Death and Tears in Nablus

Counterpunch~ Eliza Ernshire ~The people of Nablus are welcoming of a stranger into their streets. It is not so common for them to see foreigners there and many stop you to ask what you are doing in Nablus and how you see their city. It is a hard question to answer; you want to tell them about the beauty of the ancient stoned city and its unique geography, nestled in the valley of two imposing mountains, daring the northern slopes of one to build almost to its peak; but you can not, because this is not the feature that strikes you most noticeably as you enter the outskirts of Nablus.

www.counterpunch.org

Death and Tears in Nablus

ELIZA ERNSHIRE

Nablus

While war raged in Lebanon throughout the month of July and death was a daily occurrence in Gaza, other regions in this war-torn part of the world also experienced weeks of torment and torture at the hands of the Israeli Military.

Among these regions is Nablus. A city filled with tragedy and the knowledge of how unjust and unforgiving the occupational forces can be. Invasions, incursions and curfews are not new to the people of Nablus, nor are the sights of bleeding children and mourning families.

Many people say if you want to know the Occupation of the West Bank and what it actually entails then you must go to Nablus and spend some days wandering in the Old City and surrounding districts talking to residents, nearly every one of whom have lost members of their family in the decade-long struggle against Occupation; you need to talk to the students of An Najar University and listen to their stories of suffering and how many difficulties they must overcome if they want to continue their education; you must let the sorrow of the city soak into your unconsciousness.

And so I went to Nablus and wandered the Old City streets and talked with families and with students and listened to their stories.

It was not the first time I had visited the city, but the first time I had spent more than a day there.

The people of Nablus are welcoming of a stranger into their streets. It is not so common for them to see foreigners there and many stop you to ask what you are doing in Nablus and how you see their city. It is a hard question to answer; you want to tell them about the beauty of the ancient stoned city and its unique geography, nestled in the valley of two imposing mountains, daring the northern slopes of one to build almost to its peak; but you can not, because this is not the feature that strikes you most noticeably as you enter the outskirts of Nablus.

You are first struck by the ruins of the Municipality building and the destruction of the as-yet un-rebuilt Mucata. You are struck by the houses, windowless and scarred with bullet holes that line every street you walk down; you are struck by the overwhelming feeling that this city has seen war again and again and has had no time of respite to begin to rebuild.
And how can you tell the eager residents of Nablus that all you see in their city is the ravaging signs of war and hardship and the heartbreaking signs of children with no future?

The latest of these fierce and deathly times has left numerous residents of Nablus dead and many more wounded.

It began in June when the Israeli army invaded the center of Nablus at midday. They came in twenty jeeps to arrest one man. On that day they shot three people dead and imposed a curfew on the whole of the city.
Since then they have been in the city every night and sometimes during the day.

They have killed civilians including two children 14 and 16 years old. They have totally demolished the Mucata and have bulldozed an apartment block that housed 9 families. They have invaded the refugee camps and have carried out assassinations against militants whose posters now cover the walls of every shop in the city.June, July August and September 2006

The streets now empty at 9 pm and the only sounds in the night time are those of gun-fire and explosions.

'This is Nablus.' My taxi driver said. This is the prison of the West Bank.

I was to speak with Fadi, a leader of the Al Aqsa Brigades in Nablus. A friend from Nablus had talked to Fadi and Fadi had agreed to speak with me on Saturday about his life and his resistance against the occupation.

But he is now dead.

I arrived in Nablus the day after he was assassinated by Israeli Special Forces.

The city salutes him and every shop displays his poster, prepared by himself for himself. He stands one-armed and defiant. He lost his right arm in the struggle a year ago.

I came too late to speak with him. So instead of his story I will write of him, as told me by his family, his friends and his city that is now mourning his death.

Ahmad is a medical relief worker and has worked as an ambulance doctor for three years. I met him by chance in a youth project office in the center of Nablus.

I asked him about the last month in the city and he shook his head and said it has been a 'hell-of-a-time'. He has been evacuating wounded and dead people almost daily, the most heartbreaking of these he said was having to try and evacuate Fadi after he had been fatally injured.

It was late at night in the old city of Nablus.

Fadi was warned not to enter the old city, but he did and was shot by snipers.

He had a massive hole through his belly.
Ahmad told me how he tried to stop the bleeding by pressing two pillows against each side of Fadi's body, but it was impossible to stop the bleeding and he and his two helpers were being shot at the whole time and the ambulance could not approach. His two friends were wounded.

'Fadi was still alive. But he couldn't speak. He just looked at us and pointed. I suppose he was telling us that he was going'

I asked Ahmad if he knew Fadi. He answered, yes, that he did and it was not the first time he had tried to evacuate him after an Israeli attack.

'Once he had his whole insides hanging out of a horrible hole in his stomach and I had to push them back inside and he said ''thankyou Ahmad!'' and there was the time when he had his arm blown off.

'But this time was a nightmare. We were trying to drag him through the street and we were right in the sights of ten or so snipers sitting on the rooftops. I could see red laser beams all over my chest. I finally had to turn and run for cover and that is not an easy thing to do when you are a trained emergency worker.
After half an hour we managed to drag Fadi to a building, but by the time we reached the hospital he was already half-an-hour dead.

He was a good man. Ask anyone here.

'Every one knew him and every one loved him.'

When evening came I wound my way up the mountain to a quiet sanctuary, surprising in such a battle-wearied city. The sanctuary is in the garden of an old woman who has been trained as a psychologist and spends her days working with the women of Nablus. Too often the bearers of tragedy.

'The women must carry too much.' She said. 'Sometimes all their frustration and fear and torture come out of their hearts when they sit here in my small garden.'

We talked for hours and I never thought I could hear so many stories at once that would bring tears to my eyes.

'.Can you imagine?' she said, late in the evening. 'That women come to me and talk and begin to cry and then to shout and then to beat the earth with their bear fists. Can you imagine what that is like?

When the mothers tell me about their sons taken from them. Killed in front of them, or arrested from their family home. Some mothers tell me that their fourteen or fifteen year old sons rush to them when the army arrives in their street and cry to them to hide them. Some say that their sons ask to be put back inside their bellies because they would be safe there.
Can you imagine this? Fifteen year old boys! And the world hears of them only as terrorists.'

One mother came to the sanctuary and for an hour sat on the stones and howled till her heart would break: 'I could not hide him! I could not hide my son!' She cried over and over again.

To us, arrest may not seem like the end of hope, but we do not know the reality of the arrest system in Palestine. The women of Nablus know.

They know that they will not hear news of their son for maybe 21 days after his arrest. They will not know if he is alive or dead. All they will know is that he will be facing interrogation and torture alone. That his court hearing will be held in Hebrew. That his charges will be kept in a 'secret file' and that they might not see their sons again until they are grown men. This they know.

'And sometimes' the old woman told me 'the mother needs to cry her anguish, however heartbreaking it is.

'One young woman is married to a wanted man. She comes to me because she has become useless. She can not sleep in the night and can not wake in the day. She lies in her bed because she is paralyzed with fear.
She has two daughters. The eldest started school today. Four days ago the young woman's husband visited her with three new dresses for their daughter. The husband said he did not want anyone else to have to prepare his daughter for her first day at school. Later in the evening he sat with his young family and listened to his youngest girl singing a song he had taught her. He said to his wife quietly, 'I don't think I will hear this song again.' He was killed yesterday.

I knew then it was Fadi the old woman was telling me about. She stopped talking because she too was crying.

'I loved him like a son' she finally said; 'and his wife like a daughter.'

She wept because however strong she is and however many tragedies she bares with her clients, she too sometimes needs to weep.

It was hard to sleep that night. I sat at the window and watched the sleeping city below me, wondering how many homes were nursing broken families and broken hearts.

I could see the ruined outlines of homes that had been bulldozed and could see the pile of rubble that had been the Mucata, razed to the ground three weeks before.

I realized that it would take months to hear the stories this city harbors, months before I could appreciate the depths of despair the people are driven to by the harshness of the occupation.

I wondered what future was in store for all the children I had seen that day rummaging through rubbish in the Old City because there is not even a school for them to go to. I found myself wondering at the little twelve year old boys I had seen running after the militants who roam the old city with guns slung over their shoulders, looking to them like they ought to be looking to their teachers.

I found myself asking the question if it was so very surprising that these youngsters turned to the military factions of the city and joined them, and by so doing, giving up any hope of a future except that of imprisonment or death at the hands of the Israeli forces.

Because that could well be their future anyway
I finally slept as the dawn call to prayer sounded over the city.

When I returned to Ramallah I knew that it was true about Nablus.

If you wander the streets of the Old City and listen to even a few of the tales that are imprisoned within it, you will understand better the reality of this occupation, and the sadness of the city will seep into your unconscious

'But beware of becoming hopeless.even the women who cry in my garden grow strong again and return to their homes and continue to attend to their daily work. If they didn't do this Israel would have destroyed us long ago.'

Eliza Ernshire can be reached at eliza_ernshire@yahoo.co.uk

Stay informed. Subscribe and get the best of PEJ News by email. Free.

Death and Tears in Nablus

Counterpunch~ Eliza Ernshire ~The people of Nablus are welcoming of a stranger into their streets. It is not so common for them to see foreigners there and many stop you to ask what you are doing in Nablus and how you see their city. It is a hard question to answer; you want to tell them about the beauty of the ancient stoned city and its unique geography, nestled in the valley of two imposing mountains, daring the northern slopes of one to build almost to its peak; but you can not, because this is not the feature that strikes you most noticeably as you enter the outskirts of Nablus.

