a transfer of $1.0 billion from a bank in Malaga, Spain, to Panama, in August 1989.

"Instead of being supported by his peers, as would be expected in an ethical environment, Wanta was framed, arrested, flung into a stinking Swiss dungeon for 133 days, extradited to the United States (after an intervention by Yizhak Rabin), arraigned before a US Judge in New York, released when the judge threw the case out, rearrested without a warrant on the US courtroom steps, extradited illegally to Wisconsin on a trumped-up tax charge, suffered false witness, jailed for 22 years, experienced three attempts to murder him in prison plus unsuccessful official efforts to have him certified insane, released into house arrest in Wisconsin where he languished for many years, and falsely reported by the lying CIA to be dead."

Although Bush and the mainstream press have not uttered a peep about the massive amount of money headed for U.S. coffers, in the letter the President was made aware of the particulars of the deal, including an estimated 1.6 trillion to be placed in the U.S. Treasury as taxes paid by AmeriTrust.

Further, as noted by the International Currency Review, the deal provides for the following arrangements made between Wanta's organization and the U.S. Treasury, all made known to Bush:

1. Pay 35% tax direct to the Treasury, amounting to $1,575,000,000,000 prepaid.

2. Pay 6% state tax to the State of Virginia amounting to approximately $270,000,000,000 prepaid.

3. Generate windfall tax payments to the US Treasury worth at least $96 billion per banking day.

4. Generate secondary tax windfalls arising from related financial transactions by US counter-parties and others worth at least the same amount again, so that total daily tax windfalls accruing to the Treasury/Internal Revenue Service will aggregate an estimated $200 billion per banking day [3 + 4].

5. As a consequence, rehabilitate the US Federal Government's finances, reversing the decades of financial decadence, and providing resources for infrastructure and other projects, tax reductions (including a possible outright abolition of Inheritance Tax, and income and corporate tax cuts), plus additional resources for the vulnerable segments of society.

Presently, the 4.5 trillion is being held by Bank of America in Richmond, Va., as the Federal Reserve Board is illegally blocking the release of the money to the U.S. Treasury, the American People, AmeriTrust and Wanta.

Further, according to Wanta, who appeared again Friday on Greg Szymanski's radio show, The Investigative Journal, "everyday the money is being tied up" illegally by the Fed, "the American people are losing 200 billion a day."

Wanta added there was no justification to hold up the settlement and has given the Fed until July 31 to release the money or he plans to pursue all legal avenues to gain control of the total 27.5 trillion.

However, financial observers claim if Wanta proceeds after the total amount it could bankrupt many large worldwide financial institutions, lacking the liquidity to meet Wanta's request, as much of the money has been illegally diverted or stolen by corrupt U.S. officials like Bush and Clinton.

Dubbed the Wanta Plan by financial onlookers, analysts suggests the massive settlement if used properly could once again turn around the U.S. economy, erase the Bush-orchestrated 8 trillion plus National Debt and again put the needs of the American people and its faltering infrastructure at the forefront instead of in the background, as planned by the New World Order's plan to destabilize the economy and destroy America from within.

Since President Bush is fully aware of the settlement and the particulars behind the whole Wanta story, as well as being complicit in the theft of trillions, he should be publicly forced by the fess up instead of being protected by a corrupted media, a media also on the take like a bunch of back alley criminals being handed a paper bag full of money in order to keep their mouths shut.

Although there have been many attempts to outlaw and disband the Fed, the Wanta settlement should be the story that breaks the camel's back, giving Americans a clear-cut example of how foreign, private interests are controlling the destiny of their country.

The Wanta story shows a crisis has peaked since it is clear the Federal Reserve is sabotaging the finalization of the deal cut between the U.S. Treasury and Wanta, the former distinguished U.S. Secret Service/Treasury financial expert and agent

Since it is now out in the open that the Fed is blocking transfer of trillions owed the American people, financial analysts close to the case say it's time the U.S. Government disband and seize the Fed, replacing its underlying statutes with new ones creating a national central bank on behalf of the people, with appropriate policy independence safeguards protecting the people's interests not private foreign entities.

As a recap, according to Wanta, the repatriated funds now sitting in a Virginia bank represent only a small fraction of the original $27.5 trillion which was raised in 1989-92 from more than 190 international banks at a deep discount for a 20-year period at 7.5% per annum.

