by Ralph Nader
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0725-26.htm<snip>
The horrific stillness is in the civilian neighborhoods mostly populated by the innocent poor and their children. The New York Times reports "In Srifa, a neighborhood was wiped out - 15 houses flattened, 21 people killed, 30 wounded - in an Israeli air strike. The town's mayor, Afif Najdi called it a massacre." Half-a-million civilians and growing are homeless.
In the Palestinian refugee camp of Al Bourj holding 20,000 people, Israeli bombers unleashed explosives. In a frantic appeal for help to anyone on the global internet a charitable rescue organization entered the area and described a scene of "total devastation with all the buildings and roads totally smashed. There was the smell of death and destruction everywhere."
And so the rain of Israeli terror fell over this utterly defenseless country, while Bush does nothing but emit go signals to the fifth most powerful military in the world. He repeats again and again that "Israel has a right to defend itself." Of course, but not against millions of people (including tens of thousands of Arab-Americans and other US citizens living or visiting there) who had nothing whatsoever to do with the border raid by Hezbollah.
The Israeli practice of collective punishment, a war crime under the Geneva Convention, is standard against the Palestinians, who lost 78% of their land in the 1940s and want to preserve the 22% that is left to them (the 1967 boundaries). More collective punishments against the Lebanese now, just like during the unprovoked invasion of 1982...