News agencies stand by Lebanon photos
By DAVID BAUDER, AP, Tue Aug 1, 4:26 PM ET

NEW YORK - Three news agencies on Tuesday rejected challenges to the veracity of photographs of bodies taken in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, strongly denying that the images were staged.

The British web site flinging the accusation suggests that these events were staged for effect, a criticism echoed by talk show host Rush Limbaugh when he directed listeners to the blog on Monday.

The article has me dumbfounded. Can anyone else see the blatant double standard that exists? Mel Gibson, who hasn't got a clue as to what he's talking about, is chastized for uttering the incomprehensible, "Jews started all the wars. Are you a Jew?" Yet, Mr. Limbaugh's statements are not only acceptable but but he is allowed to spew his venom publicly. While Mr. Gibson scrambles to save whatever may be salvaged from his career and gratuitously slavers at their feet, Mr. Limbaugh continues his HOLOCAUST DENIAL unabated.

These events are subterfuge for the REAL issue, which is classifying ALL opposition to zionism as 'hate speech' and 'anti-Semitism' so as to prevent people from seeing the truth. Can you imagine the repercussions if this was someone saying the deaths in WWII internment camps were staged? Oh yeah they already do... that's why they have jailed people for questioning it and passed law to prevent people from speaking opposition to their version of history.

Please explain to me why it is that Americans allow such inconsistent standards to exist. How is it that Americans allow another state to determine the definition of what constitutes a 'holocaust' and whether those deaths quantify the act itself? Why is America cowed into fear at offending these people that have countless times revealed their true nature with countless acts of hostility toward us? A state founded on the principle of,"By deception thou shalt make war' SHOULD be a warning indicator, but most of us know that the tumor lies in much deeper tissue.

In a world that is being exposed to such inhumanity and such abberant and necrotic behavior it would seem that perhaps a few would desire an alternative to the road they see that lies before them. That's why I'm glad that a site like this exists. We are the voice of dissent people. My faith precludes me from violence but protest we must in whatever manner we are afforded. They will try to supplant the message with hate and violence but that is NOT the message. They will try to infiltrate and initiate hate but ultimately we must overcome through peaceful resistance. In time it may cost people their lives and their freedom because when people begin to awake they will realize their ability to maintain power has diminished and just like zionist 'israel' their true face shall come shining through and reveal their hearts and the evil that they have commited.

The zionist holocaust movement is meant to dissuade people from investigating the truth and taking a stand and speaking out. There is proof to expose the truth of what actually happened during WWII and it has nothing to do with accepting Hitler or 'neo-nazi' ideas or being 'anti-Semitic'. The people that are dying in Lebanon and Palestine are more Semitic than this group of people that visits a holocaust on these innocent people, and yes I know all about Khazars and Europe. We are hating the godlessness that these people conduct themselves with and their racist policies to everyone not of themselves. If you hate them, they have won; if you fear them, they have won; if you remain silent, they win. But, in the end they will surely NOT win.

Freedom is the message.

Freedom from their desire, freedom from their oppression, freedom from their ways.

For example, the Web site draws attention to a photo by AP's Lefteris Pitarakis time stamped 7:21 a.m., showing a dead girl in an ambulance. Another picture, stamped 10:25 a.m. and taken by AP's Mohammed Zaatari, shows the same girl being loaded onto the ambulance. In a third, by AP photographer Nasser Nasser and stamped 10:44 a.m., a rescue worker carries the girl with no ambulance nearby.

The site suggests these events were staged for effect, a criticism echoed by talk show host Rush Limbaugh when he directed listeners to the blog on Monday.

"These photographers are obviously willing to participate in propaganda," Limbaugh said. "They know exactly what's being done, all these photos, bringing the bodies out of the rubble, posing them for the cameras, it's all staged. Every bit of it is staged and the still photographers know it."

The AP said information from its photo editors showed the events were not staged, and that the time stamps could be misleading for several reasons, including that web sites can use such stamps to show when pictures are posted, not taken. An AFP executive said he was stunned to be questioned about it. Reuters, in a statement, said it categorically rejects any such suggestion.

"It's hard to imagine how someone sitting in an air-conditioned office or broadcast studio many thousands of miles from the scene can decide what occurred on the ground with any degree of accuracy," said Kathleen Carroll, AP's senior vice president and executive editor.

Carroll said in addition to personally speaking with photo editors, "I also know from 30 years of experience in this business that you can't get competitive journalists to participate in the kind of (staging) experience that is being described."

