The eight dead Canadians were a Lebanese-Canadian couple, their four children, his mother and an uncle, said relatives in Montreal.

The Montreal pharmacist and his family had arrived in Lebanon 10 days earlier for a vacation in his parents' home village and to introduce his children to relatives, they said.

Three of his Lebanese relatives died too, a family member told AFP.

"It's simply not the same thing to say that it's the same act to deliberately target innocent civilians, to desire their deaths, to fire rockets and use explosive devices or kidnapping versus the sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense," Bolton noted.

The overall civilian death toll from the Israeli onslaught in Lebanon since last Wednesday reached 195, in addition to 12 soldiers, officials said. Twenty-four Israelis have also been killed since fighting began last Wednesday, including 12 civilians in a barrage of Hezbollah rocket fire across the border.

As we witness the bombardment by Israel of Lebanon and Gaza - a grotesque over-reaction - and, as the death toll of Arab civilians mounts, you have to ask how the Israelis can do what they do. My only answer now is to conclude that it is racism. No political or territorial struggles can convincingly explain or excuse the maddened onslaught by the Israeli state.

Hizbollah and Hamas kidnapped some Israeli soldiers, thus setting off the present crisis. These factions are permanently excited by a state of conflict with no end. But yet, I cannot accept the Israeli justifications claiming the right to make rivers of blood and mountains of debris for the kidnap of their soldiers - soldiers, remember. No ancient fears of annihilation can make adequate sense of the actions either. After all, Israelis have made a kind of peace with Europe which burned and gassed millions of Jewish Europeans.

By contrast, the politicians, generals and soldiers on this mission, and their supporters, are consumed with burning revulsion for all their non-Jewish Semite neighbours. Serbian killers who turned on Muslims in Bosnia were similarly hate-filled, as were the Hutus who massacred Tutsis in Rwanda, and the murderous Muslims who want to destroy every Jew on the planet. In 1935, Goebbels said: "Many intellectuals are trying to help the Jews with the ancient phrase, 'The Jew is also a man'. Yes, he is a man, but what sort of man? The flea is also an animal!" Today, Semites treat the Arab brother as the flea, or the "other". I have heard and read Zionist fundamentalists panicking over the breeding rates of Arabs, expressing their disgust for their hygiene, debating their brain sizes, their inherent barbarism, their genetic inferiority which makes them and their states forever failures.

The extreme Zionist impulses of Ehud Olmert's government are dishonouring its own excruciating history. And noxious anti-Arab prejudices are evident too among a number of Jewish friends of Israel in the United Kingdom, not only firebrand loyalists, but nice, good, funny people. Speaking on BBC 1's This Week on Thursday, that national treasure Maureen Lipman responded thus when asked about the disproportionate reaction of Israel to Hamas and Hizbollah provocations: "What's proportion got to do with it? It's not about proportion is it? Human life is not cheap to the Israelis. And human life on the other side is quite cheap actually because they strap bombs to people and send them to blow themselves up".

I can understand how with a diminishing world population so long hated and punished, the death of one Jew feels like the death of a hundred. But that is not what Lipman is saying. Brutally straight, she sees no equivalence between the lives of the two tribes. Imagine the reactions if she had said: "All this gun crime in London, well it is a black thing. Human life is quite cheap for black people, they go in for shooting each other.".

Hardened Islamicists, loaded with anti-Semitism, hate the Jews they kill, rejoice in the murders of the dehumanised enemy. I do not hesitate to call them racists. But hardened Zionists are unmoved by photos of dead infants in Beirut, tearful young evacuees fleeing that wonderful city because "they" don't feel pain and death like the rest of us. Alter one word in that plea by Shylock and ask: "Hath not Arabs eyes? Hath not an Arab hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?"

It would be easy to despair if it wasn't for Jewish people of conscience who can see how this debases the very essence of Jewishness. A talented professional classical musician and friend wrote me this e-mail on Saturday after he had been at a Palestinian Solidarity Society meeting: "I am the son of Holocaust survivors. I loathe what Israel is doing to Palestine and Palestinians. For that reason, I have always refused to visit Israel. I am so frustrated by events in the Lebanon."

