Last week, Israel bombed power plants in Lebanon and threatened further 
attacks against Lebanon's civilian infrastructure. Did the United States 
protest this attack against Lebanese civilians? 

No. 

There you have a clear, explicit example of the U.S. government's double 
standard, a double standard that destroys the credibility of the United 
States among the people of the world. What Israel did is called a war 
crime, but the United States could not bring itself to utter even the 
mildest criticism. Instead, it blamed the victims -- the Lebanese. 

The Hezbollah guerrillas in Southern Lebanon attacked the Israeli 
occupation forces and killed seven soldiers. This prompted Israel's 
retaliation. But the Lebanese have every legal and moral right to attack 
foreign soldiers illegally occupying their country. Furthermore, Hezbollah 
sent its military forces against Israel's military forces. Israel responded 
by attacking civilian targets. It has done this repeatedly, by the way. 

Israel has illegally occupied a strip of Southern Lebanon since 1979. The 
United Nations has condemned it, but the United States has prevented any 
attempt to enforce the U.N. resolution, as it has consistently done with 
all U.N. resolutions directed at Israel's aggression against its Arab 
neighbors. There are more than 60 such resolutions, the same kind of 
resolutions that the U.S. government said, when they applied to Iraq, were 
so important that Americans must die to enforce them. 

What is important for Americans to understand is how this double standard 
harms the legitimate national interests of the American people. Because of 
America's double standard in regard to Israel, whenever an American 
president or his representative speaks on any international topic, the 
words are discounted. The world knows that we have a double standard. The world knows that our word is no good. 

The world knows, for example, how we bully countries into signing the 
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while remaining dead silent on Israel's 
refusal to sign the treaty. Israel acquired nuclear weapons and, according 
to a member of the Israeli Knesset (its parliament), has a stockpile of 300 
nuclear warheads. 

The world knows how we brand countries as state sponsors of terrorism if 
some of their agents assassinate their political enemies, but we say 
nothing about Israel, which has sent its assassins all over the world to 
kill its political opponents. Israel's assassination programs have been so 
successful that those programs have been celebrated in books, novels and 
movies. But, of course, Israel is not a state sponsor of terrorism. 

One day Americans will realize what a price they will have paid for having 
America's foreign policy hijacked by the agents of a foreign power. We have allowed that foreign power to put us into a position in which people, who 
would otherwise be our allies, must necessarily view us as enemies.