Death and Tears in Nablus

ELIZA ERNSHIRE

www.counterpunch.org

Nablus

While war raged in Lebanon throughout the month of July and death was a daily occurrence in Gaza, other regions in this war-torn part of the world also experienced weeks of torment and torture at the hands of the Israeli Military.

Among these regions is Nablus. A city filled with tragedy and the knowledge of how unjust and unforgiving the occupational forces can be. Invasions, incursions and curfews are not new to the people of Nablus, nor are the sights of bleeding children and mourning families.

Many people say if you want to know the Occupation of the West Bank and what it actually entails then you must go to Nablus and spend some days wandering in the Old City and surrounding districts talking to residents, nearly every one of whom have lost members of their family in the decade-long struggle against Occupation; you need to talk to the students of An Najar University and listen to their stories of suffering and how many difficulties they must overcome if they want to continue their education; you must let the sorrow of the city soak into your unconsciousness.

And so I went to Nablus and wandered the Old City streets and talked with families and with students and listened to their stories.

It was not the first time I had visited the city, but the first time I had spent more than a day there.

The people of Nablus are welcoming of a stranger into their streets. It is not so common for them to see foreigners there and many stop you to ask what you are doing in Nablus and how you see their city. It is a hard question to answer; you want to tell them about the beauty of the ancient stoned city and its unique geography, nestled in the valley of two imposing mountains, daring the northern slopes of one to build almost to its peak; but you can not, because this is not the feature that strikes you most noticeably as you enter the outskirts of Nablus.

You are first struck by the ruins of the Municipality building and the destruction of the as-yet un-rebuilt Mucata. You are struck by the houses, windowless and scarred with bullet holes that line every street you walk down; you are struck by the overwhelming feeling that this city has seen war again and again and has had no time of respite to begin to rebuild.
And how can you tell the eager residents of Nablus that all you see in their city is the ravaging signs of war and hardship and the heartbreaking signs of children with no future?

The latest of these fierce and deathly times has left numerous residents of Nablus dead and many more wounded.

It began in June when the Israeli army invaded the center of Nablus at midday. They came in twenty jeeps to arrest one man. On that day they shot three people dead and imposed a curfew on the whole of the city.
Since then they have been in the city every night and sometimes during the day.

They have killed civilians including two children 14 and 16 years old. They have totally demolished the Mucata and have bulldozed an apartment block that housed 9 families. They have invaded the refugee camps and have carried out assassinations against militants whose posters now cover the walls of every shop in the city.June, July August and September 2006

The streets now empty at 9 pm and the only sounds in the night time are those of gun-fire and explosions.

'This is Nablus.' My taxi driver said. This is the prison of the West Bank.

I was to speak with Fadi, a leader of the Al Aqsa Brigades in Nablus. A friend from Nablus had talked to Fadi and Fadi had agreed to speak with me on Saturday about his life and his resistance against the occupation.

But he is now dead.

I arrived in Nablus the day after he was assassinated by Israeli Special Forces.

The city salutes him and every shop displays his poster, prepared by himself for himself. He stands one-armed and defiant. He lost his right arm in the struggle a year ago.

I came too late to speak with him. So instead of his story I will write of him, as told me by his family, his friends and his city that is now mourning his death.

Ahmad is a medical relief worker and has worked as an ambulance doctor for three years. I met him by chance in a youth project office in the center of Nablus.

I asked him about the last month in the city and he shook his head and said it has been a 'hell-of-a-time'. He has been evacuating wounded and dead people almost daily, the most heartbreaking of these he said was having to try and evacuate Fadi after he had been fatally injured.

It was late at night in the old city of Nablus.

Fadi was warned not to enter the old city, but he did and was shot by snipers.

He had a massive hole through his belly.
Ahmad told me how he tried to stop the bleeding by pressing two pillows against each side of Fadi's body, but it was impossible to stop the bleeding and he and his two helpers were being shot at the whole time and the ambulance could not approach. His two friends were wounded.

'Fadi was still alive. But he couldn't speak. He just looked at us and pointed. I suppose he was telling us that he was going'

I asked Ahmad if he knew Fadi. He answered, yes, that he did and it was not the first time he had tried to evacuate him after an Israeli attack.

'Once he had his whole insides hanging out of a horrible hole in his stomach and I had to push them back inside and he said ''thankyou Ahmad!'' and there was the time when he had his arm blown off.

'But this time was a nightmare. We were trying to drag him through the street and we were right in the sights of ten or so snipers sitting on the rooftops. I could see red laser beams all over my chest. I finally had to turn and run for cover and that is not an easy thing to do when you are a trained emergency worker.
After half an hour we managed to drag Fadi to a building, but by the time we reached the hospital he was already half-an-hour dead.

He was a good man. Ask anyone here.

'Every one knew him and every one loved him.'

When evening came I wound my way up the mountain to a quiet sanctuary, surprising in such a battle-wearied city. The sanctuary is in the garden of an old woman who has been trained as a psychologist and spends her days working with the women of Nablus. Too often the bearers of tragedy.

'The women must carry too much.' She said. 'Sometimes all their frustration and fear and torture come out of their hearts when they sit here in my small garden.'

We talked for hours and I never thought I could hear so many stories at once that would bring tears to my eyes.

'.Can you imagine?' she said, late in the evening. 'That women come to me and talk and begin to cry and then to shout and then to beat the earth with their bear fists. Can you imagine what that is like?

When the mothers tell me about their sons taken from them. Killed in front of them, or arrested from their family home. Some mothers tell me that their fourteen or fifteen year old sons rush to them when the army arrives in their street and cry to them to hide them. Some say that their sons ask to be put back inside their bellies because they would be safe there.
Can you imagine this? Fifteen year old boys! And the world hears of them only as terrorists.'

One mother came to the sanctuary and for an hour sat on the stones and howled till her heart would break: 'I could not hide him! I could not hide my son!' She cried over and over again.

To us, arrest may not seem like the end of hope, but we do not know the reality of the arrest system in Palestine. The women of Nablus know.

They know that they will not hear news of their son for maybe 21 days after his arrest. They will not know if he is alive or dead. All they will know is that he will be facing interrogation and torture alone. That his court hearing will be held in Hebrew. That his charges will be kept in a 'secret file' and that they might not see their sons again until they are grown men. This they know.

'And sometimes' the old woman told me 'the mother needs to cry her anguish, however heartbreaking it is.

'One young woman is married to a wanted man. She comes to me because she has become useless. She can not sleep in the night and can not wake in the day. She lies in her bed because she is paralyzed with fear.
She has two daughters. The eldest started school today. Four days ago the young woman's husband visited her with three new dresses for their daughter. The husband said he did not want anyone else to have to prepare his daughter for her first day at school. Later in the evening he sat with his young family and listened to his youngest girl singing a song he had taught her. He said to his wife quietly, 'I don't think I will hear this song again.' He was killed yesterday.

I knew then it was Fadi the old woman was telling me about. She stopped talking because she too was crying.

'I loved him like a son' she finally said; 'and his wife like a daughter.'

She wept because however strong she is and however many tragedies she bares with her clients, she too sometimes needs to weep.

It was hard to sleep that night. I sat at the window and watched the sleeping city below me, wondering how many homes were nursing broken families and broken hearts.

I could see the ruined outlines of homes that had been bulldozed and could see the pile of rubble that had been the Mucata, razed to the ground three weeks before.

I realized that it would take months to hear the stories this city harbors, months before I could appreciate the depths of despair the people are driven to by the harshness of the occupation.

I wondered what future was in store for all the children I had seen that day rummaging through rubbish in the Old City because there is not even a school for them to go to. I found myself wondering at the little twelve year old boys I had seen running after the militants who roam the old city with guns slung over their shoulders, looking to them like they ought to be looking to their teachers.

I found myself asking the question if it was so very surprising that these youngsters turned to the military factions of the city and joined them, and by so doing, giving up any hope of a future except that of imprisonment or death at the hands of the Israeli forces.

Because that could well be their future anyway
I finally slept as the dawn call to prayer sounded over the city.

When I returned to Ramallah I knew that it was true about Nablus.

If you wander the streets of the Old City and listen to even a few of the tales that are imprisoned within it, you will understand better the reality of this occupation, and the sadness of the city will seep into your unconscious

'But beware of becoming hopeless.even the women who cry in my garden grow strong again and return to their homes and continue to attend to their daily work. If they didn't do this Israel would have destroyed us long ago.'

Eliza Ernshire can be reached at eliza_ernshire@yahoo.co.uk

Stay informed. Subscribe and get the best of PEJ News by email. Free.

PRISON, PRESS, and PISSED

from Betty

Betty waiting to retrieve her belongings outside of Alouette Women's Prisonafter her August 2nd release.

[photo credit: monika@greendreams.com]

Vancouver, September 6th, 2006

PRISON, PRESS, AND PISSED!

by Betty Krawczyk

Okay, so maybe pissed isnt a nice word for a great-grandmother to be using but I find I dont care, nice is not what is happening. To any of us. Not to prisoners, the press, and/or the public at large. Prisoners are being mistreated at Alouette Correctional Centre for Women and the press is not allowed in to report it. Are the women being beaten?

