Yesterday's Headline in the LA Times read "The Times/Bloomberg Poll - Most Back Israel, Split on U.S. Role." I did the math and noted the same as did this writer in today's letters - in 6 pt. type. It's no anomoly. -Ed
"I was puzzled by one point in the story about your latest poll. You report that 43% of respondents said Israel's bombing campaign was justified and not excessively harsh. You also report 16% described Israel's response as justified but excesive, and 28% said the response was unjustified, but you left it to your readers to do the math. It seems to me that the featured conclusion should have been that 44% of respondents thought that Israel's response was excessive or unjustified, whilc 43% thought it was justified and not excessive. But that would not have been a very good support for your headline." John Moukad, Cambridge, Mass. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14332.htm George Galloway: Blair, Olmert and Bush are murderers Socialist Worker 5 August 2006 | issue 2012 "Expanding and strengthening" the onslaught against the people of Lebanon. That was Israel's response to the international outcry over the slaughter of 56 civilians, most of them children, in Qana. And with the world's eyes turned to the increasingly savage offensive in southern Lebanon, Israel has tightened the noose of collective punishment around the Palestinians in Gaza. Accompanying all this are the barely concealed calls in Washington for an assault on Iran and Syria. No one should be in any doubt which way the chain of cause and effect runs. George Bush, with Tony Blair at his heel, is backing Israel to the hilt because the US wants Hizbollah's resistance in Lebanon smashed as a prelude to an attack on Iran. In Washington, Blair alluded to such a war. Catastrophe It is their perverse reaction to the catastrophe engulfing the occupation in Iraq, where the number of US forces is now increasing rather than being "drawn down" as was promised to military families earlier this year. To the Iraq disaster we can add Afghanistan, where Britain lost three more soldiers on Monday. Where two wars have failed, perhaps a wider one might succeed. Such is the logic that is tearing hundreds of Lebanese civilians to shreds and is bringing us to the brink of a gigantic conflagration. That is also the reasoning behind US, British and Israeli talk of imposing a foreign force in southern Lebanon. This is not a plan for peace - it is a step to further war. The belligerent forces - Israel, armed by the US, with Blair using British airports to act as quartermaster - are talking of sending troops as an alternative to a ceasefire. They want the war to continue until Israel wins, and they want to deploy forces in southern Lebanon to help Israel win. They are becoming more anxious to get other countries to send those troops precisely because Israel is not winning. Its generals have been shocked by the effectiveness of Hizbollah's military resistance. Politically, the invasion of Lebanon - for that is what it is - is already a disaster for Israel and the US. It has strengthened the national resistance in Lebanon, with Hizbollah at its centre. Lebanon's pro-Western Government speaks of Hizbollah as resistance fighters. Far from reopening sectarian and confessional divisions, which the US and Israel hoped would embroil Hizbollah in civil war, the assault on Lebanon has rallied huge numbers of Christians, Druze and Sunni Muslims behind the banner of Hizbollah. Across the Middle East anger is boiling at Israel and the US certainly, but also at the corrupt kings and puppet presidents who are allowing the massacre of Lebanon to take place. Millions are taking inspiration from the Lebanese resistance. It is that resistance that could halt the wider war drive and bring some relief to the besieged Palestinians. Make no mistake, if that resistance is broken, the result will be no kind of peace, but an even wider war. If Israel, the US and Britain win in southern Lebanon, I warn you not to be Iranian; I warn you not to be Syrian; I warn you not to be an infant in Gaza; I warn you not to be old in Bint Jbeil; I warn you not to thirst for freedom in Egypt; I warn you not to cry out for justice in Jordan; I warn you not to demand democracy in Saudi Arabia - for if the imperialist forces win in Lebanon, more Middle Eastern countries will be dragged into the maw of war, and the hand of reaction will be strengthened everywhere. But if they are defeated, if the resistance led by Hizbollah halts the invasion of Lebanon, if it refuses to kneel before imperial might, then a fire will be lit under every throne and in every corrupt chancellery from the Atlantic coast of North Africa to the banks of the Euphrates. It will speed the day when the impoverished masses across the region take control of their destiny. It will give new hope to the Palestinians. It will inspire those Israelis, currently few in number, who know the next six decades cannot be like the last and that there must be justice for Palestine. It will bring us closer to a durable peace. And, in humbling the masters of global military and economic power, it will embolden everyone who is fighting for a better world. http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9391 *** http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14332.htm The refugees' fury will be felt for generations to come Israel is seeking to cast itself as the victim even as it expels the people of Lebanon and Gaza from their homes By Karma Nabulsi 08/02/06 "The Guardian" -- -- People walk the dusty, broken roads in scorching summer heat, taking shelter in the basements of empty buildings. In Gaza and Lebanon, in the refugee camps of Khan Younis, Rafah and Jabaliya, in Tyre and Beirut, in Nabatiyeh and Sidon, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children seek refuge. As they flee, they risk the indiscriminate wrath of an enemy driven by an existential mania that can not be assuaged, only stopped. Ambulances are struck, humanitarian relief convoys are struck, UN observers are struck. Warning leaflets are dropped from the sky urging people to abandon their homes, just as they were