Top: Jewish Atrocities: Israeli Torture

History of Israel's Atrocities in Lebanon--A Pattern of Jewish State Terrorism
By Nadim Ladki; 04-21-1996; Reuter, top of page

BEIRUT, April 21 (Reuter) - Little did anyone suspect when Israeli commandos blew up 13 airliners at
Beirut airport 28 years ago that it was to be the first of many Israeli military thrusts into Lebanon.
The history of Israel's wars against Arab guerrillas in Lebanon includes many military successes but few
long-term gains in its bid to establish security on the Jewish state's northern border.
The current air, artillery and and naval bombardment, in its 11th day, is the latest attempt by Israel to
stop attacks by Hizbollah guerrillas on its northern towns.
At least 154 people have been killed and hundreds wounded, including 102 refugees shelled at a U.N.
base in the south.
The seeds of conflict were sown in 1948 when thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their
homes during the war that followed the proclamation of the state of Israel.
Many settled in Lebanon. Their battle to return to "Palestine" was given fresh impetus when the bulk of
the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leadership moved to Lebanon after being ousted from
Jordan in 1971.
Israel's first big incursion was in 1968. It said the attack on Beirut airport was a reprisal for an attack in
Athens by Lebanese- trained Palestinian guerrillas.
In April 1973, Israeli elite troops, including present-day Foreign Minister Ehud Barak disguised as a
woman, entered Beirut flats and shot dead three Palestinian guerrilla officials.
Israel said those targeted played a role in a guerrilla attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics a
year earlier.
In March 1978, in retaliation for the killing of more than 30 bus riders in a raid by sea-borne guerrillas
near Tel Aviv, Israel attacked PLO positions in south Lebanon and occupied a 10 km (six mile)-wide
strip north of the Lebanese border.
About 1,500 people were killed, mostly Lebanese and Palestinian civilians.
Some of the Israeli forces pulled out, but not before handing over the area to allied Christian militiamen
fighting Palestinians and Moslem leftists in Lebanon's civil war.
U.N. Security Council resolution 425 ordered the Israelis to leave. They refused. The United Nations set
up UNIFIL, a 5,000-strong peacekeeping force to help restore Lebanese state authority down to the
border. Israeli troops did not let it reach the border.
In 1981, PLO guerrillas rained Katyusha rockets into northern Israel and the border strip. Israel
launched air raids on Beirut in retaliation, killing scores of civilians. A flurry of diplomatic moves
prevented the conflict from widening.
But in July 1982, after months of calm on the border, Israel invaded Lebanon with the declared aim of
routing Palestinian guerrillas. It cited as justification an attack that seriously wounded its ambassador in
London.
Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon promised his army would stop after 40 km (25 miles) but it
encircled Beirut, 40 km further north. After bombardments, PLO fighters agreed to leave the city.
About 20,000 people were killed, mostly Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. Israel lost hundreds of
soldiers.
In September 1982, Israeli forces stormed west Beirut after pro- Israeli Christian leader Bashir Gemayel,
who days earlier had been elected president, was assassinated.
Israeli troops ringing the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila allowed revenge-seeking
Christian militiamen into the shantytowns. Hundreds of refugees were slaughtered and Israel was widely
condemned.
Bruised by world outrage and hurt by mounting guerrilla attacks by Lebanese Shi'ite Moslem guerrillas,
Israel, under Prime Minister Shimon Peres, pulled most of its forces out of Lebanon in 1985 and set up
a 15 km (nine mile) wide occupation zone to stop cross-border attacks. But its continued presence
stirred the resentment of local south Lebanese.
Israel then faced a more relentless enemy, Hizbollah (Party of God), whose pro-Iranian Islamist militants
attacked its troops daily and were ready to die for their cause.
In February 1992, Israeli helicopter gunships rocketed the car of Hizbollah leader Sheikh Abbas
Musawi, killing him, his wife and son. Rocket attacks into northern Israel followed, then Israeli forces
stormed two villages north of the buffer zone.
U.S., U.N. and Iranian diplomacy led to a truce, but it crumbled after Hizbollah killed seven Israeli
soldiers in July 1993 and fired Katyushas into northern Israel.
In response, Israel unleashed "Operation Accountability," a week- long air, artillery and naval blitz in
which 130 people, mostly Lebanese civilians, died and 300,000 fled their homes.
It ended when a U.S.-brokered verbal understanding barred attacks on civilians on both sides of the
border but did not mention guerrilla attacks against Israeli occupation troops.
Hizbollah pledged to rocket northern Israel every time Israeli shelling killed Lebanese civilians. It kept
the promise, and on April 11, 1996, Israel launched "Operation Grapes of Wrath," its second blitz
against south Lebanon and Hizbollah.
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Dressed in the fine robes and headdress of a Muslim cleric, Sheik Kaouk
received two reporters in a lavender-carpeted office with heavy drapes
and a photograph of Iran's late Ayatollah Khomeini on the wall. The
sheik, who appeared to be in his early 40s, twisted worry beads as he
spoke of Israel's "criminal" leaders and "failed" military operations.

Kaouk dismissed the idea of a negotiated solution in Lebanon, saying
that Israel never honors the agreements it signs. He pointed to its
refusal to withdraw from the West Bank city of Hebron as required by the
peace agreements between it and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

"The occupation will not be solved with a signature," the sheik said.

Israel invaded Lebanon during the country's civil war of 1982 to evict
Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, which was then a guerrilla
movement fighting Israel. Arafat's fighters fled within months, but
Israel stayed, provoking Iranian-backed Shiite Muslims to form a militia
called Hezbollah.

Three years later, Israel agreed to pull out of Lebanon but held on to
the 328-square-mile border security zone that it said was needed to
protect northern Israel from attack. The Israeli army remains there along
with a proxy Christian militia called the South Lebanon Army.

With the Israeli military itching to respond and prospective voters
under fire before an election, Peres began Operation Grapes of Wrath.
During the April offensive, Israel used air strikes and ground artillery
against the guerrillas in southern Lebanon and Beirut.

The operation, which also targeted Lebanese infrastructure and forced
hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee southern Lebanon, was
ostensibly designed to create pressure on the Lebanese government and
Syria to rein in Hezbollah.

The operation went awry for Israel when its artillery shells fell on a
U.N. camp at Qana, killing more than 100 civilians who had taken refuge
there. According to U.N. officials and Israeli press reports, the
incident occurred after Hezbollah guerrillas near the camp fired
Katyushas and mortars at an Israeli ground unit that had penetrated
beyond the occupied zone.

Israel has said that its artillery gunners miscalculated when they
fired back and accidentally hit the camp. The U.N. has accused Israel of
intentionally firing back at targets it knew to be too close to the camp.