Yes and no. Not with whips, but with privatization of the prison. Women are required to work at Alouette as do I when Im there. Prisoners pay? Two dollars and fifty cents a day. Thats a day, not an hour. Before privatization, women prisoners were paid four dollars and fifty cents a day. Cut it in half, was Campbells solution. And privatize everything. Including the food. Especially the food. Eggs? Well, we wont have to worry about cholesterol. Two eggs a week. Fruit? Four pieces a week. Milk? A little powdered milk poured out of a pitcher by an attendant on a half a bowl of cereal for breakfast, a cup (thats a cup, not a glass) of powdered milk for supper. Meat, when there is any, has been frozen for awhile (a long while, I know freezer burn when I see it) and sometimes cant even be cut with the plastic knives. And the paucity of fresh vegetables is a crime. There were ten pregnant women in that prison when I left August 2 and the diet fed to them (the regular with only slight modifications) is outrageous. But this is a private food service and the company has to make a profit out of the prisoners.

Prisons have become a business and the canteen is also privatized. All of the items on the canteen list cost more than they would outside and they are of the cheapest, poorest quality available. And the beauty of this arrangement for the private company is that the ruling of the Attorney General and Solicitor General is that they wont allow anything to be brought into the prison for the inmates, anything at all. Everything the women need or want has to be bought from the canteen or done without. Isnt this a lovely set up for the canteen company? A captive group of women who are forced to buy the crappiest brands of everything for inflated prices. And thats not all.

Due to a sweetheart deal with Telus, we at Alouette (and Ill be back there soon as my trial begins on Sept.18 and Madam Justice Brown wants to teach me a lesson) must pay ninety cents for a local phone call. Thats a local phone call, one that would cost a quarter on the outside. But women who make two dollars and fifty cents a day must pay ninety cents for a local phone call. Theres more, but I want to get to how Campbell handles members of the press who request prison interviews.

Just before I was released from Alouette a reporter from the Georgia Straight came and took some photos of me sitting in front of a blank wall. He was told by prison authorities in no uncertain terms to delete the photos and after he left I was advised that in the future there would be no more private interviews which meant that any reporter who wanted an interview would have to come in during regular visiting hours. The hitch is that there are no private visits. Visits take place in a communal hall, one crowded room, lots of noise, no privacy. And no visitor can bring in anything for the visit, not even a pencil or writing pad. And that means reporters, too.

So freedom of the press seems about like my own freedom to protest, just swallow the lies and dont do anything to upset Gordon Campbell and his offices and the courts. However, in the final analysis freedom of the press is up to the press, both main stream and alternate. To honestly have freedom of the press, the press has to demand access to wherever that want to go that is paid for by taxpayers, to investigate whatever they want to investigate that the public pays for, to film whatever they want to film that is built and paid for with taxpayer funds. Thats enshrined in our constitution, for Petes sake.

Betty Krawczyk

contact: betty_krawczyk@hotmail.com | 604.255.4427

For up to date news by betty, please see her blog:

http://bettysearlyedition.blogspot.com

Four dead in Lebanon 'assassination' bid

Tuesday 05 September 2006, 21:20 Makka Time, 18:20 GMT


The bomb went off in the village of Rimaila near Sidon


A Lebanese intelligence officer investigating the murder of Rafiq al-Hariri, the former prime minister, has been wounded in an bomb attack that left four of his bodyguards dead.



Lieutenant-Colonel Samir Shehade and three other men were wounded when an explosion ripped through their convoy as it left the town of Rmeileh, about 30km south of Beirut early on Tuesday.

Ahmed Fatfat, the Lebanese interior minister, said the blast was caused by a roadside bomb loaded with nails.

The attack came 10 days ahead of the release of a report on al-Hariri's assassination, which Western countries suspect was the work of Syria.

A massive blast killed al-Hariri and 22 other people on February 14 last year.

In September last year, Shehade, the deputy director of the internal security force's intelligence unit, directed the arrest of four top Lebanese intelligence officials believed to have been involved in al-Hariri's murder.

Lebanese security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said Shehade had received threats because of his work in the al-Hariri probe.

Al-Hariri's son, Saad Hariri, a prominent lawmaker in Lebanon, called the attack a terrorist act.

"This is a message which we reject," he said.

Syrian denial

Fares Soueid, a former parliamentarian and Saad Hariri ally, said the attack was aimed at sabotaging the creation of an international tribunal over al-Hariri's assassination.

Syria has denied any responsibility for the killings, but has come under heavy international pressure to co-operate with the investigations.

An international outcry over the murder of al-Hariri forced Syria, which had dominated Lebanese politics for three decades, to withdraw its troops from Lebanon in April 2005.

Since then, relations between the two neighbouring countries have soured considerably, and leaders of the anti-Syrian majority that emerged in parliamentary elections two months later have repeatedly claimed they fear for their lives.

Merkel Wimps Out on Israeli Cluster Bombs

Merkel Wimps Out on Israeli Cluster Bombs

Thursday August 31st 2006, 1:36 pm

German Development Aid Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul was spot on when she criticized Israel for its obscene and wanton use of cluster bombs in Lebanon.

But Chancellor Angela Merkel was quick to jump up and kiss the hem of Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of German Jews, after she angrily complained that mentioning such is antisemitic.

“Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor, has repeatedly complained about what she terms a growing mood against Israel and Jews in Germany,” reports Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

Wieczorek-Zeul and Oskar Lafontaine, members of Germany’s Left Party, according to Knobloch, “support the anti-mood against Jews in Germany.” In other words, if a German complains about Israel’s obvious war crimes—and in Germany, considerable parliamentary activity on cluster munitions is underway—he or she is obviously a raving antisemite, an accusation that imputes unspoken comparisons with Hitler and the Nazis.

“German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Charlotte Knobloch, the president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Wednesday to address Jewish anger over remarks made by overseas development minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul about Israel’s offensive in Lebanon,” reports Deutsche Welle. “Government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said Wednesday that Germany believed it carries a historical responsibility towards the Jewish state because of the Holocaust, and said all government ministers respected this policy.”

In other words, once again, the Holocaust was used as a cudgel by Jews who apparently believe Israel has the right to mass murder innocent Arabs, for as Alan Dershowitz wrote in the Los Angeles Times last month, there is a “new vocabulary to reflect the realities of modern warfare,” that is to say some civilians—Israeli civilians—are more innocent than other civilians, mostly Arabs, who are to be conflated with terrorists out of hand. In effect, the feelings of Germany’s Jews are more important than the lives of Lebanese children and grandmothers. How dare Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul think otherwise. No doubt she is a closet Nazi.

It does not matter that Wieczorek-Zeul and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have lashed “out at human rights abuses regardless who may have committed them.” After all, we’re talking about Israelis here and victims of the Holocaust, an event exploited over the last six decades to shake down not only Germany but virtually every other country that feels somehow responsible for what the Nazis did, a guilt expertly milked to the tune of billions of dollars.

Of course, the Nazis killed nearly 7 million Russian civilians (others put this estimate at 16 million) and thousands of communists, socialists, “degenerate artists,” homosexuals, and Roma were executed or sent to die in concentration camps, but we hear little about these poor souls.

Obviously, UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland often retreats to the secrecy of his closet and dons a Nazi uniform, glimmering with SS-Totenkopfverbande, or death’s head regalia. “What’s shocking, and I would say completely immoral, is that 90% of [Israel’s] cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict when we knew there would be a resolution, when we knew there would be an end,” Egeland said.

UN chief Kofi Annan is also a Nazi fellow traveler, as he criticized Israel’s use of cluster bombs as well. “Those kinds of weapons shouldn’t be used in civilian and populated areas,” said Annan, obviously not understanding that Israel (and the United States in Iraq) use these weapons primarily to kill civilians and inflict terror on populations considered less than civilian, as Dershowitz would have it.

“Up to yesterday night we had figures saying there were 405 locations of cluster-bomb strikes in southern Lebanon,” declared Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the UN Mine Action Coordination Center in southern Lebanon. “Per day, we are receiving an average of 30 new locations of cluster-bomb strikes because we have survey teams going to the field and getting information, and the picture is still emerging more and more.”

Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch, “who’s just returned from a visit to southern Lebanon, says the least the Israelis can do is hand over maps of where they dropped these munitions,” but then this would be considered surrendering to Islamofascists and an unforgivable effrontery to Jews around the world who suffered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chełmno, Dachau, etc., or rather the ancestors of said victims, as most of the actual victims have passed on.

But merely mentioning such crimes in relation to Israel is verboten in Germany. “A German Jewish leader has lashed out at German Development Aid Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul for demanding a UN inquiry into Israel’s use of cluster bombs against civilians in Lebanon, the daily Frankfurter Rundschau reported in its Wednesday edition,” reports IRNA. “The vice-president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Salomon Korn, accused Wieczorek-Zeul of being biased against Israel…. ‘The demand shows once again that the minister has reacted in a reflexive manner with regard to Israel,’ Korn said.”

Instead of complaining about Lebanese school kids maimed or killed by the uninhibited dispersal of cluster bombs—often painted in bright colors and thus attractive to children—Korn demanded “Wieczorek-Zeul should have first visited Israel to express her ’sympathy’ with the Israelis and not the Lebanese,” who are, recall, conflated with terrorists.

Meanwhile, “Germany’s powerful and influential Central Council of Jews removed the head of the Jewish community in the north German city of Luebeck from office for strongly criticizing the 34-day Israeli war in Lebanon, the Hamburg-based daily Die Welt reported on Thursday,” reports IRNA. “Rolf Verleger who was chairman of the Jewish community in Luebeck, was dismissed from office after writing an open letter to the Central Council of Jews in which he lashed out at Israel’s brutal and murderous policies in Lebanon and the Palestinian-run areas.”

In the letter, Verleger lambasted Israel for its target killings, the collective punishment and discriminatory policies of other people and the massive bombing of civilian areas in Lebanon.

He urged the Central Council of Jews not to remain silent towards Israel’s atrocities.

