US must bear responsibility for Israel's war crimes.

One has to seriously wonder if the reputation of Israel will ever survive what she has done on the streets of Lebanon.

The UN's Jan Egeland has condemned the devastation caused by Israeli air strikes in Beirut, saying it is a violation of humanitarian law, the first official to lay the charge of war crimes at Israel's door.

Meanwhile, even Bush's most loyal lapdog, Tony Blair, has broken with the US over Israel's behaviour, with the British Foreign Office minister Kim Howells calling the Israeli response "disproportionate" adding, "it's not enough to see a military victory. It has to win wider politicial battles as well." That meant it had to consider the consquences of its conduct in Lebanon " including the children that are dying". In an earlier interview with Sky News he repeated that he hoped the US was aware of the impact of the bombardment of Lebanon and repeated that it did not consist of " surgical strikes."

However, the story that most newspapers around the world seem to be leading with this morning is the story of the Shaito family, a Lebanese family who held off leaving their home in Tireh for days because they feared Israel's actions if they attempted to leave more than they feared remaining in a war zone.

What does it say of Israel's propensity to attack civilians that any family would even think in this way?

However, eventually the family heeded Israel's advice and eighteen of them boarded a minivan.

Within minutes they became casualties of Israel’s 12-day-old bombardment of southern Lebanon, which the Israelis say they will continue indefinitely to destroy the military abilities of Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group. By the Lebanese official count, Israel’s attacks have killed more than 380 Lebanese.

An Israeli rocket, which Lebanese officials said was likely fired from a helicopter, slammed into the center of the Shaitos’ van as it sped round a bend a few miles west of their village, and the van crashed into a hillside. Three occupants were killed: an uncle, Mohammad; the grandmother, Nazira; and a Syrian man who had guarded their home. The missile also critically wounded Mrs. Shaito and her sister. Eleven others suffered less severe wounds.

“They said leave, and that’s what we did,” said Musbah Shaito, another uncle, as his niece, Heba, 16, cried hysterically behind him for her dead father, whose head was nearly blown off. This reporter watched as paramedics struggled to remove the dead from the van, but soon gave up, as an Israeli drone hovered overhead.

“This is what we got for listening to them,” Mr. Shaito said, speaking of the Israelis.

They had waved a white flag from the van, signifiying to Israeli aircraft that they were non-threatening, Mr. Shaito told reporters later.

The phrase "disproportionate use of force" seems unnecessarily polite when one reads of so many instances of civilians waving white flags who, nevertheless, come under rocket attack. Especially when one considers that these civilians were leaving their homes because Israeli forces asked them to. For civilians to be asked to leave their homes and then to be attacked as they obey the order is a war crime.

Just as the devastation Jan Egeland witnessed in Beirut is a war crime.

To attack anyone flying a flag of truce is a war crime, just as wanton destruction was deemed a war crime under the Sixth Principle of the Nuremberg Charter.

(b) War Crimes:

Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

But it would be wrong to lay the blame for Israel's excesses solely at Israel's door. The US has a huge responsibility here.

Israel has long been inured to the criticism of the Arab world, or to European calls for restraint, safe in the knowledge that the world's sole superpower will shield her from such disapprobation. This knowledge, coupled with the fact that this same superpower have armed her to such an extent that she is - in effect - a mini-superpower in the Middle East, has led Israel to believe that she can act without fear of consequence.

It therefore naturally follows that an untested Israeli Prime Minister, newly elected to power and keen to show his military muscle - especially following on the heels of as decorated a military figure as Ariel Sharon - would, unless restrained by his more powerful partner, stray into areas of illegality.

President Bush has not only failed to restrain his Israeli partners, but by labelling this conflict a great opportunity, he has almost encouraged them to their worst excesses.

More than any previous American President I can think of, Bush has utterly failed to even pretend that the US is an "honest broker" when it comes to the subject of Israel and the Arab world.

Responsibility for the war crimes of Israel, therefore, lie at Bush's door as much, if not more, than at Olmert's.

But make no mistake, war crimes have been committed here, and any moral high ground Israel may once have felt she held, has been squandered.

Tags: war crimes, Israel, US, Lebanon, Olmert, Bush,