He described the large number of Jewish campaigners at the meeting, some wearing T shirts saying "I'm a Jew but not a Zionist". Various boycotts organised by academic, artistic and other British Jews take these actions at great cost to themselves. Rabbi David Goldberg in his recent book, The Divided Self, explores this strain between militant Israel and the Jewish psyche. He must have brought down the wrath of the zealous followers of Abraham for his honest warnings: "Sixty years after the Holocaust, Israel can no longer claim 'special case' status to justify the repression of Palestinian national aspirations or 'historical right' (whatever that means) to defend retention of biblical territory captured in war ... since 1967, [Israel] has been a Herrenvolk democracy, a term used to describe South Africa under apartheid, in which one group of subjects, the Israeli citizens, enjoys full rights while a disenfranchised group, the Palestinians, enjoys none of any significance."

Goldberg has here used that other unpalatable word - apartheid - to describe Israel's arrogance and behaviour. Apartheid in South Africa was built on twin pillars - a committed belief in racial hierarchies and an equally fervent belief that whites were gifted preferential treatment by God. The Boers, and whites in general, claimed to be the chosen ones and regarded black and brown people as bestial, destined for servility and control.

Israel espouses the same ideology, religious self regard and policies to control Arabs today. True, the country has many enemies wishing its destruction, but racism and apartheid are still unacceptable, even more so for a country with such a history.

Twenty-five-year-old social studies teacher Abdul Rahman was living with his family in downtown Beirut near the United Nations building before they all decided to flee.

"We have not slept for three days because we were living in terror and never knew when the Israelis would bomb us since they were hitting everything," he told IPS.

"If they want to hit Hezbollah, let them hit Hezbollah, but not the civilians. But civilians are all that they are hitting."

His mother feared for her 96-year-old father who they had to leave behind. "We cannot move him because he is too frail," she said. "And now all we can do is worry, since the Israelis are taking it out on the innocent people."

On Sunday, the Israeli army also re-entered the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip. According to reports from Gaza, three members of Hamas were killed after Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered Beit Hanun town early morning.

Gunfire and shelling by the Israelis is also reported to have killed a 75-year-old woman and wounded 10 others, along with a baby.

Israel launched several air strikes in Gaza as well. An Israeli army spokeswoman claimed they destroyed a Hamas operations room in the Jabaliya refugee camp.

Israel's stated goal in Gaza is to free a soldier captured by Hamas. So far Israeli actions there have left one Israeli soldier dead, along with 82 Palestinians.

Hamas is demanding the release of prisoners from Israeli jails in exchange for the Israeli soldier.

Israel is now embroiled in fighting on two fronts. The impact of the fighting with Lebanon is being felt widely in Syria.

Abud Aziz, a 31-year-old Lebanese pastry chef from Beirut crossed the border into Syria carrying his suitcase and looking for food and water. There had been no water or electricity in Beirut since Saturday, he said.

"Yesterday I saw two hospitals bombed," he told IPS. "Nobody who remains in Beirut can be safe. No way."

A 25-year-old construction worker named Hamed also said he saw warplanes bomb a hospital in Beirut.

"I saw them bomb a hospital yesterday," he told IPS. "I left just hours ago. They are bombing everything -- houses, casinos, fuel stations and so many bridges."

Meanwhile, on Sunday Hezbollah fired more than 20 rockets into the city of Haifa, Israel's third largest city, killing eight and wounding at least a dozen.

The Hezbollah clearly have the means to strike back at Israel. They are a well-armed and well-organised political and military group of Shia Muslims in Lebanon. Sustained military attacks by the Hezbollah forced Israel to vacate southern Lebanon in May 2000.

But the Hezbollah are not supported by all Lebanese. About 60 percent of the 3.8 million population of Lebanon is Muslim, most of them Shia. This is where Hezbollah draws its support.

The rest of the population is almost all Christian. A 15-year civil war between Muslim and Christian groups ended in 1991. The Hezbollah are believed to draw more support from outside the country than from many within.

