As we begin to hope that the smoking rubble of Lebanon will finally be left to cool, undisturbed by further Israeli bombs, here is a preliminary assessment of the war and of prospects for the future in its wake.

Eyewitness testimony by Lebanese journalist Omar Nashabe makes a powerful case for Israel to answer over its use of illegal weapons in Lebanon.

For anyone confused about the results of the war in Lebanon, what with both Israel and the Hezbollah claiming victory, the following rule of thumb should be helpful.

If Hezbollah were a military, given Western standards, it would certainly be the most moral in the world. During Israel’s five week offensive, Hezbollah killed 118 Israeli soldiers and 41 Israeli civilians (18 of which were Israeli Palestinians).

Using the July 12 capture of two Israeli soldiers - whose unit had apparently crossed the Israeli border into Lebanon - as a pretext, the Bush administration quickly sprung into action: imagining yet a new Middle East, where democracy and freedom reigns over militancy and oppression.  

A Sky News newscaster, interviewing British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett on Sunday, July 30 demanded an answer to this paraphrased question: if indeed Israel had precise intelligence that a Hezbollah operative was present in the village of Qana, in South Lebanon, how could it possibly fail to realize that the area was also crowded with civilians?

The Lebanon-Israel conflict has been upgraded which shows a signal of the danger of an uncontrolled situation. Regarding this utter misery, the United States and Western Europe have defined different positions towards the cruel war which were particularly noticeable.

The US media’s biased coverage of the crisis in Lebanon should come as no surprise. While the White House and Congress claim a “special relationship” with Israel, our news outlets are not supposed to have a “special relationship” with anyone. Their job is to fairly reports on matters; anything less is a disservice to those watching their news programs and reading their newspapers.

During the week of Aug. 7-11, while Members of Congress are home on recess, organize local pressure on your Representatives and Senators to demand an end to support for Israel's human rights violations, an immediate cease-fire, a just peace, and the end of weapons deliveries to Israel.

The support rate of Hezbollah has reached as high as 86.9 percent, more than 70 percent of residents in Lebanon support Hezbollah's assaults against Israel patrol forces, and 63.3 percent of the people consider it impossible for the Israeli army to defeat Hezbollah, according to an opinion poll conducted by Beirut Centere for Research and Information among various religious factions in Lebanon in late July. At the early stage of Israel-Lebanon conflict, however, many Lebanese, the Christians and Suni Muslims in particular, had reservations about the actions of Hezbollah.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returned from the Middle East almost empty-handed. The Israeli air strike at Qana village in south Lebanon blasted a hole in the American reputation, and plunged the White House into extreme isolation as during the Iraqi war.

David Brooks, the ultra-right columnist for the New York Times’ op ed page (hired for “balance” no doubt) has penned an analysis of the current Israeli attack on Lebanese civilians which purports to tell us what must be done (and its not a let up on killing civilians, especially women and children.) His article, “Cease-Fire to Nowhere” can be found in the Sunday New York Times (July 30, 2006) and was written before the latest Israeli butchery of unarmed civilians, mostly children, in Qana.

We have learned that Israel’s massive bombing of Lebanon has now escalated into a full invasion, at the cost of (so far) hundreds of lives, most of them Lebanese.

The international community on Sunday reacted with shock over the Israeli assault on civilians in the southern Lebanese village of Qana, which killed at least 57 Lebanese, including 37children.

This deadly and destructive war has killed hundreds, wounded thousands, and uprooted hundreds of thousands of people. The destruction of infrastructure from houses to hospitals, to transportation and communications systems, to power grids has been massive.

The United States is seeking a “new Middle East” by alienating the Syrian beating heart of the strategic region. Washington wants Syria to cooperate as near as in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon and as far as in Iran but is sending her messages and messengers all around the region except to Damascus.

At first glance, history seems to repeat itself in Lebanon, where a lengthy cold war is intermittently interrupted by an extreme show of violence as traditional players quickly sprint into action, stacking their support behind one party or the other.

The party believes that an international pressure for an immediate cease fire is the best expression of solidarity that our people can get in order to stop the bloodshed and massacres.

Representatives of the parties of the European Left which belong to the Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the party announced at a Press Conference in Athens today the visit of a delegation of the European Left party to Lebanon.

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the World Confederation of Labour today issued a statement expressing their feelings of revulsion at the growing loss of innocent lives due to the escalating violence between Israel and Lebanon.