The long-term Trustor of these funds, by Presidential instruction dating from President Reagan's era, Wanta further believes the total funds are now worth approximately $70 trillion.

And if the funds aren't released to the American people, Wanta again wanted to remind President Bush, the Fed and other higher-ups he will take action as trustor to organize the collection of the full $70 trillion from offshore accounts of the Title 18, Section 6 USG intelligence corporations, and their closure, as has been advised by U.S. Judge Gerald Bruce Lee in a Memorandum Opinion signed in April 2003.

Documents verifying the 4.5 trillion AmeriTrust deal will be forthcoming when converted to PDF's.

Israel targetting fleeing civilians

Fleeing civilian vehicles hit by Israeli missiles

UK Times | July 24, 2006
By Nicholas Blanford & Ned Parker
WITH an expression of utmost calm on her blood-masked face, the woman allowed herself to be gently lowered from the minibus into the waiting arms of two Lebanese Red Cross volunteers.

The rescue workers had extracted her through a jagged hole in the roof of the crumpled bus, created by a missile fired minutes earlier by an Israeli helicopter that had blasted the vehicle off the road. Left behind in the vehicle, slumped over each other and soaked in blood, were the bodies of three people.

The narrow roads that meander through the valleys and undulating chalky hills east of Tyre were a place of terror and death yesterday as Israeli helicopters attacked civilian vehicles fleeing Israelâs 11-day onslaught in south Lebanon.

Dr Ahmad Mrowe, director of the Jabal Amel hospital in Tyre, said: âToday is the day of the cars. It has been very bad.â

By early evening, the Jabal Amel hospital alone had received 41 wounded, most of them serious, according to hospital sources, all thought to be civilians seeking refuge north of the Litani river after heeding Israeli warnings to leave the area.

The stricken minibus was hit along a road cut into the side of a steep valley beyond Siddiqine village, where Israeli artillery shells exploded in thick, dirty, white plumes of smoke and dust.

One man, his face half torn off by a missile, sat in his seat, his yellowing hand hanging from the window.

Beside him, covered in the dead manâs blood, a woman moved slightly back and forth.

âCan you stand?â asked a Red Cross volunteer. The woman mumbled an incoherent response.

A few yards away, some of the survivors lay on the ground, moaning and crying.

Red Cross medics said that 19 people had been in the vehicle, all of them from Tiri, a small village 7 miles to the south-east.

Abbas Shayter, 12, said: âSomeone came for us and we drove with other cars out of the village.

âWe were trying to keep up with the others when we were hit.â

He said his grandmother, uncle and another man had been killed.

An officer with the UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon said that the Israelis had told them they would not hinder cars travelling north on the main roads.

But the evidence yesterday suggested that cars were being attacked regardless of their occupants and direction of travel.

Hezbollah rockets claimed the lives of two people and wounded 20 others in the Israeli city of Haifa. Another 50 people were injured in rocket attacks in at least 10 other towns across northern Israel.

The attacks came as Israeli troops battled to clear a mile-wide strip along the northern border, encountering resistance from Hezbollah forces in bunkers.

The Israeli Army went to the assistance of an Italian UN observer, Captain Roberto Punzo, who was hit by Hezbollah fire during the clashes. He was taken to hospital in Israel with serious injuries.

A Lebanese photographer, Layal Najib, was killed during another clash in the southern village of Qana.

Stop the Lebanese Genocide! Rwanda, Sudan, now Lebanon

This is from my friend 6@5!<

Please visit the following site, sign the petition and read the text below:

From Israel to Lebanon

Please sign this petition and forward this to your mailing list, or repost the bulletin. Let's show the people what is really going on. The people of Lebanon are in desperate need for our help and these atrocities must be stopped immediately.

Israel is commiting these crimes against humanity with US backing and weaponry. Lebanon is a free and democratic country that has been invaded by Israel; a religious, non democtratic, fascist state. There is an ethnic cleansing happening as we speak!

The New York Times reported on Saturday that Bush was rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel to guarantee that the killing can continue nonstop and that whatever is left of Lebanons frayed infrastructure will be swiftly pounded into dust.