In the wake of Hezbollah strikes into Israel, Israeli authorities have declared a 48-hour period of martial law over the northern part of the country. Hezbollah groups have fired more than 400 rockets into Israel, killing at least 16 civilians in the last five days.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned Lebanon of "far-reaching" consequences after the rocket attacks. The Israeli army said that it had warned all civilians to leave southern Lebanon.

Many of those who have left report panic conditions in Lebanon. "The Israelis bombed a bridge to the airport near us and killed many people," 26-year-old Hasna told IPS. "When other people went on the bridge to help the wounded, the planes bombed it again."

Ambulances are usually not available because of the danger, she said. "We were the last people to leave our area. The road there was nearly empty."

Alham Aras, a Danish woman who was vacationing in Tripoli in Lebanon, drove up to the border with her six children Sunday. She said she had left on instructions from her embassy.

"The warplanes bombed the Palestinian camps in Tripoli," she said, "They are attacking up and down the coast, and the port in Tripoli was also attacked."

Her 14-year-old daughter Barihan al-Jassim said, "Somebody should stop this madness. How is it possible for a country to be bombed like this and nobody stops them from doing it?"

"The intensifying aggression in this barbaric way proves that Israel has decided to push Lebanon back 50 years."

He said the punishing attacks from the far more powerful Israeli military had destroyed service stations, roads, food warehouses and homes, as well as army barracks and posts.

Under-fire pro-Syria head of state President Emile Lahoud said the Jewish state wanted to "destroy Lebanon".

"This massacre committed by the Israeli enemy shows that Israel is determined to implement its plan to destroy Lebanon and paralyze its security forces," he said during a visit to a military barracks east of Beirut where 11 soldiers were killed in an Israeli raid earlier Tuesday.

The overall death toll in Lebanon from the Israeli offensive stood at 230 dead and around 480 wounded Tuesday. Much of the country's infrastructure has been reduced to rubble, recalling the destruction wreaked during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.

Israel has brushed aside UN and EU suggestions of truce negotiations and an international buffer force in Lebanon.

It has said it is waging the war to annihilate the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hizbullah that captured two of its soldiers last week.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel "will continue the battle against Hizbullah and will continue to strike targets belonging to the group until it obtains the release of its captured soldiers and restores the security of Israeli citizens."

Meanwhile, Olmert vowed that Israel would have no mercy on "terrorists who launched missiles at our residents and our towns". He reiterated that Lebanese government should take the responsibility for the abduction of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, and accused Iran and Syria of sponsoring the group with weapons and money.

He also said that Israel had the right to fight for a normal life, adding that it was a moment of vital importance to Israel's security.

Meanwhile, Israeli left-wing protestors held a protest outside of the Knesset, denouncing the military operation as "the bloodbath" of Lebanese civilians.

Israel continued air and artillery bombardment on Lebanese targets for the sixth consecutive day on Monday. The Lebanese death toll from Israeli offensive since last Wednesday has exceeded 200, mostly civilians, medics and police said.

"We are beginning a diplomatic process alongside the military operation that will continue," she said. "The diplomatic process is not meant to shorten the window of time of the army's operation but rather is meant to be an extension of it and to prevent a need for future military operations."

Meanwhile, an Associated Press reporter saw rockets strike near the Haifa's port and a railway depot in Israel's third-biggest city.

Plumes of smoke could be seen from where the rockets - likely Katyushas fired by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon - struck near the port and the railway depot that was struck Sunday, killing eight people. No injuries were immediately reported.

Overnight 11 Lebanese soldiers were killed and 35 wounded in an Israeli air strike.

Warplanes swooped down on the area of Kfar Chima early Tuesday, firing missiles near a local army base.

As the soldiers were rushing to their bomb shelters, the base took a direct hit, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the army had not issued a communique.

In recent days, Israeli officials have sent conflicting signals about whether Israel would demand Hezbollah's disarmament as a condition for a ceasefire. Livni's comments indicated Israel would accept future disarmament, provided that Lebanon immediately deploy its own troops along the border to prevent any future rocket attacks against northern Israel.

"There is another need to prevent Iran and Syria, and from Iran through Syria, to arm Hezbollah in the future," Livni said. "These are our diplomatic goals and to achieve them we will co-operate with the international community."