The Central Council of Jews is seen as a die-hard defender of the Zionist regime as it automatically equates any criticism of Israel with anti-semitism.

In addition, Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, the daughter of the late German Jewish leader Heinz Galinski, “lashed out at Germany’s powerful Central Council of Jews, accusing it of being nothing more than a mouthpiece of Israel,” reports IRNA. “Evelyn Hecht-Galinski expressed her outrage over continued attempts by the Central Council of Jews to stifle any criticism of Israel in Germany…. ‘As a German Jew, I am ashamed of Israel. Target killings, humiliating the Palestinian population, land dispossessions, destroying infrastructure, border checkpoint harassments, building the wall, blowing up houses, bombing UN monitors,’” Hecht-Galinski wrote for Stern magazine.

Obviously, Rolf Verleger and Evelyn Hecht-Galinski are self-hating Jews, for as “Natan Sharansky made clear, where Israel is criticized illegitimately, that is anti-Semitism,” writes Fiamma Nirenstein. “Israelis have difficulty understanding the nature of the polemical attacks used against the Jewish state. By being tarred as an apartheid, colonial, racist state, the enemy is merely employing anti-Semitic canards against Israel,” thus all criticism of Israel—beyond a tourist taking an Israeli restaurateur to task for bad dining experience or complaining about a rude hotel concierge—is antisemitism.

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, Third New International Edition, antisemitism is defined as “opposition to Zionism” and “sympathy for the opponents of Israel,” most notably the Palestinians and more recently the people of Lebanon, who are less innocent than Israelis because they attempted to defend their country against invasion.

“Ken Jacobson, the associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League, urged Merriam-Webster to retain the definition,” notes Wikipedia, after the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee complained to Merriam Webster directly over the inclusion of the spurious entry. “Zionism is the national expression of the Jewish people,” he told the New York Times, “and to deny that, it seems to me, most often reflects anti-Semitic views.” In other words, if you complain about Israel killing Palestinian school children or targeting Lebanese apartment buildings in the middle of the night, you are denying the “national expression of the Jewish people.”

Fearful of denying this “national expression of the Jewish people”—in reality translated as stealing Arab land and invading neighboring countries—and angering the Jews of Germany, Angela Merkel wimped out.

“Merkel and Knobloch, in the first meeting of its kind since the council’s president took office, discussed the situation of the Jewish community in Germany, the state of affairs in the Middle East and Germany’s cooperation with the United Nations in stabilizing Lebanon for over an hour.”

In short, the German head of state kissed Knobloch’s heinie and begged for forgiveness, never mind the cluster bombs and merciless Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.

Of course, this was to be expected, as Merkel is essentially a German version of a neocon, fully in support of Israel’s invasion and mass murder campaign in Lebanon.

“At a press conference in Germany [on July 13], Chancellor Angela Merkel lined up behind US President George Bush in supporting Israel’s expanding war of attrition in the Middle East. On the same day that Israeli fighter planes bombed Lebanon’s main airport, Bush and Merkel stood shoulder to shoulder to declare their solidarity with Israel,” writes Stefan Steinberg. “Merkel … raised the issue of the intensified fighting in the Gaza Strip and laid the entire blame for the Israeli invasion of Gaza and the expansion of its aggression into Lebanon on the Palestinians. The main issue, she said, was for Palestinian and Lebanese militants to return their captured prisoners and cease rocket attacks on Israel,” in other words, the Palestinians and Lebanese must accept Israeli domination and ethnic cleansing without resistance.

It would seem the question now is how long it will be before Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul is bounced.

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War, Crime, Propaganda, and Judeo-Fascism

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - Slithered back recently into the lexicon of the Bush administration, Israel's Ohmert crowd, and their supporters in the corporate media, a new meme to help you better understand what the dated, "War on Terror" really means, and what it demands of the citizenry: "Islamo-Fascism," and its interchangeable synonyms, "Islamic Fascism," and "Islamic Terrorism" are the action phrases of the day, and as with much of the language heard coming from these actors over the past years, the au courant terms describe best their authors' values and methods.

www.PEJ.org

War, Crime, Propaganda, and Judeo-Fascism

C. L. Cook

PEJ News

August 31, 2006

We needn't have witnessed the systematic destruction of Lebanon last month to appreciate the nature of Israel, we need only remember the ongoing systematic destruction of the Palestinian peoples, a project escalated this summer and quaintly dubbed by Israel 'Operation Summer Rains'.

Those "rain drops" are naturally not water, but a torrent of blazing steel and lead. These "rains" don't bring life to the hills, rivers, orchards, and beasts beneath them, but terrible death and heart-rending loss. And, for the Palestinians there is no umbrella, they are caught in the storm; no United Nations troops are urged to protect them from the Rainmakers across the wall.

The Palestinians, those surviving the repeated pogroms perpetrated by their neighbour to remain depite the murderous, and continuing Diaspora, are left to scratch a living out of the rubble, while Israeli tower guards snipe at their children, and rockets destroy their civic leaders and any unfortunates within a hundred yards of them. Daily, news of the freshly killed in Gaza and the West Bank could be heard before a shot was fired in Lebanon.

Every day, more civilians killed. Remember the family cut down while they barbecued on the beach? Remember the family dismembered in their flat by a "stray" Israeli missile? Recall the doctor kidnapped from Gaza, with his young son before Palestinians attacked a military outpost, killing several soldiers, and abducting one?

No? How about the campaign of "Sonic Straifing" carried out continuously over Gaza commencing last Autumn, (a tactic deployed too against the Lebanese last month)?

What the media and the U.N. have consistently failed to address in the recent tragedy brought upon Lebanon through the agency of the Israeli leadership, in collusion with their armourers in America, and callously carried out by the Israeli military is context. The depth of the United Nations' abrogation of their duty to justice for peoples and nations, as presented in the pitiful Resolution 1701 makes clear: The truth of the matter will not be addressed; Israel will not be punished for its blatant illegalities; No reproach either offered to the United States, Canada, and others in the international community who sanctioned Israel's unilateral destruction and continued blockade of Lebanon.

Of course these, Israel's signature pursuits, identically apply in Palestine, but are of no issue. Despite Kofi Annan's, seemingly made suddenly aware of Israel's brutality in occupied Palestine, harsh words parting directed to the rogue of the region are meaningless. It's doubtful Kofi's successor to the helm of the U.N. will waiver from Annan's long-practiced inaction where Israel is concerned; and, 1701 insures that.

Littered again with Israeli land-mines, uncounted thousands of unexploded cluster bomb "bomblets," and other munitions, the land and waters polluted with oil and Depleted Uranium, Lebanon is in ruins. More than a thousand Lebanese civilian dead counted so far, more to be discovered when the wreckage of their homes and offices are cleared, and more being killed and wounded daily by Israel's "left-behind" ordnance, and not a single line in Resolution 1701 calls on Israel to make reparations. In fact, that duty, as with the "DMZ- like buffer zone" is assigned to others, and to be implemented at Israel's pleasure, most incredibly, while Israeli soldiers continue to occupy portions of Lebanon.

While rumours of a greater war in the middle east and beyond near deafening, the United Nations sees fit, at this late date, to reward recalcitrant, reprobate, scofflaw Israel for its unwarranted aggression against a sovereign nation. This is, as the soon late-to-be Saddam Hussein may have called it, "The Mother of All Crimes." And, those sitting at Nuremberg and Geneva, Washington, London, and Paris agreed. They explicitly cite: "Unprovoked war of aggression" as the ultimate war crime, a crime against the peace from which all others follow. Yet today, neither the United Nations, nor the European Union, are willing to apply the law. America stands silent on this too, naturally, as it has stood silent so many times in the past, opting instead to further embolden its "client state" to loose ever more American-made munitions upon its neighbours.

With the November mid-term elections in the U.S. drawing close, George W. Bush has brushed off the old "Islamic Fascists" doggerel in hope to carry again his disreputable Republican regime to control of both Houses of Congress. It proves the desire, and desperation of his administration for further wars. In an article, linked here, Toronto Star writer, Eric Margolis cites, Colombia University Professor Robert Paxton’s 2004 book, 'The Anatomy of Fascism,' and Paxton's definition of fascism as:

"1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign 'contamination.'"

As Margolis observes: "Fascism demands a succession of wars, foreign conquests, and national threats to keep the nation in a state of fear, anxiety and patriotic hypertension. Those who disagree are branded ideological traitors."

With wars already burning in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and battered Lebanon teetering, all these of the making of the Bush administration and it's allies, those same criminals would call the world to arms to fight the "Islamic Fascists," proving again the verity of the schoolyard rejoinder: "What you say is what you are."



C. L. Cook is a contributing editor to PEJ News, and hosts Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. You can check out the GR Blog here.

Can You Really Not See?