See Information Clearing House


We can not afford to be silent or passive, over 600,000 Lebanese people are displaced (according to the World Health Organization) , the prime minister of Lebanon has declared the country a disaster zone, and is reaching out to the international community for help. Israel has struck the airport, schools, hospitals, gas stations, power stations and every significant target they can, not to mention the thousands of homes brought to rubbles.

They are forcing people to evacuate their homes and they are killing them as they are leaving. The Israeli army is moving in by land, as well as striking from the air and sea. This is outright GENOCIDE!!!!

See Democracy Now!


The US has rejected the idea of an immediate ceasefire saying it would produce a "false promise" that would allow Hezbollah to survive and attack Israel in the future.

The problem is that Israel is not targeting Hezbollah, the majority of casualties have been civilians:

Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief coordinator, spoke during a visit to the Haret Hreik district of Beirut:

"It is horrific. I did not know it was block after block of houses It makes it a violation of humanitarian law," Egeland told journalists.

See Information Clearing House

Please do yourselves a favour and check your information againts alternate non biased sources, remember that FOX, The New York Times or CNN are not accurate, they are BIASED, they never show you what the international media doesn't hesitate to show, don't buy into the propaganda. Seek the truth!

Check the following links for an alternate take on the world issues without the censorship or spin of the Zionazi regime:

Information Clearing House

Democracy Now!


One Love,

Basil

a.k.a. 6@5!<

George the Foolish by Ralph Nader

British Kings used to be described with an epithet after their name, as with Richard-the Lion Hearted. Events on the warring grounds of the Middle Eastfrom Iraq to Palestine to Lebanon that Bush, by his aggressive choice is mired in warrant him being called George-the War Criminal or George-the Patron Saint of Elected Islamic Theocracies, or George-the Foolish. Take your pick.


Consider the little, defenseless country of Lebanon so friendly to the United States being torn to shreds, in the words of its desperate Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, by Israels American-built warplanes, missile and artillery.

Bushs main foreign policy theme has been to spread democracy in the Middle East (while he daily weakens democracy in America), and all he has done so far is to destroy or injure hundreds of thousands of people, leaving the chaos and utter destruction that strengthens the power of grassroots Islamists and trains more stateless terrorists in Iraq. In other words, to use the CIAs phrase, blowback against our countrys interests is breaking out all over.

But Lebanon was supposed to be the exception. With U.S. pressure, Syrian troops originally invited in with U.S. support during the Lebanese civil war to provide stability were pressured to leave last year. The Cedar Revolution was peaceably proclaimed in Lebanon by a U.S. friendly government composed of the various religious denominations. Finally, independent of both Israeli and Syrian troops for the first time in twenty-three years, the Lebanese started to pull themselves and their economy together.

See Lebanon, see the future in the Middle East, cried George W. Bush the American Caeser and his advisors in the White House.

Now see Lebanon. In a matter of days, the country is in ruins, its economy shattered, roads, bridges, airports, wheat silos, trucks with medical supplies, new ambulances rushing into service and whole families fleeing north in packed vehicles blown up.

The horrific stillness is in the civilian neighborhoods mostly populated by the innocent poor and their children. The New York Times reports In Srifa, a neighborhood was wiped out 15 houses flattened, 21 people killed, 30 wounded in an Israeli air strike. The towns mayor, Afif Najdi called it a massacre. Half-a-million civilians and growing are homeless.

In the Palestinian refugee camp of Al Bourj holding 20,000 people, Israeli bombers unleashed explosives. In a frantic appeal for help to anyone on the global internet a charitable rescue organization entered the area and described a scene of total devastation with all the buildings and roads totally smashed. There was the smell of death and destruction everywhere.

And so the rain of Israeli terror fell over this utterly defenseless country, while Bush does nothing but emit go signals to the fifth most powerful military in the world. He repeats again and again that Israel has a right to defend itself. Of course, but not against millions of people (including tens of thousands of Arab-Americans and other U.S. citizens living or visiting there) who had nothing whatsoever to do with the border raid at Hezbollah.

The Israeli practice of collective punishment, a war crime under the Geneva Convention, is standard against the Palestinians, who lost 78% of their land in the 1940s and want to preserve the 22% that is left to them (the 1967 boundaries). More collective punishments against the Lebanese now, just like during the unprovoked invasion of 1982.