The operation ended with the U.S.-brokered understandings between
Israel, Syria and Lebanon that ban attacks on civilians but allow each
side to retaliate if its civilians are hit. This is the loophole through
which both sides see the agreement unraveling.

On Friday, three children were killed in an explosion near the village
of Houla in the Israeli-occupied zone, and each side blamed the other for
detonating the roadside bomb.

"Israel only understands the language of retaliation. They only
understand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," he [the Sheik] said. "We
believe Israel will not feel pain until their people have wept like our
people have wept."

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WASHINGTON (Reuter) -
Washington has seemed ready to back whatever action Peres felt necessary to ensure his
people's security -- and their votes.
Typical of this stance was the State Department's comments on Monday about Israel's weekend attack
on an ambulance filled with refugees. The single bloodiest episode of the blitz on Lebanon, it killed four
girls and two women. Israel defended the strike, saying the ambulance carried a Hizbollah fighter.
"The shelling of the ambulance was a terrible tragedy," deputy spokesman Glyn Davies told a news
briefing.
But he laid the blame squarely on the radical Islamic group backed by Syrian and Iran, saying, "the
violence is due to Hizbollah's Katyusha rocket attacks."
James Zogby of the Arab-American Institute, however, blasted Israel' s attacks as "terrorism" and
blamed the Jewish state for first violating a 1993 ceasefire accord by disproportionate strikes on civilians
and villages, rather than targeting only Hizbollah.
He expressed disappointment at the U.S. response and said it undermines Washington's role as a honest
peace broker.
A senior U.S. official, explaining the adminstration position...
The Israelis have "responded in a measured way and ever more forcefully in the light of ever more
attacks, and they're going to continue to do it ... until they get a situation that no longer threatens civilians,
" he said in an interview.
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TYRE, Lebanon, April 11 (Reuter) - Israeli aircraft struck three
times in Lebanon on Thursday, rocketing Moslem guerrilla posts and
a Lebanese army checkpoint in retaliation to an upsurge of anti-Israeli
attacks, security sources said.
Israeli helicopters fired rockets at a Lebanese army checkpoint
in the southern port of Tyre, wounding three soldiers and destroying
an armoured troop carrier, the sources and witnesses said.
"One armoured personnel carrier was hit. It is still on fire,"
a Tyre resident who lives near the checkpoint said.
The security sources said earlier that Israeli jets fired rockets
into Hizbollah positions in the rugged Iqlim al-Toufah mountain ridge,
a pro-Iranian Hizbollah stronghold north of the Israeli-held south
Lebanon zone.
In a pre-dawn raid, jets blasted a Hizbollah ammunition depot
on Kayyal hill overlooking the city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon's
Syrian-policed Bekaa Valley, the sources said.
There was no immediate report of casualties in the raids.
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JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli forces in south Lebanon Thursday
demolished the house of a Lebanese man allegedly involved in a booby-
trapped video-cassette bombing that wounded six people at Israel's
northern border a day earlier.

"Security forces identified a south Lebanese civilian that was
involved in yesterday's attack," an army spokeswoman said.
"This afternoon they demolished his home in the central sector
of the security zone," she said, adding that the suspect had managed
to remove his family earlier in the day.
She did not say whether the man had been taken into custody.

Israel has a policy of demolishing houses in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip of Islamic militants suspected of having carried out attacks
against Israel. The destruction of a suspect's house in south Lebanon
is unusual.
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BAALBEK, Lebanon (Reuter) - Israeli jets rocketed a Hizbollah post
in eastern Lebanon Friday, wounding five civilians.

An off-duty Lebanese soldier was also injured, security sources
said. All six injured were hit by broken glass or shrapnel in their
homes, they said.
The houses were about 656 ft. from the target of the attack --
a hilltop overlooking the outskirts of Baalbek.

Hizbollah said the attack broke a U.S.-brokered cease-fire understanding
of April 26 between Israel and Lebanon which ended a 17-day Israeli
blitz of Lebanon and barred bombardments of civilian areas.
It was Israel's third air raid into Lebanon....

The jets struck less than 24 hours after Hizbollah killed four
Israeli soldiers and wounded seven in a double bomb attack in the
southern town of Marjayoun in Israel's south Lebanon occupation zone.

Hizbollah's senior official in south Lebanon, Sheik Nabil Qawook,
said after the air raid the militant Shi'ite Muslim movement would
continue to attack Israeli forces in the south.
"We intend to continue to deal painful blows to avenge every drop
of blood spilled during the April aggression," Qawook said in the
southern port of Sidon.
This was a reference to Israel's April 11-27 blitz which killed
200 people, mostly civilians, including 102 refugees killed when Israeli
gunners shelled a U.N. peacekeepers' post at Qana in the south.
Hizbollah MP Mohammad Yaghi told Reuters the Israeli rockets hit
an empty hill and that explosions heard afterwards were delayed-action
Israeli bombs.
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WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Israeli Foreign Minister Ehud Barak Wednesday
dismissed U.N. criticism of an Israeli attack on a refugee camp as
"absurd" and said he did not think the report would have an adverse
affect on a cease-fire in Lebanon.
"I don't know if this is exactly what the (U.N.) secretary general
meant but the whole idea is absurd," Barak told reporters when asked
about the report, which concluded that it was unlikely Israel bombed
a U.N. refugee camp in southern Lebanon by accident.
Barak, posing for photographs with his Omani counterpart, said
he did not think the U.N. report, released Tuesday, would have an
impact on the situation in southern Lebanon, where a U.S.-brokered
cease-fire has been in effect since April 26.
"I believe that even the Lebanese know very well that there is
no way Israel has done it intentionally or deliberately and that after
all, with all the sorrow and regret, it's something that could happen
in full scale military activties. The ultimate responsibility we believe
is still with Hizbollah (guerrillas) who used the U.N. installation
to cover the shooting," he said.
The United Nations Tuesday said Israel's shelling of a U.N. camp
in southern Lebanon that killed about 100 civilians last month was
unlikely to have been the result of gross technical or procedural
errors, as Israel claimed.
The United States blasted U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-
Ghali for drawing "unjustified" conclusions about Israel's role in
the attack. Barak was to meet Secretary of State Warren Christopher
immediately after his talks with Oman Foreign Minister Yusef Bin Alawi
Bin Abdullah.
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Palestinians have been an integral part of the Lebanese polity since the
1948 Arab-Israeli War. At that time, many fled to Lebanon. This refugee
population increased after the June 1967 War and the 1970 eviction of the PLO
from Jordan. By 1987 there were about 400,000 Palestinians in Lebanon (see The
Palestinian Element, ch. 2).In 1978 Israel invaded Lebanon, clearing out Palestinian
strongholds as far north as the Litani River. Another consequence of the
Israeli invasion was the establishment in southern Lebanon of the United
Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, whose mission was to separate the various
combatants.

