The paper quoted a well-informed source as saying that activities of this spy network exceeded what Mahmoud Rafa network which already uncovered has done.

" Members of the network, using developed technologies and communication apparatuses, facilitated selection of certain goals in Beirut's southern suburb through putting signs guiding the Israeli aircrafts to those targets," the papers indicated.

" One of the prominent figures in the network confessed that Israel has put itself on the alert 4 days before arrest of the two Israeli soldiers and provided its inactive spy cells with directives and technologies regarding targeting centers and headquarters of Hizbullah party in all Lebanese territories particularly in the Beirut's southern suburb.

With no end in sight to a conflict that has already claimed at least 390 lives on the Lebanese side alone, Defence Minister Amir Peretz warned Israel could establish its own security zone in southern Lebanon if multinational troops were not deployed along Israel's border.

An entire family of seven was killed when an Israeli missile slammed into their home in southern Lebanon while troops besieged a key border town where Hezbollah has a military headquarters.

"Israel is determined to carry on the fight against Hezbollah," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said at a press conference with Dr Rice.

But Mr Olmert said: "We are not fighting the Lebanese Government or the Lebanese people. We are fighting against Hezbollah."

Dr Rice, in Israel after making a surprise visit to bomb-scarred Beirut, said it was "time for a new Middle East" and underlined Washington's stance that an immediate ceasefire would only put off a long-term solution to the conflict.

"A durable solution will be one that strengthens the forces of peace and democracy in the region," she said.

"The people of this region, Israelis, Lebanese, and the Palestinians have lived too long in fear, and in terror, and in violence."

Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya said the US view of a new Middle East was one that began with "destroying Lebanon" and with killing the maximum number of Palestinians.

Hundreds of thousands in Lebanon have been forced to flee their homes, creating what the United Nations warns is a humanitarian catastrophe. Human Rights Watch accused Israel of using artillery-fired cluster bombs in Lebanon and demanded the Jewish state immediately halt the practice.

Washington is under pressure from European and Arab allies to try to bring an end to the crisis amid charges it was dragging its feet to allow Israel time to attempt to wipe out the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which set off the conflict after seizing two soldiers on July 12.

But Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, who is acting as an intermediary for Hezbollah, rejected Dr Rice's reported plan and said there must first be a ceasefire and a prisoner swap.

Israel is struggling to knock out Hezbollah despite its vastly superior military might and has now suggested it would accept some form of international force in southern Lebanon, currently in the grip of the Shiite militia.

A 15-year-old Arab Israeli girl was killed after a rocket hit her house in a village in northern Israel as more than a dozen rockets fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon pummelled the northern port of Haifa, wounding at least five people.

Israeli forces claimed they had taken the border town of Bint Jbeil, a Hezbollah stronghold, amid fierce gunbattles as troops in tanks and bulldozers pushed even deeper into Lebanon.

"Beit Jbeil is in our hands," General Alon Friedman, one of Israel's top commanders for its northern region, told army radio. It was not confirmed if troops were actually inside the town.

Eight Shiite militants were killed in clashes with Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah and its ally the Amal movement said, without specifying the date or location of their deaths.

Israel has massed troops on the border and warned residents of southern Lebanon to flee but says it has no plans for an all-out invasion - for now.

Aid amounting to $US250 million ($331.98 million) would also go to the Palestinians to help rebuild the Palestinian territories, a decree by King Abdullah said.

* Joshua Frank's diary :: ::
*

The original story, as most media tell it, goes something like this: Hezbollah attacked an Israeli border patrol station, killing six and taking two soldiers hostage. The incident happened on the Lebanese/Israel border in Israeli territory.

The alternate version, as explained by several news outlets, tells a bit of a different tale: These sources contend that Israel sent a commando force into southern Lebanon and was subsequently attacked by Hezbollah near the village of Aitaa al-Chaab, well inside Lebanon's southern territory. It was at this point that an Israel tank was struck by Hezbollah fighters, which resulted in the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the death of six.

As the AFP reported, "According to the Lebanese police force, the two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanese territory, in the area of Aitaa al-Chaab, near to the border with Israel, where an Israeli unit had penetrated in middle of morning." And the French news site www.VoltaireNet.org reiterated the same account on June 18, "In a deliberated way, [Israel] sent a commando in the Lebanese back-country to Aitaa al-Chaab. It was attacked by Hezbollah, taking two prisoners."

