Bush 'helped Israeli attack on Lebanon'

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Monday August 14, 2006
The Guardian


The US government was closely involved in planning the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, even before Hizbullah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross border raids in July. American and Israeli officials met in the spring, discussing plans on how to tackle Hizbullah, according to a report published yesterday.
The veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh writes in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine that Israeli government officials travelled to the US in May to share plans for attacking Hizbullah.

Quoting a US government consultant, Hersh said: "Earlier this summer ... several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, 'to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear'."

The Israeli action, current and former government officials told Hersh, chimed with the Bush administration's desire to reduce the threat of possible Hizbullah retaliation against Israel should the US launch a military strike against Iran.

"A successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign ... could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American pre-emptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations," sources told Hersh.

Yesterday Mr Hersh told CNN: "July was a pretext for a major offensive that had been in the works for a long time. Israel's attack was going to be a model for the attack they really want to do. They really want to go after Iran."

An unnamed Pentagon consultant told Hersh: "It was our intention to have Hizbullah diminished and now we have someone else doing it."

Officials from the state department and the Pentagon denied the report. A spokesman for the National Security Council told Hersh that "The Israeli government gave no official in Washington any reason to believe that Israel was planning to attack."

Hersh has a track record in breaking major stories. He was the first to write about the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and has written extensively about the build-up to the war in Iraq. He made his name when he uncovered the massacre at My Lai during the Vietnam war. Most recently he has written about US plans for Iran, alleging that US special forces had already been active inside the country.

www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1844021,00.html


Published on Sunday, August 13, 2006 by the Inter Press Service
UN Human Rights Council Condemns Israel
by Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA - The United Nations Human Rights Council issued a strongly worded condemnation of Israel Friday for violating human rights and international humanitarian law in its military operations in Lebanon.

The highest U.N. human rights body, which held a special session Friday to discuss the conflict in the Middle East, also decided to send a high-level commission to the area to investigate "systematic targeting and killing" of Lebanese civilians by Israel.

The resolution was approved by a vote of 27:11, with eight abstentions. The delegation from Djibouti was absent during the voting. European Union members of the Council, as well as Canada, Japan, Romania and the Ukraine voted against the initiative.

The new 47-member Council demanded that Israel strictly comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law, which regulates treatment of the injured, prisoners and non-combatants during armed conflicts.

However, the Council introduced a last-minute amendment to the draft resolution sponsored by Muslim countries as well as China, Cuba and Russia. The clause calls on all parties involved to respect humanitarian law and refrain from using violence against civilians.

That was the resolution's only allusion to the Lebanese Shiite militia group Hezbollah, which is fighting the Israeli troops that have invaded southern Lebanon while launching missile attacks on civilian populations in northern Israel.

The rest of the resolution condemns Israeli military actions, such as the "massive bombardment" of civilian populations in Qana, Maruain, Al Dueir, Al Qaa, Chiyah, Ghazieh and other towns in Lebanon.

The Council said the attacks had "caused thousands of deaths and injuries, mostly among children and women, and the displacement of one million civilians."

The inquiry commission is "to investigate the systematic targeting and killings of civilians by Israel in Lebanon; to examine the types of weapons used by Israel and their conformity with international law; (and) to assess the extent and deadly impact of Israeli attacks on human life, property, critical infrastructure and the environment."

The mission, to be made up of U.N. special rapporteurs on human rights and experts on international humanitarian law, will cost some 420,000 dollars, officials with the U.N. office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights estimated.

The Council, which was created in March and held its first session Jun. 19-30, was put to the test this week with the debate on the conflict in the Middle East, one of the most controversial issues in the field of human rights.

Western countries routinely criticised the Council's predecessor, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which became defunct last June, for its "imbalanced" resolutions that condemned Israel.

On this occasion, the debate in the brand-new Council followed similar lines, with a resolution that focused its criticism on Israel. For that reason, European members of the Council and other Western countries rejected the resolution, which was proposed by the 57-country Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

The delegation from Finland stated on behalf of the EU and Romania that the resolution did not go far enough, because it only referred to the concerns of one of the parties to the conflict.

The French delegation said it deeply regretted that the resolution was not adopted by consensus, and rejected it because it was "unilateral," in terms of its content as well as in the way it was drafted.

Switzerland worked hard to the very last to achieve an understanding between all of the members. When it failed in its efforts for a consensus, it decided to abstain from voting.

Eric Sottas, director of the World Organization against Torture (OMCT), said that during times of war, the search for a consensus was in vain.

He added, however, that "the Council's duty is to play a new role that would allow the achievement of concrete results".

"To do so, it is necessary to avoid the rhetoric and unbalanced resolutions void of follow-up that discredited the Human Rights Commission, all the while embracing its specificity, which is to ensure the respect of human rights and, in case of conflict, the full rigour of humanitarian law by all parties," he maintained.

But Iranian representative Alireza Moaiyyeri said there was no place for any debate other than a call by the U.N. Human Rights Council for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and an international investigation into the continued killings by Israel in Lebanon.

Israeli delegate Itzhak Levanon said the discussions were one-sided, and asked why there are no calls for investigations into "the atrocities committed by Hezbollah, Syria and Iran."

A representative of the World Jewish Congress, Lior Herman, said "Judaism, like Islam, is premised on the sanctity of human life and human dignity, principles that also apply to the one million Israelis living in bomb shelters to avoid the thousands of Hezbollah rockets designed to maximise civilian casualties, and to the 85 innocents murdered in the Hezbollah attack on Argentina's Jewish community headquarters in Buenos Aires 12 years ago this summer."

