In predictable fashion—by destroying civilian infrastructure, slaughtering innocent civilians, and thumbing its nose at the world, an admittedly bedazzled and apathetic world that sits idly by on its hands, unable or unwilling to condemn such immense and brazen crimes.

“Israel has reportedly carried out air strikes on approximately 40 sites in southern Lebanon,” reports Zaman Online. “Citing the Israeli military radio, reporters said that Israel mounted offensives on 150 targets affiliated with Hezbollah and bombarded the Beirut airport, applying an ‘aerial blockade’ over Lebanon.”

Of course, the Beirut airport has nothing to do with Hezzbollah, and the legendary resistance organization—that is, legendary in the Middle East, here it is simply another terrorist group—does not have an air force, so an “aerial blockade” over Lebanon is pointless, unless your design is to make the average Lebanese citizen suffer, or at least humiliate him for allowing a resistance to Israeli regional hegemony in his country.

“Israeli warplanes blasted runways at the main army air base in eastern Lebanon near Syria’s border today, police said, an attack that could draw the Lebanese army into Israel’s war with Hezbollah guerrillas,” notes Ireland Online. It helps that Syria is a mere four miles away to the west.

In fact, Israel plans to pitch the entire region into war, thus drawing in the United States.

“The Lebanese army has largely stayed out of the fighting between Hezbollah and Israeli forces,” a wholly unacceptable situation for the all-war, all-the-time gang in Tel Aviv and Washington.

If things go off as planned, thousands of Lebanese—and Syrians, Iranians—will need die horrible deaths and hospitals, food warehouses, sanitation plants, water treatment plants, the entire civilian infrastructure will need be inoperable, reduced to flaming ruins.

“Israel mounted its strongest attack on Lebanon since the 1982 invasion after Lebanese Hezbollah militiamen crossed into Israel on Wednesday and killed three Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two others. Five other Israeli soldiers were killed following the initial attack,” reports Market Watch, a Dow Jones, thus Wall Street mouthpiece.

Never mind it was initially reported the soldiers were “kidnapped” (corporate media speak for taking prisoners of war) on the Lebanese side of the border. As for the 1982 invasion, colorfully known as “Peace of the Galilee” (as in “rest in peace” for 17,825 Lebanese), it was a bonanza for Hezbollah, created directly as a result of Israeli aggression.

“Nothing is safe” in all of Lebanon, Brig. Gen. Dan Halutz, the Israeli army commander, told the media. “Israel warned residents to evacuate a southern Beirut neighborhood where Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is said to live…. Hezbollah said it would attack Haifa, Israel’s third largest city, if Beirut came under attack.”

It appears World War Three, otherwise known as World War Four (neocons count differently than most people), is on schedule.

“Israel and its American allies have blamed Syria and Iran for the abductions of Israeli soldiers on the Lebanon border. Hezbollah, a Shiite political party and armed militia, is a close ally of Syria and Iran. Hezbollah dominates southern and eastern Lebanon.”

Translation: Israel and the AIPAC dominated (coerced and bribed) United States government supports mass murder in Gaza and Lebanon and blame Syria and Iran, two prominent targets on the “axis of evil” roster, for all the carnage and misery.

Hezbollah “dominates southern and eastern Lebanon” because that’s where the Shi’ite Muslims live and that’s where Israeli military continual violates the border, routinely threatening the lives of Lebanese civilians.

“President Bush said the United States recognized Israeli’s right to defend itself, while calling for restraint and a return to diplomacy that could lead to a two-state solution for Palestine and Israel.”

Translation: the cardboard cut-out president recognizes Israel’s “right” to invade its neighbors and kill people who are not Israeli (and thus considered sub-human) on illegally occupied land. Bush, or rather the neocons, have no intention of entertaining “a two-state solution for Palestine and Israel” and, in fact, more than a few neocons are more fanatically Zionist than Olmert and the Likudites.

“Israel carried out air, sea and ground attacks against targets in Lebanon Thursday, effectively blockading the country. Israel also attacked Palestinian government institutions in the Gaza Strip, in what is being described as an open ended military campaign on two fronts,” summarizes MensDailyNews.

Usually, a militarily imposed blockade is an act of war. In other words, Hezbollah has all the right in the world to attack Haifa, as threatened, although of course this would be certain suicide for thousands and thousands of Arabs.

Indeed, World War Four, the “clash of civilizations” version, is right around the corner.

“Speaking on Israel Radio, Defense Minister Amir Peretz says Israel will not allow Hezbollah guerrillas to reoccupy their positions in southern Lebanon.”