By Amira Hass 08/30/06 "Haaretz." -- - -Let us leave aside those Israelis whose ideology supports the dispossession of the Palestinian people because "God chose us." Leave aside the judges who whitewash every military policy of killing and destruction. Leave aside the military commanders who knowingly jail an entire nation in pens surrounded by walls, fortified observation towers, machine guns, barbed wire and blinding projectors. Leave aside the ministers. All of these are not counted among the collaborators. These are the architects, the planners, the designers, the executioners. But there are others. Historians and mathematicians, senior editors, media stars, psychologists and family doctors, lawyers who do not support Gush Emunim and Kadima, teachers and educators, lovers of hiking trails and sing-alongs, high-tech wizards. Where are you? And what about you, researchers of Nazism, the Holocaust and Soviet gulags? Could you all be in favor of systematic discriminating laws? Laws stating that the Arabs of the Galilee will not even be compensated for the damages of the war by the same sums their Jewish neighbors are entitled to. Could it be that you are all in favor of a racist Citizenship Law that forbids an Israeli Arab from living with his family in his own home? That you side with further expropriation of lands and the demolishing of additional orchards, for another settler neighborhood and another exclusively Jewish road? That you all back the shelling and missile fire killing the old and the young in the Gaza Strip? Could it be that you all agree that a third of the West Bank (the Jordan Valley) should be off limits to Palestinians? That you all side with an Israeli policy that prevents tens of thousands of Palestinians who have obtained foreign citizenship from returning to their families in the occupied territories? Could your mind really be so washed with the security excuse, used to forbid Gaza students from studying occupational therapy at Bethlehem and medicine at Abu Dis, and preventing sick people from Rafah from receiving medical treatment in Ramallah? Will also you find it easy to hide behind the explanation "we had no idea": we had no idea that the discrimination practiced in the distribution of water - which is solely controlled by Israel - leaves thousands of Palestinian households without water during the hot summer months; we had no idea that when the IDF blocks the entrance to villages, it also blocks their access to springs or water tanks. But it cannot be that you don't see the iron gates along route 344 in the West Bank, blocking access to it from the Palestinian villages it passes by. It cannot be that you support preventing the access of thousands of farmers to their land and plantations, that you support the quarantine on Gaza which prevents the entry of medicine for hospitals, the disruption of electricity and water supply to 1.4 million human beings, closing their only outlet to the world for months. Could it be that you do not know what is happening 15 minutes from your faculties and offices? Is it plausible that you support the system in which Hebrew soldiers, at checkpoints in the heart of the West Bank, are letting tens of thousands of people wait everyday for hours upon hours under the blazing sun, while selecting: residents of Nablus and Tul Karm are not allowed through, 35-year-olds and under - yallah, back to Jenin, residents of the Salem village are not even allowed to be here, a sick woman who skipped the line must learn a lesson and will be purposefully detained for hours. Machsom Watch's site is available for all; in it are countless such testimonies and worse, a day by day routine. But it cannot be that those who are appalled over every swastika painted on a Jewish grave in France and over every anti-Semitic headline in a Spanish local newspaper will not know how to reach this information, and will not be appalled and outraged. As Jews we all enjoy the privilege Israel gives us, what makes us all collaborators. The question is what does every one of us do in an active and direct daily manner to minimize cooperation with a dispossessing, suppressing regime that never has its fill. Signing a petition and tutting will not do. Israel is a democracy for its Jews. We are not in danger of our lives, we will not be jailed in concentration camps, our livelihood will not be damaged and recreation in the countryside or abroad will not be denied to us. Therefore, the burden of collaboration and direct responsibility is immeasurably heavy. Amira Hass writes for Ha'aretz. She is the author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza. © Copyright 2006 Haaretz

Spy Pie: Porn and the CIA

August 29, 2006 at 16:03:15

Porn and the CIA (Your tax dollars at work)

by Mickey Z.


http://www.opednews.com

With a defense budget-hold on, let's dispense with the bullshit-with a "war" budget of over $350 billion dollars per year, did you ever wonder if all the legal tender being funneled away from social programs is making anyone except defense contractors feel safe? And just who are the clever folks trusted with the responsibility of deciding how that monumental sum is spent?

One doesn't exactly have to waste hours scouring accurate expenditures to get the feeling that U.S. decision makers fall neatly into the Austin Powers camp of spying. It might be comforting to convince ourselves that the CIA is efficient and necessary, but here's a fine example of American "intelligence" to help snap us out of our denial...and it involves one-time Indonesian president, Sukarno.

In 1948, George Kennan, head of the State Department post-war planning staff, called the resource-rich nation of Indonesia "the most crucial issue of the moment in our struggle with the Kremlin." At that time, Sukarno had been president of the world's largest Muslim nation for three years. "A star among Third World leaders, active in the nonaligned, anti-imperialist movement," author Mark Zepezauer says Sukarno had "long been a thorn in the side of the US. Worse yet, the Communist party (PKI) was part of his governing coalition."

"The PKI, nominally backed by Sukarno, was a legal and formidable organization and was the third largest Communist Party in the world," writes former CIA agent Ralph McGehee. Inevitably, Sukarno garnered the attention of that inventive gang of sleuths at the Central Intelligence Agency and covert U.S. support for his rivals in the Indonesian military hit full stride by 1957. That's just about the time that the CIA hatched a scheme to bring down the popular Indonesian leader-a scheme that would make Inspector Clousseau smile.

The basic idea was to portray the hated Sukarno in a pornographic film: getting frisky with his supposed Soviet spy mistress. (Note to younger readers: Yes, there was actually a time when appearing in a sex video was not considered a good career move.) "Our special Sukarno committee was formed to accomplish ... the production of a film, or at least some still photos, showing Sukarno and his Russian girlfriend engaged in his favorite activity," CIA operative Joseph Burkholder Smith writes in "Portrait of a Cold Warrior."

American taxpayers dollars went a long way in funding the CIA's neat idea (as Ollie North might have called it) of developing a full-face mask of Sukarno and then hiring an American porn actor in Los Angeles to wear it. History did not record who would handle the role of sexy Soviet mistress but it's not hard to imagine her looking something like Natasha in "Rocky and Bullwinkle."

"The resulting movie and some still photographs from it were passed around influential circles in Indonesia," explains Barry Hillenbrand in Time magazine. "But the CIA miscalculated. Rather than express surprise and outrage at their leader's apparent peccadilloes, Indonesians shrugged."

Shortly after that, the CIA went back to what it does best: covert military support and destabilization resulting in a bloody coup to install a dictator more amenable to America's desires.

Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.



http://www.mickeyz.net

Mickey Z. is the author of five books, most recently "50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed to Know: Reclaiming American Patriotism" (Disinformation Books). He can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.

NYT to Freedom of the Press: "Drop Dead!"

NYT to Freedom of the Press: "Drop Dead!"

Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque

Tuesday, 29 August 2006

Readers in the UK perusing the New York Times yesterday ran across an intriguing headline about new facts emerging in the "bomb terror plot" that recently shook the island kingdom. I say, what does America's "paper of record" have to say about this vital subject. Let's click the headline and…let's click again and…Where's the story? What's this message?


This Article Is Unavailable

On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain. This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial.


Yes, that's right: British users of the great universal information system of the age are being blocked from reading a story in America's most venerable and venerated newspaper – blocked not by government censorship, but by the newspaper itself. Who needs the KGB or the Stasi if the media watchdogs of a "free country" willingly snap the muzzle on themselves and lie down whimpering, thumping their tails at the bootheels of power?

And it wasn't just this newfangled internet gizmo that was blocked: "the shipment of yesterday's paper to London was stopped. The story was also omitted from the International Herald Tribune, the NYT's European sister paper," as the Guardian reports.

What accounts for this extraordinary situation? The Guardian explains:


…It is believed to be the first time that the paper has stopped British readers accessing one of its articles because of worries about UK law. Earlier this month, the home secretary, John Reid, and the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, issued a joint warning to the media to avoid coverage of the current terror investigations which might prejudice future trials. The statement threatened possible contempt proceedings against publications that failed to show appropriate "restraint".


That would be the same John Reid – the former Stalinist enforcer turned rightwing Blairite bullyboy in Labour's "four legs good, two legs better" regime – who immediately after the alleged bomb plot was uncovered took to the airwaves and spoke in no uncertain terms of the predetermined guilt of the terrorist suspects. It was Reid himself who prejudiced the case, in the most spectacular fashion. Reid's little confab with Lord Goldsmith – the legal eagle who cravenly reversed himself on the obvious illegality of the Iraq War after the White House and Blair leaned on him – had nothing to do with "protecting the rights" of the bomb plot suspects. (Blair after all has called for "rethinking" Britain's legal commitment to Europe's Human Rights Law, because of the "restrictions" this puts on his regime's maniacal drive to overturn the Magna Carta.)

No, what Reid (and the ever-acquiescent attorney general) want to do is intimidate the press from probing too deeply into the terror plot, from which the Blair government has tried to make so much political hay. (Without success, by the way; Blair, like Bush, is in free fall at the polls. His cynical mendacity and bloodthirsty lockstep with Bush have produced a true political miracle in Britain: the resurrection of the hated Tory Party, which had almost disappeared as a political force since 1997. Now the Conservatives are soaring in the polls, leading Labour by nine points.)

And so the New York Times is aiding and abetting this attempt to throttle the free flow of information in a supposed democracy. What is truly sinister about this cowardice is the precedent it sets for the paper's future policy. Hearken to the strange black-and-white rationale of this self-censorship delivered by George Freeman, vice president and assistant general counsel of the New York Times Company:


"…We're dealing with a country [the UK] that, while it doesn't have a First Amendment, it does have a free press, and it's our position that we ought to respect that country's laws."


Dig the pretzel logic: because the UK has a "free press," we should bend our knee to its laws that, er, restrict the freedom of the press. "We ought to respect that country's laws."

So when will the New York Times start blocking Chinese readers from reading stories that might violate "that country's laws"? (Those Chinese readers who have somehow circumvented the Reidish restrictions that Beijing's enforcers have clamped on the internet, that is.) Hey, the United States has a "free press," too; should the New York Times stop publishing stories using leaks of classified information that might violate "that country's laws?" If you're going to bow down to John Reid, why not to George Bush too while you're at it? Are Britain's press-restriction laws somehow more honorable than the shackles Bush, Al Gonzales and the whole sick crew are trying to put on America's media?