Photographers are experienced in recognizing when someone is trying to stage something for their benefit, she said.

"Do you really think these people would risk their lives under Israeli shelling to set up a digging ceremony for dead Lebanese kids?" asked Patrick Baz, Mideast photo director for AFP. "I'm totally stunned by first the question, and I can't imagine that somebody would think something like that would have happened."

The AP had three different photographers there who weren't always aware of what the others were doing, and filed their images to editors separately, said Santiago Lyon, director of photography.

There are also several reasons not to draw conclusions from time stamps, Lyon said. Following a news event like this, the AP does not distribute pictures sequentially; photos are moved based on news value and how quickly they are available for an editor to transmit.

The AP indicates to its members when they are sent on the wire, and member Web sites sometimes use a different time stamp to show when they are posted.

"The first Qana massacre did not quench the Israeli thirst for blood," it is said, graphically describing yet another Israeli crime against the innocents of Lebanon. In Qana, 57 armless, defenseless civilians died in an Israeli air strike, 37 of them were children. Maybe these numbers don't matter to you, Mr Bush; they are mere numbers of the nameless Lebanese dead. But they matter to more than 200 million Arabs in the Middle East.

I quote our late president, Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who in 1973 had said, "Arab oil is not dearer than Arab blood." But it seems that Iraqi oil is dearer than American blood. I am somewhat relieved to arrive at this conclusion. At least there's no racism against a certain group of people. Everybody is a potential sacrifice to secure US interests, even if it means sacrificing a whole nation.

No, Mr Bush, we will not accept, nor will we allow the sacrifice of more Lebanese civilians. A ceasefire should have been enforced two weeks ago. Was there a need for 37 children to die before you decided it was time for a ceasefire? How many more, Mr Bush, should die before you decide to stop sending those bloody weapons to Israel? Perhaps we can afford a sacrifice that will rein in your generosity towards Israel permanently.

We have a dream for a new Middle East. Not the "New Middle East" that you've been brainstorming in your Oval Office. It is the new Middle East that Middle Easterners have been dreaming of; a Middle East with no violence, and no US-made weapons to fuel that violence. It is a dream only we, Middle Easterners, are allowed to dream and realise it.

In Arabic we have a saying that goes, "They murder the murdered and walk in his funeral." Allow me to interpret this for you, Mr Bush: Your precision-guided missiles shipment has arrived in Tel Aviv. These missiles will "precisely" fall onto Lebanese villages; kill hundreds; and displace thousands more. (Evidently, we've just witnessed the first "precise" target in Qana.)

Yet you have "compassionately" been able to send aid to Beirut, at the same time, with supplies for the thousands of people directly and fatally affected by your vocal, (im)moral and military support for Israel. Please include US flags in your aid shipment to Beirut; they must have burned all the US flags in stock.

Mr Bush, Lebanon can and will be rebuilt, but lost lives cannot be restored. Your credibility and your government's credibility have long been lost - irretrievably lost like those lost innocent lives. People will not forget this though. They will not turn the other cheek; they will retaliate - just like you had chosen to retaliate after 9/11. Retaliation is a value you have successfully promoted by putting it into practice, always.

I was born too late to see how the British Empire had collapsed, but right on time to see how the American Empire is falling apart. Mr Bush, You will surely be remembered in history for hastening that process.

With no more respect to offer,

Mira Al Hussein

Mira Al Hussein is a UAE national writer based in Dubai who has had a brief stint with the KT. She can be reached at Mira.AlHussein@zu.ac.ae

Israeli jets also carried out another strike in the northern Lebanese region of Akkar, near the Syrian border, the second in 24 hours after two bridges were hit there early Wednesday, police said.

Police sources said it was not clear what had been targeted in the latest bombing.

Israel called a 48-hour partial halt to air strikes after a raid on the Lebanese village of Qana on Sunday killed 52 civilians, most of them women and children.

The lull expired early Wednesday.

Hezbollah fired its biggest salvo of rockets at Israel after the Jewish state's commandos struck deep into Lebanon, snatching five suspected guerrillas in a helicopter raid.

One Israeli was killed in the barrage, the heaviest in 22 days of fighting, as 230 rockets rained down on northern Israel after the snatch operation in the ancient city of Baalbek -- 100 kilometres (60 miles) from Israel -- killed 11.

