Meanwhile, Israeli government spokespersons and Bush administration officials took to the Sunday morning talking head programs in Washington to defend Israel's barbarous actions. The networks failed to present the views of Lebanese government spokespersons. Israel's and the Bush administration's line is that Israeli attacks are "precision targeted." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pointedly refused to criticize Israel on ABC's This Week.

Israeli Kadima (ex-Likud) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert joins Ariel Sharon in annals of Israeli leaders who committed war crimes in Lebanon.

American media is failing to report that the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, like the U.S. attacks in Iraq, are violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Additional Protocols governing military attacks on civilians by governments that are parties to the conventions:

Civilians are not to be subject to attack. This includes direct attacks on civilians and indiscriminate attacks against areas in which civilians are present.

There is to be no destruction of property unless justified by military necessity.
Warring parties must not use or develop biological or chemical weapons

Three years and hundreds of thousands dead overseas.  And yet he claims we can't pull out until we complete the mission.  "MISSION FAILED!"

Six years and no favorable results from 1600 Pensylvania Avenue, only failed attempts to pass Racist, Sexist & Anti-Gay based laws and One Veto that will cause friends of mine with incurable disease to die, all in the name of his little tin god.  How in the name of Anubis and Hecate can he say that Stem Cells are an abomination?

In two years or less, can we get a verdict of "Guilty"?

You tell me.

By Noureddine Ait Messaoudene

Thank you Mr Robert Fisk for putting a name on the bodies of our dead ("The Independent" 31-07-2006). Can you imagine that even this action that would seem so trivial in other circumstances takes out a great significance with regards to the tragic events of the Israeli aggression against Lebanon. No! The women, the elderly, the children, the "civilian casualties", the torn out bodies, the smashed limbs and the burnt corpses are not those of dummies or some lifeless beings.  

Yes! They have names like any human being, they have a history... they had a life, souvenirs, moments of joy and moments of sadness. But then, look at their names: Hussein, Abbas, Ali, Mehdi, Zeinab, Fatima Zohra... All of this sounds very Shiite for those who know the region. Hezballah supporters or at least would be supporters. Enough of a reason for making them a target of the mighty Israeli Air Force.  

I look at the horrible pictures of the Kana second massacre (we still have in mind the 1996 massacre), read different articles and comments and try to make a sense out of all this chaos. I try my best to hold my tears as stare again and again at the dusty faces of all these innocent children who were buried alive as what they thought was shelter was directly and deliberately hit by an American made missile fired from an American made warplane piloted by an Israeli obeying the instructions of the Israeli Defence Forces. But I go back to your article and read the names of these little dusty bodies; my tears cannot be held anymore. Mehdi Hashem aged seven, Abbas Al Shalhoub aged one... and so many others. Was Mehdi asleep when the missile struck the house and turned it in a collective tomb? The little Abbas might have been crying for milk, milk is rather rare due to the Israeli embargo on South Lebanon. By the way, the IDF even bombarded a milk factory near Beyrouth.

This time, the crime is so ugly and at such a great scale of horror that even the most conciliatory media could not "asepticize" the images. Many Algerian newspapers, for example, used a terribly moving picture of the petrified body of a small baby with a pacifier still hanging on his clothes. Surrealistic world in such circumstances: "pacifier". After all, this is all part of the "pacification" work of Israel.  Condemnations are fusing from everywhere and from every part, even close allies to Israel and from within Israel itself Israel.

The response of the Israeli officials? Just take a look at the attitude of Dan Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, stating with incredible cynicisms that the victims were told to leave prior to the attack, that it is Hizballah who is to blame because he used the victims, his own people and supposedly supporters, as human shields and that at least Israel "regrets" the death of innocent children, which Hizballah never did. Wrong Mrs Gillerman! Hizballah did express his deepest regrets to the death of Israeli Arab children and convey his condolences to their parents. But this only confirms that these children were not considered as fully Israelis.  