But you can be sure the next time the New York Times is under fire from the White House and the rightwing echo chamber for publishing classified material from a whistleblower (or from some savvy player in the Regime's own internecine warfare), the paper will send out the call: "Stand up for us, friends! The freedom of the press is being attacked! Help us defend our sacred liberties! Help us speak truth to power and cast a torchlight on the darkness of government skullduggery!"

I guess it's OK to kill the freedom of the press – as long as it's suicide, not a whack job from outside. We can campaign for "net neutrality" and maintaining the unrestricted, gloriously anarchic freedom of the internet from government encroachment until we're blue in the face; we can pour our hearts and souls into it, lobby Congress, write letters, lead protest marches and what all – but it's not going to mean a damn thing if the media itself is going to fall down and grovel in a paroxysm of trembly "respect" whenever they're confronted with the onerous press restrictions of the various principalities and powers of the world.

This is a major defeat for press freedom – a craven surrender offered up meekly without even firing a shot.

Lebanon, Lebanon

Lebanon, Lebanon
John Le Carré
29 - 8 - 2006


The attacks on Lebanon's infrastructure and civilians will rebound on Israel for years to come, says John Le Carré.


So answer me this one, please. If you kill a hundred innocent civilians and one terrorist, are you winning or losing the war on terror? "Ah", you may reply, "but that one terrorist could kill two hundred people, a thousand, more!" But then comes another question: if, by killing a hundred innocent people, you are creating five new terrorists in the future, and a popular base clamouring to give them aid and comfort, have you achieved a net gain for future generations of your countrymen, or created the enemy you deserve?


Also by John Le Carré in openDemocracy:

"A predatory and dishonest war"
(January 2003)

This was the opening contribution of a symposium among writers, artists and civic leaders responding to the build-up to the war in Iraq that was to be launched in March 2003:

"The American over-reaction is beyond everything Osama could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. But this war was planned long before Osama struck, and it is Osama who made it possible. Without him, the Bush junta would have been mired in Enron, electoral scandal and taxation sleaze. Thanks to Osama, Americans are instead being daily misled by their leaders and by their compliant corporate media."



On 12 July 2006 the Israeli chief-of-staff granted us an insight into the subtleties of his nation's military thinking. The military operations being planned for the Lebanon, he told us, would "turn back the clock by twenty years". Well, I was there twenty years ago, and it wasn't a pretty picture. Since then, the lieutenant-general has been as good as his word. I am writing this just twenty-eight days after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, a common enough military practice not unknown to the Israelis themselves.

In that time, 932 Lebanese have been killed and more than 3,000 wounded. 913,000 have become refugees. Israel's dead number ninety-four, with 867 wounded. In the first week of this conflict, Hizbollah fired some ninety rockets a day into Israel. Last week – despite 8,700 unopposed bombing sorties flown by the Israeli air force, resulting in the crippling of Beirut's international airport, and the destruction of power-plants, fuel-dumps, fishing-fleets, 147 bridges and seventy-two roads – Hizbollah upped its daily average of rockets to 169. And those two Israeli prisoners who were the purported cause of all the fuss have still not come home.

So yes. Exactly as we were warned, Israel has indeed done to the Lebanon what it did to it twenty years ago: laid waste its infrastructure and visited collective punishment on a delicate, multicultural, resilient democracy that was struggling to reconcile its sectarian differences and live in profitable harmony with its neighbours.

Until four weeks ago, Lebanon was being heralded by the United States as a model of what other middle-eastern countries might become. Hizbollah, it was widely and perhaps optimistically believed by the international community, was loosening its ties with Syria and Iran and on the way to becoming a political rather than a purely military force, yet today this very force is the toast of all Arabia, Israel's reputation for military supremacy is in tatters and its cherished deterrent image no longer deters. And the people of Lebanon have become the latest victims of a global catastrophe that is the work of deluded zealots and has no end in sight.

This piece was written in support of Lebanon, Lebanon, to be published by Saqi on 28 September 2006; all proceeds will go to children's charities working in Lebanon

© David Cornwell, 2006

Hamas, Hizbullah Face Their Greatest Challenges

Hamas and Hizbullah are two resistance movements on different paths. But both must effectively transition from armed resistance to governance. How successfully they do this will significantly affect the Arab region in the months ahead.


-------------------
Advisory Release: 29 August 2006
Rights & Permissions Contact: Agence Global, 1.336.686.9002, rights@agenceglobal.com
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Hamas, Hizbullah Face Their Greatest Challenges
by Rami G. Khouri


BEIRUT -- The Arab world's two leading self-styled "Islamic resistance movements" -- Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine -- seem to be moving in different directions, but there are lessons to be learned from both. The main one is that armed resistance is primarily a means for these groups. Their ultimate goal is a national order that reflects their society's valid concerns on political legitimacy, sovereignty, ideology and social values. Above all, their success reflects their ability to respond to the real needs of their constituents, rather than to promote any sort of ideal Islamic society or espouse revolutionary rhetoric and wage perpetual war.

As Hizbullah holds its own in Lebanon and the region, it also finds itself preoccupied with the challenges of shifting its center of gravity -- or at least its international image -- from guns to governance. After achieving the two striking feats of driving the Israeli army out of south Lebanon in 2000 and fighting it to a draw in 2006, it has no room left for military endeavors, and nothing more to prove on the battlefield.

It asserted itself in recent years by defying five parties: a weak Lebanese central government, other Lebanese political groups, Israel, the United States, and the dominant regimes in the Arab world. In return, these forces have now physically and politically hemmed it in: The Israeli army will destroy all Lebanon after the next provocation, the Lebanese government has moved 15,000 soldiers to the south, the UN Security Council dispatched another 15,000 international peace-keepers, and Lebanese and Arab political leaders call on Hizbullah to engage and integrate fully in the national governance and security system.

History suggests that fighting resistance wars to liberate one's occupied land is much more straightforward than making a subsequent transition to political responsibility. Hizbullah's most important test is just starting: It must erase the haze of its own inscrutability, remove the ambiguity of its relations with Iran and Syria, and slay the demons of mistrust that plague its relations with many key players, especially in Lebanon. It can do this and retain its integrity and impact, but only if it applies the same serious operating principles to the political realm that it has applied in recent years militarily, socially and in terms of its sheer focus, courage and efficiency.

The parallel lessons from Palestine are instructive and sobering. The Palestinian national resistance movement against Zionism and Western powers since the 1930s has passed through erratic stages of success and failure. The Fateh-dominated PLO made some major political achievements regionally and globally in the 1970s and 80s, only to sink into a sad cycle of complacency, corruption and incompetence after 1990. This ultimately led to its own marginalization, and the political and physical destruction of many aspects of Palestinian society.

Three key responses to this institutional mediocrity and political failure were the rise of Hamas and smaller Islamist groups, the waging of two grassroots and largely spontaneous popular intifadas against Israeli occupation, and the fragmentation of society into local political-military wards, militias and gangs. Hamas' success in resisting Israel militarily ultimately helped drive Israel out of Gaza; it achieved parallel political success in winning local and national elections in 2005-2006.

Its overall trajectory, however, has been more difficult than Hizbullah's. This is mainly because it has been fought simultaneously by a brutal Israeli military and political assault, Fateh and other Arab governments that fear its ilk, and the United States and Europe who have sanctioned and tried to break it. Yet it has also performed poorly in many cases, unable to build on the credibility and legitimacy that it had achieved since its founding less than two decades ago.

A respected member of Hamas in Gaza has now publicly admonished his fellow ruling Islamists and other Palestinians for their failures, charging that, "Gaza is suffering under the yoke of anarchy and the swords of thugs," and since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza a year ago, "life became a nightmare and an intolerable burden."

These sentiments were published in an article Sunday by Ghazi Hamad, a former Hamas newspaper editor and the spokesman for the current Hamas government. He urged Palestinians to examine their own performance and not blame Israel for all their problems and failures, though he also seemed to place most of the blame on assorted Fateh-linked armed groups in Gaza. His most important point was his insistence on "self-criticism and self-evaluation," instead of the habit of "blaming our mistakes on others."

Hamas has been through tough moments before, including repeated assassinations of its leaders, mass deportations and jailings of its members, and the current political and economic boycott of Israel, the United States and Europe. In light of the lessons of Hizbullah's performance in Lebanon, Hamas must now adjust quickly or risk the same doomed, but self-inflicted, fate as Fateh and the PLO.

As Ghazi Hamad aptly challenged it and Palestinian society to do, it needs to examine its own ways in order to achieve success by being more accountable to its constituents, rather than faithful to fiery or emotional slogans. The performance of Hizbullah and Hamas in the months ahead are worth monitoring, for they will impact greatly on political trends throughout the Arab world.


Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, and editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star.

Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 29 August 2006
Word Count: 867
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Agence Global is the exclusive syndication agency for The Nation, The American Prospect, Le Monde diplomatique, as well as expert commentary by Richard Bulliet, Mark Hertsgaard, Rami G. Khouri, Tom Porteous, Patrick Seale and Immanuel Wallerstein.

Findin Holes in Canada's 'Anti-Terror' Law

Public interest defence way around anti-terror law provisions for media, lawyer argues

Don Butler
CanWest News Service


Friday, August 25, 2006


OTTAWA - A federal lawyer presented a ''modest proposal'' Thursday that he said ensures a contentious section of the federal anti-terrorism law remains well within constitutional bounds, arguing that a public interest defence would limit the scope of the section.

Section 4 of the Security of Information Act makes it a criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison, to give, receive or possess a wide range of ''official secret'' government information and documents.

