IDF: Rome Gives Us Legitimacy to Forge Ahead In Lebanon ¶ Updated

Israel has taken heart from the failure of yesterday’s 15-nation conference in Rome attended by Condoleezza Rice and Kofi Annan to agree a ceasefire call.

“We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world, a green light …. to continue the operation, this war, until Hezbollah won’t be located in Lebanon and until it is disarmed ,” Haim Ramon, the hawkish Israeli Justice Minister, told Israel Army Radio. “Everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror.”

Ian McKinnon, Times Jerusalem Correspondent, said that public opinion in Israel was still pushing Mr Olmert and his ministers firmly in favour of war.

“The editor-in-chief of Maariv newspaper says today in a front page column that the time has come for Israel to wage war in the Lebanese border villages without caring for the consequences, and not to be afraid to send soldiers into difficulty and danger in fraught hand-to-hand combat without caring how many people get killed.”

Time won’t help Israel disarm Hizbullah

BOSTON (Christian Science Monitor) July 27 — Israel’s war with Hizbullah shows no sign of relenting, despite the extraordinary human and economic costs on both sides of the border.

More than 400 Lebanese have been killed, at least 17 Israeli civilians have been felled by rockets that threaten the northern third of Israel, Lebanon’s infrastructure has been decimated, and many poor Lebanese (mostly Shiite Muslims) are now homeless.

Both belligerents are attacking indiscriminately. Hizbullah’s weapons are notoriously inaccurate and more likely to kill innocent civilians than soldiers. And Israel has targeted noncombatants in southern Lebanon as though the area were a free-fire zone.

[Similar to the Katrina hurricane disaster, the poor and elderly without transportation are being killed under unrelentless bombing by the IAF in Southern Lebanon – Oui]

Lebanese men search for survivors in the rubble of two six-storey buildings which were destroyed by Israeli bombs in an apartment block in the centre of the southern port of Tyre (Soure), late afternoon July 26. Nikola Solic/Reuters

Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz as much as admitted his contempt for noncombatant immunity when, according to Israeli army radio on July 24, he ordered the destruction of 10 multistory buildings in the Shiite-inhabited suburbs of Beirut for every rocket hitting Haifa.

With the Bush administration providing diplomatic cover, Israel is playing for time. Israel’s premise is that the longer its war continues, the more it will wear down Hizbullah. The Israeli military is fighting intense battles to capture border villages with a view to re-creating a buffer zone. Hizbullah fighters, honed by two decades of Israeli occupation, are defending their soil fiercely.

The United States and Israel commit very similar war crimes in the Middle East.

Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz did duty as a fighter pilot in Israel’s War of Attrition with Egypt under Nasser – Egyptian school bombed: 48 children died.

Under his command, execution of extra-judicial assassinations in Gaza and the West Bank occupied territories. He defended the bombing of an appartment building killing 16 civilians including nine children by F-16 precision strike, dropping a one ton bomb to take out a ‘terrorist’.

Controversy lasted through appointment cycle as new chief of staff, ended before the Israel Supreme Court where he lied out of the dilemma.

Pilots have no concern or responsibility for consequences of target where the bomb is dropped. The leadership is culpable, let the protesters come to me, according to Dan Halutz of Iranian descent!

Excellent qualification for indictment before a war crimes tribunal.

Why we Refuse – Avihai Becker

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s Fatwa Condemning the Israeli attack on Lebanon

Support for Hizbullah is growing in the Arab world with every day that it confronts Israel. In Iraq, the parliament has spoken out forcefully against Israel’s campaign, and last week Ayatollah Ali Sistani issued a powerful fatwa (religious opinion) condemning the attacks on Lebanese civilians and infrastructure and calling on all Shiite clerics to take action.

Al-Qaida Calls for Holy War Against Israel

CAIRO, Egypt (ABC/AP) 40 minutes ago — Al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader issued a worldwide call for Muslims to rise up in a holy war against Israel and join the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza until Islam reigns from “Spain to Iraq.”

In the message broadcast by Al-Jazeera television, Ayman al-Zawahri, second in command to Osama bin Laden, said that al-Qaida now views “all the world as a battlefield open in front of us.”

‘Deplorable’ ◊ by spiderleaf

U.N. observation post that was demolished after it was hit by Israeli air strikes, killing four U.N. observers, in the town of Khiam, on the Lebanese Israeli border. AP Photo/UNIFIL

Update [2006-07-28 03:30AM by Oui]:

Blown to pieces – UN bunker Where 4 Died
NEW YORK (United Nations) by Evelyn Leopold

The Scotsman July 27 — PICTURES were released yesterday of the UN outpost destroyed by an Israeli attack in Southern Lebanon. They came as Finland identified the 29-year-old naval officer who was one of four observers who died there.

Lieutenant Jarno Makinen, who had been part of the UN monitoring team in the Middle East since November, was killed with three other unarmed UN officers from Canada, China and Austria.

“It is feared that Makinen was killed in the strike on the Khiam observation post on 25 July,” the Finnish statement read, but did not say that Lt Makinen’s body had been found.

Tarja Halonen, the Finnish president whose country holds the European Union presidency, said that there was “no justification” for the attack and demanded “full clarification from Israeli officials”.

The strike was also condemned by other Finnish officials, including Matti Vanhanen, the prime minister, who phoned his Israeli counterpart, Ehud Olmert, demanding an investigation.

Finland has provided more than 43,000 personnel for UN peace missions since the 1950s, and has 14 peacekeepers in the Middle East. Forty-five Finnish soldiers have been killed in on UN duty.

Israel has apologised for the incident, describing it as a mistake, but China was in no mood to let the matter rest at the UN yesterday, warning the United States that its opposition to a statement condemning the attack could have a “negative impact” on UN talks on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The US was blocking a UN Security Council statement on the incident. But the envoys said there was some hope a policy statement would be adopted.

 
China's UN ambassador, Wang Guangya

“This is a serious matter,” China’s UN ambassador, Wang Guangya, said after a private meeting with the US negotiators. “It is an attack on the UN peacekeepers. “If the Security Council cannot send a strong political message supporting our guys on the ground, it will be difficult for people to understand.”

Asked about the negotiations on a resolution on Iran that six nations are conducting, Mr Wang said nearly every delegation in the council was frustrated over the US position. “Definitely this frustration will have its negative impact.”

UN officials had said numerous calls had been made to the Israeli military and its diplomats in New York to protest at repeated firing on the outpost.

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