Iran and Syria are prime supporters of Hezbollah, leading to fears they could be drawn into a wider regional conflict.

Also Tuesday, the Israeli army's deputy chief of staff said he has not ruled out a ground invasion into Lebanon.

"At this stage we do not think we have to activate massive ground forced into Lebanon but if we have to do this, we will. We are not ruling it out," Maj. Gen Moshe Kaplinski told Israeli radio.

Israel is fighting Islamic militants on two fronts - one in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which captured two Israeli soldiers last Wednesday in a daring cross-border raid, and another in Gaza against Hamas, which captured another Israeli soldier during a raid of its own on June 25.

United Nations negotiator Terje Roed-Larsen told reporters in Jerusalem that "concrete ideas" had been presented to the Israeli government to solve the crisis, and that Israel would deliberate on them in the coming days.

He did not provide any further details on the proposals.

The UN team, led by Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special political adviser Vijay Nambiar and Mideast envoy Alvaro de Soto along with Roed-Larsen, arrived in Jerusalem Monday night to try and broker an end to the week of fighting.

Israel's army refused to rule out a large-scale ground invasion of the south only six years after it ended its 22-year occupation of the area.

"At this stage we do not think we have to activate massive ground forces into Lebanon but if we have to do this, we will," Moshe Kaplinsky, Israel's deputy army chief, told Israel Radio.

He said the offensive would end within a few weeks, adding that Israel needed more time to complete "very clear goals."

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he expected European powers to join a proposed Lebanon stabilization force.

Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have urged the U.N Security Council to deploy a security force in Lebanon but Israel says it is too early to discuss such a move and the United States has questioned how it would restrain Hezbollah guerrillas from attacking Israel.

"It is urgent that the international community acts to make a difference on the ground," Annan said in Brussels, suggesting a force that would operate differently from toothless U.N. peacekeepers who have patrolled south Lebanon since 1978.

"I would expect contributions from European countries and countries from other regions," Annan said.

He was speaking after talks with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who said some European Union member states were willing to contribute to the proposed force.

Thousands of innocent Lebanese have been forced from their homes by the bombings, especially in the South, and have headed up to Beirut (which the Israelis are also indiscriminately bombing). Some 100,000 Lebanese have fled to Syria, though Israeli bombing of roads and bridges has not made it easy for them to get out. Although, because of widespread Western racism, very few over here care about these displaced persons, they face a desperate situation. Roads have been bombed out, and bridges are gone. Lebanese television reported on numerous villages bombed. Rescue teams attempting to take an injured woman to a better hospital with more supplies were blocked when they found the bridge destroyed.

If the reports coming out of Lebanon can be believed, the Israelis are only sometimes striking known Hizbullah safe houses or facilities or missile emplacements. A lot of their bombardment appears aimed at punishing civilian populations and forcing them north to Beirut. Such an approach would help explain the high number of civilian casualties. That is, there may be an element of ethnic cleansing in Israeli tactics.

The Irish Times reports:

' The civilian toll continued to mount in Lebanon yesterday as Israeli planes struck dozens of targets. Nine civilians, including two children, were killed when they were hit by a missile that struck a bridge in the southern port city of Sidon . In the southern city of Tyre , rescue workers pulled nine more bodies from the civil defence building that was hit on Sunday in an Israeli strike. Close to 200 civilians have been killed in Lebanon since the Israeli offensive began last week, when Hizbullah attacked an Israeli border patrol, killing three soldiers and capturing two. Five more soldiers were killed when they gave chase into Lebanon .'

Hizbullah sent rockets on Israel again Monday, with four hitting Haifa, including a strike that collapsed a building and injured 11 persons. Since the outbreak of the fighting last Wednesday, 24 Israelis have been killed, 12 soldiers and 12 civilians.

The Guardian complains that the world leaders again did nothing on Monday to stop the massive Israeli assault on Lebanon.

I should explain to The Guardian about spheres of influence. Great Powers have them, and other Great Powers respect them if they do not want a war. That is why the US did nothing about the Soviets in Hungary 1956 or in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Soviet sphere of influence.

