Chris Giannou, a Canadian surgeon working in Lebanon at the time of the Israeli invasion, testified before the U.S. Congress that he witnessed "the total devastation of residential areas and the blind, savage, indiscriminate destruction of refugee camps by simultaneous shelling and carpet bombing from aircraft, gunboats, tanks and artillery," leaving only "large blackened craters filled with rubble and debris, broken concrete slabs and twisted iron bars and corpses." A Norwegian doctor and social worker told the Guardian "the siege of Beirut seemed [like] gratuitous brutality.... The arsenal of weapons, unleashed in a way that has not been seen since the Vietnam War.... The use of cluster bombs and white phosphorus shells, a vicious weapon, was widespread.... All of West Beirut ... was living in wreckage and garbage and loss" (see John Rose, The Israeli invasion of Lebanon 1982).

If the residents of the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp had weapons in September of 1982, as Hezbollah now has weapons, no doubt over 2,000 Palestinians would not have fallen victim to the brutality of Major Saad Haddad of the Christian (Phalangist, i.e., fascist) South Lebanon Army, a militia armed, supplied, and uniformed by the Israelis. As Noam Chomsky writes in The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians (pages 364-S), "Chief of Staff Eitan and Generals Drori and Yaron met with the Phalangist command. Eitan congratulated them on having carried out good work, offered them a bulldozer with IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] markers removed and authorized them to remain in the camps for another 12 hours. The killing continued. At 5 a.m. Saturday morning the murderers began to leave the camps and, after 36 hours, the slaughter ended." According to the Kahan Commission, a whitewash commission empanelled to investigate the ethnic cleansing of refugee camps in Beirut, Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, was found to be personally responsible for the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. Of course, such bloody details were of little concern to the Israeli people, as they elected him prime minister in March, 2001.

"We view Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and I would hope that Hezbollah would prove that they're not, by laying down arms and not threatening peace," declared Bush last week, reports Agence France-Presse. "We are being asked to disarm so that Lebanon remains defenseless. Our force is protecting Lebanon," Nasrallah responded. "As long as Lebanon remains threatened, even if that lasts a million years, we will say to our children and to their descendants that their patriotic, human, moral and sacred religious duty is to defend their people and their fatherland." Nasrallah then threw the ball back in Bush's court by stating, "if you can convince me that there are other ways to protect Lebanon, I'm ready to listen." In other words, if Bush can contain Israeli aggression and guarantee the outlaw state will not invade again, he may entertain disarming. However, as Bigfoot will appear in a Broadway musical before Israel will stop killing Arabs in large numbers, Hezbollah will not disarm Hezbollah anytime soon.

Meanwhile, the demonization of Islam continues unabated. Last week Pope Benedict XVI cited a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of Islam's Prophet Muhammad as "evil and inhuman," a comment interpreted by some Muslims as a call by the Catholic church for another Crusade. Naturally, "al-Qaeda," specifically the Mujahedeen Shura Council in Iraq, a Pentagon black op claiming to be an "umbrella organization" representing the Iraqi resistance, responded to the dotterel in the Vatican by declaring it would "break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose head tax, then the only thing acceptable is a conversion (to Islam) or (killed by) the sword," the sort of gibberish neocon newspaper columnists and radio and television talk show hosts and anchors consume with orgiastic delight.

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