As serious as the 1978 incursion was, it paled in comparison with the
1982 Israeli invasion, which affected all of the southern half of Lebanon as
far north as Beirut (see The 1982 Israeli Invasion and Its Aftermath, ch. 5).
This action had several direct consequences. First, it resulted in the deaths
of several hundred Palestinian fighters and the expulsion of several thousand
more, not to mention several thousand Lebanese and Palestinian casualties and
massive destruction. For a time, the invasion and occupation diminished Syrian
influence, as the Syrian Army was forced north and east. The Israeli
occupation promoted the creation of the MNF, made up of military units from
Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, which supervised the
Palestinian evacuation and later stayed to keep the peace. The IDF occupation
also created an expedient climate for Bashir Jumayyil (and, subsequently, for
his brother Amin) to win the presidency.

In addition, there were several less direct consequences. The occupation
of Muslim West Beirut allowed Christian forces, on September 27-28, 1982, to
enter the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, where they massacred
several hundred civilians. Lebanese Shias, who were severely affected by the
invasion and occupation, turned their enmity on the Israelis. As a show of
support for their coreligionists, the government of Iran, with Syrian
approval, dispatched a contingent of the Pasdaran to the Biqa Valley.
Anti-Israeli Shia opposition burgeoned during the occupation, and there were
several suicide-bombing incidents perpetrated against IDF positions (see
Suicide Bombings, ch. 5).

In 1987 Israel's relations with Lebanon continued to revolve around the
issue of security. Israel retained its support of the SLA's activities in
southern Lebanon, maintained its ties to the LF, and perpetuated its policy of
attacking Palestinian and Lebanese targets that Israel labeled "terrorist"
bases.
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A WEEK into Israel's ferocious bombardment .. as thousand upon thousand of Israeli shells and bombs thump
down on Lebanon, ancient Katyusha rockets continue to be plonked into Galilee' s deserted fields.
Operation Grapes of Wrath, a resonant cliche from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", was launched to
protect the Israelis of northern Galilee. It has not, in that respect, been a demonstrable success. Yet it has
still been a domestic triumph. And, at the start when casualties were low, it won international sympathy;
the reproaches were muted.

Strange that: Lebanon, though not Hizbullah, has been badly hurt, its land once again a battlefield, its
people being killed and made homeless. Since the barrage began on April 11th, several hundred
thousand Lebanese have been forced to flee their homes, trailing up the single road north, seeking
temporary refuge in the streets, schools and mosques of Beirut. Their presence, plus Israel's surgical
strikes at two of Beirut's power stations, have plunged the capital back into the disorder it thought it had
escaped.

Close to 100 Lebanese, most of them civilians, had been killed in the first week of the bombardment, half
of them on April 18th when Israel shelled a UN peacekeeping base near Tyre where hundreds of
Lebanese refugees were sheltering. Earlier in the day, a family of nine, including small children, had been
killed in a raid on a village near Nabatiyeh. The casualty rate, at first relatively low because of Israel's
policy of telling people to get out before it blasted their homes, was rising fast. The number of dead
Lebanese civilians, in just a few days, was many times more than the 12 people in northern Israel killed
by Hizbullah rockets in the 14 years since Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982.

Israel has struck houses in Beirut, supposedly belonging to Hizbullah but not inhabited by them.
Helicopter gunships attacked a Palestinian refugee camp, wounding the small son of a radical
commander, the object of the chase. One of the power stations hit was in Lebanon's Christian heartland
where no Hizbullah guerrilla would show his face. Its destruction, Israel said, was in revenge for the
rocket that broke a single power line in Galilee.

That may have been the moment when Israel decided the rules would have to be revised. The
suicide-bomber opened a vista of military funerals--and Israel has never allowed the death of its
conscript soldiers to be an inevitable part of army life. The vicious tit-for- tat killing wound on for a time.
The Israelis killed two Lebanese civilians; Hizbullah fired Katyusha rockets into Israel; a Lebanese
youngster was killed by an unexplained explosion; Hizbullah fired more rockets injuring several Israeli
civilians; another Israeli soldier was killed. Then, on April 11th, Israel struck, making that last Katyusha
salvo its justification.

The long-term explanation

Lebanon is the battleground on which Israel fights its wars, first with the Palestine Liberation
Organisation (PLO), now with Hizbullah. Yet, for the first 20 years or so of Israel's independence,
Israelis living near the Lebanese border were the safest of all the frontiersmen. The Lebanese got on with
their own affairs; the Israelis, while keeping a wary eye on water resources, had no designs on Lebanese
territory.

The event that changed this came in the early 1970s, when Jordan's King Hussein, with Israel breathing
down his neck, forced the PLO out of his country. The PLO regrouped in Lebanon, taking control of
part of the south, creating a state within a state from which it launched attacks on Israel. The border
became a war zone.

In 1978 the Israelis, made bold by their breakthrough with Egypt (and by the havoc of Lebanon's own
civil war), invaded southern Lebanon. After three months, and many Lebanese and Palestinian
casualties, the Israelis went home but, on the way, ignoring UN instructions to withdraw completely, they
handed over a chunk of the southernmost part of Lebanon to the SLA, an army that they financed,
equipped and controlled. The PLO, despite this, continued its operations. In 1982, the decision was
taken--whether by Israel's prime minister, the late Menahem Begin, or by his defence minister, Ariel
Sharon, is still disputed--to send ground troops all the way to Beirut and crush the PLO once and for all.
Lebanon would be freed of Palestinians, and of Syrians too, said the propaganda. And the Israelis could
henceforth live at peace, with no PLO trying to drive them out of the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

It all went terribly wrong. It took Israel three bloody months to seize Beirut. The PLO and its fighters
were indeed driven out of the country but survived to fight--and eventually to make peace--elsewhere.
Hizbullah was formed in 1982, inspired by Iranian revolutionaries largely in response to Israel's invasion.
At least 12,000 people were killed during that invasion, including 600 Israeli soldiers. Palestinian refugees
were massacred in their camps in a Beirut district under Israeli military control. An American-led force
tried to stop the fighting but limped home after a suicide-bomber killed 240 marines. Lebanon, when it
had eventually fought itself to a standstill, ended up under Syrian control.

When Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 1985, it established, formally if unilaterally, that a "security
zone" in the south should remain under its control. This uneven buffer area, about nine miles (14km) wide,
amounts to roughly one-twelfth of Lebanon.
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SIDON, Apr. 15 (IPS) -- Aida Abaisi heard the Israeli
helicopters heading toward her south Lebanese village minutes
before she saw them rising over the horizon, and knew she had no
time to waste.
Grabbing two small children, one in her arms and one in tow, the
50-year old mother of six screamed at her remaining children to
grab as much bread as they could and run.
Through a pounding rainstorm, the family fled from one small
Lebanese village to another until they found a taxi willing to
speed north to relative safety.
"We could see the helicopters while we were running," Abaisi
recalled, standing with her children in the center of Sidon, a
major coastal city which Israel has yet to target. "We kept
running. Some of the houses in the villages were destroyed, totally
destroyed."
In its fifth day today, and with no end in sight, Israel's blitz
of Southern Lebanon continued unabated yesterday as scores of
U.S.-made Apache helicopters strafed villages as far north as the
Litani River, declaring the area south of the river a "no go zone"
.
Not since July 1993 has Israel crossed its 15-kilometer
self-declared "security zone" strip of occupied south Lebanon with
such force in an attempt to root out Hizbollah resistance fighters.
A U.S.-brokered deal by which both sides agreed not to target
the other side's civilians brought the 1993 fighting to a halt.
Then, the war of attrition lasted seven days and sent 300,000
panicked Lebanese civilians to Beirut, causing massive strain on
a cash-strapped Lebanese government focused on post-war
reconstruction.
This time, the tens of thousands of families fleeing north could
not find safety even in Beirut. Israel bombed Hizbollah positions
in the Lebanese capital on April 11, 12 and 14 , hitting a
hospital, a power generating sub-station, and the Hizbollah
headquarters.
The strikes sent carloads of residents in the Hizbollah
controlled suburbs of Beirut fleeing south. But frenzied Lebanese
soon realized that their intended destinations were no more safe
than the place they had left. In mid-flight, thousands ran instead
to Sidon half-way between the southern villages and Beirut.
There they found temporary shelter with friends, family, or in
local elementary schools, women and children sat huddled in
stairwells waiting for blankets, food and medicine from the Red
Cross and Lebanese relief agencies. Some women set up makeshift
kitchens with utensils and supplies from home while children played
in the school playground.
Exhausted and war-weary, these Lebanese staunchly refused to
blame the Iranian-backed resistance group for their homelessness.
"They won't succeed in breaking the ties between us and the
resistance," said Shafiq Zainadin, a construction worker from the
south Lebanon village of Siwani, one of those almost completely
destroyed by Israeli shelling. "The village is the Hizbollah. We
are the Hizbollah."
"Israel tried this in 1993 but they failed," said Zainadin.
"They are only strengthening our ties with the resistance by
bombing us."
With only about 1,000 active fighters, Hizbollah constitutes a
small but widely tolerated fraction of the country's political
spectrum.
While the guerrilla group enjoys substantial financial and
military support from Iran, tacit tactical support comes from
Shiite pockets of Beirut and small, predominantly Shiite villages
in the South.
But as Israeli shells continue to fall, support for Hizbollah
seems to be increasing as the nation rallies around a common enemy.
"Hizbollah could never have dreamed of such popularity," said
Lebanese journalist Firas al-Amin, who writes for the country's
leading daily An Nahar and says he does not support Hizbollah. "The
Israelis are creating this mood because the one thing that unites
all Lebanese factions is hatred of Israel."
The most telling sign that Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres'

intent to make the Hizbollah unpopular is backfiring came when
Christian Maronite Patriarch Mar Nasrallah Boutros Sufeir, one of
the most powerful Christian leaders in Lebanon condemned Israel's
actions without condemning Hizbollah.
Though most Lebanese, including a substantial number of Shiites,

do not want to see Hizbollah's brand of radical Islam in the
country, the Muslim fundamentalist group is viewed by the majority
of Lebanese as a legitimate resistance to Israeli occupation of
southern Lebanon.
"All villagers are resisting Israel," said Hanat Hussein, a
30-year-old mother of five. Six months pregnant with her sixth
child, Hussein said she has fled her village at least five times
since Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982.
Buoyed psychologically by the immense popular support they have
been getting from a much wider segment of people than usual,
Hizbollah fighters have upped the ante in its battle with Israel,
launching more katyusha rockets into northern Israel today, hitting
areas it has hitherto failed to reach.
Just before Israeli bombs blasted its Beka'a Valley-based radio
station, the Hizbollah leadership ordered all guerrillas to the
front lines, including a 70-strong volunteer suicide bombing squad.
Such a prolonged battle could bring this tiny country to a
standstill, relief agency workers say. An estimated 500,000
Lebanese live south of the "no go zone." Agency workers estimate
some 300,000 have already fled, filling up dozens of elementary
schools in Sidon and the few remaining towns deemed safe.
Bahia Hariri, sister of Lebanese president Rafik Hariri and
director of a charitable agency he founded in 1979, estimates that
Sidon's schools can handle only 50,000 refugees and are quickly
reaching that number.
"It's a total crisis," said Hariri. "The people who came running
without anything -- no food, no clothing. We are trying to feed
them, provide blankets and give medicine."
As fresh streams of refugees packed children and belongings into
cattle cars and the death toll increases, Hariri has only one idea
on how to halt the relentless onslaught of bombs: Israel should go
home.
"This situation of resistance will end as soon as Israelis
retreat from south Lebanon," she said. "You cannot ask the
resistance to be disarmed while their land is occupied."
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TYRE, Lebanon, April 11 (Reuter) - Israeli aircraft struck three
times in Lebanon on Thursday, rocketing Moslem guerrilla posts and
a Lebanese army checkpoint in retaliation to an upsurge of anti-Israeli
attacks, security sources said.
Israeli helicopters fired rockets at a Lebanese army checkpoint
in the southern port of Tyre, wounding three soldiers and destroying
an armoured troop carrier, the sources and witnesses said.
"One armoured personnel carrier was hit. It is still on fire,"
a Tyre resident who lives near the checkpoint said.
The security sources said earlier that Israeli jets fired rockets
into Hizbollah positions in the rugged Iqlim al-Toufah mountain ridge,
a pro-Iranian Hizbollah stronghold north of the Israeli-held south
Lebanon zone.
In a pre-dawn raid, jets blasted a Hizbollah ammunition depot
on Kayyal hill overlooking the city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon's
Syrian-policed Bekaa Valley, the sources said.
There was no immediate report of casualties in the raids.
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Unfriendly Fire Israel again pounds Lebanon, says attacks won't lead to war