"We have carried out this operation to prove that we can hit everywhere in Lebanon," army chief of staff Dan Halutz told reporters in the Israeli border town of Kiryat Shmona after the raid.

Minutes later, a missile hit near Beit Shean, some 60 kilometers south of the border, Hezbollah's deepest strike yet into Israel which came a day after Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert said the offensive had significantly weakened Hezbollah.

"Today, the threat posed by Hezbollah is not what it was. It can no longer threaten this people, as this people have stood up to it and have come out victorious," Olmert said late Tuesday.

A military source told AFP that for the first time, a Syrian-made Fajer-5 missile, with a longer range and larger warhead, was fired from Lebanon, hitting the northern town of Rosh Pina and causing no injuries.

The militia has fired more than 2,000 rockets at northern Israel since the start of the offensive on July 12, killing 19 civilians, while more than 800 people, mostly civilians have been killed by Israeli strikes on Lebanon.

At least seven people were killed, including an 80-year-old couple, as Israel renewed its air, sea and land bombardment of the southern Tyre region, police said. All died when their homes collapsed.

Other attacks destroyed two bridges in northern Lebanon and killed a Lebanese soldier and wounded two others in the southern port of Sidon.

Ground fighting in the border area continued as Israel sought to press its advance deeper inside Lebanese territory despite meeting resistance from Hezbollah militants.

"Heavy exchanges of fire have continued with renewed intensity throughout the UNIFIL area of operation in the past 24 hours," said a statement from the United Nations Interim Force (UNIFIL) in southern Lebanon.

Arab network Al-Jazeera reported an Israeli soldier killed in the fighting, but the army only said that five troops had been wounded in clashes with in the village of Mhaibib in the southeast corner of Lebanon.

Olmert told British television Wednesday that Israel would continue to fight Hezbollah until an international force -- "an effective force made of combat units" -- is deployed in south Lebanon.

In a sign of progress, the permanent UN Security Council members embarked on intense talks on the conflict and ambassadors said a resolution setting out a possible settlement was close.

"I'm confident that by tomorrow we'll be in a position to have discussions in the council on a text which actually takes us forward," Britain's UN Ambassador Emyr Jones-Parry told reporters.

US Ambassador John Bolton said: "We find the results of the conversations have been encouraging so far, though a little work remains to be done."

But differences between France and the United States forced the UN to again postpone a planned meeting Thursday of potential contributors to an international force for Lebanon.

France and the United States had been divided over whether a political settlement should be agreed between Israel and Hezbollah before any international force is sent in.

Despite the slowly building diplomatic momentum, Israel's Defence Minister Amir Peretz vowed his country would not succumb to international pressure and would only end its offensive once its goals were achieved.

"We will not determine our military operation according to European and American pressure, we will set it according to the operation's goals," Peretz said in an Israeli television interview.

Justice Minister Haim Ramon told Israeli public radio the offensive in Lebanon would last until the end of next week.

"I counsel everyone to show determination and patience and let the army finish the job," Ramon said. "At the minimum, we have until the end of next week to react and try and finish the job."

The commando raid on Baalbek, a Hezbollah stronghold, was the deepest yet to place troops on the ground in Lebanese territory.

Israeli media said 200 elite troops took part in the raid, the 15th special operation carried out since the start of the war.

Baalbek lies in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon, less than 15 kilometres from the border with Syria, one of the main supporters of the Shiite Muslim militia.

Police said the Israelis snatched five people in the raid, carried out within sight of three ancient Roman temples that rise dramatically from the valley floor.

Eleven civilians, one of them a Syrian, died in the attack, they said.

In Tel Aviv, an army spokeswoman said the Hezbollah fighters captured in Baalbek had been brought to Israel and that all the Israeli troops involved in the raid had returned to their base.

Hezbollah denied the claim, saying "the citizens kidnapped in Baalbek are normal civilians."

Despite the kidnapping, Israel said it was not looking to exchange them for two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah on July 12 in a cross-border raid.

That brazen move prompted a massive Israeli offensive by air, land and sea in which 835 Lebanese have been killed and 3,210 wounded, according to official figures. Hundreds of thousands more have been forced to flee their homes.

Lebanese officials estimate that Israeli bombardments have caused losses of 2.5 billion dollars, with half a billion this week alone, setting the country's infrastructure back several years.

Meanwhile in the Gaza Strip, where Israel is pursuing another fierce offensive after a soldier was seized by militants June 25, an officer with the Palestinian preventative security force was killed by unknown gunmen.