The Associated Press departed from the official version as well. "The militant group Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them," reported Joseph Panossian for AP on July 12. "The forces were trying to keep the soldiers' captors from moving them deeper into Lebanon, Israeli government officials said on condition of anonymity."

And the Hindustan Times on July 12 conveyed a similar account:

"The Lebanese Shi'ite Hezbollah movement announced on Wednesday that its guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. 'Implementing our promise to free Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, our strugglers have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon,' a statement by Hezbollah said. 'The two soldiers have already been moved to a safe place,' it added. The Lebanese police said that the two soldiers were captured as they 'infiltrated' into the town of Aitaa al-Chaab inside the Lebanese border."

Whether factual or not, these alternative accounts should at the very least raise serious questions as to Israel's motives and rationale for bombarding Lebanon.

MSNBC online first reported that Hezbollah had captured Israeli soldiers "inside" Lebanon, only to change their story hours later after the Israeli government gave an official statement to the contrary.

A report from The National Council of Arab Americans, based in Lebanon, also raised suspicion that Israel's official story did not hold water and noted that Israel had yet to recover the tank that was demolished during the initial attack in question.

"The Israelis so far have not been able to enter Aitaa al-Chaab to recover the tank that was exploded by Hezbollah and the bodies of the soldiers that were killed in the original operation (this is a main indication that the operation did take place on Lebanese soil, not that in my opinion it would ever be an illegitimate operation, but still the media has been saying that it was inside 'Israel' thus an aggression first started by Hezbollah)."

Before independent observers could organize an investigation of the incident, Israel had already mounted a grisly offensive against Lebanese infrastructure and civilians, bombing Beirut's international airport, along with numerous highways and communication portals. Israel didn't need the truth of the matter to play out before it invaded Lebanon. As with the United States' illegitimate invasion of Iraq, Israel just needed the proper media cover to wage a war with no genuine moral impetus.

"It is enormously frustrating to be right on the back doorstep of Lebanon and ready to move in with hundreds of tonnes of aid, but the door remains closed," spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis of the refugee agency UNHCR told a news briefing.

And the World Health Organization (WHO) said hospitals in the south were running out of medicines and fuel for the generators that they have been forced to use since Israeli bombing cut off normal power supplies.

The agencies said the situation for civilians was getting worse by the day in southern Lebanon -- where Israel has been attacking the Islamic Hizbollah militia for nearly two weeks -- and in temporary shelters for people who have fled the area.

The UNHCR's Pagonis said supplies for 20,000 packed into parks or public buildings in and around Beirut "are still blocked in Syria, waiting a safe route into Lebanon."

Humanitarian officials and reports from the region say Israeli planes have bombed roads and destroyed bridges on roads from the Syrian border -- apparently in an effort to stop fresh weapon supplies reaching the Hizbollah.

MATTER OF HOURS

"We have urgently needed tents, mattresses, blankets and other aid which would be delivered in only a matter of hours if only we had access to the country," said Pagonis.

Olmert's announcement of an air lift and a linked offer of a humanitarian corridor from Israel itself came after talks in Jerusalem with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Top U.N. officials and independent humanitarian bodies have been calling on Israel for days to guarantee the security of aid convoys to heavily bombed areas of the south.

But, asked later for comment on the Israeli move, Pagonis said it did not appear "to address the immediate situation we are confronted with right now" -- the absence of safe passage authorization for the supplies waiting in Syria.

And another U.N. source said a route through Israel would take much longer to organize and greatly delay the arrival of urgently needed food, medical supplies and relief equipment.

In a separate telephone news conference, officials of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva and Beirut said they were also having problems in moving around in Lebanon.

"A big problem is access, to bring first aid and to get supplies to hospitals," WHO representative in Lebanon Jaouad Mahjour said on a radio-telephone link from Beirut. "Another big problem is evacuating the injured."

Horowitz's response to every question, every development in the Middle East, whether it concerns Lebanon, the Palestinians, Syria or Iran, is the same: "They want to drive the Jews into the sea". It's as simple as that. Not even a superficial attempt at analysis; just the message that the Arab world is trying to finish off the genocide started by Europe. And if Laura is any yardstick, a lot of Americans buy that stuff.

