Israel ``bombing everything that's moving''

US brand of ``diplomacy'' endorses terrorism


US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Rome, shows her feeling that too many Lebanese are still alive

``I can still remember seeing the people who were driving with the fear in their eyes, with everything, every precious thing they have in their cars.... My God, this is too terrible.''

That and the title of this post are quotes from Malak Khaled, an eyewitness to the Israeli bombing and who is currently internally displaced in Lebanon. She was interviewed by Dennis Bernstein on Flashpoints for Thursday July 27.

She described how thousands of people are attempting to evacuate through a landscape where main bridges are reduced to rubble and Israeli warplanes buzz over the fleeing civilians. This causes incredible fear because of the Marwaheen massacre two weeks ago where ``an Israeli missile incinerated a car and a small truck full of families leaving their Lebanese border village of Marwaheen near Tyre after the Israeli army used loudhailers to tell residents they had just hours to go. Pictures showed charred bodies of children strewn across the road.''

Download and listen to that entire interview, and the two others in the program. They will rip out your gut.

Meanwhile, the Green Light continues to shine brightly for the slaughter, as Israel explains that it's offensive ``will continue for several more weeks," according to Major-General Udi Adam.

Here's more, the clear message Rice transmitted in Rome:

Haim Ramon, the Israeli justice minister, told army radio on Thursday: "We received yesterday in the Rome conference permission, in effect, from the world - part of it gritting its teeth and part of it granting its blessing - to continue the operation, this war, until Hezbollah's presence is erased in Lebanon and it is disarmed."

Ramon also said that "everyone who is still in south Lebanon is linked to Hezbollah, we have called on all who are there to leave. Bint Jbeil is not a civilian location, we have to treat it like a military zone".

Malak Khaled, in the interview cited above, expresses anguish over the thousands of civilians stuck in the areas Israel de facto has declared a free-fire zone. Juan Cole has posted a commentary by Patrick McGreevy using the notion of hominus sacres--``those without rights who can be killed without it being called the murder of a human, homicide''--to describe Israeli terror:

Look at this logic: since Israel has asked civilians to leave, any that disobeyed have forfeited their status as civilians. Because the United States and its British followers have blocked the resolution to stop the killing, Israel will continue until Hezbollah ``is no longer present.'' But remember Hezbollah has been redefined to include all those ``still in south Lebanon.'' This crude logic renders all the people of southern Lebanon hominus sacres.

It is monstrous that the US and Israel wish to continue the slaughter, now far, far beyond any issue of captured soldiers. After two weeks of meeting resistance, the issue for these allied super-militaries is denying Hezbollah a perception of victory, a perception that resistance to the neocon agenda is worthwhile or even possible.

There is no other way to describe the US-Israeli policy--it is terrorism if we take the US definition of such seriously--as pointed out by former ambassador Edward Peck in a Democracy Now! interview today:

you can google U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2331, and read the U.S. definition of terrorism. And one of them in here says -- one of the terms, ``international terrorism,'' means ``activities that,'' I quote, ``appear to be intended to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.''

That describes US-Israel policy to a tee.