Joseph Cannon, Cannonfire
August 3, 2006

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Hizbullah's capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 was a direct result of Israel's silent but unrelenting aggression against Lebanon, which in turn is part of a six-decades long Arab-Israeli conflict.

Since its withdrawal of occupation forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israel has violated the United Nations-monitored "blue line" on an almost daily basis, according to UN reports. Hizbullah's military doctrine, articulated in the early 1990s, states that it will fire Katyusha rockets into Israel only in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians or Hizbullah's leadership; this indeed has been the pattern.

In the process of its violations, Israel has terrorized the general population, destroyed private property, and killed numerous civilians...

From Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon:

"All those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah,"

Those "terrorists" include the children of Qana:

One small arm stretched out from under the sheets; thin, the arm of a little girl, a piece of cloth like a bracelet wrapped around the wrist. As bodies were loaded on the stretcher, I saw another dead girl; she was dressed in a black shirt with a coloured scarf wrapped loosely around her head. Her face was swollen.

Were there rockets in Qana, as Israel claims?

Red Cross workers and residents of Qana, where Israeli bombing killed at least 60 civilians, have told IPS that no Hezbollah rockets were launched from the city before the Israeli air strike...

"There were no Hezbollah rockets fired from here," 32-year-old Ali Abdel told IPS. "Anyone in this village will tell you this, because it is the truth"...

Qana had been a shelter because no rockets were being fired from there, survivors said. "When Hezbollah fires their rockets, everyone runs away because they know an Israeli bombardment will come soon," Abdel said. "That is why everyone stayed in the shelter and nearby homes, because we all thought we'd be all right since there were no Hezbollah fighters in Qana."

How long will they be able to spin away the truth?

The real trick, in terms of keeping American and British public opinion on side, is to blur the sequence of events that led to the war and present it as a desperate Israeli struggle against an unprovoked onslaught by thousands of terrorist rockets.

As for my previously-articulated theory that the war is, in large measure, about access to increasingly-scarce water resouces, note that the ground invasion is being chracterized as a "push to the Litani River." And we have this from Uri Avnery:

Now the generals are convinced that there is no alternative to occupying the whole area up to the Litani River, about 24 km from the border, in order to prevent the rockets from being launched from there. Then they will find out that they have to reach the Awali River, 40 km inside - the famous 40 km which Menachem Begin talked about in 1982.

Finally, I encourage everyone to read this important commentary by Turkish writer Sadik Yalsizucanlar (Turkey being the one Islamic state admired by Bush and Israel). A few excerpts:

This victim psychology is substitute for religious/ethnic nationalism. Explaining something by killing someone is, at most, as Schuon said, "the work of a spoiled, decayed, and putrid state."

More:

In this attack the region’s main highways, electric and water distribution networks, communication channels, hospitals and emergency institutions, total infra structure, have been destroyed. Civilian settlements have been indiscriminately bombarded and hundreds of children, women and civilians have been massacred.

More:

It’s as if Israel is consciously attempting to strengthen anti-Semitism, which is increasingly deepening and spreading in the world.

That's as good an explanation as any for the despicable Israeli practice of firing on fleeing refugees.

Why would Israel's leaders want to increase hatred of Jews? Because anti-Semitism is Israel's greatest weapon, greatest ally and greatest excuse.

Although this column has always striven to condemn both the Israeli state and anti-Semitism (just as, in 1939, I would have condemned the Third Reich without hating the German people on ethnic or religious grounds), this war of aggression will inevitably make expressions of anti-Semitism more common. Each such expression, anywhere in the world, hardens the hearts of the Israeli population. And people with a hard heart will blind themselves the war-planners' real goal -- the hidden goal, the unstated goal, the obvious goal -- of taking Lebanon and stealing its resources.