Horowitz is keen to bang the square peg of the Lebanon story into the round hole of his claims that the "Jews" are facing an imminent genocide in the Middle East. And to help him, he and the massed ranks of US apologists for Israel -- regulars, I suspect, of shows like Laura's -- are promoting at least four myths regarding Hizbullah's current rockets strikes on Israel. Unless they are challenged at every turn, the danger is that they will win the ground war against common sense in the US

The first myth is that Israel was forced to pound Lebanon with its military hardware because Hizbullah began "raining down" rockets on the Galilee. Anyone with a short memory can probably recall that was not the first justification we were offered: that had to do with the two soldiers captured by Hizbullah on a border post on July 12.

But presumably Horowitz and his friends realised that 400 Lebanese dead and counting in little more than a week was hard to sell as a "proportionate" response. In any case Hizbullah kept telling the world how keen it was to return the soldiers in a prisoner swap.

Hundreds of dead in Lebanon, at least 1,000 severely injured and more than half a million refugees -- all because Israel is not ready to sit down at the negotiating table. Even Horowitz could not "advocate for Israel" on that one.

So the chronology of war has been reorganised: now we are being told that Israel was forced to attack Lebanon to defend itself from the barrage of Hizbullah rockets falling on Israeli civilians. The international community is buying the argument hook, line and sinker. "Israel has the right to defend itself", says every politician who can find a microphone to talk into.

But, if we cast our minds back, that is not how the "Middle East crisis", as TV channels now describe it, started. It is worth recapping on those early events (and I won't document the long history of Lebanese suffering at Israel's hands that preceded it) before they become entirely shrouded in the mythology being peddled by Horowitz and others.

Early on July 12 Hizbullah launched a raid against an army border post, in what was in the best interpretation a foolhardy violation of Israeli sovereignty. In the fighting the Shiite militia killed three soldiers and captured two others, while Hizbullah fired a few mortars at border areas in what the Israeli army described at the time as "diversionary tactics". As a result of the shelling, five Israelis were "lightly injured", with most needing treatment for shock, according to the Haaretz newspaper.

Israel's immediate response was to send a tank into Lebanon in pursuit of the Hizbullah fighters (its own foolhardy violation of Lebanese sovereignty). The tank ran over a landmine, which exploded killing four soldiers inside. Another soldier died in further clashes inside Lebanon as his unit tried to retrieve the bodies.

Rather than open diplomatic channels to calm the violence down and start the process of getting its soldiers back, Israel launched bombing raids deep into Lebanese territory the same day. Given Israel's worldview that it alone has a right to project power and fear, that might have been expected.

But the next day Israel continued its rampage across the south and into Beirut, where the airport, roads, bridges, and power stations were pummelled. We now know from reports in the US media that the Israeli army had been planning such a strike against Lebanon for at least a year.

In contrast to the image of Hizbullah frothing at the mouth to destroy Israel, its leader Hassan Nasrallah held off from serious retaliation. For the first day and a half, he limited his strikes to the northern borders areas, which have faced Hizbullah attacks in the past and are well protected.

He waited till late on June 13 before turning his guns on Haifa, even though we now know he could have targeted Israel's third largest city from the outset. A small volley of rockets directed at Haifa caused no injuries and looked more like a warning than an escalation.

It was another three days -- days of constant Israeli bombardmeent of Lebanon, destroying the country and injuring countless civilians -- before Nasrallah hit Haifa again, including a shell that killed eight workers in a railway depot.

No one should have been surprised. Nasrallah was doing exactly what he had threatened to do if Israel refused to negotiate and chose the path of war instead. Although the international media quoted his ominous televised message that "Haifa is just the beginning", Nasrallah in fact made his threat conditional on Israel's continuing strikes against Lebanon. In the same speech he warned: "As long as the enemy pursues its aggression without limits and red lines, we will pursue the confrontation without limits and red lines." Well, Israel did, and so now has Nasrallah.

The second myth is that Hizbullah's stockpile of 12,000 rockets -- the Israeli army's estimate -- poses an existential threat to Israel. According to Horowitz and others, Hizbullah collected its armoury with the sole intent of destroying the Jewish state.

