Beirut

By: Vernon Richards, , author of ‘Islam Undressed‘

By Ali Sina
In an Israeli air strike in Qana 54 civilians including 30 children were killed. This brought Arab condemnation and according to BBC, a Human Rights Watch accused the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) of treating southern Lebanon as a "free-fire zone" calling this strike a "war crime". It said the failure to distinguish between civilians and combatants could be judged as a war crime. “The Israeli military seems to consider anyone left in the area a combatant who is fair game for attack," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

While some of the populace in the Middle East is cheering the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah and their kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, it has now become clear by Saturday, that the result has been almost a total destruction of the infrastructures of both Gaza and Lebanon. Misery has returned to haunt the daily lives of millions of these Mideasterners on both sides of the border.

“Before the Israeli attack, Lebanon no longer existed, it was no more than a hologram.” This is what the Lebanese journalist, Michael Behe, wrote on July 30. His commentary was posted on the website of the Metula News Agency in Beirut.

To understand the Lebanese situation, it helps to know that, despite a history that dates back to biblical times, modern Lebanon was literally the invention of Western powers, England and France, after WWI in 1920. It became independent of France in the early 1940s.