Then, Israel broke an 11 month truce with the PLO and smashed their way to Beirut, destroying 20,000 Lebanese lives and injuring many more. The New York Times reported indiscriminate bombing of Beirut. Israeli planes dropped deadly cluster bombs all over the country including four clearly marked hospitals, as reported in The Washington Post and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Who took the brunt of these war crimes? The Shiites who make up the bulk of the population of south Lebanon. And what emerged to defend these defenseless human beings who were not part of the PLO resistance that was the alleged object of the invasion? Hezbollah. A product of Israels collective punishment.

Since the Israelis withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 after 18 years of oppression over the natives the still land-mined border has been porous. Far more for the well-equipped Israelis than to Hezbollah. Israel routinely violated Lebanons airspace and coastal waters, terrorized the area with abductions and damage, retained control over Lebanese territory called Shebaa Farms and generally got away with it without international news coverage. Since 2000, Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters would ritually eye each other over the border and sometimes engage in skirmishes. Still, Hezbollah and Israel wisely negotiated some prisoner exchanges. Israel had 100 times more prisoners to exchange than did Hezbollah.

So on July 12, Hezbollah went for another prisoner exchange by capturing two Israeli soldiers in a firefight, and thought the result would be another such exchange. Big mistake. Even Hezbollah under-estimated the need for each new Israeli Prime Minister to demonstrate his capability for massive mayhem.

Among other towns, he is destroying the ancient coastal town of Tyre where the carpenters have run out of wood for the coffins and the fleeing inhabitants of this municipality of approximately 25,000 people wonder whether they will survive the flight to who knows where from Israeli shelling and aircraft.

So George W. Bush, who knows that Hezbollahs rockets were fired after Israel started its mass bombing and shelling of Lebanon, willfully rejects a truce, typical of his refusal for five years to overcome Israels opposition to an adequate multinational peacekeeping force on the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Finally, did you know that Hezbollah is one of the largest employers in Lebanon schools, clinics, stores, farming, transport? It has 14 elected members in the Lebanese Parliament. It is militantly determined to defend its nearly 2 million Shiites the downtrodden of Lebanon from all aggressions. It receives weapons from Iran and the international weapons markets, while Israel receives weapons from the United States within an overall annual aid program of $4 billion.

Israel has 175,000 soldiers and another 400,000 ready reservists. It controls totally the skies, the seas and the ground forces with its advanced precision armaments. It is backed up by the United States to whose Congress it will send the bill for this war. Hezbollah has anywhere from 2,000 to 3,500 fighters, according to U.S. press reports, with small arms and short to medium range rocket launchers.

This is a relevant comparative reality, which should replace the apoplectic exaggerations so that sane voices and powers Israeli, Arab, American and European can stop the battles, stabilize the border with an effective international guard and move toward a broader Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

The powerful parties and their allies can make this happen far easier than the weaker parties to the conflict. Meanwhile, George W. better stop losing Lebanon, and fast. END

Life in Lebanon: Robert Fisk's Journal

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes

from: Information Clearing House

A gripping diary of one week in the life and death of Beirut

By Robert Fisk
07/23/06 "The Independent" -- --
Sunday 16 July

It is the first time I have actually seen a missile in this war. They fly too fast - or you are too busy trying to run away to look for them - but this morning, Abed and I actually see one pierce the smoke above us. "Habibi (my friend)!" he cries, and I start screaming "Turn the car round, turn it round" and we drive away for our lives from the southern suburbs. As we turn the corner there is a shattering explosion and a mountain of grey smoke blossoming from the road we have just left. What happened to the men and women we saw running for their lives from that Israeli rocket? We do not know. In air raids, all you see is the few square yards around you. You get out and you survive and that is enough.

I go home to my apartment on the Corniche and find that the electricity is cut. Soon, no doubt, the water will be cut. But I sit on my balcony and reflect that I am not crammed into a filthy hotel in Kandahar or Basra but living in my own home and waking each morning in my own bed. Power cuts and fear and the lack of petrol now that Israel is bombing gas stations mean that the canyon of traffic which honks and roars outside my home until two in the morning has gone. When I wake in the night, I hear the birds and the wash of the Mediterranean and the gentle brushing of palm leaves.