What's even more terrible about this now well known Israeli rhetoric, the same which is used for the situation in Gaza and the Palestinian territories, is this vicious attempt to make the victim guilty of its own death. According to the Israelis, the 37 children of Kana and the other 750 or so civilians killed in Lebanon are guilty at least on three levels. They did not comply with the Israeli orders of leaving their homes and villages. They supported and backed Hizballah. They were part, willingly or unwillingly, of Hizballah strategy of an "asymmetrical" warfare where they served as "predictable collateral losses to be shown as proof of the inhuman behaviour of Israel". No, I am not kidding or "pushing the cork too far". We have already heard this kind of insanity in the mouth of a very high ranking American military officer when an inmate of Guantanamo committed suicide.  

Amidst all this mayhem, the strongest and most lucid political statement that was made came in the worlds of Nejwah Shelhub, a survivor of the Kana massacre: "Why does the world do this to us?"(Reported in R. Fisk's article in "The Independent" 31-07-2006).

It summarizes the whole situation of despair and distress of Lebanon because it points out the bottom line: Lebanon is facing the whole world and there is no acceptable explanation or justification to the mortification it is enduring!

Indeed, when the sole superpower of the world, the United States, is so blindly backing Israel in its criminal actions against the whole people and the whole land of Lebanon then it's the whole world that Lebanon is facing.  

When the European Union is either completely aligned with or completely powerless in front of the United States, then it's the whole world that Lebanon is facing.  

When the United Nations cannot even issue a resolution condemning Israel for such a horrible war crime as the Kana massacre, let aside imposing a truce or a ceasefire, when it is incapable of condemning Israel for the killing of its own peacekeeping men, then it's the whole world that Lebanon is facing.    

When even some of the Arab governments take Hizballah as the sole responsible of the whole situation because of his so called "adventurous" action and are not capable of issuing a simple common statement in support of Lebanon and against the Israeli methodical destruction of Lebanon, then it's the whole world that Lebanon is facing.  

When it goes to the point where some so called Muslim scholars -thank God that it is from one single country- issue a fatwa forbidding any support to the resistance in Lebanon because it is Shiite, then it's the whole world that Lebanon is facing.  

Who can answer Nedjwa Shelhub and all the Lebanese people who feel so lonely these days? Let us not be fooled by the 48 hours suspension of the bombing announced by Israel. As I am writing these lines, news are coming about Israeli warplanes striking a civilian vehicle in Dors. Incidentally, these are among the civilians who obeyed the Israeli orders of fleeing their homes. The urgency is to call for an immediate ceasefire NOW!! It is the responsibility of every one of us. Nobody can claim that he did not see the dozens of civilians killed every day, the blown out houses, the destroyed bridges, the desolation, the despair. Following a ceasefire and only after the madness of the killing is stopped, all issues can be discussed.

At this point, I must express my deepest conviction about some of the numerous aspects of the situation in the Middle East. Because we have to keep in mind that what is going on in Lebanon cannot be isolated from what is going in Gaza where almost the same situation is endured by the battered Palestinians and in the whole region.    

The awesome and disproportionate military superiority of Israel at the regional scale, doubled with the blind and unconditional support of the United States is one of the key problems of the Middle East crisis. There has to be some kind of a balance of power. It is very unfortunate to express it this way but one has to have the frankness to express it: the very logic and strategy followed until now by Israel needs a "balance of terror", a "deterrence" capacity against the systematic resort to "disproportionate" aggressions or retaliations.  This is the only way left for bringing Israel to an acceptable compromise with all the Arabs, especially the Palestinians, and that does not leave it freehanded in destroying its neighbours every time a problem arises.      

The West, in general but particularly meaning western governments, has to abandon the dogma of the moral superiority of Israel over the Arabs altogether, the myth of the only democracy in the Middle East that stands as the ultimate barrier of the "Civilized World" against the threat of "Muslim Terror". The Western powers have to come back to a more balanced view where the different protagonists are treated as equally "valued" parties in a conflict that has to be resolved through negotiation and compromise. But a compromise that does not wipe out the whole history of the conflict and try to impose an "accomplished fact" achieved solely through military superiority and so called moral superiority in the name of an eternal "divine right of Israel to unilaterally define its borders and then defend them".            