If this really was Hizbullah's intention in amassing the weapons, it has a very deluded view of what is required to wipe Israel off the map. More likely, it collected the armoury in the hope that it might prove a deterrence -- even if a very inadequate one, as Lebanon is now discovering -- against a repeat of Israel's invasions of 1978 and 1982, and the occupation that lasted nearly two decades afterwards.

In fact, according to other figures supplied by the Israeli army, at least 2,000 Hizbullah rockets have already been fired into Israel while the army's bombardments have so far destroyed a further 2,000 rockets. In other words, northern Israel has already received a fifth of Hizbullah's arsenal. As someone living in the north, and within range of the rockets, I have to say Israel does not look close to being expunged. The Galilee may be emptier, as up to third of Israeli Jews seek temporary refuge in the south, but Israel's existence is in no doubt at all.

The third myth is that, while Israel is trying to fight a clean war by targeting only terrorists, Hizbullah prefers to bring death and destruction on innocents by firing rockets at Israeli civilians.

It is amazing that this myth even needs exploding, but after the efforts of Horowitz and co it most certainly does. As the civilian death toll in Lebanon has rocketed, international criticism of Israel has remained at the mealy-mouthed level of diplomatic requests for "restraint" and "proportionate responses".

One need only cast a quick eye over the casualty figures from this conflict to see that if Israel is targeting only Hizbullah fighters it has been making disastrous miscalculations. So far some 400 Lebanese civilians are reported dead -- unfortunately for Horowitz's story at least a third of them children. From the images coming out of Lebanon's hospitals, many more children have survived but with terrible burns or disabling injuries.

The best estimates, though no one knows for sure, are that Hizbullah deaths are not yet close to the three-figures range.

In the latest emerging news from Lebanon, human rights groups are accusing Israel of violating international law and using cluster grenades, which kill indiscriminately. There are reports too, so far unconfirmed, that Israel has been firing illegal incendiary bombs.

Conversely, the breakdown of the smaller number of deaths of Israelis at the hands of Hizbullah -- 42 at the time of writing -- show that more soldiers have been killed than civilians.

In fact, although no one is making the point, Hizbullah's rockets have been targeted overwhelming at strategic locations: the northern economic hub of Haifa, its satellite towns and the array of military sites across the Galilee.

Nasrallah seems fully aware that Israel has an impressive civil defence program of shelters that keep most civilians out of harm's way. Unlike Horowitz I won't presume to read Nasrallah's mind: whether he wants to kill large numbers of Israeli civilians or not cannot be known, given his inability to do so.

But we can see from the choice of the sites he is striking that his primary goal is to give Israelis a small taste of the disruption of normal life that is being endured by the Lebanese. He has effectively closed Haifa for more than a week, shutting its port and financial centres. Israeli TV is speaking increasingly of the damage being inflicted on the country's economy.

Because of Israel's press censorship laws, it is impossible to discuss the locations of Israel's military installations. But Hizbullah's rockets are accurate enough to show that many are intended for the army's sites in the Galilee, even if they are rarely precise enough to hit them.

It is obvious to everyone in Nazareth, for example, that the rockets landing close by, and once on, the city over the past week are searching out, and some have fallen extremely close to, the weapons factory sited near us.

Hizbullah seems to have as little concern for the collateral damage of civilian deaths as Israel -- each wants the balance of terror in its favour -- but it is nonsense to suggest that Hizbullah's goals are any more ignoble than Israel's. It is trying to dent the economy of northern Israel in retaliation for Israel's total destruction of the Lebanese economy. Equally, it is trying to show Israel that it knows where its military installations are to be found. Both strategies appear to be having an impact, even if a minor one, on weakening Israeli resolve.

The fourth myth is a continuation of the third: Hizbullah has been endangering the lives of ordinary Lebanese by hiding among non-combatants.

We have seen this kind of dissembling by Israel and Horowitz before, though not repeated so enthusiastically by Western officials. The UN head of humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland, who is in the region, accused Hizbullah of "cowardly blending" among the civilian population, and a similar accuation was levelled by the British foreign minister Kim Howells when he arrived in Israel.