I went to buy groceries this evening. There is no more milk but plenty of water and bread and cheese and fish. When Abed pulls up to let me out of the car, the man in the 4x4 behind us puts his hand permanently on the horn, and when I get out of Abed's car, he mouths the words "Kess uchtak" at me. "Fuck your sister." It is the first time I have been cursed in this war. The Lebanese do not normally swear at foreigners. They are a polite people. I hold my hand out, palm down and twist it palm upwards in the Lebanese manner, meaning "what's the problem?". But he drives away. Anyway, I don't have a sister.

Monday 17 July

The phones are still working and my mobile chirrups like a budgerigar. Too many of the calls are from friends who want to know if they should flee Beirut or flee Lebanon or from Lebanese who are outside Lebanon and want to know if they should return. I can hear the bombs rumbling across Hizbollah's area of the southern suburbs but I cannot answer these questions. If I advise friends to stay and they are killed, I am responsible. If I tell them to leave and they are killed in their cars, I am responsible. If I tell them to come back and they die, I am responsible. So I tell them how dangerous Lebanon has become and tell them it is their decision. But I feel great sorrow for them. Many have been refugees four times in 24 years. Today I am called by a Lebanese woman with Lebanese and Iranian citizenship and one child with a US passport and another with only a Lebanese passport. Her situation is hopeless. I suggest she travels to the Christian mountains around Faraya and try to find a chalet. It will be safe there. I hope.

I come back from Kfar Chim where part of an Israeli missile or an aircraft wing has just partially decapitated the driver of a car. He looked so tragic, his head lolling forward in the driver's seat, just looking at all the blood splashing down his body on to the floor. Abed was getting spooked because I spent too long at the scene. The Israelis always come back. "Habibi, you took too long. Never stay that long again!" He is right. The Israelis did come back and bombed the Lebanese army.

Now my housemaid Fidele is spooked. She thinks it is too dangerous to travel from the Christian district of Beirut to my home since the Israelis blew the top off the local lighthouse 400 metres from my front door. Fidele is from Togo and makes fantastic pizzas (I recommend her Pizza Togolaisi to anyone) so I send Abed off to pick up her up and bring her to my home for one hour. She puts my dirty clothes in the washing machine, and after five minutes the power goes off and we have to take them all out and try again tomorrow.

Tuesday 18 July

At 3.45am, I wake to the sound of tank tracks and a big military motor heaving away in the darkness. I go downstairs to find that the Lebanese army has positioned an American-made armoured personnel carrier in the car park opposite my home. It has been placed strategically under some palm trees, as if this will stop Israeli aircraft from spotting it. I don't like this at all and nor does my landlord, Mustafa, who lives downstairs. The Lebanese army is now an occasional target for the Israelis and this little behemoth looks like a palm tree disguised as a tank. Later in the morning, I call a general in the army who is a friend of mine and army operations calls me back to check the location. It takes an hour before they find the car park on their maps. Then I receive another call telling me that the APC is next to my home to prevent the Hizbollah from using the car park to launch another missile at an Israeli ship. The empty American Community School is just up my road. The Lebanese army is defending us.

The first French warship arrives to pick up French citizens fleeing Lebanon. It steams proudly past my balcony. Many French naval vessels are named after great military leaders, and this particular anti-submarine frigate is called the Jean-de-Vienne. I pad off to consult my little library of French history books. Jean de Vienne, it turns out, was a 14th-century French admiral who raided the Sussex town of Rye and the Isle of Wight and who was killed - oh lordy, lordy - fighting in the Crusades against the Muslim Turks. A suitable ship to start France's evacuation of the ancient Crusader port of Beirut.

Wednesday 19 July

Now that the Israelis are destroying whole apartment blocks in the Shia southern suburbs - there is a permanent umbrella of smoke over the seafront, stretching far out into the Mediterranean - tens of thousands of Shia Muslims have come to seek sanctuary in the undamaged part of Beirut, in the parks and schools and beside the sea. They walk back and forth outside my home, the women in chadors, their bearded husbands and brothers silently looking at the sea, their children playing happily around the palm trees. They speak to me with anger about Israel but choose not to discuss the depth of cynicism of the Shia Hizbollah who provoked Israel's brutality by capturing two of its soldiers. As well as the Hizbollah, the Israelis are now targeting food factories and trucks and buses - not to mention 46 bridges - and the bin men are now reluctant to pick up the rubbish skips each night for fear their innocent rubbish truck is mistaken for a missile launcher. So no rubbish collection this morning.

