I have rather extensively browsed various blogs covering the Israeli war in Lebanon, and a leading, and contentious, issue common with most involves the notion of terrorism.

This is the dominant myth: Hezbollah is based in Lebanon therefore Israel is justified in its attacks, however painful it is for innocent Lebanese caught in the middle.

Civilian deaths are to be expected, moreover, because Hezbollah hides behind women and children. Israel cannot avoid such “collateral damage”.

Collateral damage, the fancy political jargon word means, more plainly and honestly, the expected but unavoidable murder of civilians. “Unavoidable” only because asserting regional dominance is the goal. If peace, justice and security were the objectives Israel’s policy within the region and towards Palestinians would be far different.

Certainly, massive retaliation would be off the table.

This war, rather this massacre, like so many other wars is “inevitable”; Israel cannot simply stand by and allow these terrorists to kill their people. This is the realist perspective. Inevitable. Justifiable. Proportional. The War on Terror includes Israeli and American military campaigns wherever they so choose.

By this logic it is important to distinguish “our” crimes from “theirs”. Our murder is justified and inescapable; We are protecting ourselves from vile terrorists who seek to undermine our democracy, freedom and so much more. Our weapons are much more sophisticated and therefore kill much more rapidly, but this is not terrorism! No, only the explosives the “other” depends on can be described as such.

An American fighter plane can litter cluster bombs in Iraqi neighborhoods, and when the duds become landmines and children pick them up and lose an arm or more, well, then, this is collateral damage.

But when Hezbollah abducts Israeli soldiers, then the natural response is to burn down Lebanon with an American-made arsenal. It’s all justified in the War on Terror.

Yet, so many carelessly comply with this corrupt double standard.

Compared with last year’s terrorist attacks in London, writes Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, “what’s happening in Lebanon is six times the devastation, six times the agony, six times the trauma, six times the terror of the 7/7 terrorist attacks.”

“But our leaders in UK, US and European governments don’t seem to think so. They have all unanimously fumbled their fingers and mumbled meaninglessly as Israel has proceeded to respond to Hizbollah’s capture of IDF combatants — an action in concordance with legitimate military resistance against illegal occupation — by ruthlessly smashing civilian life and infrastructure in Beirut.”

On this issue of double standards, our terrorism as no more than fighting terror, their resistance as unequivocal terrorism, he notes:

But such terrorist attacks, when targeted against the Other, no longer constitute terrorism at all; in our Orwellian world of media double-speak, they become instead laudable acts of valour. In fact, when an Israeli air strike killed 8 Canadian citizens in southern Lebanon, US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton emphasized that such deaths due to IDF operations are morally different to the deaths of Israelis due to attacks by Hizbollah. "I think it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts," he said. In contrast, Israeli military operations constituted only "self-defense", with the "the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths."

Dead Lebanese are unworthy victims. They don’t count. But Israeli lives do. The moral distinction drawn by Bolton is not in fact moral at all; it is political, a political decision to view the lives of one group of human beings as sacred, and another group as functionally irrelevant. Such "moral" distinctions are central to the legitimization of large-scale systematic violence against a particular human group.

Thus, it is a “political decision” to disregard Israeli atrocities.

Bolton and others in the Bush administration are well aware of what is at stake for Israel—and “fighting terrorism” is a clever pretense to see through this ongoing aggression.

Unfortunately for the aggressors—Israel and the US—not all are accepting this politicization of mass murder. Britain has backed off and clearly demanded that Israel end this butchery. All but a few countries want a cease-fire.

Today, many Israelis rallied for peace and to hold their government accountable for this senseless murder and destruction.

Countless others around the globe stand in solidarity with the Lebanese (and Israeli citizens) and in opposition to the Israeli government and all other actors that seek the continuation of Lebanese suffering. Because most people are sensitive to overwhelming human suffering and injustice and one-sidedness. It’s also not difficult to realize that corporate media is mostly garbage. They are busy helping perpetuate the myth and the terror behing Israel’s military campaign.

Turn off the televion, is my advice.

Robb,