The force is dominated by loyalists of president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah faction which has been locked in violent clashes with supporters of Hamas after the Islamist movement swept to power in a shock election victory in January.

Israel launched its offensive in Lebanon on July 12, after Hezbollah fighters seized two soldiers and killed another eight in cross-border raids.

But while the majority of Israel's Jewish population says the Shiite militia instigated the offensive, many of the 1.2 million Arabs -- some 19 percent of the population -- say the government and its chief ally the United States are the culprits behind the violence.

"This was a premeditated war carried out by Israel according to an American agenda," Wasal Taha, an Israeli Arab lawmaker, told AFP. "Had it not started now, they would have found a different date.

"We demand Israel's government which launched this vast, brutal and barbaric war to stop it immediately in order to allow a diplomatic solution," he said.

The painful divisions between Israel's Arab and Jewish populations were on full display in the Knesset (parliament) this week.

"Murderer!" Arab lawmaker Ahmed Tibi shouted to boos from his Jewish colleagues as Defense Minister Amir Peretz delivered a speech in the chamber following Israel's deadly raid in the Lebanese village of Qana that killed 52 civilians, most of them children.

The previous week, Effi Eitam shouted at Arab lawmakers during another stormy Knesset session: "I can't stand the fact that our sons are fighting and being killed and you support the enemy. Shame on you! Go away!... You should be expelled from here."

Saied Adawi, a writer for the Israeli Arab weekly Kul al-Arab, said most of the country's Arab population backed views expressed by their representatives.

"The Arab MPs represent the population. Most of the people think like their leaders and MPs," he said.

"The kidnapping wasn't the real reason for launching the war. The feeling is that Israel wanted this war anyhow."

Opinion polls largely back this view.

Leading Israeli pollster Mina Tsemach told AFP that according to a poll conducted last week among 500 Israelis, who included 75 Arabs, more than 90 percent of the Arab respondents thought the war was unjustified, compared with 92 percent of Jews who backed it.

Although they enjoy full citizenship, many Israeli Arabs see themselves as second-rate citizens, discriminated against and neglected by the state. With relatives living in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon, they have "always been between a rock and a hard place", Adawi says.

While most Israeli Jews see Hezbollah leader Hassan Hasrallah as a "terrorist", Israel's Arabs, like many across the Arab world, view him as a hero resisting the region's strongest army.

"Israel's Arabs believe that he is the only Arab leader who dared to do what no one else has dared in years. He is perceived by the public as a hero," Adawi said.

Taha, the Arab lawmaker, drew scorching criticism in Israel last month after he was quoted in the media as supporting Israeli soldier abductions shortly after Palestinian militants snatched a serviceman at an army outpost near the
Gaza Strip.

"I see the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance against the occupation as legitimate," Taha told AFP, saying that Hezbollah's goals were linked to those of the Palestinians.

"If I were Lebanese I would have joined the resistance. A soldier who fights in a military base and is captured is a prisoner."

These statements, coupled with other declarations of support for the Palestinians, brought several right-wing MPs to take action against Taha and several other Arab lawmakers -- including a request to revoke their Israeli citizenship.

"The Israeli Arab members of the Knesset betray the state of Israel according to any standard, whether it's judicial, public or simply human," Eitam, the Jewish lawmaker, told AFP.

"They use the Israeli democracy as a cover for their views. They are a fifth column in their country while it is at war," he said.

"I intend to act to have their parliamentary immunity removed and put the MPs on trial and to have their Knesset membership and citizenship revoked."

"I have no doubt that they represent large parts of the Israeli Arab public which has forgotten that democracy means rights but also duties," Eitam added.

"The Arab public must understand that without duties there are no rights."

The Islamic Movement's Northern Branch also warned of what could take place Thursday in the vicinity of the Temple Mount. The head of the movement, Sheikh Raed Selah, said in a radio interview that the Supreme Court does not have the authority to rule on the matter.

According to Selah, "The Supreme Court isn't worthy of deciding on matters pertaining to the Al Aqsa Mosque, because Israel does not have sovereignty over it. Selah called on Islamic Movement supporters to reach the Al Aqsa Mosque on Thursday.

Sunday, in Qana, 57 of Haim Ramon's "terrorists," 37 of them children, were massacred with precision-guided bombs. Apparently, Katyushas had been fired from Qana, near the destroyed building.

"One who goes to sleep with rockets shouldn't be surprised if he doesn't wake up in the morning," said Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman.

