Malevolent Neutrality

As Lebanon's apartments and airports collapsed in flames under Israeli missiles on Sunday, the G8 issued a ringing condemnation - of the Lebanese. According to the summitteers '[t]he immediate crisis results from efforts by extremist forces to destabilise the region and to frustrate the aspirations of the Palestinian, Israeli and Lebanese people for democracy.' This is hypocritical tosh. The Palestinians have democratically expressed their aspirations by voting Hamas into government, and the Lebanese by giving Hizbullah 28 MPs, one of whom holds the cabinet post of minister of Labour. Israel seems intent on protecting its self image as 'the only democracy in the Middle East' by destroying the other democracies on its borders. The G8 summit is one more stain on the blotted scutcheon of the EU and US as they join Israel's blockade of the Palestinians for electing the wrong government. The Palestinian raid which captured Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit on the 25th June was followed by an intensified bloackade. On Wednesday the 12th of July Hizbullah,presumably seeking to show solidarity with the otherwise abandoned Palestinians, also attacked an Israeli patrol and captured two Israeli soldiers. If this is a war, as Ehud Olmert says and the presence of indiscriminate bombing and lying suggest, then Israel could have accepted Hamas and Hizbullah's offer of a prisoner exchange. Israel did not, responding instead with the destruction of Lebanon from ground,sea and air - an assault that has left 200 Lebanese and 24 Israelis dead. At the head of the phalanx is Amir Peretz, Israeli minister of defence. Peretz was Olmert's opponent from the left in the election this past spring and inspired the hopes of many for a new rationality in Israeli politics. The attacks on Gaza, and now Lebanon, place him as simply the latest Israeli Labour leader who flattens to deceive. The Great Powers responded to the pounding of Lebanon with the traditional display of even bloodyhandedness, calling upon Israel 'to exercise the utmost restraint.' Suitably chastened, Israeli forces proceeded to kill 34 Lebanese the following day. But the G8 are worse than irrelevant - they are complicit. President Bush - caught off record demanding that Syria 'stop this shit' - and Tony Blair have made a great fuss about Syria and Iran's support for Hizbullah. Yet every Israeli warplane that bombed a Lebanese bridge or destroyed a block of flats comes from the West.

On Wednesday the 12th of July Hizbullah launched their daring raid and in a subsequent skirmish killed eight Israeli soldiers. That night Israeli warplanes bombed much of Southern Lebanon and Beirut, including an attack on the airport. Around 35 Lebanese people were killed. The warplanes were F 16 fighter bombers. Since the United States is the only country that makes the F 16 the planes were certainly American, and probably part of the 52 aircraft sold to Israel in 2002. 'Sold' is to be taken in its broadest meaning here, since the planes were paid for with the $2.8 billion the US gave to Israel that year.

Taxpayers money was put to good use again on Friday the 14th, when Israel bombed further the infrastructure of the terrorist threat such as roads, bridges and petrol depots. 50 Lebanese were killed that day. On Saturday Israeli expanded its assault to Tripoli in the north of Lebanon where are there are few Shia and even fewer Hizbollah supporters. 18 Lebanese refugees were killed by Israeli missiles on the road to Tyre. In response to the attacks and the bombing of its headquarters Hizbullah fired rockets into Tiberias and against an Israeli warship blockading Beirut. The warship was almost certainly one of 7 vessels sold to Israel by the Federal Republic of Germany, again bought with American money.

Sunday saw 30 Lebanese killed by Israeli missiles, including a Canadian family. A subsequent Hizbullah rocket attack on Haifa killed 8 Israelis. Monday brought the Lebanese death toll, paid for by the even handed West, to over 200 people. Hundreds of people are now dead for the sake of two Israeli soldiers - so ghastly an imbalance that even Israel has changed its public aim of the operation to forcing the Lebanese government to disarm Hizbullah and control the Southern border. It is no surprise that Israel wants to disarm the only Arab force that has beaten it on the battlefield but the demand is both hypocritical and illogical. Hypocritical because Israel, unrecalcitrant subject of 30 UN Security Council Resolutions, is insisting upon the implementation of UNSC 1599 which calls for the disarmament of Lebanese militias. Illogical because Israel couldn't disarm Hizbullah, a force established only to resist the Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon. As the past week had made clear, Israel controls Lebanon's southern border. Hizbullah and Hamas have launched rocket attacks against the military that continues to occupy their land (the Shebaa Farms between Syria and Lebanon and the siege imposed on all of Gaza). That military is the one that the Western powers should think about disarming - or at least stop arming.