FROM ACROSS THE POND

I am so appalled by the action of Israel, I really would like to know if any reader can in all conscience defend the heinous, disproportionate offensive to the Lebanon and the attacks on the mainly innocent citizens. The facts at this juncture are thus:

Lebanese toll - 600 killed, 1,788 seriously injured, 5,000 homes damaged. More than 2,500 aerial attacks by Israel. 500,000 people displaced within Lebanon. 200,000 have left the country, 3 airports bombed and 62 bridges destroyed.

Israel toll - 19 civilians dead, 26 seriously injured, 374 less badly injured, 632 treated for shock, 33 Israeli soldiers killed, 50 injured. 1,514 rockets and missiles fired at Israel and 200,000 Israelis have left their homes in north Israel.

(These details from today's 'The Times')

I simply don't understand how a precision guided missile can have killed 4 UN observers...IF they are precision guided, it was murder then? If not, back to the drawing board surely. I want to know why a meeting of 15 foreign Ministers in Rome on Wednesday last, failed to demand an immediate ceasefire...thereby effectively giving the green light to Israel, to continue this carnage. The exact number of fatalities in Lebanon cannot be ascertained, as so many bodies are under the rubble. I have no labelled faith, but does it not say in the Torah, something about respecting the sanctity of life? It seem to me, that like all faiths, cherry picking what suits the agenda at the time, obtains!

Hezbollah know the area, they can appear and disappear within minutes...the Israeli's don't have a hope of wiping out this group, so why don't they try attacking the ideology instead?

Does anyone reading this, defend the destruction of Lebanon, the mass murder and maimings, the KNOWN fact that for every death, at least five NEW terrorists will be born out of bereavement in Lebanon (ergo, there will be no end in sight) and the knowledge that we in the 'civilised' West (and more and more, I use that term in the loosest possible sense) grow ever more contemptuous by the hour of this unconscionble action on the part of Israel, AND the fact that Bush condones anything and everything that Israel does, and to my shame, to a lesser degree does Blair.

We even now, are allowing our airports to be used to facilitate the transporting of missiles by the Americans, even though they have military bases in this country...(in the same way we allowed extraordinary renditions by the CIA to use them too...WHY)?

Ehud Olmert won't win the bigger battle for international sentiment if this continues much longer.