Today, we hear unctuous statements about how Israel takes pains to avoid civilian casualties, drops leaflets to warn civilians to flee target areas and conforms to all the rules of civilized warfare.

But Israel's words and deeds contradict her propaganda.

Gillerman, at a pro-Israel rally in New York, thundered, "To those countries who claim that we are using disproportionate force, I have only this to say: You're damn right we are."

Gillerman spoke the truth. No sooner had Hezbollah taken the two Israeli soldiers hostage than Israel unleashed an air war - on Lebanon. It was the moral equivalent of a municipal police ravaging an African-American community because Black Panthers had killed cops.

If Israel is not in violation of the principle of proportionality, by which Christians are to judge the conduct of a just war, what can that term mean? There are 600 civilian dead in Lebanon, 19 in Israel, a ratio of 30-1.

Yet, whatever one thinks of the morality of what Israel is doing, the stupidity is paralyzing. Now, 87 percent of Lebanese back Hezbollah, and the entire Arab and Islamic world is rallying behind Hassan Nasrallah.

And how does one defend our behavior?

When Gillerman was exulting in the disproportionality of Israel's attack on Lebanon, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton was smiling smugly beside him. When the U.N. Security Council tabled a resolution condemning Hezbollah's igniting of the war, but also the excesses of Israel's reprisals, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton vetoed it. When a few congressmen sought to moderate a pro-Israeli resolution by adding words urging "all sides to protect innocent life and infrastructure," GOP leader John Boehner ordered the words taken down.

America shares full moral and political responsibility for the massacre at Qana. Our Israeli friends appear to be playing us for fools.

Israel has bombed Red Cross center and ambulances, and a UN observation post killing 4 observers. She has displaced a million people inside the country, some of whom are forced to take shelters in even prisons. Infants have been forcibly separated from their parents, and the elderly from their care-taking children. Relief supplies are difficult to get to the internally displaced refugees. Nothing is immune from Israel's bombing campaign.

If a small fraction of these crimes were to be committed by any invading state, in contravention to international laws, Bush and Blair and their European allies in the NATO would be screaming aloud demanding cease-fire, failing which they would threaten the invading nation with all kinds of actions - UN sanctions, embargo and war. But when it comes to crimes of Israel, they are her greatest cheer-leaders. They want to see more Muslim blood, more destruction, literally hell on earth and not cease-fire, because to them Muslim lives and properties are cheap and expendable.

As Michael Schure, an ex-CIA analyst and the foremost expert on al-Qaeda, has said, Bush and Blair through their naked support of such monumental crimes against Muslims have repeatedly given credence to everything that their adversaries have been saying about the West. No bones about it. Truly, it is not OBL and al-Zawahiri who are radicalizing Muslims throughout the world, but these two world leaders. With world leaders like these, who needs OBL to bring the Armageddon on earth?

Exchange of prisoners between contending parties is not new. It takes place all the time. Even Israel has, in the past, negotiated such exchanges. Moreover, the demand of Hizbullah and Hamas to exchange captured Israeli soldiers for Muslims prisoners held by Israel is justified given the fact that it is Israel that for decades has been holding thousands of Palestinian prisoners and hundreds of Lebanese citizens -- many of whom are women, children and (even) infants -- some literally kidnapped.

Remember that although Israel was forced to withdraw from southern Lebanon in 2000, some 22 years after its invasion, she continued to hold onto the Sheba Farms in defiance of UN Security Council resolution 425, and refused the release of 300 Lebanese prisoners including a number of Hizbullah leaders. Israel also refused to hand d over to the Lebanese government the map of land mines planted in south Lebanon. She continued to violate the air, water and land sovereignty of Lebanon. Even the plea of Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora with the Bush Administration did not produce any result. So, when all the options for a peaceful resolution of these legitimate concerns were balked at by the Zionist regime, Hizbullah captured two Israeli soldiers when they violated Lebanese sovereignty on July 12.

Hizbullah promptly called for the exchange of prisoners. Unfortunately, Israel does not care about the fate of those soldiers. She used the event as a pretext for something more sinister, something that remained unfulfilled from the Zionist blueprint for six-decade long history of annexation and annihilation, massacre and manipulation. The current murderous campaign of Israel inside Lebanon cannot, therefore, be grasped without an understanding of the Zionist dream that includes annexing the southern part of Lebanon to the Litani River, the Syrian Golan Heights, and the West and East banks of the Jordan River.

