"An "Israeli" journalist condemned the "Israeli" occupation of south Lebanon and the recent slaughtering of a Lebanese mother along with her six children by "Israeli" warplanes reciting a long list of "Israeli" massacres against Lebanese civilians".

"Nadwa Othman, who was killed last week with her six children, was not the first mother to have been killed by mistake by "Israel" in "the security zone." In April two years ago we killed a mother and her seven children, by mistake of course. Five days earlier, an "Israeli" attack helicopter fired on a Lebanese ambulance and two mothers and two girls were killed; in August of this year, a civilian named Abd al Hassan Bushar was injured. According to reports, he was 110 years old. Three children were wounded three months earlier, also in an "Israeli" bombing attack; a 17-year-old boy was killed last week, a few days before the Othman family met its death," Gideon Levy wrote in "Israeli" daily Ha'aretz yesterday.

The lives of the Lebanese citizens in the security zone - women, children and old people who found themselves in this situation through no fault of their own, - are far less secure than the lives of the "Israeli" mothers and children south of the border. This is the way it should be, according to the "Israeli" perception, when the alternatives are always either us or them. However, it is doubtful that this is the true alternative, he added..

As occupied territories go, the occupied territory in southern Lebanon couldn't be better from an "Israeli" point of view, because there, the profoundest wish of Yitzhak Rabin and many other "Israelis" is fulfilled: there's no High Court of Justice and no B'Tselem. Few take any interest in the danger to the lives of the mothers and children in the village of Janta where the Othmans lived; there are even fewer who care about the human and civil rights of the residents of this village and others like it, Levy wrote.

"The Khiyam prison is full of men and women whose illegal arrest and conditions of imprisonment are "Israel's" direct responsibility, just as it is responsible for everything else that is done in the security zone.

""Israel" grabs and arrests people, and transfers them for interrogation to within its own borders and detains them, finally, at Khiyam or in "Israeli" prisons, without trial and without time limits. "Israel" is allowed to imprison Lebanese citizens - even the High Court of Justice has said so - without limitations as "bargaining chips" to be used on a rainy day or in negotiations over "Israelis" missing in action about whom it has long been clear that they are no longer in Lebanon or perhaps even still alive.

""Israel" builds, paves and fortifies there, and confiscates and takes control of private property, but in contrast to the bypass roads in the West Bank, from there no voices are even raised in protest.

"The only protest that is heard is the violent protest of the Hezbollah. In "Israel", it is very convenient to depict this not as a protest against the military occupation, but rather as yet another expression of the desire to wipe us off the face of the earth".

"Reuven Merhav, a senior Mossad veteran and formerly the representative of the Foreign Ministry in Beirut, has said that if all the opponents to the withdrawal - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader MK Ehud Barak, Labor MK Dr. Ephraim Sneh and retired chief of staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak - had been born Shi'ites, they would be fighting the same stubborn war against the occupier that the Hezbollah is fighting. "The Hezbollah," says Merhav, "are freedom fighters in every respect, an authentic expression of the deep desire to eject "Israel" from southern Lebanon."

"Freedom fighters? An authentic expression? Occupied territory? This is not convenient for "Israel" to see, neither for the Likud nor the Labor Party, who are united on the issue of Lebanon in a miserable alliance that only spells disaster. It is much more convenient to talk about "the security zone," "Hezbollah terrorists," and "they want to wipe us off the face of the earth," than to admit to reality, the "Israeli" journalist concluded.