While everyone debates whether or not Syria is behind the murder of Christian Lebanese leader Pierre Gemayal, my focus is on the continued hypocrisy of the United States, the one country that has contributed much to the deterioration of Lebanon.

There is significant evidence to point to Syria in the slaying — Gemayel was murdered on the very day that the International Tribunal was approved to investigate the murder nearly two years ago of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a Sunni Muslim. He was a prominent critic of Syria, too.

There have been a string of assassinations in Lebanon over the past two years, including heads of state, political party leaders, members of the legislature and journalists. The common denominator in all of the killings is not the religion of the victims or even their politics. It is the fact that all of them have openly opposed and criticized the continued intervention of Syria’s regime in Lebanon’s struggle for freedom.

Yet, these murders are a part of a larger problem the United States has helped to create when it actively defended the Israeli homicide military assault of Lebanon’s civilian areas.

President Bush this week immediately denounced the Gemayel murder, as he did the killing of Hariri in February 2005. But he did not do it because he believes in nurturing democracy in Lebanon, nor because he cares about the impact that the murders will have on the future of Lebanon.

Bush is playing politics with Lebanon just as is everyone else.

One can argue even more forcefully that while the circumstantial evidence of the recent murders points to Syria, there is just as much circumstantial evidence that Bush and the United States are seeking to exploit this assassination as a part of their larger regional agenda to undermine Syria and even Iran.

Need anyone be reminded of the horrific actions of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who refused to criticize Israel’s vicious homicide military onslaught against civilian targets in Lebanon? Israel intentionally targeted civilian areas in its response to a Hezbollah border provocation, a provocation that has been going back on forth on both sides of the border by both Israel and Hezbollah for the past five years.

Yet Israel decided to use this provocation not to destroy Hezbollah but to also punish the Lebanese people for failing to accept Israel’s military hegemony in the region and for failing to curb the military actions of Hezbollah.

Rice intentionally blocked efforts to force Israel to end the hostilities, which savaged not Hezbollah but the Lebanon’s civilian centers.

The aftermath of the most recent war by Israel has been to strengthen, not weaken, Hezbollah’s standing not only in Lebanon but in the entire Middle East. Hezbollah is the only military force that has the courage and the wherewithal to standup to Israel’s military aggression.

No Arab military force has dared to standup to Israeli aggression more valiantly. And that valiance is exactly what Bush and the United States hoped to erode. Instead of criticizing Israel for their vicious assault against the civilians of Lebanon, Bush, Rice and the American government instead blamed the victims, Lebanon.

Rice even went out of her way to block efforts to force Israel to halt its punishing homicide military assaults, even though Israel had achieved most of its goals in the first few days of the war. Israel sought to continue that assault purely as a vindictive punitive strategy.

Since Israel was forced to withdraw from Lebanon, Israelis have watched as Lebanon has slowly and steadily rebuilt its country, recreating the majestic economic glitter that once made Beirut the Paris of the Middle East.

That must have been hard for Israelis to accept, considering that they remain mired in an endless conflict of their own doing in Palestine. They must have watched with envy as Beirut’s economy continued to grow and Hariri’s reconstruction plans progressed so swiftly.

Stealing that future from the Lebanese is a punishment that the Israelis relished as much as they accepted as they watched, without flinching, the mounting civilians deaths during their war of Lebanese destruction.

Syria may be behind the assassinations of Hariri, Gemayel and a long list of other Lebanese leaders.

But the United States is just as guilty for Lebanon’s deteriorating situation.

The Bush administration is more concerned with its own political agenda of appeasing Israel and dominating Middle East oil, than it is with bringing democracy to the Arab world.

Before Bush and the United States can demand an inquiry into Gemayel’s murder or the murder of any Lebanese leader, they should also and with the same force demand an inquiry into Israel’s more devastating murder of thousands and thousands of Lebanese civilians, Lebanese society and Lebanese hopes.

— Ray Hanania was named the 2006/2007 Best Ethnic Columnist by New America Media. He can be reached at www.hanania.com.