Eu To Send 7000 Peacekeepers To

EU to send 7000 Peacekeepers to Lebanon
Israeli Cluster Bombs Menace Lebanese Children

European nations have pledged 7000 troops to a peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon. France will lead the force, and will have 2000 of its own troops on the ground.

The Israelis are saying that they won’t end their blockade of Lebanese ports until the UN force is in place. LBC satellite news reports that Lebanon is losing $3 million a day in forfeited agricultural and retail business, since no raw materials can be imported into Lebanon at the moment.

the UN estimates that Israel’s war on the little country of Lebanon cost that country all the economic recovery strdes it had taken in the past two decades.

The Israeli military extensively used US-made cluster bombs in civilian areas of Lebanon, which is a war crime. The bombs frequently do not detonate, so now south Lebanon is littered with deadly fist-size bomblets that will inevitably kill and disfigure children and other civilians.

The US State Department will investigate whether Israeli deployment of these weapons in civilian areas violated secret agreements under which Washington supplied them to Israel.

Nothing will come of the investigation, given the clout of the Israel lobby in Washington, but someday the relative of an innocent maimed Lebanese may decide to take revenge on the country that supplied the cluster bombs. And the American public will ask in astonishment why anyone should hate us.