But Justice Department lawyer Robert Frater proposed that the section's scope is effectively limited by two things - the federal Access to Information Act, and a public interest defence that he argued is available in common law.

The RCMP used Section 4 to obtain search warrants authorizing raids on the home and office of Ottawa Citizen journalist Juliet O'Neill in January 2004 after she wrote a story about Maher Arar based in part on leaked government documents.

Lawyers for the paper and others have argued this week in Ontario Superior Court that the section is so vague and broad that it should be struck down for violating Charter of Rights guarantees of freedom of expression.

He told Judge Lynn Ratushny that the 1983 access act, which provides a right of public access to government documents unless they are specifically exempted, ''fundamentally improved our understanding of what could be given out and what could be withheld.''

It affects the Security of Information Act, he argued, ''because it is a relevant indicator of what secret official information is. Does the access act help me know if I'm entering a zone of risk? I say, of course it does.''

Frater also said Thursday that those who release or distribute secret official information can escape criminal conviction if they can convince a court they were acting in the public interest.

Section 4 is silent on public interest as a defence, but Frater said both Parliament and the Supreme Court have accepted public interest defences in other criminal laws.

Ratushny, he suggested, could reasonably read a public interest defence into Section 4.

''There's nothing illegitimate in considering, as a matter of principle, whether that defence exists.''

The media's main concern, he said, is that government officials might unreasonably withhold authorization to release information of pressing public interest.

''To the extent that we need a safeguard in this statute, it's against that possibility - that authorization will be unreasonably withheld. If you have a public interest defence, it alleviates that concern.''

Such a defence, along with the option of seeking judicial review, he argued, ''ensures a check on government power that is responsive to free speech concerns.''

Though Section 4 forms part of the federal anti-terrorism law, Frater said its main purpose is to deter "the unauthorized release of secret official government information.

''It's about the breach of trust essential to the relationship between the government and its employees.''

In a factum filed with the court, Frater said deterrence of leaking underlies Section 4's criminalization of receipt and retention of secret information.

As well, he said, criminalizing receipt and retention ''is consistent with general criminal law practice that focuses on transactions Parliament wishes to deter. Thus the thief and the fence, the drug trafficker and the possessor, the prostitute and the john, are all liable to prosecution to attempt to stop the conduct in question.''

In the event Ratushny strikes down all or part of Section 4, Frater asked the declaration of invalidity be suspended for one year to permit Parliament to amend the section. A parliamentary committee is currently studying the section, and is expected to report in late December.

If the search warrants authorizing the raids on O'Neill are quashed, Frater also asked Ratushny to hold property seized during the raids for 30 days to allow the government to apply for a new search warrant under different authority.

That, declared Ottawa Citizen lawyer David Paciocco, ''is the most audacious submission I've ever heard.''

Ottawa Citizen

© CanWest News Service 2006

Presenting the Freedom Agenda: George W. Bush's Newly Birthed Spin

PEJ News - C. L. Cook - I'll admit: I'm a sucker for a well turned phrase. And Dubya's overworked PR machine has provided a plethora of, if not veritable, then memorable examples of these. Pressed yesterday during a Q & A with reporters to explain his umpteenth repetition of an implied connection between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the September 11th attacks, George Bush unveiled the new and improved, rebranded logo for his long-stale War on Terror label.

www.PEJ.org

Presenting the Freedom Agenda:
George W. Bush's Newly Birthed Spin

C. L. Cook

PEJ News
August 22, 2006


It has all the elements: Short and punchy; vague and open to interpretation; historically vacant and wilfully ignorant of the current situation; sizzling with sound bite pizzazz to appeal to a mindless press. In short, a real winner!

Answering the intrepid reporter, likely not to find work within a hundred yards of the "President" again, Mr. Bush said:

"The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East."

The Freedom Agenda

Usually these PR gems are saved for major addresses and such, and so may have the plans for the debut of this sure to become immortal bit of flackery been; but as another great maestro of the turn of a phrase once cautioned: "The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley."

A-gley sums up the recent careers of George and his merry band of nitwits nicely. But this is no ode to mice we've seen unfold across the Middle East these last terrible years. And it may be said, has been said, that George and his wrecking crew never had an ounce's concern for democracy, or its implicit agenda of freedom.

Risking falling into the dread "conspiracy theorist" ash can, I wonder if the reputedly linguistically challenged, intellectually awkward George of the Bungle really let go his load prematurely with TFA, or was this just another clever way to have the press, and other useful idiots, send his semaphore up the old flag pole for him to see who would salute? It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

Here's a snippet from Bush's epic encounter with the fourth estate yesterday.


QUESTION: What did Iraq have to do with it?

BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?

QUESTION: The attack on the World Trade Center.

BUSH: Nothing. Except it’s part of — and nobody has suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — Iraq — the lesson of September 11th is take threats before they fully materialize, Ken. Nobody’s ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq.”

Well, I might have been premature with the whole Bush cleverly planted this meme purposefully thing; might be a bit of a stretch. It's possible he really did get flustered enough, being unused to the media sassing back, that he really did spill the beans on the administration's next Newspeak headline.

Now, the fun will be seeing what, after all those pencils worn to stubs at Bush's PR HQ to get to; "The Freedom Agenda" are gonna come up with next. Will it be in time for His next big public address? "Quick somebody, call up David Frum!"

Perhaps it's much ado over nothing. Bush doesn't really need new material; he has been reading from the original script for years. Why mess with a good thing now? Why indeed. George and company seem intent on carrying through their own "agenda" to make of the Middle East a cauldron, a crucible in which to forge their vision of the future.

Yesterday's little fracas with the press is just one of many examples of the nation's unease with the direction Bush and his tight group are taking the country. When I say, "the nation" I mean of course the wafer thin elite ruling the airwaves and holding most of the wealth. It seems the short leash those masters of America thought contained their servant George is proving too thin to constrain some of his baser instincts. But, a rap on the nose with a rolled newspaper may too be too little too late to bring him to heel.

To George and Dick, Don and Richard, Paul and Doug, their project has proven a great success so far. They have accomplished, in part, what they set out to do; now all that remains is to finish the job in Iran and Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan.

And if that can't now be called 'The Freedom Agenda,' it will be called something else,
but to they it will be simply a rose by another name.



C. L. Cook is a contributing editor to PEJ News, and host of Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria. You can check out the GR Blog here.

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Doubts about Karzai growing in Afghanistan

Doubts about Karzai growing in Afghanistan
By Carlotta Gall The New York Times

Published: August 22, 2006


After months of widespread frustration in Afghanistan over corruption, the economy and a lack of justice and security, doubts about President Hamid Karzai have led to a crisis of confidence in the country.

Interviews with ordinary Afghans, foreign diplomats and Afghan officials make clear that the expanding Taliban insurgency in the south represents the most serious challenge yet to Karzai's presidency.

The insurgency has precipitated an eruption of doubts about Karzai, widely viewed as having failed to attend to a range of problems that have left Afghans asking what the government is doing.

Corruption is so widespread, the government apparently so lethargic, and the divide between rich and poor so great, that Karzai is losing public support, warn officials like Ahmad Fahim Hakim, vice chairman of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.

"Nothing that he promised has materialized," Hakim said, echoing the comments of diplomats and others in Kabul, the capital. "Beneath the surface it is boiling."

For the first time since Karzai took power four and half years ago, Afghans and diplomats are speculating about who might replace him. Most agree that the answer for now is no one, leaving the fate of the U.S.-led military involvement in Afghanistan intimately tied to Karzai's own success or failure.

On Tuesday, Karzai's office announced that he had spoken that day with President George W. Bush, who assured him of continued American support. Karzai had also accepted Bush's invitation to visit Washington.

Karzai, a consummate tribal politician, has been the cornerstone of the U.S.-led effort to create a centralized democratic government in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban government driven from power in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

To his supporters, he has managed to keep the peace in a fractious society by giving regional warlords and armed leaders a stake in power, while managing to set the country on the road to a democratic future.

"The perception of growing insecurity has affected the psyche of the Afghan people," Jawed Ludin, the president's chief of staff, said in a telephone interview from Kabul. But he called it a reality check rather than a crisis.

He said that people "still trust" Karzai and "still think he can lead them."

But the costs of his compromises are becoming harder to stomach for average Afghans and some foreign donors. Critics say they have insulated many people from the benefits of democratic change and have hampered the running of the president's administration and local government.

Riots in Kabul on May 29, which killed 17 people in the worst violence in the capital since the Taliban were ousted, were a wake-up call, many there say.

The violence came after three Afghans were killed by a runaway American military truck, and four more killed when American soldiers fired into an angry crowd.

Protesters later rampaged through the streets, attacking foreign offices and chanting "Death to Karzai," an indication of how he is blamed for the growing disenchantment.

"He was shaken," said a Western diplomat, asking not to be named because of the political content of his remarks.

Recriminations against Karzai have continued, and his own missteps have not helped redeem his political standing.

In a reaction to the riots, Karzai appointed a powerful local commander with known links to organized crime as police chief of Kabul. He also appointed to senior police posts 13 former commanders who were to have been weeded out under long-awaited improvements in the police system.

Karzai's aides indicated that the steps were necessary to ensure security in the capital. But the appointments further alienated foreign diplomats and aid workers as well as ordinary Afghans.

"He is too accommodating," said Joanna Nathan, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, a policy research organization. "The police reform was incredibly disappointing."

Recent interviews with a range of Afghans illustrated a common theme of complaints against corrupt and self- serving government officials.

Earlier this month, 60 members of the Parliament, which has until now been largely supportive, signed a statement protesting the appointment of certain officials and the poor performance of his government.