( Newsday ) Susan Sachs; 07-27-1993, top of page

Unfriendly Fire Israel again pounds Lebanon, says attacks won't lead to war

By Susan Sachs. MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT

As its artillery gunners, warplanes and gunboats pounded guerrilla
targets in Lebanon for a second day and forced thousands of Lebanese
to flee their homes, Israel pledged yesterday that its "Operation Settle
Accounts" would not drift into a full-scale ground war.
In the offensive, Israel's most intense in more than a decade,
at least 33 militants of the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah party were killed
and more than 123 wounded, according to unconfirmed reports from Lebanon.
One Israeli soldier was killed in a shootout at the western edge of
Israel's security zone in southern Lebanon, the army said.
Aiming to assure their own population as much as neighboring Arab
states, Israeli officials said the raids would stop if pro-Iranian
Hezbollah militants end their rocket attacks on northern Israeli towns.
But throughout the day, more than 70 Katyusha rockets fired from
southern Lebanon rained on the border region and a Hezbollah leader
vowed the barrage would continue. Only one casualty was reported in
Israel yesterday - two civilians were killed on Sunday - and
military commanders warned that rocket attacks from Lebanon are likely
to continue for days.
Israelsaid the offensive is in retaliation for a month of rocket
and ground attacks on Israeli troops and their proxy militia in southern Lebanon.
Army officials cited by Israel state television said the operation
aims to drive civilians from their south Lebanon villages, then destroy
bases in villages used by Shiite militiamen to launch attacks on Israeli
forces. The officials said the ultimate goal is to force the Lebanese
government and its Syrian patrons to assert control over the Hezbollah
and its allies in radical Palestinian groups.
"Certainly there is no intention whatsoever to launch a military
operation, or return the situation to what it was 11 years ago," Gad
Ben-Ari, the spokesman for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, told The
Associated Press. "
In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in a costly and inconclusive attempt
to crush Palestinian and Shiite Muslim guerrilla attacks over the
border. Thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians and hundreds of Israeli
soldiers were killed in the invasion, which became Israel's most
domestically unpopular war.
This time, though, the political situation in Israel could well
deter another drawn-out war. Already, the left-wing Meretz party and
some members of Rabin's own Labor party have raised questions about
the Lebanon campaign and voiced objections to expanding operations. Rabin's
government coalition includes Meretz, Labor and a small ultra-religious
party that reportedly also has expressed reservations. Israel state
television said the political divisions arose yesterday in a cabinet
meeting at which eight of 18 ministers turned down a request by Rabin
to keep open the option of using ground troops in Lebanon.
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Fri, 26 Apr 1996 11:45:43 -0500

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Title: 25 Apr 96--Attacks on Civilians and Civilian Property

In separate letters addressed to Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and
to Shaikh Hasan Nasrallah, Secretary-General of Hizballah, Human Rights
Watch/Middle East expresses profound concern with the attacks of Israeli and
Hizballah forces which have resulted in grievous civilian casualties and
destruction of civilian facilities. The letters urge each to insure that the
forces under their respective commands strictly adhere to the long-recognized
principles of civilian immunity as clearly codified in the Geneva Conventions
and Protocols and in subsequent restatements of customary international
humanitarian law.

The letter to Shaikh Nasrallah calls on Hizballah to publicly pledge to
abide by the laws of war with regard to the targeting of civilians. The
letter to Prime Minister Peres calls on Israel to distinguish between civilian
and military targets under all circumstances and to refrain from
indiscriminate bombardments and disproportionate attacks.

Human Rights Watch/Middle East further urges that both Israel and
Hizballah replace the July 1993 "understandings" with mutual written
commitments not to attack or threaten to attack civilians, including in
reprisal for attacks by the adversary.

Human Rights Watch/Middle East
Human Rights Watch is a nongovernmental organization established in 1978 to
monitor and promote the observance of internationally recognized human rights
in Africa, the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and among the signatories of
the Helsinki accords. It is supported by contributions from private
individuals and foundations worldwide. It accepts no government funds,
directly or indirectly. Its Middle East division was established in 1989 to
monitor and promote the observance of internationally recognized human rights
in the Middle East and North Africa.

April 24, 1996

Prime Minister Shimon Peres
Government of Israel
Jerusalem, Israel

via fax

Dear Mr. Prime Minister:

As you prepare to visit Washington on April 28-30 for meetings with the
Clinton administration, we write to express our profound concern with your
government's policy of indiscriminate bombardment and attacks which cause
disproportionate harm to civilians in the current military campaign against
Hizballah. Since the outset of Operation Grapes of Wrath on April 11,
according to an Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson, Hizballah attacks have
wounded twenty-six Israeli civilians. The Israeli operation has resulted in
around 150 killed and many hundreds wounded, almost all of them Lebanese
civilians. In addition, Israeli forces have targeted civilian objects, and
sought to terrify Lebanese civilians in order to force them out of their
homes.

While Israel has the right to protect its citizens, and to respond to attacks
with appropriate military measures, a policy of reprisal against
noncombatants, as well as indiscriminate and disproportionate military
operations which cause harm to civilians and civilian property, is expressly
forbidden under international humanitarian law. The Israeli attack that
resulted in the deaths of more than 100 Lebanese civilians seeking shelter at
the UN outpost in Qana violated this long-standing principle of civilian
immunity.

The fighting has displaced some 10,000 Israelis and up to 400,000 Lebanese
from their homes. Human Rights Watch condemns the actions of both Hizballah
and Israel in provoking this massive displacement. In the case of Israel, your
government's clear intent to generate a massive humanitarian crisis as a means
of pressuring Syrian and Lebanese authorities is absolutely impermissible
under international law.

We are deeply concerned, moreover, with your government's effort to create a
"free-fire" zone across much of southern Lebanon. On April 13, following the
rocketing of an ambulance carrying fleeing civilians near Tyre that killed two
women and four children, your government's spokesman Uri Dromi declared that
"We gave the residents advance warning to clear out so as not to get hurt. All
those who remain there, do so at their own risk because we assume they're
connected with Hizballah." Following the April 18 Israeli Air Force attack on
a building in the southern village of Nabatiyeh al-Fawqa, which killed a
mother and seven of her children as well as another relative, you stated, "But
naturally Nabatiyeh was supposed to be vacant." We must remind you that
warnings of intent to attack do not deprive civilians who cannot or will not
flee of their protection under the laws of war.

Reports of the last several days document continued Israeli targeting of
civilians and civilian facilities, in contravention of the laws of war. On
April 23, the IAF reportedly bombed a reservoir in Sultaniyeh, near Tyre,
which served twenty Lebanese villages in the region. The main coastal highway
linking Beirut, Sidon and Tyre has been under near-constant shelling by
Israeli warships for the past four days, preventing the movement of civilians
out of the war zone and the delivery of badly needed relief supplies to those
trapped there, raising serious concern about the health and livelihood of the
thousands who remained in their homes and localities. We urge you to halt
immediately this reportedly "pinpoint" shelling which has made no distinction
in being aimed at clearly marked vehicles of the Red Cross/Red Crescent, the
UN, or other manifestly non-military targets.

