"Israeli ground forces also crossed into Lebanon to hunt for the missing soldiers, Israeli Army Radio said," reports Reuters, and then offers an excuse, per usual: "Israeli troops have not struck deep into Lebanon since they withdrew from a southern border strip in 2000 after Hizbollah’s Shi’ite fighters waged an 18-year war of attrition against them," in other words they resisted the illegal occupation of the southern part of their country, as they now resist the illegal occupation of the Shebaa Farms area and continual Israeli border provocations (and violations of Lebanese airspace by Israeli fighter jets). No mention of this by Reuters or Bloomberg.

Like the civilians of Gaza, the civilians of Lebanon will be required to pay for Hezbollah capturing prisoners of war.

"Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz warned the Lebanese government that the Israeli military will target infrastructure and 'turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years,’ if the soldiers were not returned, Israeli TV reported," notes the Associated Press. Only a little bit of translation is required, as Israel does not usually mince words. Israel will destroy civilian infrastructure in Lebanon, as it did in Gaza, a violation of international humanitarian law. But then Israel in Palestine and Lebanon, as the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, does not do international law.

Of course, the New York Times chimed in. "The fighting erupted when Hezbollah attacked northern Israel with rocket fire this morning, injuring several Israeli civilians in the northwestern town of Shlomi, the Israeli military said. Israel responded with artillery fire and air strikes that targeted Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon. Later, Israeli troops moved into southern Lebanon in the first such incursion since Israel pulled its troops back into Israel in 2000." Reading the New York Times, or any other corporate media newspaper for that matter, you get the impression Hezbollah simply fires Katyusha rockets into northern Israel out of vindictiveness. Israel’s border provocations and targeting of Lebanese civilians is rarely mentioned.

In predictable fashion, Israel is now attacking Lebanese civilians in response to the "abduction" (capture) of its soldiers. "In southern Lebanon, Israeli fighter jets bombed five bridges in quick succession, effectively cutting off that region from the rest of the country. At least two Lebanese civilians were killed in one of the bridge strikes, civil defense officials said, and a power plant was badly damaged. Airstrikes hit the cities of Marjuyun and Kfar Shouba, and warships shelled roads connecting cities to each other."

As expected, the Times chalks all of this up to an attempt to stop the movement of the "kidnappers," or resistance forces in engaged in a long tradition—taking prisoners during wartime. "Troops entered Lebanon soon after the 9 a.m. abduction, striking 30 military and infrastructure targets in an effort to slow the movements of the gunmen holding the kidnapped soldiers." Of course, destroying "infrastructure targets" will not stop Hezbollah, although it will create a refugee problem and make life a living hell for Lebanese civilians. "Scores of suddenly stranded Lebanese wandered back roads looking for a way home—their faces grim and worried, their belongings stuffed into plastic bags. Sirens wailed in the background."

Since the 2000 "pullback" (i.e., the Hezbollah resistance defeated Israel), the Israeli military has consistently attacked civilian infrastructure in Lebanon. In 2000, for instance, Israel targeted three key electric plants "that limited power supplies to a few hours a day for Beirut and other parts of Lebanon," as the Los Angeles Times noted at the time. As Israeli diplomat Abba Eban explained in 1981, attacking and slaughtering civilians is a "rational prospect." Hizbollah understands this policy all to well, as do the civilians of al-Mansouri, Majdal Zoune, Zibqin, Kafra, Yater, Eita al-Jabal, al-Ezizeh, and other Lebanese cities indiscriminately shelled by Israeli artillery over the years. A prime example of this brutality can be seen in the Israeli shelling of Qana, a village located southeast of Tyre, resulting in the killing of 106 civilians.

It should be obvious what is going on here—Olmert and the Likudites are escalating hostilities in the region in an effort to draw the United States in even more, the situation in Iraq not withstanding.

Olmert, the Likudites, and their neocon collaborators understand well the military prowess and red ink checkbook of the United States will be required to take on the Lebanese, Syrians, Iranians, and the Palestinians, long designated mortal enemies of the Israeli state. For as Israeli foreign policy expert Yehoshafat Harkabi noted in 1988, "Israeli intentions to impose a Pax Israelica on the Middle East, to dominate the Arab countries and treat them harshly," cannot be accomplished, considering current realities. "Writing from a realist perspective, Harkabi concluded that Israel did not have the power to achieve that goal, given the strength of the Arab states, the large Palestinian population involved, and the vehement opposition of world opinion. He hoped that 'the failed Israeli attempt to impose a new order in the weakest Arab state—Lebanon—will disabuse people of similar ambitions in other territories.’ Left unconsidered by Harkabi was the possibility that the United States would act as Israel’s proxy to achieve the overall goal," writes Stephen J. Sniegoski.