In 2002 Israel made the same charge: that Palestinians resisting its army's rampage through the refugee camps of the West Bank were hiding among civilians. The claim grew louder as more Palestinian civilians showed the irritating habit of gettting in the way of Israeli strikes against population centres. The complaints reached a crescendo when at least two dozen civilians were killed in Jenin as Israel razed the camp with Apache helicopters and Caterpillar bulldozers.

The implication of Egeland's cowardly statement seems to be that any Lebanese fighter, or Palestinian one, resisting Israel and its powerful military should stand in an open field, his rifle raised to the sky, waiting to see who fares worse in a shoot-out with an Apache helicopter or F-16 fighter jet. Hizbullah's reluctance to conduct the war in this manner, we are supposed to infer, is proof that they are terrorists.

Egeland and Howells need reminding that Hizbullah's fighters are not aliens recently arrived from training camps in Iran, whatever Horowitz claims. They belong to and are strongly supported by the Shiite community, nearly half the country's population, and many other Lebanese. They have families, friends and neighbours living alongside them in the country's south and the neighbourhoods of Beirut who believe Hizbullah is the best hope of defending their country from Israel's regular onslaughts.

Given the indigenous nature of Hizbullah's resistance, we should not be surprised at the lengths the Shiite militia is going to ensure their loved ones, and the Lebanese people more generally, are not put directly in danger by their combat.

If only the same could be said of the Israeli army and airforce. One need only look at the images of the victims of its strikes against residential neighbourhoods, car, ambulances and factories to see why most of the dead being extracted from the rubble are civilians.

And finally, there is a fifth myth I almost forgot to mention. That people like David Horowitz only want to tell us the truth...


Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His book "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State" is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

The fatality rate was high, he said, "because the Israelis are using new kinds of bombs which can enter shelters. They are bombing the bomb shelters which are full of refugees."

Masri said he had barely slept in the 13 days since the Israeli bombing of Lebanon began. His hospital, he said, was functioning with only 25 percent staff because "most are now unable to get here because so many roads and bridges are bombed. Those who are here are eating, sleeping and living here 24 hours a day because if they leave they fear they may be unable to return."

On Sunday, Jan Egeland, the United Nations emergency relief chief, toured the devastated areas of south Beirut. He described what he saw as "horrific" and said the destruction "makes it a violation of humanitarian law."

Egeland said UN supplies of humanitarian aid would arrive within the next few days, but "we need access," and "so far Israel is not giving us access."

Aid is now a matter of life and death. Masri said his hospital would soon begin to run out of medicines and supplies.

"We are concerned about what is to come because we cannot continue at this rate," he said. "Already we've had to go to the Ministry of Health to get extra supplies. If the UN succeeds in opening safe passage from the south, we will be deluged with patients."

Masri said hospitals in Sidon and other southern cities are overwhelmed with patients, who are being treated in the corridors and lobbies.

According to Masri many of the injured there are suffering from the impact of incendiary white phosphorous. The Lebanese ministry of interior has officially said that the Israeli military has used this weapon.

"We don't know why we aren't getting help from the International Committee of the Red Cross," Masri said. "The Lebanese Red Cross is helping us the best they can, but no foreign agencies are helping us. Why not?"

As the IPS correspondent was speaking with the assistant director, an enraged man was led out by several security guards. His wounded son had just been discharged.

"I want my son to stay here because we have no place to go," the man was shouting. "Our home has been flattened. If we leave here we must go to a refugee camp in a school, or sleep on the dirt in a park. I demand you allow us to stay here."

People are furious about the high number of casualties among children.. Mariam Mattar, a 50-year-old mother sitting on a mattress in a park in central Beirut along with hundreds of other refugees from southern Beirut said no home there was safe.

"We left our house because they are bombing everything in the civilian neighbourhoods," she told IPS. "They are killing all our children. What human would ever do this kind of thing."

They had moved to central Beirut because it was safer. But living out in the open has meant another kind of hell. "We are without our shoes even. We are living in the dirt. Would Israel allow her children to live like this," she asked, pointing at her bare feet.

She pulled a little boy towards her and said, "What have these children done? The other children who didn't escape are rotting under the destroyed buildings as we speak."

Israeli war planes roared above as several refugees spoke with IPS.

"We are very afraid from all the bombings," Ramadan, a 12-year-old boy in the park said. "I hope they stop. This is all we want now.."