Human Rights Watch therefore calls on your government to take the following
steps:
-- distinguish at all times between civilians and combatants, and between
civilian property and legitimate military targets;
-- refrain from indiscriminate bombardment and from disproportionate
attacks.
-- replace the July 1993 "understandings" regarding southern Lebanon with a
public and written commitment not to attack civilians and civilian
areas, including in reprisal for attacks by Hizballah forces.

In conclusion, we strongly urge you to bring Israel's conduct of this campaign
immediately into comportment with the long-recognized principles of civilian
immunity as codified in compellingly clear terms in the Geneva Conventions and
subsequent restatements of customary international humanitarian law.

We attach, for your information, a Human Rights Watch/Middle East letter
addressed to Shaikh Hasan Nasrallah of Hizballah which condemns that
organization's policy of reprisal against civilians and civilian property in
northern Israel and urges Hizballah to pledge publicly to abide by
international humanitarian law in this regard. The organization has also
written to Secretary of State Christopher to demand that the US government
cease its support for Israel's policies of indiscriminate and disproportionate
bombardment and targeting of civilian property.

Sincerely,
Christopher E. George, Executive Director

April 24, 1996

Shaikh Hasan Nasrallah
Secretary-General
Hizballah
PO Box 266-25
Beirut, Lebanon

via fax

Dear Shaikh Nasrallah,

Human Rights Watch is deeply distressed with the great civilian toll caused by
the fighting between Israel and the militants of Hizballah. In that regard we
write to express our profound concern with your party's expressed policy of
reprisal against Israeli civilians. While Hizballah has the right to resist
Israeli military occupation and to engage Israeli forces and those of its
surrogate South Lebanese Army, a policy of reprisal against noncombatants, as
well as indiscriminate bombardment which causes disproportionate harm to
civilians and civilian property, is expressly forbidden under international
humanitarian law.

For this reason we strongly condemn Hizballah's policy of deliberately
targeting civilian areas in northern Israel with inaccurate volleys of
Katyusha rockets. Statements of your organization, such as that of April 15
that "economic" and "tourist" sites in northern Israel would be "exposed to
the rockets of the Islamic resistance," are in clear violation of
international humanitarian law. Warnings by Hizballah that "Everyone who
remains within this specified area will bear the responsibility of his
presence" do not absolve your organization of its obligations under
international humanitarian law to refrain from targeting civilians under any
circumstances.

The laws of war, as embodied in the Geneva Conventions and their Protocols,
require that Hizballah, as well as Israel, distinguish at all times between
civilians and combatants, and between civilian objects and legitimate military
targets. This categorical prohibition also applies to attacks on the
adversary's civilians and civilian property in reprisal for similar attacks by
the adversary. Combatants must also refrain from indiscriminate attacks
(operations that are not directed at a specific military objective but that
strike military targets and civilians and civilian property without
distinction) and from disproportionate attacks (in which any military
advantage is outweighed by damage to civilians and civilian property).

Human Rights Watch therefore calls on your organization to take the following
steps:
-- publicly pledge to abide by the laws of war, especially with regard to
the targeting of civilians;
-- replace the July 1993 "understandings" with a written commitment not to
attack or threaten to attack civilians, including in reprisal for
attacks by Israeli forces;
-- ensure that Hizballah military operations are located away from
populated areas.

In conclusion, we strongly urge you to bring Hizballah's conduct immediately
into comportment with the long-recognized principles of civilian immunity as
codified in compellingly clear terms in the Geneva Conventions and Protocols
and in subsequent restatements of customary international humanitarian law.

For your information, we are attaching a copy of a Human Rights Watch letter
to Israeli Prime Minister Peres which condemns Israeli attacks that have
killed some 150 Lebanese civilians since April 11, and calls on Israeli
government to cease immediately its policies of indiscriminate bombardment and
disproportionate attacks. The organization has also written to Secretary of
State Christopher to demand that the US government cease its support for
Israel's policies of indiscriminate and disproportionate bombardment and
targeting of civilian property.

Sincerely,
Christopher E. George
Executive Director

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top of page

The Coastal Post - May, 1996 top of page

BY EDWARD W. MILLER

Without the elixir of history, it is impossible to fully digest the story of Israel's ongoing interest in Lebanon and
the reasons why Israeli governments have repeatedly both interfered with this country's internal politics and
provoked "incidents" at it border since the 1940's.

Today's Lebanon, a narrow country stretched along the eastern Mediterranean coast was once the land of the
Phoenicians. Centuries later while the mountain areas were being settled by early Christian sects fleeing
Byzantine rule, the southern parts accepted Muslim dissidents who coalesced to form the Druse community.
Those Christian Maronites recognized the church in Rome in 1736 and accepting support from Catholic France
in the 18th century further alienated the Druse with whom they then warred until European powers intervened to
establish an autonomous province. Following WWI modern Lebanon came into existence with extended borders
as a French mandate in 1920.

The Vichy government took charge after France's defeat in WWII, following which Lebanon was reconquered by
the British and Free French. Lebanon's independence was then recognized by France in 1941. President Charles
De Gaulle sent troops into the area in 1943, but Britain intervened and by 1943 both the French and British had
pulled out. In 1958, following a revolt in Iraq during which King Faisel was killed, our U.S. Marines landed in
Tripoli at President Chaumoun's request only to pull out by October on that year.

The intimate details of Israel's manipulations in Lebanon are detailed in the diary of Moshe Sharett, who shared
the Prime Ministership of Israel with Ben Gurion only to be forced out of the cabinet because Sharett would not
tolerate what he considered Ben-Gurion's immoral and clandestine methods. Sharett's diary was published
posthumously by his son, despite a campaign of physical threats and legal confrontation by the Zionists.

As author Livia Rokach demonstrates in her book Israel's Sacred Terrorism, "Sharett's diary provides the
entire documentation of how in 1954 Ben Gurion developed the diabolic plans to "Christianize" Lebanon, i.e., to
invent and create from scratch the inter-Lebanese conflict, and of how a detailed blueprint for the partition and
subordination of that country was elaborated by Israel more than fifteen years before the Palestinian presence
became a political factor."

As early as 1918, Zionist leaders meeting in Europe with a committee of the British Palestinian Mandate
discussed the northern border of Palestine as extending into southern Lebanon and at the Paris peace
conference the next year proposed boundaries up to Lebanon's Litani River, emphasizing the "vital importance
of controlling all water resources up to their sources... The Zionist military forces that invaded Palestine in 1948
also occupied...the vicinity of the Litani River, but were forced to withdraw under international pressure.

In 1954, meeting with Eisenhower's envoy Eric Johnson on water matters, Israel threatened to use force against
Lebanon to prevent utilization of the Litani water to develop South Lebanon... In Israel's 1982 invasion of
Lebanon (Operational Peace for Galilee) the entire length of the Litani River came under Israeli control."

