Wild Dogs Are Devouring The Victims Of Israel’s Bombing Raids
By Mike Whitney
July 22, 2006
"Lebanon carpenters are running out of wood for coffins. Bodies are stacked 3 or 4 feet high at the hospital morgue. The
stench is spreading in the rubble. The morbid reality of Israel’s bombing campaign is reaching almost every corner of
the city… On Thursday, the wild dogs gnawed at the charred remains of a family bombed as they were trying to escape the
village."
"The complicity of the American public in these heinous crimes will damn America for all time in history."
- Paul Craig Roberts; "The Shame of being an American"
For more than a week Israel has been raining down terror on the Lebanon’s unprotected cities and towns. So far, more
than 1,200 sites have been completely destroyed laying to waste most of the country’s civilian infrastructure and
triggering a humanitarian crisis. The death toll, currently at 350, continues to mount while the number of displaced
civilians is estimated at more than 500,000.
We know now that Israel’s plan of attack was "finalized more than a year ago" and that Hezbollah’s capturing of the 2
Israeli soldiers was merely a pretext to execute their strategy. Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at
Bar-Ilan University clarified this point saying, "Of all Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was
most prepared. In a sense, the preparation began in 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal."
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving Power-point presentations, on an off-the-record
basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and think-tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in
revealing detail."
Although this simply confirms what most serious analysts suspected from the beginning, it is still interesting on many
levels. For one thing, we can be sure that top ranking officials in the Bush administration (including George Bush) not
only knew of the plan, but tacitly endorsed the invasion of a friendly country who posed no threat to national security.
We can also assume that the battle-plans were carefully orchestrated with Washington so that Bush could co-opt the
leaders at the G-8 meetings while Israel pummeled its vulnerable neighbor. Again, this shows the appalling degree of
cynicism in the Bush foreign policy strategy.
The SF Chronicle article also demonstrates the extent to which the media is integrated into the machinery of state
power. The fact that select "journalists" were provided with information about future aggression against non-threatening
states shows that the administration places great value on the preparation of propaganda for major events like the
destruction of Lebanon. The media’s carefully crafted message; chock-full of the usual "buzz-words" and "talking points"
(nb. "Israel is fighting a war on 2 fronts"; "Israel has the right to defend itself"; "Syria and Iran are the cause of
the violence") follows the predictable pattern of emphasizing Israeli "victim-hood" while lashing out against future
enemies without any evidence of wrongdoing. Nearly every one of the 4,000 or so articles covering the violence, use the
very same talking points in describing events on the ground. It is a shocking reminder of the woeful state of modern
corporate media which advances an elite agenda through the intentional dissemination of misinformation. In the present
crisis, much of the public support for Israeli aggression can be directly attributed to the manipulation of language and
facts appearing in the media. (We should note that, so far, there is no proof that either Iran or Syria is directly
involved in the hostilities and that, more importantly, it is American ordinance in the control of Israeli pilots that
is pelting-down on the blameless civilians in Lebanon. Neither Iran nor Syria are in any way responsible for the carnage
in Lebanon.)
According to the Chronicle, Israeli officials expect a 3 week campaign. Targeted bombing is to be followed by commando
raids and a ground offensive, but the situation is "fluid" and plans will undoubtedly be modified to meet the changes in
conditions on the ground. Already, we can see that 500,000 mostly poor Shiites have been uprooted in the south and
"ethnically cleansed" from the area. Israel’s 20 mile buffer-zone to the Litani River is tantamount to occupation and
will preclude many of these refugees to returning to their homes.
Israel’s invasion can be expected to reenergize the ethnic and religious rivalries which resulted in Lebanon’s civil war
which killed an estimated 70,000 Lebanese nationals. Apparently, no price is too high to pay to ensure that Israel can
establish a client regime in Beirut that will function at the behest of Tel Aviv.
Once again, all of the details were clearly worked out with members of the Bush administration prior to the invasion.
Obviously, they were given Washington’s blessing. Since the hostilities broke out, the Bush administration has publicly
given the "green light" to Israeli aggression and successfully blocked all diplomatic efforts to achieve a "cease-fire".
The international community is now as much a hostage of Bush’s preemptive doctrine as the frightened Lebanese civilians
cowering in their underground shelters in Beirut.
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 Lebanon’s frayed infrastructure will be swiftly pounded into dust.
Make no mistake, the vast destruction of the once-bustling metropolis and the ocean of suffering caused by the
unprovoked Israeli air-assault, is a joint-operation facilitated by the Washington warlords as much as anyone in Tel
Aviv.
In an op-ed piece today in the New York Times, neoconservative chieftain, Richard Perle provided a lurid summary of the
present strategy:
"Israel must now deal a blow of such magnitude to those who would destroy it as to leave no doubt that its earlier
policy of acquiescence is over. This means precise military action against Hezbollah and its infrastructure in Lebanon
and Syria, for as long as it takes and without regard to mindless diplomatic blather about proportionality."
Perle’s statement is, in fact, an apt description the Bush-Olmert battle-plan for Lebanon. It tells us that, despite the
failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the two leaders still believe they can achieve a political solution through the
(exclusive) use of overwhelming force. There is no moral or ethical component to the present policy, nor is there any
wiggle-room for negotiation or diplomacy. (Condoleezza Rice’s trip is purely for public relations purposes) It is simply
violence as a political-panacea removed from any rational alternative. 3 years in Iraq and 39 years of unrelenting
bloodshed in Palestine, have taught them nothing. Lebanon is shaping up to be another dismal chapter in the chronicle of
colonial atrocities.
ENDS