Some civilians are less innocent than others, as the moral derelict Alan Dershowitz tells us, and really the Lebanese have nobody to blame but themselves for making the mistake of living in the same country as Hezbollah. Besides, the IOF leafleted the Lebanese, telling them to get out of their country, never mind the roads, bridges, and ports were long ago destroyed.

On April 18, 1996, the IOF shelled a refugee camp at Qana, killing 106 civilians seeking refuge in a Fijian UNIFIL compound. "The Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their hands or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disemboweled. There were well over a hundred of them. A baby lay without a head. The Israeli shells had scythed through them as they lay in the United Nations shelter, believing that they were safe under the world’s protection," wrote Robert Fisk at the time (warning, link contains gruesome photo of headless baby).

Of course, then as now, Arabs are not safe from the morally and spiritually bankrupt Israelis, who consider a million Arabs not worth a Jewish fingernail, as Rabbi Yaacov Perrin told the New York Times (Feb. 28, 1994, p. 1).

As Edward S. Herman notes, the Israeli public has no problem with ethnic cleansing and slaughtering sleeping children, same as the German people had no problem with their beloved Hitler killing millions, from Jews to Poles and 25 million Russians. "Palestinian stone throwing can mean [home] demolition," writes Herman.

On the other hand, if a Baruch Goldstein slaughters 29 Palestinians, his home is not demolished. In fact, a memorial to this mass murderer was erected near his home, although destroyed by the army under court order in 1999, and he is honored by significant numbers within Israel. At his memorial service in 1994, Rabbi Yaacov Perin stated that "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." As Amira Hass contends, this Nazi-like mindset has grown under the occupation, where the military superiority, abuse of the inferiors, and fear that they might not remain quiet, has made for an increasingly racist perspective that now characterizes the majority of the Jewish population of Israel. Speaking of Israeli attitudes toward the intensified repression in 1996, David Hoffman reported that "few Israelis have objected to going back to the old methods against the Palestinians; many, in fact, have complained that the reaction was too timid" (WP, March 15, 1996). Phyllis Bennis states that "The majority of Israeli Jews are willing to accept the killing of Palestinians and collective punishment of the Palestinian people as justified state policy."

Likewise, they support the slaughter of sleeping babies in Lebanon. "We warned the residents that we would be attacking there," a high-ranking IOF officer told the Likudnik and neocon infested Jerusalem Post. "We work under the assumption that the villages are empty and that whoever is there is affiliated with the Hizbullah."

In other words, if the Lebanese are so stupid as to remain in their country, or they have no means of escape, unlike the upper classes and elite, they deserve to be killed. After all, they are only Arabs, hardly worth a fingernail.

In response to the massacre, Lebanese PM Fuad Siniora told Condi Rice to take a hike. Of course, Siniora should have told Rice to bugger off from the outset, but then he is little more than a lackey of international finance, that is to say the neolib shark set, in particular Group Méditerranée.

"There is no place on this sad morning for any discussion other than an immediate and unconditional ceasefire as well as an international investigation into the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now," said Siniora, according to al-Jazeera. "Rice, who said she was 'deeply saddened’ [by] Qana bombing, is currently in Israel but had been expected to visit Beirut during her Middle East trip to press for talks between leaders from Israel and Lebanon," al-Jazeera continues. Indeed, so "deeply saddened" was Condi, she was photographed smiling with Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni and offense minister Amir Peretz.

"Israel is in no rush to reach a cease-fire before we reach the main objectives we set forth, including progress in the diplomatic process and preparations for a multinational force," declared top war criminal Ehud Olmert. Translation: the IOF will continue slaughtering civilians, as they are not worth a Jewish fingernail, a process hammered out some time ago, as the widely reported.

"Of all of Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared," Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "In a sense, the preparation began in May 2000, immediately after the Israeli withdrawal, when it became clear the international community was not going to prevent Hezbollah from stockpiling missiles and attacking Israel. By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we’re seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it’s been simulated and rehearsed across the board." In other words, after Hezbollah kicked the IOF out of Lebanon, Israel decided to invade again, as it is unacceptable for the Lebanese to actually defend themselves.

Last month, Likudnik Mafioso members Binyamin Netanyahu and Natan Sharansky engaged in discussion, sponsored by the criminal American Enterprise Institute (where Bush admits harvesting his "minds," that is to say Zionist-neocon criminal minds), at Beaver Creek, Colorado, where they received the blessing of dominus, or don, Dick Cheney. "Our Washington sources claim that the U.S.-supported invasions of Gaza and Lebanon and the impending attacks on Syria and Iran represent the suspected 'event’ predicted to take place prior to the November election in the United States and is an attempt to rally the American public around the Bush-Cheney regime during a time of wider war," writes Wayne Madsen.

Meanwhile, here in America, we remain mesmerized by the Israeli Spin Machine. "All the major Jewish organizations in the US, Europe and Canada pledge fealty to the Israeli state and endorse its crimes against humanity as do all the mass media; they influence or control the US Congress, executive branch and trade union confederations in the US.," writes James Petras. "The 'Big Lie’ of Israeli 'reprisals’ has been repeated so often in the media and in official circles that it is taken as an accepted fact," although it will be increasingly tough for the Israeli Spin Machine to sugarcoat the mass murder at Qana, especially when nearly half the victims are children. Naturally, disturbing video of headless babies and splattered grannies will be kept off the idiot tube. Out of sight, out of mind, as usual.

Petras summarizes:

For Israel, the military attack was directed toward destroying all of Lebanon, converting it into an economic wasteland, with the idea that by ethnically cleansing the Lebanese civilians from southern Lebanon, they would have an easier time in declaring the country a "free-fire" zone—to be bombed at will killing any Hezbollah sympathizers, activists, social workers, medics and fighters. The strategy was to "empty the pond (southern Lebanon and south Beirut—perhaps 40% of the country’s population) to catch the fish (Hezbollah)." (Hezbollah is a mass political and social movement with a mass base of 1.1 million Lebanese). In the process, Israel seeks to create a client regime in Lebanon and to cut off the moral and material support, which Hezbollah gives to the democratically elected Hamas government in Palestine.

As well, the neocons will have their perfect storm pretext to invade Syria and Iran, or at least shock and awe the two countries, possibly nuking the latter.

In the meantime, as the clock ticks toward World War Three (or Four, take your pick), we can expect more Qanas, more dead babies, hundreds of thousands of people ethnically cleansed from Greater Israel, formerly southern Lebanon.

For news, we can look to Anderson Cooper, CNN "journalist" and great-great grandson of railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. Even as the radioactive fallout begins its descent, Anderson will tell us all is the fault of Hezbollah, or Hamas, or the Lebanese and Palestinians, worth less than a fingernail, for their inability to submit to the hellish hegemony of the Zionists.

In the weeks and months ahead, as Syria is drawn in, and then Iran, and nukes are swapped, the massacre of Qana will be considered a minor, if not entirely insignificant blip on the historical radar screen.