The local Beirut papers are filled with photographs that would never be seen in the pages of a British paper: of decapitated babies and women with no legs or arms or of old men in bits. Israel's air raids are promiscuous and - when you see the results as we now do with our own eyes - obscene. No doubt Hizbollah's equally innocent civilian victims in Israel look like this but the slaughter in Lebanon is on an infinitely more terrible scale. The Lebanese look at these pictures and see them on television - as does the rest of the Arab world - and I wonder how many of them are provoked to think of another 9/11 or 7/7 or whatever the next date will be.

What does war do to people? Later, I am talking to an Austrian journalist and idly ask what her father does. "He drinks," she says. Why? "Because his father was killed at Stalingrad."

I walk across with tea for the soldiers on the APC in the car park. They are all from Baalbek, Shia Muslims. They would never open fire on a Hizbollah missile crew. Then I return home from another visit to the southern suburbs and find they have gone, along with their behemoth. The first good news of the day.

The minister of finance holds a press conference to talk of the billions of dollars of damage being done to Lebanon by Israel's air raids. "We have had pledges of aid from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar," he proudly announces. "And from Syria and Iran?" the man from Irish radio asks, naming Hizbollah's two principal supporters in the Muslim world. "Nothing," the minister replies dismissively.

Thursday 20 July

A bad day for messages. Phone calls from the States to tell me I am an anti-Semite for criticising Israel. Here we go again. To call decent folk anti-Semites is soon going to make anti-Semitism respectable, I tell the callers before asking them to tell the Israeli air force to stop killing civilians. Then a fax from a Jewish friend in California to tell me that a man called Lee Kaplan - "a columnist for the Israel National News", whatever that is - has condemned me in print for developing a "high-paid speaking career among anti-Semites". Unlike Benjamin Netanyahu and many others I can think of, I never take money for lecturing - ever - but to smear the thousands of ordinary Americans who listen to me as anti-Semites is outrageous.

Another fax from the editor of the forthcoming paperback edition of my book, apologising for bothering me at a "very difficult (sic) time" but promising to send me page proofs by DHL which is still operating to Beirut. I go downtown to check this with DHL. Yes, the man says, parcels for Lebanon are sent to Jordan and then in a truck via Damascus to Beirut. A truck, I say to myself. Ouch.

Friday 21 July

The Israelis have just bombed Khiam prison. An interesting target since this was the jail in which Israel's former proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, used to torture male prisoners by attaching electrodes to their penises and female prisoners by electrocuting their breasts. When the Israeli army retreated in 2000, the Hizbollah turned the prison into a museum. Now the evidence of the SLA's cruelty has been erased. Another "terrorist" target.

The power comes back at home at 11pm and I watch Israel's consul general, Arye Mekel, telling the BBC that Israel is "doing the Lebanese a favour" by bombing Hizbollah, insisting that "most Lebanese appreciate what we are doing". So now I understand. The Lebanese must thank the Israelis for destroying their lives and infrastructure. They must be grateful for all the air strikes and the dead children. It's as if the Hizbollah claimed that Israelis should be grateful to them for attacking Zionism. How far can self-delusion reach?

Saturday 22 July

I have coffee in my landlord's garden and he climbs an old wooden ladder into his fig tree and brings me a plate of fruit. "Every day it gives us our figs," he tells me. "We sit under our tree in the afternoon and with the breeze off the sea, it is like air conditioning." I look at his little paradise of pot plants and sip my Arabic coffee from a little blue mug. We watch the warships sliding into Beirut port. "What will happen when all the foreigners have gone?" he asks. That's what we are all asking. We shall find out this week.
Sunday 16 July

It is the first time I have actually seen a missile in this war. They fly too fast - or you are too busy trying to run away to look for them - but this morning, Abed and I actually see one pierce the smoke above us. "Habibi (my friend)!" he cries, and I start screaming "Turn the car round, turn it round" and we drive away for our lives from the southern suburbs. As we turn the corner there is a shattering explosion and a mountain of grey smoke blossoming from the road we have just left. What happened to the men and women we saw running for their lives from that Israeli rocket? We do not know. In air raids, all you see is the few square yards around you. You get out and you survive and that is enough.