The Levant is now a joint US-Israeli sphere of Influence. Egypt and Jordan both have peace treaties with Israel and are non-NATO allies of the US. So they won't do more than politely disagree that Israel's wholesale destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure is useful. Turkey is part of the joint US-Israeli sphere of influence, with close military ties to both countries. Iraq is now working the American training wheels, in Bush's parlance, and although it has not formally joined the full US-Israeli sphere of influence, it has no military to speak of and basically its legs are broken. The Gulf monarchies have more or less acquiesced in the situation as well.

Syria and Iran are the only two significant dissenters. Syria is weak and isolated, having been expelled from Lebanon and having lost its Soviet patron a decade and a half ago. Iran is distant from the scene and although it might give some rockets and training to a group like Hizbullah, it does not have a history of direct military intervention in other countries anyway. The Lebanese should not hold their breath expecting succor from either quarter.

The European Powers all ceded the Levant to the US-Israeli sphere of influence a long time ago. They will not get out ahead of the US. They mostly deeply dislike the Apartheid policies of Israel in the Occupied Territories, but they also deeply dislike and fear Hamas and Hizbullah, having their own large Muslim populations that they don't want radicalized.

So, basically, the Palestinians and the Lebanese are screwed. The Lebanese might not have been in such a vulnerable situation if they had not kicked out the Syrians, though the Syrians were there in 1982 the last time Israel invaded.

That is why there is terrorism in the Middle East. The Israeli occupation of the Occupied Territories has been barbaric and intolerable. It produced Hamas. The Israeli occupation of South Lebanon was barbaric and intolerable. It produced Hizbullah. A wise Great Power can walk back such bad situations, as the US did in Europe and Japan after World War II. Unwise Powers get stuck with the Tar Baby.

But terrorism is a weapon of the weak and should not be over-estimated as a deterrent for Great Powers. Mostly they see it as a cost of doing business, and even where the Powers suffer from it, it has the advantage of rallying home populations behind militaristic policies.

At some point the Europeans may find a way to step in. The elements of an eventual resolution of the current Israeli war on Lebanon are becoming clear in international diplomacy. Italian PM Romano Prodi of Italy is already thinking about how to round up 10,000 UN peacekeepers to insert in the Lebanese south as a buffer between the Israeli army and Hizbullah. Russia agrees and is willing to participate.

Chirac and Blair are also on board with this plan, which will go to the UNSC from the G8 summit.

My advice: don't send the blue helmets unless you authorize them to shoot back when attacked.

On the other hand, the Irish Times report above says that Israeli officials reject a UN deployment and insist instead that the Lebanese army must be stationed along the border.

It is probably the Olmert government's hope that this posting will set the Lebanese army against Hizbullah, producing intra-Lebanese fighting that serves Israeli interests.

Israel, however, does not always get its way. We'll see. Peacekeeping is a ways off. The Israelis will fight their war first.

Israeli attacks have been targeting trucks, presumably on suspicion that they may be being used to transport ammunition to Hezbollah fighters in south Lebanon.

Beirut's southern suburb, a bastion for the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, was also the target of overnight shelling by warships stationed off Lebanese shores.

At least 34 people were killed and dozens injured in Israeli attacks Monday which swept several Lebanese regions.

The attacks continue parallel to U.N. and EU efforts to achieve a cease-fire and a proposed settlement regarding the issue of the two Israeli soldiers whose kidnapping by Hezbollah militants in a cross-border attack last Wednesday provoked Israeli retaliation.

In the meantime, foreign embassies, including those of the United States, France and Britain, have started evacuating their nationals from the war-torn country.

The channel showed footage of a burning object crashing into the ground near the Hezbollah stronghold of southern Beirut.

The report said that the aircraft was an F-16 fighter jet.

The Hezbollah stronghold has been under Israeli air raids over the past few days.

But Israel said that there was no such news about the downing of any Israeli aircraft.

Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which triggered the current Israeli-Lebanese conflicts by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers last Wednesday, intensified its rocket attack on Israeli cities amid Israeli air and sea assault on Lebanon.