The five Latin American countries that voted in favour of the resolution -- Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay -- called on Israel and Hezbollah to refrain from the use of force and to guarantee safeguards for civilians. The remaining Latin American member of the Council, Guatemala, abstained from voting.

© Copyright 2006 IPS - Inter Press Service


Editorial: Cease-Fire Charade
13 August 2006

By the time the Israeli Cabinet meets today to consider Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s recommendation that the UN cease-fire resolution be accepted, Israel’s major new thrust toward the Litani River in southern Lebanon will probably have expanded the conflict with Hezbollah. The slightest hint of a Hezbollah counterattack, under the one-sided terms of Friday’s Resolution 1701, will permit the Israeli military to mount “defensive” operations and thus keep the conflict going. We can confidently expect that Olmert’s Cabinet will willingly agree to the cease-fire — just as soon as Hezbollah stops its attacks. Israel is a past master at kicking its boot into the hive and then protesting that it must take action against the resulting swarm.

Will the Security Council allow itself to be manipulated into remaining silent about Israel’s massive new push into Lebanese territory? And on the very eve of the council’s vote, such a thing is custom-made to make an early cease-fire less likely. Security Council members should not forget the rebuke of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan after their vote. The resolution, he said, had taken far too long and as a result the reputation of the UN had been seriously tarnished. If the organization is to play a real role in the restoration of peace and Lebanese sovereignty, it must now be seen to be acting firmly in assessing who is doing what to sabotage and delay the cease-fire.

Resolution 1701 already rides roughshod over the legitimate concerns of the Arab world about protecting both Lebanese sovereignty and Lebanese civilians. It places immediate pressure on the cease-fire process which could cause the whole process to fail and thus allow Israel to continue with its own brutal solution, based on purely “defensive” grounds. How “defensive” does the UN Security Council consider the attack Friday on the hundreds of vehicles fleeing north from the Israeli-occupied Lebanese town of Marjayoun? At least seven people were killed when an Israeli drone fired rockets at the convoy which was heading away from the fighting. The Israelis knew that very well since they had watched it leave the town. And they also knew that in that long line of vulnerable vehicles were 350 members of the Lebanese Army and security forces, the very people whom the Israelis pretend they want to be in control of southern Lebanon.

As long as Israeli troops continue their incursions into Lebanon, they know those incursions will be resisted and, according to 1701, resistance will give them the excuse to continue their bloody depredations. It will also enable them to try to throw the blame for the worsening humanitarian crisis onto the Hezbollah fighters who oppose them. Even though it is Israeli weapons that have cut roads and bridges, Israeli warplanes that have destroyed vehicles — even those transporting innocent civilians who want only to flee to safety — the Israelis will deny the death and destruction are their responsibility.

Can the Security Council possibly accept so brazen a distortion of what the whole world knows is true?

arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=76245&d=13&m=8&y=2006


How the New York Times bowed to Israeli pressure and changed a story... and got caught. Reuters and the NYT have both been caught altering their stories for the benefit of the Extremist Zionist Regime in Israel.

No longer can Apologists for Israeli Terror claim that there is no Western media bias in favor of Israel.

NYT: As weeks wore on, Bush Administration began to doubt Israel could win an outright military victory in Lebanon

RAW STORY
Published: Sunday August 13, 2006


As the weeks "wore on," the Bush Administration began to doubt that Israel could win an outright military victory in Lebanon, according to an early version of an article published in Monday's New York Times.

An advance version of the Times article obtained by RAW STORY included references to such doubts as expressed by an unidentified senior Bush Administration official, but for unknown reasons it was left out of the published article.

"When the war in Lebanon began in mid-July, American diplomacy was predicated on giving the vaunted Israeli armed forces the time it needed to destroy Hezbollah militarily," Warren Hoge had once written.

The unpublished draft continued:

"The Bush administration resisted all calls for a cease-fire, even as worldwide clamor for one increased, arguing that a simple truce with no conditions for its aftermath would leave Hezbollah entrenched and Israel exposed to renewed rocket attacks from southern Lebanon."
"As the weeks wore on and civilian casualties mounted and the Hezbollah fighters proved to be an unexpected match for the experienced soldiers of Israel, however, the Bush administration began to doubt whether Israel could indeed win an outright military victory, according to a senior administration official."
Excerpts from the revised Times article follow:

#
When Israel began its counterattack on Hezbollah one month ago, the Bush administration backed the Israeli plan to destroy the militia and its arsenal of rockets, resisting efforts by France and other allies to call for a cease-fire.

But as the assault wore on and it became evident that Hezbollah was a far more fearsome and skilled adversary than Israel had first thought — and as Lebanese civilian casualties mounted — American policy moved more urgently toward seeking an immediate political solution.

That shift, recounted by senior administration officials, led to one of the most dramatic bouts of diplomacy that the United Nations Security Council has witnessed in years. Whether it leads to peace in southern Lebanon remains unclear. But what is certain is that negotiators in a half-dozen countries took part in a rare high-wire act.

American secretaries of state attend Security Council sessions on resolutions only after a deal has been struck. Yet last Friday, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in New York, not only was there no deal, it was unclear whether the Council would even meet.

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FULL TIMES ARTICLE AT THIS LINK

www.nytimes.com/2006/08/14/world/middleeast/14reconstruct.html?_r=1&oref