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Title: “Israel's cruel offensive”
By: James Abourezk
Date: July 29, 2006
The following piece by Senator Jim Abourezk, founder of ADC and
currently chairman of the National Board, will appear in tomorrow's
Rapid City Journal.
James Abourezk is a Sioux Falls attorney who represented South Dakota in
the U.S. House of Representatives from 1971-1973 and in the U.S. Senate
from 1973-1979. He is of Lebanese descent and founded the American-Arab
Anti Discrimination Committee.
SIOUX FALLS -- I have to get this off my chest, as it's been bugging me
for the last couple of weeks.
Israel has virtually destroyed the infrastructure of Lebanon. Instead
of confronting Hezbollah directly (which I think they are afraid to
do), they've bombed the civilian areas of Lebanon, hoping the Lebanese
and Arabs will turn on Hezbollah. What's interesting is that the Arab
world is becoming more united than ever against what Israel, with
American support, is doing to the Lebanese.
Israel has bombed the milk factory in Beirut, the grain silos in
Tripoli, hospitals, all the bridges in the country, the highways leading
in and out of Lebanon, as well those leading in and out of the villages
they are bombing. Israel has dropped leaflets on villages in the south
telling them to evacuate, then they bomb the vehicles people are using
to flee the villages. It's high-tech ethnic cleansing, as Israel has
destroyed people's homes and they have nothing to return to. The
American taxpayer is paying for the bombs that are destroying Lebanon,
and they likely will have to pay more to rebuild Lebanon after Israel is
done with it.
Israel is using phosphorous bombs and cluster bombs against civilians,
weapons banned by the Geneva Conventions when used against civilians. My
wife, Sanaa and I watch Arabic television, and I've seen small babies
burned by the phosphorous as well as the wholesale deaths of people in
the villages who tried to stay in their homes out of the way of the
bombing.
There is now a shortage of water, food and medicines, as there is no
way to get them into Lebanon because of the destroyed highways and the
destroyed airport as well as the blockade of the seaports.
President George W. Bush states that he is hoping for more killing so
Hezbollah can be gotten rid of. Which is why he refuses to pick up the
phone to tell the Israelis to stop. And they would stop if he told them
to, as they rely on the U.S. for their money - more than $8 billion a
year - as well as their weapons that are being used in violation of U.S
.
law in this cowardly and cruel offensive. Ronald Reagan finally called
Menachem Begin in 1982 and stopped the killing in Lebanon, shortly after
the massacres in Sabra and Shatila, so we know it works.
And the U.S. Congress is despicable in its silence. They are all bought
off by the Israel lobby and are afraid to criticize. If this were
happening in any other country by any other country, there would be
speeches on the floor of Congress, legislation introduced to stop aid
and other help to whomever would be committing this cruelty. But since
their campaign money comes from the Israeli lobby, we hear only silence.
It is hard to imagine, but try to imagine how you would feel if some
country continued bombing Sioux Falls or Madison or Watertown or
Brookings, and left you no route of escape, or if you did try to escape,
that they bombed the car you were trying to escape in. Try to imagine
small children you know being burned by phosphorous bombs, or a small
child in your neighborhood picking up one of the small clusters that are
contained in a cluster bomb, and having his or her arms blown off by the
explosion. Cluster bombs, at least the ones that explode right away, are
like highly powerful weed cutters that are timed to explode at chest
level, designed to kill anyone in the vicinity where they are dropped.
We saw that in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel that led to the
slaughter of more than 30,000 innocent Lebanese.
As of today, there are an estimated 750,000 Lebanese made homeless by
the Israeli bombing campaign. And it's essentially just starting. The
Lebanese who are American citizens are lucky as they can be evacuated to
Cyprus, but for those who are not Americans, there is no escape. Syria
has taken in as many of these refugees as can get across the border and
they've announced they will continue to take whomever can get there, but
from the south of Lebanon, it's very difficult to get there.
George Bush, perhaps our most famous draft dodger, was a great supporter
of the Vietnam War while at the same time he was busy using his father's
influence to escape the draft. He is now in favor of continuing the
killing in Lebanon and refuses to call for a cease fire, because, he
says, he wants Hezbollah destroyed. The problem is that Israel cannot
destroy Hezbollah either militarily or politically. They are Lebanese
who live there, and who are defending their home territory. They have
more support now than they ever had because of Israel's cowardly bombing
campaign. Even those Lebanese who did not support Hezbollah are
applauding that group's standing up to Israel's military power. Even in
Egypt, where the dictator Mubarak has sold his soul to the U.S. and to
Israel, the people are out on the streets protesting. And in Jordan the
same is happening. Despite the Jordanian government's tacit support of
Israel, the public is out in the streets.
Unfortunately, even though the Saudi public is in support of Hezbollah,
the government won't allow street protests, but the Saudi government is
now denouncing Israel's actions.
Both Israel and the U.S. are lucky that the dictators and monarchies are
in power. A democracy of the kind that Bush is calling for would result
in the Arab public marching on Israel en masse. What is holding them
back are the authoritarian regimes in the Arab world. Only Syria is
standing firm, and Syria is a militarily weak country, but apparently
with enough backbone to resist selling out.
The U.S. wants Hezbollah disarmed because Hezbollah is the only obstacle
that prevents Lebanon from being brought into the Israel sphere of
influence. It's that simple so far as strategy is concerned. Hezbollah
chased Israel out of Lebanon in 2000, after 22 years of Israel's illegal
occupation of Lebanon. Hezbollah is considered heroic by most Lebanese,
which is why it probably will survive this onslaught.
One wonders why all these commentators on television, the news anchors,
etc., who are cheerleading Israel's slaughter of the innocents, do not
remember Israel's illegal occupation of Lebanon for all those years, or
why they don't remember the continuing illegal occupation of Palestine,
including Gaza, which remained the world's largest prison even after
Israeli troops and settlers came out of Gaza last year. The Gazans are
prevented from conducting their own foreign policy, from using their
airport and their seaports by the Israelis. And despite exhibiting their
independence by building their own power plant a few years ago, that was
the first thing that Israel bombed in Gaza. Because there are no
terrorists hiding there, we can only presume that Israel wants to begin
selling electricity to the Gazans again. There is always a commercial
aspect to war, is there not? We need only to ask Halliburton for the
answer to that question.
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