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Two of the curious things missing from commentary on the ongoing Israeli destruction of Lebanon and their reoccupation of the Palestinian territories, are any reference to UN resolution 425 and its mandates and the lies told about the so-called “kidnapping” of Israeli soldiers.
Back on the 19th March 1978 the international community and the UN Security Council were concerned about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, an occupation eerily similar to today’s “troop deployments” and “incursions”. Back then the Security Council
Twenty-eight years later, with over 400 Lebanese dead, thousands wounded and the basic infrastructure of the nation destroyed, the US once more refuses to call off its Middle Eastern proxy, Israel. The US vetoed Resolution 425 in 1978, it even though the majority of the Security Council endorsed it. This resolution is only one of the 35 Security Council Resolutions the US has vetoed in an attempt to shield Israel from international sanctions and one of the over 90 Resolutions opposing Israeli aggression. In fact, the US has vetoed every Resolution in the Security Council that calls on Israel to conform to international law. Nothing has changed since 1978.
Since the Israeli government made it clear that they were not prepared to allow even the slightest hint of democracy to break out in the region, in the last three weeks it has reoccupied the Gaza strip and overthrown the democratically elected Palestinian government and again invaded Lebanon, destroying its hopes for democracy. All the while good ol’ Condi Rice continues to use the rhetoric of “Israeli security” and “Israeli restraint” while her government supplies high tech, laser guided weapons that are used against ambulances, schools, hospitals, community centres, power stations and water treatment plants in Lebanon and Gaza.
The attitude of the Israeli government was summed up in a Saturday Age newspaper article which quoted the IDF commander, General Dan Halutz, a former Israeli air force pilot, as saying that all he felt when he dropped the bombs on Gaza that killed 13 people, most of them children, was a “slight bump.” He said “… a slight bump … that’s what I feel.” Despite the mock hand wringing and crocodile tears, I suggest the Israeli government feels only a ‘bump’ as its tanks steamroll over the lives of its ‘enemies’.
While Lebanese children, women and men continue to die at the hands of Israel’s military forces at a rate of over 10 times that of Israelis, Condi, “the thin lady”, is quite unperturbed by her own comment, full of irony, that “There's an obligation, when you’re elected democratically, not to try to have one foot in terror and one foot in politics.” Meanwhile her government’s funding allows Israel to invade Lebanon and Gaza all the while continuing to lie about the so-called “kidnapping” of Israeli solders at a “border crossing”.
There was no border crossing. It never happened. Why? Because the Israelis are already occupying huge swathes of Southern Lebanon up to 10 kilometres deep in contravention of UN Security Council Resolutions 508, 509 and 587 all of which call for the unconditional withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanese soil.
When the Israelis said they would withdraw from Lebanon in 1978, just like in Gaza and the West Bank, they never left. Since then the UN has operated the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). UNIFIL officers keep watch over a 10 kilometre wide “buffer zone” on the Lebanese side of the border into which Israel makes “incursions”. It is for this reason that you might see, on your nightly news, the Israeli tanks and troop carriers avoiding the internationally regarded border crossings and illegally entering another nation’s sovereign territory. The UNIFIL border posts and officers have been attacked by both sides but it is Israel that does not recognised UNIFIL as having any legitimacy. The deliberate and calculated targeting and murder of four UN monitors demonstrates the contempt with which Israel and its sponsor, the US, hold the international community and overwhelming public opinion. Meanwhile the Israeli’s continue to fund the Lebanese Christian militias who often carry out their dirty work on Lebanese soil.
In short, the Israeli armed forces have conducted a military occupation of this area since 1978 with total disregard for international law and so it is impossible for a “border crossing” to have occurred in relation to the so-called kidnapping. The Israeli soldiers were already on Lebanese soil. Therefore any reports that “Hezbollah fighters crossed into Israel …” is fallacious. The truth is quite the reverse. Newspeak at its most dangerous and inane. For the occupiers, as Orwell said, war is peace.
It’s quite obvious that the most recent attacks against innocent Lebanese and Palestinians and now UN observers, was not a swift and sudden response to anything. A more likely scenario is that the Israeli and US governments were waiting for some precipitous event from which they could claim some twisted form of moral high ground and do what it is they have been itching to do since Hamas was voted into government by the Palestinians. I suggest that also in their minds is that the UN will buckle under the threat of further attacks and not extend the mandate for UNIFIL beyond the July 31, 2006 cut off date. If the mandate is not renewed by then, the UN will have to withdraw and the carnage on the Lebanese side of the border will, forthwith, make what has already occurred seem like the proverbial Sunday picnic. Make no mistake, a good part of this battle is about bringing the UN’s mission in the region to a halt and I suggest the US representative on the Security Council, John Bolton, is doing all he can to ensure this occurs.
Nonetheless, Condi Rice doesn’t see the irony of her comments and neither would the ideologues in the Knesset, the White House or Canberra. The fact that President Bush and Prime Minister Howard have not come out and condemned Israel shows the whole US and Australian administrations are full and complicit partners with it in its Middle Eastern reign of terror. And don’t look to our opposition for any relief. Our so-called opposition endorses Israeli bellicosity and supports their deadly intentions one hundred percent.
Also ironic is that Condi has been referring to UN Security Council Resolution 1559 as some form of justification to allow the continued Israeli aggression. She cites the need for the government of Lebanon to obey 1559 and other UN resolutions and ban Hezbollah but she ignores those parts of 1559 which call for “the strict respect of the sovereignty, territorial integrity, unity, and political independence of Lebanon under the sole and exclusive authority of the Government of Lebanon throughout Lebanon”.
The current aggression, deaths and murders taking place in Lebanon and Gaza are indeed “complicated matters”. However, what is not complicated are the lies perpetrated and hypocrisy demonstrated by the Israeli, US and Australian governments. The destruction of the lives and hopes, dreams and aspirations of innocent Semitic civilians is nothing more than state sponsored terror. The blood of the dead calls to us to hear the lies and deception perpetrated against them in the name of power and to reject the commentary that sheets blame on them, the innocent victims.