What will be the cost of our complicity in this madness?
It's another day, therefore it must be another complete change of Israeli tactics.
Having fought from the air and then sent in and withdrew the ground troops, Israel then went back to air attacks and have now redeployed troops on the ground. It's an ever changing feast. I've never known a war in which the tactics and the war aims changed with such dizzying frequency.
It was a war to free kidnapped soldiers that morphed into a war to destroy Hizbullah that morphed into a war to establish a security zone on the border. It may morph again. You have to keep your eye on this one and watch it like a hawk.
The only thing that has remained constant in this war is Israel's unwavering ability to hit civilians. Yesterday, Israel managed to kill 33 Kurdish farm workers as they collected plums and peaches. Either the Israelis are lying when they say they use smart weapons or those same smart weapons are being operated by dimwits. There is no other explanation for the horrific amount of civilian casualties the Israeli campaign is producing, other than to assume that they are doing this deliberately. And none of us want to make that assumption.
However, Israel have also bombed the main coastal highway north from Beirut to the Syrian border, which United Nations have described as the "umbilical cord" for aid supplies to the stricken Lebanese. It's been said before, but it's as if Israel is making a list of all the targets that one must under no circumstances attack - hospitals, clinics, aid routes, milk factories, gas stations, fuel storage depots, - and then deciding, bugger it, do them anyway.
Support for Israel, which was never in great supply due to the generally held assumption that she was overreacting, has now started to heamorrhage away from the Israeli's. Even the British Jewish community have split on the issue.
Maureen Lipman, the actor and Guardian columnist, said she was contemptuous of "self-despising" British Jews who signed a petition by the Jews for Justice for Palestinians group this summer criticising Israeli government policy.
"The death toll of women and children was terrible; in the last attack I felt ashamed ... (but) there is a lack of understanding of Israel's situation and how there has been drip-drip terrorism ... what exactly is a proportionate response to unprovoked attacks? A letter? A sanction? A slapped wrist?"
The actor Miriam Margolyes robustly defended the opposite perspective. "Israel must stop bombing Lebanon," she said. "It is both morally and strategically wrong ... I am very disappointed at the response from English Jews who regard people like me as traitors when in fact they are the traitors because they are betraying the high ideals of our faith."
Loss of support for the Israeli cause (from places where it could normally be relied upon) seems to come - not only from the extremely high number of civilians killed - which will always alienate people, but from the fact that the Israeli campaign seems so haphazard and unfocused. It's very hard to detect a plan. It all seems so aimless, so random and so very cruel.Yesterday, the Israelis - for reasons known only to themselves - decided to attack "the Christian heartland that has traditionally shown great sympathy towards Israel."
It was the Christian Maronite community whose Phalangist militiamen were Israel's closest allies in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon yet Israel's air force yesterday attacked three highway bridges north of Beirut and - again as usual - it was the little people who died.Nor does the Israeli campaign appear to be having any effect on Hizbullah's ability to hit back.
The Israelis gave no reason for the attacks - no Hizbollah fighters would ever enter this Christian Maronite stronghold and the only hindrance was caused to humanitarian convoys - and there were growing fears in Lebanon that the latest air raids were a sign of Israel's frustration rather any serious military planning.
Hizbullah demonstrated that its ability to strike at Israel remained largely intact, by firing more than 200 rockets at northern towns and villages, killing three civilians and injuring dozens. Two rockets landed deeper in Israel than any previously, hitting near the city of Hadera, 50 miles from the border.And so the terrible war stumbles on, achieving nothing apart from managing to unite the Arab world behind Hizbullah, a feat that a few short weeks ago seemed unthinkable.
Whatever qualms Arabs once had about Hizbullah they have since been dissipated by Israel's attacks, the hundreds of deaths, the sight of up to a quarter of the Lebanese population fleeing their homes, and especially the bombing of UN observers and the massacre at Qana.
The Shia organisation and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, have become symbols of resistance even in such unlikely places as the Gulf countries where Sunnis and Shias have been spotted waving the yellow-and-green flag.
And as Blair and Bush sit idly by, allowing this orgy of violence to be visited upon the innocent civilians of Lebanon, one cannot help but wonder what price we will eventually pay for our inaction and our silent complicity in these terrible crimes.
Robert Fisk gives his views from Beirut:
And all across the Muslim world, "we" - the West, America, Israel - are fighting not nationalists but Islamists. And watching the martyrdom of Lebanon this week - its slaughtered children in Qana packed into plastic bags until the bags ran out and their corpses had to be wrapped in carpets - a terrible and daunting thought occurs to me, day by day. That there will be another 9/11.
Are we condemned to live forever in a state of perpetual ignorance?
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