Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon captured two Israeli soldiers along their southern border. Provocations had been running high for some time. The Israeli Defense Forces response was to start a murderous campaign by employing their generously supplied US aircraft to bomb civilian targets, resulting in rising death toll of the innocent.

Meanwhile, Israel’s biggest cheerleader George Bush, between letting out a few 4-word expletives at the G-8 Summit and attempting to manipulate some neck therapy on the German chancellor, stated that Israel had two of their soldiers captured and they were justified in their response.

And while the rest of the civilized world calls for restraint and introduction of a UN peacekeeping force in view of the rise of human casualties, this person in charge of a democratic nation that has lost most of its credibility in the region and around the world, vetoes such a move, and continues to shoot off his mouth by first trying to involve Syria and then Iran in this round of the conflict.

Saaduddin Hariri, son of the late Rafik Hariri and a rising star in Lebanese politics, said it best when he stated that the Israeli attack on Lebanon was a crime against all Lebanese.

With their incursions on Lebanese soil and their message of death and destruction delivered by air, particularly against civilians, the Israelis are the enemy. There are no rebellious factions within Lebanese society running their own agenda as some in the West are trying so eagerly to portray. And we couldn’t agree more.

The Lebanese today stand helpless but united against this onslaught by a rogue state called Israel. Fueled by Bush’s encouragement and armed with America’s armaments, Israel has been daily targeting the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon, resulting in tragic human losses.

They will continue as long as their cheerleader is rapidly replenishing their missiles and weapons of mass destruction

And if the Israelis are under any delusions that they can force a government favorable to Israel on Lebanon then they couldn’t have been more mistaken. This sadistic aggression, which has united the various Lebanese ethnic factions against a common enemy, has also hardened realization in many in the region that the government of Israel is one of violence against Arabs, and fueled by murderous intent. The faces and pictures of those dismembered and killed by Israeli bombs may not appear in Western media, but the people across the Middle East cannot forget the images of those young Lebanese bodies strewn and mutilated by Israeli bombs and missiles, courtesy of George Bush. Babies and children were not spared. Nor the images of old men and women whose very survival has been threatened by Israeli destruction of their food and water sources.

Nor could we easily forget the smiling faces of Israeli children signing off on bombs and missiles just before they were being loaded on Israeli aircraft to deliver their message of death to Lebanese children. Bet you these images never made to any of the pages in US tabloids.

The US media continues to promote their version of the crimes against the Lebanese civilians as an Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, but the truth is far from that. This latest round of violence fits in with Israeli expansion plans for the region. And to compound their murderous intent further, the Israelis are running a similar campaign of cutting down civilians in cold blood in the Gaza Strip. This too is under the guise of rescuing a captured soldier.

All the while their US cheerleader applauds, and passes misleading information on to his trusting constituents.

So pathetic and hypocritical is US foreign policy in the Middle East, it is no wonder that George Bush has all but promoted further terrorism by his one-sided stance, all in favor of the Rottweiler of the region, Israel. And that in itself is tragic as the Americans were once looked on as friends and honest brokers of democracy and justice by the people of the region.

What is happening in Lebanon today is far from that. Justice and democracy have taken a back seat to the Zionist influence on US politics, and even the Lebanese will not be spared.