In other words, the people of southern Lebanon will not be allowed to return to their homes, as most of them support Hezbollah.

Israel has coveted southern Lebanon (up the Litani River) for decades and went so far as to impose a “security zone,” that is say a swath of illegally occupied land where life was hell on earth for Arabs. In Nazi Germany, this was called Lebensraum, stealing land from people at gunpoint, as Hitler did (with disastrous results) under Operation Barbarossa. In Bushzarro world, this land grab and ethnic cleansing is considered self defense.

“Hezbollah has proved itself a formidable enemy,” explains the BBC.

No kidding. Hezbollah single-handedly kicked Israel out of southern Lebanon and will do so again—that is short of Israel reducing the country to a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a distinct possibility as we are told Israel has learned from its mistakes (i.e., they were not brutal enough the last time they invaded and occupied Lebanon).

“Israel’s calculation appears to be that, in the post-11 September 2001 world, with the US very tied up in Iraq, it has time on its side.”

Precisely. Plus the administration, Congress, and the Pentagon are swarming with neocons and their operatives, all determined to turn the Middle East into a cinder.

In order to get “fair and balanced” news outside of the pro-Israel corporate media Borg Hive, one has to venture to Arab websites, for instance al-Jazeera.

“As tensions spread from Palestinian territories to Lebanon, specter of inferno hangs over the region…. The Israeli occupation army ramped up its terrorist land, air and sea attacks in Lebanon, killing as many as 47 people, almost all of whom were civilians…. A family of 10 and another family of seven were killed in their homes in the south Lebanon as Israeli terrorist fighter bombers carried out dozens of air strikes. Three others from Hezbollah resistance fighters were killed in clashes in the occupied Lebanese territory of Sheba’a farms. The clashes were described as the most violent since the Israeli unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon on May 25, 2000, under pressure from Hezbollah fighters.”

Mahmoud al-Zahar, the Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister, “described the Israeli terrorist offensive against Lebanon as ‘a destruction enterprise’ with an international shadow of silence cast on it…. ‘this area has been exposed to aggressions in 1948, 1956, 1967, … (1978, 1982, the first intifada 1988-1993, the second intifada 2000-2005, the third intifada 2006-) …the Israeli aggression has not changed, the problem is not in the Israeli aggression; it is in the sleeping or dead international consciences,’” al-Zahar said.

Of course, here in America and much of Europe, it is verboten (and downright illegal in parts of Europe) to criticize Israel, thus a disgusting lack of conscience should be expected.

Meanwhile, as Israel’s “destructive enterprise” moves forward with bloody efficiency, neocons and Jabotinsky fanatics are crawling out of the woodwork to defend the action.

“The next Middle East war—Israel against genocidal Islamism—has begun,” writes Yossi Klein Halevi, described as a foreign correspondent for the neocon New Republic and senior fellow of the Shalem Centre in Jerusalem. “The first stage of the war started two weeks ago with the Israeli incursion into Gaza in response to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and the ongoing shelling of Israeli towns and kibbutzim. Now, with Hezbollah’s latest attack, the war has spread to southern Lebanon…. Ultimately, though, Israel’s antagonists won’t be Hamas and Hezbollah but their patrons, Iran and Syria. The war will go on for months, perhaps several years. There may be lulls in the fighting, perhaps even temporary agreements and prisoner exchanges. But those periods of calm will be mere respites.”

In other words, we are experiencing the opening salvo of World War Four, according to the Israelis and their neocon acolytes. No doubt they are jumping for joy.

The goals of the war should be the destruction of the Hamas regime and the dismantling of the Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon. Israel cannot coexist with Iranian proxies pressing in on its borders. In particular, allowing Hamas to remain in power—and to run the Palestinian educational system—will mean the end of hopes for Arab-Israeli reconciliation not only in this generation but in the next one, too….

The ultimate threat, though, isn’t Hezbollah or Hamas, but Iran. And as Iran draws closer to nuclear capability, an Israeli-Iranian showdown becomes increasingly likely.

According to a very senior military source, Israel is still hoping that an international effort will stop a nuclear Iran. If that fails, then Israel is hoping for a US attack. But if the Bush administration is too weakened to take on Iran, then, as a last resort, Israel will have to act unilaterally.

For Israelis, that is the worst scenario of all. Except, of course, the scenario of nuclear weapons in the hands of the patron state of Hezbollah and Hamas.

In effect, regardless of the platitudes of Zionists such as Mr. Halevi, the “ultimate threat” to Israel is a unified Muslim world and Arab nationalism.