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 6, 2006; A01

FARMINGTON, Conn., Aug. 5 -- The passion and energy fueling the antiwar challenge to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman in Connecticut's Senate primary signal a power shift inside the Democratic Party that could reshape the politics of national security and dramatically alter the battle for the party's 2008 presidential nomination, according to strategists in both political parties.

A victory by businessman Ned Lamont on Tuesday would confirm the growing strength of the grass-roots and Internet activists who first emerged in Howard Dean's presidential campaign. Driven by intense anger at President Bush and fierce opposition to the Iraq war, they are on the brink of claiming their most significant political triumph, one that will reverberate far beyond the borders here if Lieberman loses.

An upset by Lamont would affect the political calculations of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who like Lieberman supported giving Bush authority to wage the Iraq war, and could excite interest in a comeback by former vice president Al Gore, who warned in 2002 that the war could be a grave strategic error. For at least the next year, any Democrat hoping to play on the 2008 stage would need to reckon with the implications of Lieberman's repudiation.

Even backers of the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee are now expecting this scenario. Two public polls in the past three days show Lamont with a lead of at least 10 percentage points.

Although there are reasons beyond Lieberman's strong support for the war and what critics say is his accommodating stance toward Bush that have put him in trouble, the results will be read largely through the prism of what they say about Iraq and Bush's popularity.

Should Lieberman lose, the full ramifications are far from certain. One may be to signal immediate problems for Bush and the Republicans in November, but another could be to push Democrats into a more partisan, antiwar posture, a prospect that is already adding powerful new fuel to a four-year-long intraparty debate over Iraq.

Strategists say the Connecticut race has rattled the Democratic establishment, which is virtually united behind the three-term incumbent's candidacy, and will force an uneasy accommodation with the newest, volatile power center within the party.

"This sends a message to all Democratic officeholders," said Robert L. Borosage of the liberal Campaign for America's Future. "You're going to have a much tougher Democratic Party."

That could be felt most acutely by Clinton, who polls show is the early front-runner for the 2008 nomination and who has drawn criticism from what are known as net-roots activists for opposing a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Clinton appears to have gotten the message, as she demonstrated with sharp questioning of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at a Senate hearing on Thursday.

The Connecticut race may be seen as an intensification of the partisan, polarized politics of the Bush era. Lieberman is paying a price for being an advocate of bipartisanship.

As a result, a loss on Tuesday could generate more demand for a strongly anti-Bush, antiwar candidate in the Democratic primaries. Several are ready to run, including Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), former senator John Edwards (N.C.) and Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.), the only one of the three to vote against the war in 2002.

None, however, may be as attractive to the grass-roots activists as Gore. He has said he cannot conceive of circumstances that would put him in the race. But he may be coaxed to reconsider if the sentiment for him grows after the November midterm elections.

Republicans are already seeking to exploit a possible victory by Lamont as a sign that Democrats are moving too far to the left on national security issues. "They want retreat -- under the guise of 'reducing the U.S. footprint in Iraq,' " William Kristol writes in the latest issue of the Weekly Standard.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) said it is a mistake to contend, as the Republicans are doing, that the Democrats have been captured by left-wing, antiwar activists, saying the Connecticut race most of all reflects discontent with Bush rather than an ideological awakening. "This is really about Bush," he said. "It's deeper than an antiwar thing."

Still, many party moderates say they see worrisome parallels to what happened to the Democrats during Vietnam, when they opposed an unpopular war but paid a price politically for years after because of a perception the party was too dovish on national security.

"Candidates know they cannot appease [antiwar] activists if they are going to run winning national campaigns," said Will Marshall, president of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute. "It will intensify the tension inside the Democratic coalition as we head into two critical elections."