In fact, it appears this is precisely what Israel is attempting to do now. Soon enough, Israel will paint itself into a corner, unable to stem the growing tide of resentment and violent reaction, and will call on the United States to attack its enemies. Or, more to the point, Israel’s vocal choir in the United States will demand a response, beginning with Syria and eventually Iran, two targets already highlighted on the neocon hit list, the "evil empire" roster.

Addendum

Ari Rabinovitch, writing for Reuters, muses: "The violence has knocked the hopes of many Israelis that it might one day be possible to break from conflict with various foes through a mixture of withdrawing from some occupied land and protecting boundaries with overwhelming force."

Israelis need to realize their government never had any intention of ending the "conflict with various foes" who had and continue to have their land systematically stolen, their communities destroyed, their civilian infrastructure targeted. Israelis need to go back to the United Nations Partition Plan (resolution 181) conceived in 1947 (see this map). Instead, the Palestinians live on a fraction of land as original proposed (see this page). Israelis need to realize they support apartheid, a refashioned and high-tech Warsaw ghetto wall, and also understand their society is riddled with anti-Arab racism and hatred.

Israelis need to consider the following quotes issued from their founders and leaders:

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist." — Golda Meir Statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." — Golda Meir (quoted in Chapter 13 of The Zionist Connection II: What Price Peace by Alfred Lilienthal )

"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country …. expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." — Theodore Herzl (from Rafael Patai, Ed. The Complete Diaries of Theodore Herzl, Vol I)

"… it is the duty of the [Israeli] leadership to explain to the public a number of truths. One truth is that there is no Zionism, no settlement, and no Jewish state without evacuating Arabs, and without expropriating lands and their fencing off." — Yesha’ayahu Ben-Porat, (Yedi’ot Aharonot 07/14/1972) responding to public controversy regarding the Israeli evictions of Palestinians in Rafah, Gaza, in 1972. (Cited in Nur Masalha’s "A Land Without A People" 1997, p.98)

"The very point of Labor’s Zionist program is to have as much land as possible and as few Arabs as possible!" –Yitzhak Navon ("moderate" ex-Israeli president and a leading labor party politician.) Cited on p.179 of Nur Masalha’s A Land without a People who cites Bernard Avishai’s The Tragedy of Zionism 1985 p.340

"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail."
–Rabbi Ya’acov Perin in his eulogy at the funeral of mass murderer Dr. Baruch Goldstein.

"In working for Palestine, I would even ally myself with the devil"
– Vladimir Jabotinsky founder of Revisionist Zionism (Likud party roots)
responding to condemnation for his alliance with Ukrainian pogromist Petlyura.

"In strategic terms, the settlements (in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza) are of no importance." What makes them important, he added, was that "they constitute an obstacle, an unsurmountable obstacle to the establishment of an independent Arab State west of the river Jordan."
–Binyamin Begin, (son of the late Menahem Begin and a prominent voice in the Likud party writing in 1991, Quoted on page 159 of Findley’s Deliberate Deceptions)

"Our fathers had reached the frontiers recognized in the partition plan; the Six-Day War generation has managed to reach Suez, Jordan, and the Golan Heights. This is not the end. After the present cease-fire lines, there will be new ones. They will extend beyond Jordan … to Lebanon and … to central Syria as well."
– Moshe Dayan to Zionist youth at a meeting in the Golan Heights July, 1968

"They [Israel] have typically concealed the continually expansionist nature of their project from their western sponsors and pursued a "step by step" process toward these goals. While pointing to militant Arab rhetoric to frighten Jews and convince them that the Arab world is genocidal against Jews and that no peace is possible with them, Israeli leaders have been quite aware of the actual inability of the Arab world to deliver on this militant rhetoric. "
–Rosemary and Herman Ruether in "The Wrath of Jonah" (1989)

"The main difference between Bosnia and Palestine is that ethnic cleansing in the former took place in the form of dramatic massacres and slaughters which caught the world’s attention, whereas in Palestine what is taking place is a drop-by-drop tactic in which one or two houses are demolished daily, a few acres are taken here and there every day, a few people are forced to leave"
–Edward Said (Washington Report 09/1998)

"The demolition and sealing of houses are among the most severe methods of punishment used by the authorities against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. To our knowledge, this harsh form of punishment is unique to Israel and is not employed by any other nation. Demolition and sealing of houses in the territories contravene international law that prohibits collective punishment and arbitrary injury to property."
– B’Tselem, an Israeli Human Rights Organization.

