The Qana Massacre

This is the second massacre perpetrated by Israel in Qana village, with sixty villagers, mainly women, babies and children crushed by tons of Israeli bombs. There were few men among the casualties, which fully contradicts Israeli claims that Hezbollah combatants hide behind civilians. The first massacre in 1996 resulted in the death of one hundred innocent civilians, mainly women and children who had taken refuge in a U.N. centre established in that village. The casualties had wrongly imagined that the United Nations flag would protect them from Israeli shelling.

What does Israel hope to achieve in slaughtering babies, other than the repugnance of all civilised human beings?

Equally repugnant are those Arab regimes like Saudi Arabia, who watch with exultant eyes the massacre of Shia Moslems in Lebanon and Iraq, in the hope that this will weaken the resolve of Iran to have a word in the affairs of the region, and further to discourage Shia minorities (one million in Saudi Arabia), Bahrain, Qatar etc. from rising against their Sunni rulers.

Iran, pragmatic as it has shown itself to be, has not shown territorial ambitions, not even in Iraq, where the majority of the population is Shia and not Sunni Moslems. On the other hand we are entitled to ask what are the Americans and their British lackeys doing in Iraq, and why did they invade that country? To dispose of one man, Saddam Hussein, and in so doing to create civil war and anarchy, as part of Bush's distorted vision of a new Middle East?

Syria, one of the so called targets of the American initiative has remained quiescent throughout the destructive wars in Iraq and Lebanon. It has everything to gain and nothing to lose in remaining aside. When the Syrian army was forced to evacuate Lebanon, Bashar El-Assad of Syria vowed to destroy Lebanon over the heads of its inhabitants. Israel is doing it for him, and consequently he and his Ba'ath party cannot feel sorry for what is happening in Lebanon..

We talk of an Arab World, and we have an Arab League. The truth, however, lies in the fact that the majority of that world are illiterate vestiges of the Middle Ages.

Lebanon enjoys the highest rate of literacy in the Arab world, but this has not prevented its politicians from squabbling for petty reasons or from milking the fat cow for their own personal benefit.

Today, the war has united Lebanon as never before, and the whole nation including Hezbollah stands firmly behind Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and the Speaker of the House of Deputies, Nabih Berri.

To allay the fears of a large section of the Lebanese population of the outcome of a Hezbollah victory against the Israeli invasion, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, in a televised broadcast two days ago stated that a Hezbollah victory would represent the victory of the entire Lebanese nation, Christians and Moslems, and that Lebanon has nothing to fear from Hezbollah.

Consequently Prime Minister Siniora, who has shown considerable courage and wisdom in dealing with the situation, stands today stronger than ever with the entire nation behind him.

The United States and Israel have miscalculated badly, in that they wrongly assumed that the destruction of Lebanon would split the nation on a confessional basis. This has not happened.

If the United States, as expressed by Condoleezza Rice, wants a global and permanent solution to the problem between Lebanon, Syria and Israel, then the United States should exert pressure on Israel to enter into meaningful negotiations and not simply to impose impossible conditions.