It is, therefore, not difficult to fathom why Israeli Prime Minister Olmert preferred invasion of Lebanon over negotiation to exchange prisoners. Israel has always been a colonial enterprise that thrives on opportunities for practicing state-run terrorism and colonization against Arabs. The capture of Israeli soldiers provides that criminal justification to destroy and slaughter, let alone an opportunity to set up a client state in the plundered territory that would safeguard Israel's so-called inalienable rights to intervene. Invasion comes rather easy with Israeli warlords. To these hawks, Barak's 2000 pullout from the 'Security zone' was a mistake and needed to be corrected. They want a 'Buffer zone.'

One should not forget that it was Israeli atrocities and western betrayals that brought about the emergence of resistance fighters of Hizbullah, born in families of the Shi'ite victims and out of the ashes of south Lebanon. During the Lebanese Civil War, when the USA and France acted more like proxies to pro-Israel forces in the region, the U.S. Embassy (April 1983), and French and U.S. Army barracks (October 23, 1983) were attacked by these resistance fighters killing nearly 300. By the time the Civil War ended, Hizbullah, with its militia, refused to disarm in fighting the Israeli presence in the security zone.

The Lebanese government with a weak military was in no position to contest IDF and found it prudent to overlook Hizbullah's efforts to securing the southern border. Thus, the latter had a de facto approval from its constituency. [A poll conducted by the Arab-American Institute as recently as April of 2006 showed widespread support for Hizbullah. Only 6% of Lebanese people agreed to a disarmament of the group.]

Hizbullah also did a superb job building clinics, hospitals and schools, paving roads and constructing homes, and rebuilding houses and other infrastructure in war-torn Lebanon. These activities earned them immense popularity in the south and made them a major political and social force to be reckoned with.

The presence of the IDF and its surrogate SLA in the south was a source of constant irritation for Lebanon and her people, and led to hostilities with Hizbullah and the Lebanese forces. In April 1996, during Israeli "Grapes of Wrath" campaign to destroy Hizbullah guerrillas, Israeli artillery gunners shelled a United Nations base in Qana, east of the port city of Tyre, killing more than 100 civilians sheltering there. That massacre at Qana galvanized the western leaders to arrange a ceasefire.

Fighting between the Hizbullah and the IDF resumed again in June of 1999. In May 2000, under the new Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the IDF started to gradually withdraw from southern Lebanon turning over its positions to its ally - the SLA. However, amidst incessant pressure from the Hizbullah, SLA collapsed, leading Israel to accelerate its withdrawal, which it accomplished by late May. Nonetheless, she held on to the Sheba Farms.

On Sunday, July 30, 2006, under new Prime Minister Olmert, the IDF repeated the war crimes of 1996 through missile strikes in the village of Qana. Villagers had gathered in a shelter in one of Qana's buildings, probably thinking that the massacre of 1996 would not be repeated by savage Israelis. But they were wrong. Lebanese Red Cross officials said that 58 people died in the Israeli assault on the village, including 34 children. Rescuers dug through the debris to remove dozens of bodies.

In 1996, Qana was the price Lebanon had to pay for world leaders to end the killing. But this time, with the US and its leadership firmly behind Israel's war-crimes, no such ceasefire is in the making. So, when the rest of the world cries out foul and is saddened with savagery of Israel, and demonstrates for ceasefire, leaders like Bush, Blair and Condi Rice show that they are devoid of human traits. Their behavior is immoral, demented, sadistic and criminal. Truly, if we are looking for a modern-day Nero, we have it in these world leaders.

In their delirious mindset, they have forgotten that when the doors of negotiation, seeking fairness and justice, are shut down, radical elements -- prone to seek alternative ways to redress their grievances -- always emerge. If that happens, don't mumble 'why they hate us?' It is events like Qana that produces recruits for 9/11, 7/11 and 7/7.

The current events in the Occupied Palestine and Lebanon once again have shown the utter moral bankruptcy of the West and its leadership, especially of the USA and the UK. Hypocrisy is its hallmark. The West can preach equality, liberty, democracy and human rights, but they truly don't mean them when it comes to vast majority of non-whites. So, when Israel commits monumental crimes against Arabs, violating scores of international laws and UN charters, the USA and her western allies have consistently cheered and supported her criminal activities.

It is said that when criminals and demons rule our world, it is better for human beings to be dead than alive. How long will humanity let these modern-day Neroes to rule our world?