"It is an open secret that Israeli policy makers hoped for a massive emigration of Palestinians as a result of economic and demographic pressure. Therefore, they also developed a clever system which caused numerous Palestinians born here to lose their residency rights when they went to work or study abroad."
– Amira Hass in 08/26/1998 Ha’aretz Op’Ed titled The Settlers are Not to Blame.

While campaigning for the prime ministership, Binyamin Netanyahu Criticized his Labor party opponents for missing an opportunity during the Tiannamen Square massacre. "Had he been prime minister, he said, he would have seized the chance then, while the world was watching China, to carry out the transfer of the Palestinians."
– p. 137 Washington Report 09/1998

"[Israel will] create in the course of the next 10 or 20 years conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza Strip and the west Bank to Jordan. To achieve this we have to come to agreement with King Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat."
– Yitzhak Rabin (a "Prince of Peace" by Clinton’s standards), explaining his method of ethnically cleansing the occupied land without stirring a world outcry. (Quoted in David Shipler in the New York Times, 04/04/1983 citing Meir Cohen’s remarks to the Kenesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee on March 16.)

"To solidify their gains after the 1967 war, according to UN figures, the Israelis destroyed during the period between June 11, 1967 and November 15, 1969 some 7,554 Palestinian Arab homes in the territories seized during that war; this figure excluded thirty-five villages in the occupied Golan Heights that were razed to the ground. In the two years between September 1969 and 1971 the figure was estimated to have reached 16,312 homes."
–from The Zionist Connection II, by Alfred Lilienthal, p.160. 1978

"Jews came and took, by means of uprooting and expulsion, a land that was Arab. We wanted to be a colonialist occupier, and yet to come across as moral at the same time… The Arab armies — chiefly from Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Transjordan, now Jordan — totaled just over 20,000 men. The core of the Arab nations’ fighting forces remained behind, in part to ensure the internal stability of their own fledgling regimes…. Crucially, Israel had a quiet agreement with Transjordan that its Arab Legion, the strongest of the invading armies, would take over only the West Bank, which the U.N. partition plan had intended as the center of a Palestinian Arab State."
– Ilan Pappe’, Israeli Historian at Haifa University.

"Till then everyone in Israel spoke about Arabs who had just run away in 1948, but there existed no real historical research on it. There were two conflicting propaganda versions, one Arab and another Jewish. As one who received his education in Israel, I thought I knew that the Arabs had 'run away.’ But I knew nothing else. The Jewish generations of 1948, however, knew the truth and deliberately misrepresented it. They knew there were plenty of mass deportations, massacres and rapes . . . . The soldiers and the officials knew, but they suppressed what they knew and were deliberately disseminating lies."
– Israeli Historian Benny Morris in an interview with Rami Tal published in Israeli Daily Yediot Ahronot December 1994.

"Israel’s conquests included not only such major cities as Jaffa, Lydda and Acre, but also 418 Palestinian villages that were destroyed and another 100 villages that were occupied by Jews. In all Israelis took over more than 50,000 homes, 10,000 shops and 1,000 warehouses. It was estimated that about a quarter of the buildings in the new state were originally the property of the Palestinians."
– p. 72 of Fallen Pillars by Donald Neff

"Indiscriminate plundering of Palestinian property by Jews [in 1948] was so common that it caused Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to confide to his diary that he was 'bitterly surprised’ by the 'mass robbery’ in which all parts of the population participated. […] Tom Segev reported: 'In Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem there were many civilians among the looters.’ Another Israeli writer, Moshe Smilanky, reported: 'Individuals, groups and communities, men, women and children, all fell on the spoils. Doors, windows, lintels, brinks, roof-tiles, floor-tiles, junk and machine parts …’ Segev commented that Smilansky 'could have also added to the list toilet bowls, sinks, faucets and light bulbs.’"
– p.68 of Fallen Pillars by Donald Neff

(Classic Quotes on Zionism, from the Jerusalemites website.)