In May 1955 Sharett in his dairy described Israel's plans to destabilize Lebanon's government, a diabolic
enterprise that eventually produced the 1978 Lebanese War. Sharett quotes Moshe Dayan, Ben Gurion's
defense minister at a secret cabinet meeting on May 16th: "According to him [Dayan] the only thing necessary
is to find an officer, even just a major. We should either win his heart or buy time with money, to make him agree
to declare himself the savior of the Marionite population. Then the Israel army will enter Lebanon, will occupy
the necessary territory, and will create a Christian regime which will ally itself with Israel. The territory from the
Litani southward will be totally annexed to Israel and everything will be alright."

On May 28th Sharett notes: "The Chief of Staff supports a plan to hire a [Lebanese] officer who will agree to
serve as a puppet so that the Israeli army may appear as responding to his appeal "to liberate Lebanon from its
Muslim oppressors." As a matter of history, in accordance with Moshe Dayan's plan, Major Sa'd Haddad
declared a Maronite State in 1979.

"Moshe Dayan, then Israel's Chief of Staff, explained why Israel needed to reject any border security
arrangement of Arab states, or by the United Nations, as well as by the formal security guarantees suggested by
the United States. Such guarantees, he predicted, might "tie Israel's hands... As Dayan admitted...much anxiety
had to be generated... The lives of Jewish victims also had to be sacrificed to create provocations justifying
subsequent reprisals, especially in those periods in which the Arab governments succeeded in controlling the
reactions of the harassed and enraged Arab border populations. A hammering daily propaganda, controlled by
the censors was directed to feed the Israeli population with images of the monstrosity of the enemy."

With this background, the present tragedy unfolding in Lebanon is easier to understand. The basic Zionist plot is
unchanged, only new players have appeared on Israel's stage.

With President Clinton safely in Japan, Israel, obviously with a green light from the U.S. administration, felt free
to carry out "Grapes of Wrath," her fifth major terrorist attack on her old killing fields in southern Lebanon.
Using as an excuse a few Katyusha rockets aimed at her military (who have been illegally occupying and
threatening the southern Lebanese people since 1978), Israel's army on the anniversary of the Holocaust, bent
on murder and mayhem, is presently destroying millions of dollars in property, killing civilians and creating chaos
as she stampedes populations as far north as Beirut. On the morning of the 18th, Israeli shells plunged directly
into a UN refugee camp south of Tye where thousands fleeing Israeli fire sought shelter and food. The latest
figures reported over 60 deaths and hundreds wounded. Most victims were women and children. This is Israel's
fifth major terrorist assault on her northern neighbor.

Within a year following Israel's 1967 war during which an additional 200,000 Palestinian refugees had fled the
country, Israel first launched massive ground and air attacks against this country. President Johnson, who
"failed to recognize the seriousness both of Israel's '67 war and the attacks on Lebanon," did nothing. The
Lebanese were left to lick their wounds.

Then in 1969, just before Nixon took his first oath of office, as the Lebanese were preparing to celebrate the
New Year, Israeli planes bombed and destroyed Beirut's new Khalde airport, thus turning the hub of that area's
commercial traffic into a "smouldering mass of burnt-out fusilages from thirteen planes." Israel's excuse: an
Israeli citizen killed in Athens by an Arab.

Next, following Lebanon's civil war in 1978 for which Israel had carefully laid the groundwork, Israel launched
another full-scale invasion of Lebanon with 20,000 troops, supposedly in response to Palestinian guerilla activity,
but later studies showed the invasion (Operation Litani) had been planned two years prior to this. A "security
zone" was established by Israel to be manned by her puppet army of mercenaries, the SLA,. but more important,
the invasion had moved north to the Litani River, killing over 2,000 civilians in the process. Though the UN
finally intervened and eventually a UN Security Force was sent, Israel now had the access she had coveted,
access to irrigation waters from the Litani River which had been the real object of both her incursion and her
refusal to leave Lebanon.

Then, moving forward to July 1981, Israel, using a supposed arms buildup by the Palestinian as an excuse, again
subjected Lebanon to terrorist attacks. Israel bombarded Beirut killing over 450 citizens and wounding 800
more. President Reagan publicly stated: " I don't think violence is ever helpful in the peace process," and to
show his firm resolve actually held up the delivery of F-16s to Israel for a whole month.

Things were reasonably quiet for a time but in February, 1982, Israel's Major General Yehoshua Saguym Chief
of Israel's Intelligence, met with Pentagon officials and Secretary of Defense Haig to outline Israel's plans for a
major invasion and Lebanon. Following this meeting Israel took delivery of $217,695,000 worth of military
equipment from the U.S., whereupon our media began to prepare Americans for the military operation by
"revealing" the PLO was receiving Soviet rockets and other supplies supposedly to threaten Israel.

"The fifth Arab-Israeli War...began with an aerial bombardment of Beirut on June 4th and 5th, 1982...Israeli
forces launched a massive land, sea and air offensive of Lebanon which resulted in the occupation of a third of
the country...destruction of Syrian missile batteries in the Bekaa Valley; the elimination of over one-quarter of
the Syrian airforce, and the destruction of all the political, social and military organizations of the PLO. The
invasion included a seige...of Beirut. The campaign lasted 67 days... The United States was virtually the only
nation in the world that did not issue a statement criticizing the invasion."

In the prolonged negotiations that followed, PLO officials and other Palestinian refugees were evacuated by ship
to Tunmis and other Arab countries. Some of their families, who were to follow and who were promised
safe-keeping by the U.S. were then massacred by the Phalanges forces under Israeli orders. Over 1,000 women,
children and old men were thus butchered in the Sabra and Shatila refugee centers. Israel's General Sharon,
strongly criticized for this mayhem (thousands of Israelis marched in the streets), and eventually by his own
government, was relieved of his command but rewarded by a cabinet post in the Knesset. This 1982 Lebanese
War which killed some 30,000 civilians, devastated Beirut where over 500,000 were driven from their homes. As
those who had not been killed by Israel's "cluster bombs" fled to surrounding villages. President Reagan's USS
New Jersey sitting offshore, fired shells into these towns. Beirut today is still in the process of rebuilding as
Israeli planes are again repeating the destruction. The U.S. involvement in Israel's 1982 war destroyed what
little credibility we had in the Mideast, cost our taxpayers billions plus almost 300 U.S. Marine lives, but left
Israel still occupying southern Lebanon despite the UN Security Council directive to get out.

In 1993 Israel once more devastated southern Lebanon. "After Israeli air raids, smashing thousands of houses,
had killed over 100 civilians and sent 300,000 fleeing north," a tacit agreement was reached wherein Hezbulla
could fire rockets into Israel only if Israelis or their mercenary SLA forces attacked civilians. Israel broke the
agreement July 9th, wounding a whole family and killing two teenagers with anti-personnel shells from a tank.
Things then remained reasonably quiet along the Israeli-Lebanese border until the present hostilities which are
now in their sixth day.