But leaders of the net-roots activists, and some party strategists, argue that as antiwar sentiment spreads Democrats stand to gain politically by aggressively challenging Bush's war policies. Parallels to Vietnam are inaccurate, they say, because of the nature of an Iraq war that has become a low-level sectarian civil war.

"If Democrats were winning elections, that prescription would be something worth listening to," said Tom Matzzie, Washington director of MoveOn.org, said in response to the party's moderate wing. "That's the prescription people have been giving us, and we've been losing elections."

With much of the establishment backing Lieberman, Lamont initially built his campaign with the support of grass-roots activists disaffected with the incumbent and the president. Liberal bloggers around the country promoted his candidacy, helping to raise his profile while attacking Lieberman and attracting money (although Lamont's personal fortune has financed most of his campaign). They helped give voice to rank-and-file Democrats furious with Bush and frustrated by what they regard as cautious and ineffective party leadership in Washington, as well as to some local elected officials angry with Lieberman.

Lieberman enjoys the support of the party's national leadership, along with most of organized labor and key constituency groups. Former president Bill Clinton came here two weeks ago to campaign for Lieberman, vouching for his party bona fides and urging Democrats to put aside differences on the war. Hillary Clinton has said she wants Lieberman to win. Senate Democratic leaders back his candidacy and months ago urged MoveOn officials to stay out of the primary.

Come Tuesday night, if Lamont wins the primary, they will be forced to shift allegiance. Both Clintons have said they will support the winner of the primary, and other party officials plan to do the same.

Lieberman, however, has said that if he loses, he intends to run as an independent in the general election against Lamont and Republican nominee Alan Schlesinger. Party officials will have to decide whether to press him to abandon those plans and, if he declines, how strongly they will get behind Lamont's candidacy. Democrats hope to pick up three vulnerable Republican-held House seats in November and do not want a distracting Lieberman-Lamont general election battle to get in the way of those campaigns.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Friday he is not worried about the fallout from the Senate primary on House races, arguing that the message from Connecticut is that anyone supporting Bush's war policies is in deep trouble. "What's playing out here is that being a rubber stamp for George Bush is politically dangerous to life-threatening," he said.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff sees the Connecticut Senate race as critically important in shaping the midterm campaigns. "This will embolden Democrats around the country," he said. "I think that this primary in its own way sets off a chain of events that makes the fall elections very quickly a debate that could be framed as a [Democratic] timeline [for withdrawing U.S. forces] versus Republicans supporting a longer-term solution."

All of that may bode well for the Democrats, given sentiment about the war. As Democratic pollster Peter Hart put it: "What [Connecticut] tells us about the fall is something I think we've known all along, and that is the status quo in Iraq is unacceptable. It's unacceptable to Democratic primary voters, it's unacceptable to independents and it's unacceptable to a large minority of Republicans. Iraq is the number one issue and the message is exceptionally simple: We cannot abide the status quo."

Connecticut is a liberal, Democratic-leaning state, by no means a reflection of the rest of the country. Still, politicians in both parties will react if Lieberman loses. "I think that the overriding pressure on people in 2007-2008 in both parties quite frankly will be the pressure to be credible on what comes next and how we get out," Democratic strategist Anita Dunn said.

As I see it, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is shooting Israel and America in the feet (and Lebanon in the stomach) each day that he continues his onslaught, with President Bush enthusiastically providing the ammunition.

But since discussions of the Middle East usually involve people shouting past each other, let me stop harrumphing and try to address head-on the arguments of the many readers who disagree.

It's a tragedy that Lebanese children are dying, but it would be crazy to accept a cease-fire now. That would hand Hezbollah a huge victory and return the Middle East to the impossible situation of the last few years, with rockets still raining down on northern Israel. So the U.S. has to give Israel space to get this job done.

Look at the results so far with the job half done: some 600 dead Lebanese, and scores of dead Israelis; Hezbollah's rise to heroic status; the strengthening of Syria's hard-line regime; the weakening of moderates like King Abdullah of Jordan; a boost for Shiite militants in Iraq and around the region; the marginalization of Lebanon's democracy movement; and the further trashing of America's reputation around the world.

