Israeli assault intensifies, Lebanese resistance hits back

The Israeli air, sea and land war against Lebanon and Gaza intensified today, with Israeli F-16s, missile-launching ships and artillery pounding heavily populated areas across much of Lebanon. While the Lebanese special envoy to the UN, Nouhad Mahmoud, labeled the Israeli attacks as “a widespread barbaric aggression,” top U.S. officials, including Bush and UN ambassador John Bolton, explicitly refused to support a motion for a ceasefire at the UN Security Council.

Unsurprisingly, Bolton blamed Iran and Syria for the crisis and demanded that the Hezbollah military be “disarmed and

disbanded immediately.” In other words, Bolton’s “diplomatic solution” to an unfolding armed conflict is that one side should commit suicide.

Directly contradicting a statement by U.S.-supported Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, the White House said that it would not ask the Israeli military to limit its attacks on Lebanese civilians, citing Israel’s “right to protect itself.”

It is impossible to know at this time the real casualty figures in Lebanon. As of midnight Beirut time, at least 75 Lebanese, mostly civilians, had been reported killed by the bombing and shelling with hundreds wounded. Enormous damage has been done to Lebanon’s infrastructure, which was just beginning to recover from 25 years of civil war and Israeli invasion and occupation.  

At least 85 Palestinians—fighters and civilians—have been killed in Israel’s Gaza offensive. Israel’s tremendous advantage in high-tech weaponry—much of it provided by U.S. tax dollars—gives it the ability to unleash lethal firepower from afar, limiting its own casualties.

While the casualties have been one-sided, the Israeli establishment has been shocked by Hezbollah’s military capacity. On the Lebanon-Israel front, at least 12 Israelis have been killed and two Israeli soldiers captured.

Following the destruction of Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah’s home in a Beirut suburb today, an unmanned Hezbollah drone hit an Israeli guided missile cruiser with a crew of 80 off the Lebanese coast. Several hours later, the ship, which was part of the Israeli naval blockade of Lebanon and had been firing missiles, was reported still burning as it was being towed back to an Israeli port. A number of sailors were reportedly missing. In retaliation for the Israeli bombing and shelling of Lebanon, hundreds of rockets have been fired into northern Israel, some striking as far as Haifa, nearly 20 miles from the border.

In southern Gaza today, Palestinian fighters smashed through an Israeli wall that had blocked thousands of Palestinians, who were returning from Egypt to Gaza, for the past several weeks. Six people had died and nearly all were suffering, confined in the suffocating heat without sufficient water, food or medicine.

Polarization sharpens

Polarization in the region between governments that are under U.S. domination and the alliance of forces in resistance

Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah

has sharpened since the Hezbollah opened a second-front in the military struggle against Israel two days ago. It’s easy to tell from the U.S. military-media complex who Washington views as the “enemy”: the resistance forces in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, and the governments of Syria and Iran.

Coordinating closely with Washington are the subordinated governments of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. These governments are striving both to suppress their own people, who generally support the resistance, and to isolate the movements and governments that are fighting imperialism.

Perhaps the most striking example of this was the statement by the Saudi police-state monarchy on July 14, as Israeli bombs rained down all over Lebanon. Rather than criticize the Israeli assault, as the monarchs would have done in the past—even if it constituted nothing more than lip-service—today’s statement put the blame for the crisis exclusively on the resistance.

The statement reads in part: “It is necessary to make a distinction between legitimate resistance (to occupation) and irresponsible adventurism … The Kingdom views that it is time that these elements alone bear the full responsibility of these irresponsible acts and should alone shoulder the burden of ending the crisis they have created.”

This statement is an attack on the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements, particularly Hamas and Hezbollah. But it can also be read—and most definitely will be in Washington and Tel Aviv—as blaming the governments of Syria and Iran for the crisis as well.

The National Council of Arab Americans, in statement issued today, said: “Fully supported by the Egyptian and Jordanian regimes, the Saudi position appears to be an attempt to provide an ‘Arab voice,’ albeit a token one, that would isolate the resistance in South Lebanon and Palestine as ‘illegitimate’ and ‘adventurous’ forces outside ‘acceptable behavior.’ This is a dangerous destabilizing role played on behalf of the U.S.-Israeli alliance. It serves to open the gates for what is expected to come—widening the attacks to include Syria and Iran in some form or another.”

U.S. organizations call for emergency mass protests

The need for international solidarity to defend the Palestinian and Lebanese people, and demand an end to occupation in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and elsewhere, could not be clearer.

Today, a coalition of U.S. organizations, including the National Council of Arab Americans, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation and the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), issued a call for a national emergency march in Washington, D.C. and major West Coast cities on Saturday, Aug. 12.

National Emergency March on Washington
Saturday, Aug. 12, 12 Noon
At the White House, Washington, D.C.

Defend the People of Palestine and Lebanon!
Stop the U.S.-Israeli War!
From Iraq to Lebanon to Palestine: Occupation is a Crime!
Support the Palestinian People’s Right to Return!
Money for Jobs and Education, Not War and Occupation!

Click here to read about the widening war in the Middle East.
Click here to read more about the objectives of Israel’s assault on Gaza.