Americans need to understand that the much-vilified Hezbulla organization was formed in 1982 after that terribly
destructive invasion, specifically to protect southern Lebanon from further acts of Israeli violence. Iran was
party to its formation and has maintained some degree of support as has Syria's Assad, which is one reason our
Israeli lobby in Washington has pressed Congress to isolate Iran and vilify Syria. It really makes little difference
who supports Hezbulla. Israel's smoke and mirrors campaign to vilify the two Muslim countries and their leaders
is intended to distract the world's attention from her intent to continue the economic destruction of Lebanon as
well as to steal vital irrigation waters from the Litani River. Most Mideast authorities agree the Lebanese will
need Hezbulla's support until Israel troops have left the country. After all, our own colonial rebels were happy to
receive help from France back in the Revolutionary War days.

The U.S. State Department, however, which has sided through the years with Israel whether she was right or
wrong, while advertising itself as a "honest broker," is presently calling on the Syrians and Lebanese to "disarm
the Hezbulla." Our American Ambassador in Beirut, Richard Jones, "listed several demands that essentially
reflected the Israeli position. These included an end to Katyusha rocket attacks on northern Israel and
Lebanese guarantees for the security of the region; the disarming of the Hezbulla and a cessation of guerilla
attacks against Israeli soldiers inside the nine-mile "security zone"...and a Syrian guarantee for the agreement."

Neither the Lebanese nor Syria nor the Hezbulla forces are likely to accept this offer. In the first place,
according to the Geneva Conventions which Israel signed along with 140 other countries, Lebanon has a perfect
right to attack a foreign army [Israel's] occupying her soil with any means at her disposal." It is Israel, not the
Lebanese that are at fault as the UN has said to Tel Aviv many times. Just a sour American patriotic forces
would have been fools to have disarmed until old George III gave the Colonies their liberty, the Hezbulla, a
volunteer force created for similar reasons is not going to disarm until Israel is out of Lebanon.

Just how much political coin President Peres stands to gain from his present Lebanon Campaign is anyone's
guess. "Hanging tough" as if to shoulder the military cloak of the murdered Rabin, while appearing to meet the
challenges of Netanyahu and the Likud Party is a dangerous game. Many Israelis, remembering the tragic
outcome of their '82 Invasion are already critical of Peres' action. The April 18th massacre will create worldwide
pressure on the Security Council to respond, George McGovern, former United States Senator, in a letter to the
New York Times April 17th perhaps said it best: "I urge him [Peres] to take whatever political risk is involved in
placing his ideals and the principles of his nation above lesser political concerns. There are some things worse
than losing an election. One is killing innocent children and destroying their home."

Hopefully, some of these truths will come home to Washington before more Lebanese blood is shed, and the
chance for a true Mideast peace fades again into the distance. top of page

by Dr. Maher Hathout, Senior Advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Al Akhbar NEWS Agency
top of page

History is written not so much to understand the past but to shape the
future. This premise usually holds when addressing the reporting about
events in the Middle East. Most textbooks, for example, indicate that
the Six-Day War was initiated by the Arabs and Israel pounded them in
retaliatory strikes. But the late Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem
Begin, said, In June 1967 we...had a choice. The Egyptian army
concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was
really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We
decided to attack him. (New York Times, August 21, 1982). The same
misconception in reporting is used today to justify Israels destruction
of Lebanon. Furthermore, six lies are spinning the news in Israels
favor to justify her aggression in Lebanon:

Lie 1: This war is between Hizbollah and Israel.
Reality: Hizbollah members are not suffering any casualties. This is
a war directed against the people of Lebanon. It is designed to break the
infrastructure of Lebanon and destroy her peoples spirit. On April 19,
1996, the New York Times wrote, Israels goal has been to create an
unmanageable number of refugees in Lebanon...to restrain Hizbullahs
attacks. If the definition of terrorism is to attack civilian targets
to achieve a political goal, then Israel is guilty of hi-tech
terrorism.

Lie 2: Israel is retaliating against Hizbullah Katyusha rocket attacks into Northern Israel.
Reality: According to a fact sheet from the Reuters News Agency; Israel
was the first to attack civilians on March 30 and April 8. The three
Hizbollah attacks on March 4, March 10 and March 14 targeted Israeli
occupying soldiers inside Southern Lebanon. Prior to Israels attack of these
civilians, both parties were abiding by the 1993 US-brokered agreement that
only military sites could be targeted. Only after Israel massacred civilians
in refugee camps did Hizbollah start firing Katyusha rockets into Northern
Israel on April 9. The Israeli bombing of refugee camps, power plants, water
reservoirs throughout Lebanon commenced on April 11.

Lie 3: Israel is acting in self-defense.
Reality: The source of the conflict is the occupation of Southern Lebanon
by Israel, a violation of international law. Resolution 425 of the UN
Security Council, passed immediately after the 1982 Israeli invasion of
Lebanon, calls for Israel to leave Southern Lebanon and the replacement of
Israeli forces with Lebanese government forces.

Lie 4: Israel is intervening because the Lebanese Government is unable to control the situation.
Reality: If Israel leaves, Lebanese officials have stated that they will
send 35,000 troops to Southern Lebanon to keep the border secure and calm.

Lie 5: Israel claims it was unaware of the presence of civilians in a U.N. shelter it bombed near Tyre.
Reality: The UN had informed Israel repeatedly about the presence of its
shelter for Lebanese refugees.

Lie 6: Israel claims it needs to create a Security Zone in Southern Lebanon..
Reality: The reason Israel is in Southern Lebanon is to siphon off the water
of the Litani river. According to a United Nations Economic and Social
Commission for Western Asia, Israel was using water from the Lebanese Litani
River, by means of an 11 mile tunnel it had drilled, as well as from Lebanons
Wazzani springs. (United Press International, June 1, 1994) In Middle East
politics, water has now become more valuable than oil.

These lies are generated by pro-Israeli propagandists for the sole
purpose of influencing American public opinion. Benjamin Netanyahu, the
leader of the Israeli Likud Party and candidate for Prime Minister in the
upcoming Israeli election, said, ...an integral part of making a decision is
addressing the question of how it will affect public opinion and what needs
to be done to make its message more palatable and effective to international
audiences...If public opinion was of decisive importance in shaping political
outcomes during the first half of the century, it is now, as the close of the
second half of the century, assuming an importance not even imaginable thirty
or forty years earlier. (A Place Among Nations: Israel and the World, p.
386) The consequence of state-sponsored public relation campaigns like
Israels is articulated best by author Henry Miller: The history of the world
is the history of a privileged few. top of page

c. 1998 by Jew Watch
at jewwatch.com