Lebanese, instead of turning on Hezbollah, are rallying around it. A poll by the Beirut Center for Research and Information found that 87 percent of those surveyed supported Hezbollah's battles with Israel. That included 80 percent of Lebanese Christians surveyed.

So with those results after more than three weeks, why will it be any different in another couple of weeks?

It is, of course, possible that bunker-buster bombs could decapitate Hezbollah's leadership. But Israel didn't achieve a victory in the 18 years before it withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, so it's time to move toward a cease-fire -- not only to save Lebanese lives but also to get on with the business of a diplomatic solution.

There may be a diplomatic solution, but first we have to clear out Hezbollah from southern Lebanon. Then an international force can go in as a buffer, and Israel will be delighted to pull out.

It's fine to talk about an international force, but no country will send troops if Hezbollah objects. Otherwise, those troops will be targets, as they were in 1983. And Hezbollah and Syria won't approve unless there is some larger agreement between Israel and Lebanon -- and some benefit to Syria as well.

How can one negotiate with those who would destroy you? Israel tried restraint and Hezbollah used the time to build up its arsenal.

President Bush is right about one thing: We need to do more than restore the prewar situation on the Israeli-Lebanese border. There is also an opportunity here -- to achieve a landmark Lebanon-Israel peace deal.

Edward Walker, former ambassador to Israel and former assistant secretary of state for the region, told me he thought a long-term settlement was plausible (although he acknowledged that he was also the optimistic boy who expected a pony every Christmas). France is showing leadership in pressing for such a lasting deal, and Mr. Bush should push that diplomatic effort with every administration sinew.

Terms of a genuine settlement might involve an exchange of prisoners, Israel giving up the Shebaa Farms area (if not to Lebanon, then to an international force), and an Israeli promise not to breach Lebanese territory or airspace unless attacked. Hezbollah would commit to becoming a purely political force and to dismantling its militia, with its weaponry going to the Lebanese armed forces. Israel would resume talks with Syria on the Golan Heights, the U.S. would resume contact with Syria, and Syria would agree to stop supplying weaponry to Hezbollah (or allowing it in from Iran). Syria and Hezbollah would then pledge cooperation with a robust international buffer force along the border. Some of this may have to come in stages: for example, with Hezbollah first leaving the border area and then giving up its weaponry.

Granted, it's odd for Israel to hand over Shebaa Farms to Lebanon, since old maps show pretty clearly that it was Syrian. But Syria, seeking to make mischief, has said that it is Lebanese, and it certainly is not Israeli.

Israel would worry that such a settlement would be seen as rewarding Hezbollah and would encourage other militant groups. That's a legitimate concern. But such moves would also remove the raison d'être for Hezbollah's militia, and they are probably the price for achieving calm in northern Israel. So let's stop the killing and start the talking.

(Note: This article will appear in the August 13 issue of The Times Magazine.)

One evening earlier this summer, Lebanon's most popular satire show, ``Bas Mat Watan,'' broadcast a sketch showing an ``interview'' with Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader and secretary general. ``Nasrallah'' was asked whether his party would surrender its weapons. He answered that it would, but first several conditions had to be met: there was that woman in Australia, whose land was being encroached upon by Jewish neighbors; then there was the baker in the United States, whose bakery the Jews wanted to take over. The joke was obvious: there were an infinite number of reasons why Hezbollah would never agree to lay down its weapons and become one political party among others.

But it was the rapid reaction to the satiric sketch that sent the more disquieting message. That very night, angry supporters of Hezbollah closed the airport road with burning tires -- a warning that they could block at will the main access point in and out of the country -- and marched on mainly Sunni, Druse and Christian quarters in Beirut. In a Christian neighborhood, they clashed with the son of a former president and his comrades, and several youths were taken to hospital.

The leaders of Hezbollah defended these actions, explaining that they were the spontaneous emotional res