Israel Blames Iran

A wounded boy rests in a hospital after Israeli warplanes attacked several houses in the village of Srifa near the port-city of Tyre in southern Lebanon July 19, 2006. REUTERS/Ali Hashisho (LEBANON)

As expected, Iran has officially been implicated in Israel's new lease on war. Let's keep in mind that this whole war began when Hezbollah (the Iranian-bankrolled fundamentalist Shiite organization that was originally created in Southern Lebanon for the very purpose it is being employed today: to stop Israeli attacks there) kidnapped 2 Israeli soldiers last week and, in the process, killed 8 others -- none of whom Israel seems to care about as much as the 2 living kidnapees. Well, according to Israeli PM Olmert this act was an Iranian directive with the main aim of detracting G8 attention from a topic that neither the war on Iraq, the war on Afghanistan, nor a large number of other horrible natural and man-made disasters has managed to avert their attention from for several years: namely, Iran's nuclear program.

Well then let's thank the Iranians for finally and unequivocally demonstrating what we already knew, that the G8 is only useful for two things: to prove (thanks to press-call line-ups) that Vladimir Putin is an extremely short man (even shorter than Angela "I'm wider than I look" Merkel) and to prove that the G8 doesn't do jack squat for anyone. Oh yeah, and they're also really good at getting their own citizens out of dangerous war zones.

Even if, according to Olmert, the G8 is now entirely focused on the Israeli war in Lebanon it clearly hasn't mattered because nobody in that elitist clan of corruption has done anything to stop it or even condemn it. As with the inhumane occupation of the Palestinian territories, it seems this war will continue and more people will be murdered until Israel is good and ready to stop what it started -- in this case an all-out war in the name of a kidnapping. And all the while, innocent civilians on all sides of this war must suffer in terrifying, blood-soaked silence.