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Israeli Cluster Munitions Threaten Civilians

17 August 2006


NABATIYEH — United Nations deminers beginning emergency survey and clearance work in the south of Lebanon have identified 10 locations where Israel used artillery-delivered cluster munitions during the recent hostilities, Human Rights Watch reported today. Human Rights Watch researchers in Lebanon have inspected two of those sites in the village of Kfar Roummane. Dangerous unexploded submunitions, duds that fail to detonate on impact but are still live and at risk of exploding, are present in areas of Nabatiyeh, Tabnine and Beit Yahoun, as well as areas adjacent to the 3km road connecting Tabnine and Beit Yahoun, U.N. demining officials said. 

The creation of "Hezbollywood"

Andrew Ford Lyons 16 August 2006


I’m always fascinated with the birth of a meme. A new one recently surfaced amid the vitriolic rhetoric that gets dished out by the neoconservative punditry of the Internet: “Hezbollywood.” Google it and be in awe of its (as of this writing) 131,000 results. I’m almost surprised that Google even bothers to ask, “Did you mean: Hollywood?” Of course not. Right now, right-wing word herders are singing “Hooray For Hezbollywood!” And why not? In one simple word, they can summarize an entire paranoia. 

Resolving Lebanon's post-war housing crisis

Nasser Yassin 16 August 2006


As soon as the UN resolution 1701 became effective on the morning of Monday 14th of August, partisan journalists embarked on propagandising the victory; politicians ran debates on performance and political outcomes of this war, military experts turned to assess the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of their weapons, and diplomats continued to debate the meaning of each word in the UN resolution. Lebanese civilians, however, were left to face the harsh reality of this destructive war. 

Photostory: Protesters challenge US-Israel weapons flights through the Netherlands

16 August 2006


AIRPORT, AMSTERDAM — Today, fifty protesters staged a “die-in” at Schiphol Plaza, the main entrance of Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam to demand an end to the transit of US arms through the Netherlands to Israel. There have been 76 cases of arms transit via the Netherlands to Israel in 2005 and 23 cases in the period between June and July 2006. The “die-in” symbolized the more than 1,000 casualties of the Israeli war on Lebanon and more than 150 casualties of the Israeli war on Gaza. 

The systematic destruction of Palestinian homes

15 August 2006


The IOF policy of systematically destroying residential homes in the Gaza Strip continues unabated; two homes were destroyed yesterday and scores of adjacent houses severely damaged. 18 homes have now been targeted in this way since the IOF began informing Palestinians by telephone of the imminent shelling of their homes. According to Al Mezan field sources, on 14 August at approximately 11:20pm, IOF war planes fired a rocket at the two-storey house of Mohammed Joda Ma’rouf, in Jabalia town. The house was completely destroyed and 4 adjacent houses badly damaged. 

Elderly Palestinian and His Son Killed when IOF Bombard their House

16 August 2006


Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) killed an elderly Palestinian and his son in Khan Yunis in the early morning hours of Wednesday, 16 August 2006, when an IOF plane leveled their house with a bomb. IOF did not give them sufficient time to evacuate the house; and they were killed during the evacuation. In addition, a second son and two neighbors were moderately injured by shrapnel. 

Photostory: The Irish Intifada - is Israel's latest war the tipping point?

16 August 2006


As the conflict bore itself out feelings on the streets of the West escalated in response. Anger, frustration and the belief that something must change has brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets of Europe. No where has this been more obvious then in Ireland where Trade Unions, NGOs, Solidarity Campaigns and Anti-War groups have been bringing people onto the streets in their thousands. All across Ireland people are out on the streets, cultural institutions are refusing to take sponsorship from the hafrada (apartheid) state and senior members of the Oireachtas (Irish parliament) are calling for sanctions against Israel. The Irish Intifada has finally arrived. 

We're not just fighters, says Hezbollah

14 August 2006


A hot, daily meal from a Hezbollah-run soup kitchen in Noueiri, south-east Beirut, was how Zeina Khawle managed to feed her children throughout the long weeks of the Lebanese crisis. A widow, and mother of three, Zeina hosted a displaced family from southern Lebanon in her Beirut home. “There is nobody to help me and I have no money,” she said, flanked by her nine-year-old son Hassan, who on the day IRIN visited, was disappointed that lentil soup was not on the aid menu. Across Beirut and its devastated southern suburbs, a relief effort organised and financed by Hezbollah has been helping hundreds of thousands of displaced people, according to one of the Islamist party’s officials. 

"Butcher of Qana" finds No Safe Haven on Capitol Hill

16 August 2006


WASHINGTON DC — Former Israeli General Moshe Ya’alon, the “Butcher of Qana”, found it nearly impossible to deliver a briefing on Washington DC’s Capitol Hill Monday, August 14th, as he was disrupted again and again by Washington DC based activists. Members of the Coalition for Justice and Accountability drew attention to Ya’alon’s leading role in the 1996 shelling of a United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) compound in Qana, Lebanon. Under the supervision of Ya’alon, Israeli armed forces repeatedly targeted the compound, killing 106 civilians and wounding hundreds of others. Ya’alon is currently facing a civil suit in US Federal Court on charges stemming from his involvement in the Qana attack. 

Lebanese deaths, and Israeli war crimes, kept off the balance sheet

Jonathan Cook 16 August 2006


During Israel’s war against the people of Lebanon, our media, politicians and diplomats have colluded with the aggressors by distracting us with irrelevancies, by concocting controversies, and by framing the language of diplomacy. In the fragile truce that is currently holding while Lebanon waits for Israel to withdraw, we are simply getting more of the same. One example of the many distractions during the war that neatly reveals their true purpose is the “faked Reuters photograph” affair. The far worse photography scandal, which is not talked about, is that the images of the war we saw over the past month in our Western media were constantly doctored, day in, day out.