I go home to my apartment on the Corniche and find that the electricity is cut. Soon, no doubt, the water will be cut. But I sit on my balcony and reflect that I am not crammed into a filthy hotel in Kandahar or Basra but living in my own home and waking each morning in my own bed. Power cuts and fear and the lack of petrol now that Israel is bombing gas stations mean that the canyon of traffic which honks and roars outside my home until two in the morning has gone. When I wake in the night, I hear the birds and the wash of the Mediterranean and the gentle brushing of palm leaves.

I went to buy groceries this evening. There is no more milk but plenty of water and bread and cheese and fish. When Abed pulls up to let me out of the car, the man in the 4x4 behind us puts his hand permanently on the horn, and when I get out of Abed's car, he mouths the words "Kess uchtak" at me. "Fuck your sister." It is the first time I have been cursed in this war. The Lebanese do not normally swear at foreigners. They are a polite people. I hold my hand out, palm down and twist it palm upwards in the Lebanese manner, meaning "what's the problem?". But he drives away. Anyway, I don't have a sister.

Monday 17 July

The phones are still working and my mobile chirrups like a budgerigar. Too many of the calls are from friends who want to know if they should flee Beirut or flee Lebanon or from Lebanese who are outside Lebanon and want to know if they should return. I can hear the bombs rumbling across Hizbollah's area of the southern suburbs but I cannot answer these questions. If I advise friends to stay and they are killed, I am responsible. If I tell them to leave and they are killed in their cars, I am responsible. If I tell them to come back and they die, I am responsible. So I tell them how dangerous Lebanon has become and tell them it is their decision. But I feel great sorrow for them. Many have been refugees four times in 24 years. Today I am called by a Lebanese woman with Lebanese and Iranian citizenship and one child with a US passport and another with only a Lebanese passport. Her situation is hopeless. I suggest she travels to the Christian mountains around Faraya and try to find a chalet. It will be safe there. I hope.

I come back from Kfar Chim where part of an Israeli missile or an aircraft wing has just partially decapitated the driver of a car. He looked so tragic, his head lolling forward in the driver's seat, just looking at all the blood splashing down his body on to the floor. Abed was getting spooked because I spent too long at the scene. The Israelis always come back. "Habibi, you took too long. Never stay that long again!" He is right. The Israelis did come back and bombed the Lebanese army.

Now my housemaid Fidele is spooked. She thinks it is too dangerous to travel from the Christian district of Beirut to my home since the Israelis blew the top off the local lighthouse 400 metres from my front door. Fidele is from Togo and makes fantastic pizzas (I recommend her Pizza Togolaisi to anyone) so I send Abed off to pick up her up and bring her to my home for one hour. She puts my dirty clothes in the washing machine, and after five minutes the power goes off and we have to take them all out and try again tomorrow.

Tuesday 18 July

At 3.45am, I wake to the sound of tank tracks and a big military motor heaving away in the darkness. I go downstairs to find that the Lebanese army has positioned an American-made armoured personnel carrier in the car park opposite my home. It has been placed strategically under some palm trees, as if this will stop Israeli aircraft from spotting it. I don't like this at all and nor does my landlord, Mustafa, who lives downstairs. The Lebanese army is now an occasional target for the Israelis and this little behemoth looks like a palm tree disguised as a tank. Later in the morning, I call a general in the army who is a friend of mine and army operations calls me back to check the location. It takes an hour before they find the car park on their maps. Then I receive another call telling me that the APC is next to my home to prevent the Hizbollah from using the car park to launch another missile at an Israeli ship. The empty American Community School is just up my road. The Lebanese army is defending us.

The first French warship arrives to pick up French citizens fleeing Lebanon. It steams proudly past my balcony. Many French naval vessels are named after great military leaders, and this particular anti-submarine frigate is called the Jean-de-Vienne. I pad off to consult my little library of French history books. Jean de Vienne, it turns out, was a 14th-century French admiral who raided the Sussex town of Rye and the Isle of Wight and who was killed - oh lordy, lordy - fighting in the Crusades against the Muslim Turks. A suitable ship to start France's evacuation of the ancient Crusader port of Beirut.
Wednesday 19 July

