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Seymour Hersh: U.S. Helped Plan Israeli Attack, Cheney "Convinced"
Assault on Lebanon Could Serve as Prelude to Preemptive Attack
on Iran
No Shelters, Sirens for Israel's Arab Citizens
Seymour Hersh: U.S. Helped Plan Israeli Attack, Cheney
"Convinced" Assault on Lebanon Could Serve as Prelude
to Preemptive Attack on Iran
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports in this week's
issue of the New Yorker that Israeli officials visited the
White House earlier this summer to get a "green light"
for an attack on Lebanon. The Bush administration approved,
Hersh says, in part to remove Hezbollah as a deterrent to
a potential US bombing of Iran. [includes rush
transcript]
Israel and Lebanon saw continued violence on the last day
before a UN ceasefire. South Lebanon continued to come under
intense Israeli bombardment Sunday. In the most lethal attack,
fifteen Lebanese were reported killed after Israel bombed
the village of Rachat. Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched more
than 250 rockets into Northern Israel. It was the highest
number of rockets Hezbollah has fired into Israel since fighting
began. At least one Israeli was killed.
The past month's violence broke out after Hezbollah captured
two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others. Israel rejected
Hezbollah's demand for a prisoner exchange, and launched a
full-on attack targeting Lebanon's vital infrastructure, including
a power station, the main airport and scores of roads and
bridges. An estimated 1,000 Lebanese have been killed and
more than one million displaced. At least forty Israeli civilians
have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced under
a daily barrage of Hezbollah rockets.
The Bush administration has openly backed Israel's campaign.
The administration resisted international efforts for a ceasefire
and rushed arms to the Israeli military.
A major new article says U.S. support for the invasion of
Lebanon has gone even further than we already know. That in
fact, White House support for the massive bombing of Lebanon
even predates the day those two Israeli soldiers were seized.
In this week's issue of the New Yorker, investigative journalist
Seymour Hersh reports Israeli officials visited the White
House earlier this summer to get a "green light"
for an attack on Lebanon. The Bush administration approved,
Hersh says, in part to remove Hezbollah as a deterrent to
a potential US bombing of Iran. A government consultant said
the Bush administration also saw the attack on Lebanon as
a "demo" for what it could expect to face in Iran.
No Shelters, Sirens for Israel's Arab Citizens
While hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken refuge
in bomb shelters, many Arab-Israelis in say they have had
no such protection. They say they have been left on their
own, thereby exposing some of Israel's worst inequalities.
We go to Haifa to speak with the director of an Advocacy Center
for Arab Citizens and to a Jewish Israeli who lives in an
Arab town in Northern Israel and wrote a book about her journey
across the Jewish Arab divide. [includes rush
transcript]
We want to turn now to an overlooked aspect of the war as
it's affected Israel's northern residents. Israel's civilian
death toll is now at forty. But not all are Israeli Jews.
Almost half of the victims of Hezbollah's attacks are Arab-Israeli.
They're part of a community of more than one million living
inside Israel.
While hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken refuge
in bomb shelters, many Arab-Israelis say they've had no such
protection. They say they've been left on their own, thereby
exposing some of Israel's worst inequalities.
- Jafar Farah, director of the Mossawa
Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens of Israel, which campaigns
for equal rights Israel's Arab citizens. He joins us on
the line from Haifa.
- Susan Nathan, a British-born Israeli Jew who lives in
the Arab town of Tamra, in Northern Israel. She's written
a book about her time there titled "The Other Side
of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish/Arab Divide."
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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