in 1996, 1982, 1978, 1967 and 1948. The ultimately impossible decision in Gaza and Lebanon today is: where does a refugee go? In Beirut in July 1982, after surviving a bomb that destroyed a seven-floor apartment block next door to me, burying alive more than 40 people taking refuge in its cellar, some of us began to sleep on the roof; there is no refuge from this terror, there is only resistance. Fifteen of the 37 children killed in Qana on Sunday were disabled; their families could take them no further north, according to the Lebanese MP Bahia Hariri. >From June to August 1982, Israeli aircraft flying over Lebanon dropped "smart bombs" on children's hospitals in Shatila camp, Gaza hospital, Acre hospital and 11 of the country's orphanages, killing dozens of disabled children. They had nowhere else to shelter. The roofs had been painted with huge white crosses visible from the sky. That war did not give Israel the security it claims to seek, and nor will this one. In 1948 Palestinians fled after hearing news of the massacres in villages by Haganah forces and receiving leaflets dropped from the sky telling them to run for their lives. This week their grandchildren and great-grandchildren are being killed with impunity in the refugee camps of Gaza, where they are trapped. Last Friday alone more than 30 Palestinians were killed, with no international condemnation and barely a mention in the press. In Qana they were also trapped. "We couldn't get out of our neighbourhood because there are only two roads leading out and the Israelis bombed them both several days ago," said Mohammad Shalhoub, a disabled 41-year-old survivor. The US and Britain are claiming that no ceasefire is possible until there is an international force that will implement United Nations resolution 1559. Yet the Lebanese prime minister issued a seven-point plan in Rome last week, consistent with international law and agreed by all elected parties in Lebanon (including Hizbullah), that had as its first requirement an immediate and unconditional ceasefire. It is implementation of the dozens of UN resolutions that Israel has flouted for more than 50 years with protection from the US - and now from Britain - that will stop this conflict. The capture of a soldier from an occupying army in Gaza, and of two soldiers on the Lebanese border by local resistance, in an attempt to force the release of thousands of illegally detained Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, should have been dealt with by Israel in the framework of the laws of war and with a proportional response. Instead, by launching this massive attack, Israel has destroyed the social and economic infrastructure of a sovereign nation, Lebanon, just as it is destroying the infrastructure of a democratically elected administration in occupied Palestine. It is producing generations of refugees who will also resist. Power stations, bridges, key manufacturing and food factories in Lebanon are ruined, the entire industrial estate of Gaza pulverised. The ancient city centre of Nablus has been demolished. Whole villages in south Lebanon and sections of refugee camps in Gaza have been obliterated. These too are war crimes. If Britain will not stop Israel, nor condemn it, then under the Geneva conventions it is complicit in those crimes. Before seeking the implementation of UN resolution 1559, which calls for the disarmament of Hizbullah, Britain must seek with more sincerity the implementation of UN security council resolutions 242 and 338, which demand the immediate withdrawal of Israel from lands illegally occupied in the 1967 war, including the Golan Heights, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. There is hardly a statesman or citizen in the world today who cannot see that it will take outside intervention to stop Israel inflicting this terror. Calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, and working towards the implementation of all UN resolutions addressing this conflict, will restore to the international community - and Britain in particular - the legitimacy it has squandered by allowing months of war crimes to go by, witnessed but uncondemned and unconstrained. Israel has failed to understand that it cannot expel a people and call itself the victim; that it cannot conquer its neighbours and treat any and all resistance to that conquest as terrorism; that it cannot arm itself as a regional superpower and annihilate the institutional fabric of two peoples without incurring the fury of their children in the years that follow. Karma Nabulsi teaches politics and international relations at Oxford University. She is the author of Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance and the Law [EMAIL PROTECTED] Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006. *** ----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2006 5:05 PM Subject: Fri., Aug. 4, Noon - 1 PM, LA Jews for Peace Ceasefire Vigil at Israeli Cons. Join LA Jews for Peace Ceasefire Now! Vigil Fri., Aug. 4th Noon- 1 PM Israeli Consulate 6380 Wilshire Blvd. (Just east of La Cienega) Please wear black. If you have a religious artifact, like a menorah, please bring it also. Be prepared to hold both a sign and an artifact. Also, bring a digital camera if you have one, so we can post a story on laindymedia afterwards. RSVP: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (I'd like to know how many of you and your friends can make it.) No Flags, Please -- Except for United Nations and Peace Flags Suggested Signs (I will have around 15) & Banners NOT ALL JEWS SUPPORT ISRAEL'S ACTIONS LA JEWS FOR PEACE ISRAEL, YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR US LA JEWS WANT AN IMMEDIATE & UNCONDITIONAL CEASEFIRE ISRAEL, CEASE FIRE NOW! ISRAEL, DO NOT SHAME THE JEWS OF THE WORLD ISRAEL, WHY ARE YOU USING CLUSTER BOMBS? THOU SHALT NOT KILL A SHANDEH UN A CHARPEH - A SHAME AND A DISGRACE JEWS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN GAZA AND LEBANON VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE ISRAEL, WHY ARE YOU BOMBING CHILDREN? START THE TALKS, STOP THE BOMBS Thanks, Marcy --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