A group of elders from Baghlan Province, in northern Afghanistan, said they had come to Kabul to seek the replacement of their governor, who they said was concerned only with his own power and did nothing for his people. But they had no success.

"We just want a neutral, impartial governor," Abdul Shukur Urfani, one of the representatives, said. "People will start demonstrating because they are dissatisfied with what the government is doing."

Karzai has dismissed many such problems as petty corruption, but the range of corruption in fact runs both large and small.

At one end of the scale is a housing scandal from three years ago, when cabinet ministers, in Karzai's absence, awarded themselves and friends prime real estate in Kabul, where land prices have shot up since the U.S. invasion.

An investigation was quietly dropped and the officials were allowed to build their ostentatious villas, which now tower above passers-by as a constant reminder of official excess. Elsewhere, though corruption is small in scale, it has an enormous impact on the poor, which is most of the population.

After months of widespread frustration in Afghanistan over corruption, the economy and a lack of justice and security, doubts about President Hamid Karzai have led to a crisis of confidence in the country.

Interviews with ordinary Afghans, foreign diplomats and Afghan officials make clear that the expanding Taliban insurgency in the south represents the most serious challenge yet to Karzai's presidency.

The insurgency has precipitated an eruption of doubts about Karzai, widely viewed as having failed to attend to a range of problems that have left Afghans asking what the government is doing.

Corruption is so widespread, the government apparently so lethargic, and the divide between rich and poor so great, that Karzai is losing public support, warn officials like Ahmad Fahim Hakim, vice chairman of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.

"Nothing that he promised has materialized," Hakim said, echoing the comments of diplomats and others in Kabul, the capital. "Beneath the surface it is boiling."

For the first time since Karzai took power four and half years ago, Afghans and diplomats are speculating about who might replace him. Most agree that the answer for now is no one, leaving the fate of the U.S.-led military involvement in Afghanistan intimately tied to Karzai's own success or failure.

On Tuesday, Karzai's office announced that he had spoken that day with President George W. Bush, who assured him of continued American support. Karzai had also accepted Bush's invitation to visit Washington.

Karzai, a consummate tribal politician, has been the cornerstone of the U.S.-led effort to create a centralized democratic government in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban government driven from power in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

To his supporters, he has managed to keep the peace in a fractious society by giving regional warlords and armed leaders a stake in power, while managing to set the country on the road to a democratic future.

"The perception of growing insecurity has affected the psyche of the Afghan people," Jawed Ludin, the president's chief of staff, said in a telephone interview from Kabul. But he called it a reality check rather than a crisis.

He said that people "still trust" Karzai and "still think he can lead them."

But the costs of his compromises are becoming harder to stomach for average Afghans and some foreign donors. Critics say they have insulated many people from the benefits of democratic change and have hampered the running of the president's administration and local government.

Riots in Kabul on May 29, which killed 17 people in the worst violence in the capital since the Taliban were ousted, were a wake-up call, many there say.

The violence came after three Afghans were killed by a runaway American military truck, and four more killed when American soldiers fired into an angry crowd.

Protesters later rampaged through the streets, attacking foreign offices and chanting "Death to Karzai," an indication of how he is blamed for the growing disenchantment.

"He was shaken," said a Western diplomat, asking not to be named because of the political content of his remarks.

Recriminations against Karzai have continued, and his own missteps have not helped redeem his political standing.

In a reaction to the riots, Karzai appointed a powerful local commander with known links to organized crime as police chief of Kabul. He also appointed to senior police posts 13 former commanders who were to have been weeded out under long-awaited improvements in the police system.

Karzai's aides indicated that the steps were necessary to ensure security in the capital. But the appointments further alienated foreign diplomats and aid workers as well as ordinary Afghans.

"He is too accommodating," said Joanna Nathan, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, a policy research organization. "The police reform was incredibly disappointing."

Recent interviews with a range of Afghans illustrated a common theme of complaints against corrupt and self- serving government officials.

Earlier this month, 60 members of the Parliament, which has until now been largely supportive, signed a statement protesting the appointment of certain officials and the poor performance of his government.

A group of elders from Baghlan Province, in northern Afghanistan, said they had come to Kabul to seek the replacement of their governor, who they said was concerned only with his own power and did nothing for his people. But they had no success.

"We just want a neutral, impartial governor," Abdul Shukur Urfani, one of the representatives, said. "People will start demonstrating because they are dissatisfied with what the government is doing."

Karzai has dismissed many such problems as petty corruption, but the range of corruption in fact runs both large and small.

At one end of the scale is a housing scandal from three years ago, when cabinet ministers, in Karzai's absence, awarded themselves and friends prime real estate in Kabul, where land prices have shot up since the U.S. invasion.

An investigation was quietly dropped and the officials were allowed to build their ostentatious villas, which now tower above passers-by as a constant reminder of official excess. Elsewhere, though corruption is small in scale, it has an enormous impact on the poor, which is most of the population.

Unexploded cluster bombs prompt fear and fury in returning refugees

Unexploded cluster bombs prompt fear and fury in returning refugees

Four dead as mine-clearing teams fear death toll from Israeli weapons could soar

Declan Walsh in Yahmour
Monday August 21, 2006
The Guardian


When the guns went silent in Aitta Shaab, a war-ravaged village close to the Israeli border, three children skipped through the rubble looking for a little fun.
Hurdling over lumps of crushed concrete and dodging spikes of twisted metal, Sukna, Hassan and Merwa, aged 10 to 12, paused before a curious object. Sukna picked it up. The terrifying blast flung her to the ground, thrusting metal shards into her liver. Hassan's abdomen was cut open. Merwa was hit in the leg and arm.

"We thought it was just a little ball," said Hassan with a hoarse whisper in the intensive care ward at Tyre's Jabal Amel hospital. In the next bed Sukna, a ventilator cupped to her mouth and a tangle of tubes from her arms, said even less.
Her mother watched anxiously. "The Israelis wanted to defeat Hizbullah," said Najah Saleh, 40. "But what did these children ever do to them?"

Israel may be pulling out of Lebanon but its soldiers leave behind a lethal legacy of this summer's 34-day war. The south is carpeted with unexploded cluster bombs, innocuous looking black canisters, barely larger than a torch battery, which pose a deadly threat to villagers stumbling back to their homes.

Mine-clearing teams scrambling across the region have logged 89 cluster bomb sites so far, and expect to find about 110 more. Meanwhile, casualties are being taken into hospital - four dead and 21 injured so far. Officials fear the toll could eventually stretch into the thousands.

"We already had a major landmine problem from previous Israeli invasions, but this is far worse," said Chris Clark of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre in Tyre, standing before a map filled with flags indicating bomb sites.

Cluster bombs are permitted under international law, but UN and human rights officials claim Israel violated provisions forbidding their use in urban areas. "We're finding them in orange plantations, on streets, in cars, near hospitals - pretty much everywhere," Mr Clark said.

The bombs are ejected from artillery shells in mid-flight, showering a wide area with explosions that can kill within 10 metres (33ft). But up to a quarter fail to explode, creating minefields that kill civilians once the war is over. A decades-old campaign to ban them has failed.

Israel turned to cluster bombs in the last week of the war, apparently frustrated at the failure of conventional weapons to rout Hizbullah fighters from their foxholes. Mine-clearance teams are finding evidence pointing to their provenance: the US, the world's largest cluster bomb manufacturer, which gave Israel $2.2bn (£1.2bn) in military aid last year.

In Nabatiye, 15 people were injured in just one day along a bomb-strewn road. In Tibnin, 210 bombs were found around the town hospital. "That's about as inappropriate [a use of cluster bombs] as you can get," Mr Clark said.

In Yahmour, a hilly frontline village that has become a complex urban minefield, minesweepers from the UK-based Mine Action Group have cleared the main roads and some house entrances. But danger lurks everywhere. One elderly woman lost her leg in an explosion last Monday as she swept her yard.

Now holes pock the road, yellow tape appears around fields and houses, and residents tip-toe around the "grape bombs". Ilham Tarhini, 45, stood at her front door appealing for help. After returning from refuge in Syria three days ago she found tiny bomblets poking from the soil of her garden of olive trees. From where she was standing she could count eight: "I'm afraid to step into the streets."

But the most volatile payload sat in Jamil Zuhoor's living room. During the war an unexploded rocket packed with bomblets punched through his front wall, skidding to a halt before a chest of drawers. "I can't see us moving back in here for another year at least," he said, shutting the door of his shattered house.

The UN is appealing for money and minesweepers. With such help it hopes the worst-hit areas can be cleared within six months, Mr Clarke said. But until then residents live in fear.

Many share the blame equally between Israel and the US. "It's like we are living in a prison," said Aisa Hussain, 38, a Yahmour resident who has ordered his children to remain inside his house.

Strolling through the village he pointed to yet another tiny black canister perched under a tree. "You see what America is sending us," he said bitterly. "This is their idea of democracy."

Backstory

Cluster bombs were first used by the Germans in the second world war but have become a standard weapon for many countries, including Britain, France and Italy.

The most popular delivery device, the American-made M26 rocket, scatters 644 bomblets over 20,000 square metres. Under test conditions up to 23% of bomblets from the M26 failed to explode on impact. The United States keeps 370,000 such rockets in stock.

The M26 inflicted hundreds of civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003, says Human Rights Watch, over populated areas. The British army used M26s in the 1991 Gulf war

The US halted cluster bomb exports to Israel in 1982 after indiscriminate use against civilians but rescinded the ban in 1988. Belgium is the only country in the world that has banned cluster bombs.