Juan Cole on Israel in Lebanon: This is Nothing Less Than Ethnic Cleansing

I find Juan Cole to be one of the most intelligent and moderate voices on a variety of issues, but particularly in his areas of expertise: Iraq, Arab nations, and the Middle East. Others have voiced very similar opinions.

So when I read this, it riveted me:

So let's get this straight. The Israelis warn the small town Shiites of the south to flee their own homes and go hundreds of miles away (and live on what? in what?). But then they intensely bombing them, making it impossible for them to flee. The Lebanese have awoken to find themselves cockroaches.

I repeat, this is nothing less than an ethnic cleansing of the Shiites of southern Lebanon, an assault on an entire civilian population's way of life. Aside from ecology, it is no different from what Saddam Hussein did to the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, and the Israelis are doing it for exactly the same sorts of reasons that Saddam did.
The economy of downtown Beirut has been murdered by the Israelis.

Your reaction?

Juan also writes:

Not satisfied to have made 500,000 out of 3.8 million Lebanese homeless already, and to have chased over 100,000 out of their own country to Syria, AP says that on Thursday ' Israel warned hundreds of thousands of people to flee southern Lebanon "immediately . . ." ' The Orwellian world into which Olmert and his band of manic bombers have plunged ordinary Lebanese is illustrated by Liz Sly's report for the Trib.