Now that the Israelis are destroying whole apartment blocks in the Shia southern suburbs - there is a permanent umbrella of smoke over the seafront, stretching far out into the Mediterranean - tens of thousands of Shia Muslims have come to seek sanctuary in the undamaged part of Beirut, in the parks and schools and beside the sea. They walk back and forth outside my home, the women in chadors, their bearded husbands and brothers silently looking at the sea, their children playing happily around the palm trees. They speak to me with anger about Israel but choose not to discuss the depth of cynicism of the Shia Hizbollah who provoked Israel's brutality by capturing two of its soldiers. As well as the Hizbollah, the Israelis are now targeting food factories and trucks and buses - not to mention 46 bridges - and the bin men are now reluctant to pick up the rubbish skips each night for fear their innocent rubbish truck is mistaken for a missile launcher. So no rubbish collection this morning.

The local Beirut papers are filled with photographs that would never be seen in the pages of a British paper: of decapitated babies and women with no legs or arms or of old men in bits. Israel's air raids are promiscuous and - when you see the results as we now do with our own eyes - obscene. No doubt Hizbollah's equally innocent civilian victims in Israel look like this but the slaughter in Lebanon is on an infinitely more terrible scale. The Lebanese look at these pictures and see them on television - as does the rest of the Arab world - and I wonder how many of them are provoked to think of another 9/11 or 7/7 or whatever the next date will be.

What does war do to people? Later, I am talking to an Austrian journalist and idly ask what her father does. "He drinks," she says. Why? "Because his father was killed at Stalingrad."

I walk across with tea for the soldiers on the APC in the car park. They are all from Baalbek, Shia Muslims. They would never open fire on a Hizbollah missile crew. Then I return home from another visit to the southern suburbs and find they have gone, along with their behemoth. The first good news of the day.

The minister of finance holds a press conference to talk of the billions of dollars of damage being done to Lebanon by Israel's air raids. "We have had pledges of aid from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar," he proudly announces. "And from Syria and Iran?" the man from Irish radio asks, naming Hizbollah's two principal supporters in the Muslim world. "Nothing," the minister replies dismissively.

Thursday 20 July

A bad day for messages. Phone calls from the States to tell me I am an anti-Semite for criticising Israel. Here we go again. To call decent folk anti-Semites is soon going to make anti-Semitism respectable, I tell the callers before asking them to tell the Israeli air force to stop killing civilians. Then a fax from a Jewish friend in California to tell me that a man called Lee Kaplan - "a columnist for the Israel National News", whatever that is - has condemned me in print for developing a "high-paid speaking career among anti-Semites". Unlike Benjamin Netanyahu and many others I can think of, I never take money for lecturing - ever - but to smear the thousands of ordinary Americans who listen to me as anti-Semites is outrageous.

Another fax from the editor of the forthcoming paperback edition of my book, apologising for bothering me at a "very difficult (sic) time" but promising to send me page proofs by DHL which is still operating to Beirut. I go downtown to check this with DHL. Yes, the man says, parcels for Lebanon are sent to Jordan and then in a truck via Damascus to Beirut. A truck, I say to myself. Ouch.

Friday 21 July

The Israelis have just bombed Khiam prison. An interesting target since this was the jail in which Israel's former proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army, used to torture male prisoners by attaching electrodes to their penises and female prisoners by electrocuting their breasts. When the Israeli army retreated in 2000, the Hizbollah turned the prison into a museum. Now the evidence of the SLA's cruelty has been erased. Another "terrorist" target.

The power comes back at home at 11pm and I watch Israel's consul general, Arye Mekel, telling the BBC that Israel is "doing the Lebanese a favour" by bombing Hizbollah, insisting that "most Lebanese appreciate what we are doing". So now I understand. The Lebanese must thank the Israelis for destroying their lives and infrastructure. They must be grateful for all the air strikes and the dead children. It's as if the Hizbollah claimed that Israelis should be grateful to them for attacking Zionism. How far can self-delusion reach?

Saturday 22 July

I have coffee in my landlord's garden and he climbs an old wooden ladder into his fig tree and brings me a plate of fruit. "Every day it gives us our figs," he tells me. "We sit under our tree in the afternoon and with the breeze off the sea, it is like air conditioning." I look at his little paradise of pot plants and sip my Arabic coffee from a little blue mug. We watch the warships sliding into Beirut port. "What will happen when all the foreigners have gone?" he asks. That's what we are all asking. We shall find out this week.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)