Qana - The Massacre of Hope

Qana. 56 dead, 34 of them children.

There are several pictures at Deficient Brain blog that you won't be seeing in the American media. He simply asks "do you have kids?"

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is blaming Hizboullah for using the area to launch rockets at Israel while the Israeli ambassador to the UN says, ominously, "there will not be peace until the terrorists learn to love their children more than they hate us." The video of the ambassador is at Outide the Beltway, where you can read all the usual neocon moral contortions too. They could at least admit the Israelis are equally to blame, at minimum.

Or maybe more than that. NewsHounds blog claims a Spanish reporter in Qana at the time of the attack says there were no Hizboullah activists in the town.

It is possible that Israel has been lying about its reasons for attacking Lebanon from word one. Joshuia Franks at antiwar.com has a roundup of original reports from the outbreak of hostilities that said the "kidnapped" Israeli soldiers were actually in Lebanese territiry, not Israel.

One thing is now certain. Any ceasefire process has been conclusively derailled by the attack at Qana. Condi Rice has been sent packing by Lebanon, after receiving an unequivocal "no" from Israel even before the attack.

Noe the Lebanese Prime Minister, who originally would have been more than happy to see Hizboullah defanged, has been pushed past the point of no return too. Talking Points Memo quotes him:

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuoad Siniora expressed his 'gratitude' to Hizbullah and its leader Hassan Nasrallah for "sacrificing their lives for the country."
During a press conference held in wake of the Qana village incident in which 55 Lebanese were killed, Siniora asked: "Is Israel's mission to wipe out the Lebanese? It seems they want to kill all of us. One of those killed today is a baby just one day old. With its aggression, Israel is encouraging extremism."

"Israel won't obtain a thing through the war," he added. "Does it believe that through war it will obtain goals? They won't obtain a thing, and the opposite is the truth. The entire Lebanese nation is united against the Israeli aggression," Siniora said.

Even the weathervane of Lebanon, Walid "The Next Chalibi" Jumblatt, is admitting that his Israeli sponsors have lost this one:

We have to acknowledge that they have defeated the Israelis. It's not a question of gaining one more village or losing one more village. They have defeated the Israelis," he said. "But the question now is to whom Nasrallah will offer this victory."

Will Lebanon now descend into civil war? It is quite possible - and it partly depends on how long Israel is determined to keep losing by winning. The longer they do, the more difficult it will be for Lebanon to keep any kind of integrity of statehood. It's difficult to believe they don't already know that.