july war relief

Warcrimes and Lebanon
Thursday August 3, 2006
The Guardian
The US-backed Israeli assault on Lebanon has left the country numb,
smouldering and angry. The massacre in Qana and the loss of life is not
simply "disproportionate". It is, according to existing international
laws, a war crime.
The deliberate and systematic destruction of Lebanon's social
infrastructure by the Israeli air force was also a war crime, designed
to reduce that country to the status of an Israeli-US protectorate. The
attempt has backfired. In Lebanon itself, 87% of the population now
support Hizbullah's resistance, including 80% of Christian and Druze and
89% of Sunni Muslims, while 8% believe the US supports Lebanon. But
these actions will not be tried by any court set up by the
"international community" since the US and its allies that commit or are
complicit in these appalling crimes will not permit it.
It has now become clear that the assault on Lebanon to wipe out
Hizbullah had been prepared long before. Israel's crimes had been given
a green light by the US and its loyal British ally, despite the
opposition to Blair in his own country.
In short, the peace that Lebanon enjoyed has come to an end, and a
paralysed country is forced to remember a past it had hoped to forget.
The state terror inflicted on Lebanon is being repeated in the Gaza
ghetto, while the "international community" stands by and watches in
silence. Meanwhile, the rest of Palestine is annexed and dismantled with
the direct participation of the US and the tacit approval of its allies.
We offer our solidarity and support to the victims of this brutality and
to those who mount a resistance against it. For our part, we will use
all the means at our disposal to expose the complicity of our
governments in these crimes. There will be no peace in the Middle East
while the occupations of Palestine and Iraq and the temporarily "paused"
bombings of Lebanon continue.
Tariq Ali
Noam Chomsky
Eduardo Galeano
Howard Zinn
Ken Loach
John Berger
Arundhati Roy
London
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