It should not be surprising this war will “go on for months, perhaps several years” (the neocons envision it as a multi-generational “long war”) as it will take some time to kill the millions of Muslims opposed to Israel’s long-standing plan to balkanize the Middle East, or short of mass murder subject them to groveling subservience, as many Israelis consider Arabs and Muslim little more than “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” as the ancient Israelites reduced their Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite neighbors.

Addendum

According to Daniel Ayalon, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, two rockets that fell on Haifa today constitutes “a major, major escalation” of the emerging kick-off of World War Four, according to CNN.

Of course, bombing bridges and roads in crowded Lebanese urban areas, attacking Lebanese military bases near the Syrian border, targeting civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon is simply fighting “terrorism,” especially if you consider millions of Arabs terrorists, as Israel obviously does.

Meanwhile, it appears the only in-depth news of what is happening in Lebanon comes from bloggers and folks posting on forums, a fact that should not be surprising considering the propaganda mission of the pro-Israel corporate media.

According to a poster going by the moniker “Live from Lebanon” on the Islamica Community website, the Israeli military has bombed all streets and bridges in Saida (or Sidon, 8 km south of Beirut), Lebanon, thus trapping 200,000 residents in the city. As the poster notes, while CNN concentrates on a rocket striking a northern Israel town, the local media is covering “babies and kids dead” as a result of the intense Israeli barrage of high explosives and “precision” munitions.

It appears the neocon-connected Jerusalem Post is fishing for a reason to extend the invasion to Iran. “Israel has information that Hizbullah guerrillas who captured two Israeli soldiers are trying to transfer them to Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.” Of course, this makes absolutely no sense and Iran would be stupid to accept Israeli prisoners of war (or prisoners of invasion, as war requires two parties of approximate capability and parity, certainly not the case here). Of course, in the past, the neocons have come up with more ridiculous pretexts, for instance Saddam’s model airplanes, capable of spreading death and destruction—not.

Finally, Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor of the Times, declares in “the past American intervention has been decisive in stopping this type of violence. So far there has been only a muted response from the White House. But George Bush will be in Germany today and then go on to St Petersburg for the G8 summit. It is hard to imagine that events in the Middle East will not dominate discussions.”

In fact, in the past, U.S. intervention (and this is the appropriate word) has exacerbated the situation. Is it possible Mr. Beeston has amnesia, not remembering the October 23, 1983, bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut? It should be noted the barracks was bombed as a result of Reagan’s support of the Israeli presence in Lebanon and also because the U.S. Sixth Fleet had fired “shells the weight of Volkswagens at Druze positions,” that is to say Druze Muslim villages.

* * *

Of course, the United States government, controlled from the inside by a cabal of Zionist neocons, will not simply be led willy-nilly into Lebanon. If it happens, it was planned to happen some time ago.

Damain Lataan of Verdon, Australia, writes on his blog:

“This entire crisis has all the hallmarks and is beginning to unravel as a carefully orchestrated ploy to create a casus belli for Israel to attack and occupy the Gaza, neutralise Hamas, the democratically elected government of the Palestinians to deprive the Palestinians of any power to resist reoccupation of the Gaza, possibly on a permanent basis, and, at the same time, to neutralise Hizbollah in pursuit of regime change in Lebanon.

Since the Israelis are now also making noises about Syrian and even Iranian involvement in the Hizbollah actions against Israel that has prompted Israel’s attacks against Lebanon, there are indications that these noises are intended to foment US involvement in attacking Syria and Iran on Israel’s behalf.”

As if to confirm these suspicions, Bush, meeting with neocon-friendly German Chancellor Angela Merkel, told the slavish corporate media Syria “needs to be held to account,” according to CNN.

* * *

It is interesting to note that Hezbollah dubbed its operation to capture Israeli soldiers “Truthful Promise,” according to a the Daily Star (a Lebanese newspaper). “Whatever can be said about Hizbullah, one cannot deny that the party’s leaders are true to their word. During a prisoner exchange between Hizbullah and Israel in 2004, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah vowed that if all Lebanese detainees were not freed from Israeli jails, Hizbullah would eventually abduct more Israeli soldiers…. Nasrallah initially tried to secure the release of Lebanese prisoners through a second phase of prisoner-exchange negotiations, but these high-profile talks abruptly fell apart. This begs the question of whether the current crisis could have been avoided, had these negotiations been carried out to the very end.”

However, the Israeli government rejected this deal because it would “serve as a reward for terror,” according to Israel Insider. In short, the current wave of state-sponsored terrorism—including the murder of more than 50 civilians (no doubt this number is much higher)—is partially the result of Israel’s intransigence.