The “Solidarity with Israel” and “Free Lebanon” rallies have quieted, and a combustible mixture of grief, fear, and anger hangs like an ugly cloud over the rubble and ruin. As Israelis emerge from their bomb shelters and their shattered sense of security, they count 154 dead, 422 wounded, and a military embroiled in controversy. As the Lebanese survey their crumpled bridges, airports, and apartment blocks, they too grieve for thousands dead and injured and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes. In Gaza, 228 Palestinians were killed, 720 injured. The main power station was bombed; homes and businesses have no electricity or water; the medical system has collapsed; children are starving. Read more about Mideast chaos, grief resound in the air 

The message delivered to Condoleezza Rice this week by Israeli officials is that the humanitarian and economic disaster befalling Gaza has a single, reversible cause: the capture by Palestinian fighters of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in late June from a perimeter artillery position that had been shelling Gaza. When Shalit is returned, negotiations can start, or so Rice was told by Israel’s defence minister, Amir Peretz. If Peretz and others are to be believed, the gunmen could have done themselves and the 1.4 million people of Gaza a favour and simply executed Shalit weeks ago. Read more about The struggle for Palestine's soul 

For over a decade now, since the Oslo Agreement signed by the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1993, the Palestinians, along with much of the world, have been laboring under a couple of misapprehensions. One is that, with Oslo, Israel had at long last recognized their aspirations, even if only partially. The other is that their leaders, as embodied by the presidency and the government that arose, had the wherewithal to move them towards a full-fledged Palestinian state on the 1967 borders in the face of Israel’s grand plans and intentions in the region. It’s the classic syndrome of desperate people believing what they want to believe. Read more about Paralysis of the Palestinian 'Authority': What's to be done? 

A mistake too often made by those examining Israel’s behaviour in the occupied territories — or when analysing its treatment of Arabs in general, or interpreting its view of Iran — is to assume that Israel is acting in good faith. Even its most trenchant critics can fall into this trap. Such a reluctance to attribute bad faith was demonstrated this week by Israel’s foremost human rights group, B’Tselem, when it published a report into the bombing by the Israeli air force of Gaza’s power plant in late June. Jonathan Cook comments. Read more about Bad faith and the destruction of Palestine 

The Quartet (along with the international community generally) has failed to enable the Palestinian president to act credibly towards the goal of making “progress towards a two-state solution through dialogue and parallel implementation of obligations.”Anyone following the news from the occupied Palestinian territory would think that it is the Hamas-led government that is preventing the Palestinian president from achieving “credible” progress towards a two-state solution. In the present charged political divisions among Palestinians, even a large percentage of the economically deprived and hounded population is being persuaded to clutch at this straw. Read more about Seeing the forest for the trees 

In a recent article on this site criticising Human Rights Watch for singling out Hizbullah rather than Israel for harsher condemnation of its military actions during the Lebanon war, I made sure to quote the organisation fairly and accurately before seeking to refute its arguments. Unfortunately, in a response published on Counterpunch, HRW’s Middle East policy director, Sarah Leah Whitson, did not return the favour. Possibly realising that her case was weak, she decided to paraphrase my argument instead, misrepresenting it, and only then try to rebut it. Read more about Human Rights Watch still denying Lebanon the right to defend itself 

The trajectory of a long-running campaign that gave birth this month to the preposterous all-party British parliamentary report into anti-Semitism in the UK can be traced back to intensive lobbying by the Israeli government that began more than four years ago, in early 2002. At that time, as Ariel Sharon was shredding the tattered remains of the Oslo accords by reinvading West Bank towns handed over to the Palestinian Authority in his destructive rampage known as Operation Defensive Shield, he drafted the Israeli media into the fray. Local newspapers began endlessly highlighting concerns about the rise of a “new anti-Semitism”, a theme that was rapidly and enthusiastically taken up by the muscular Zionist lobby in the US. Read more about How Israel's 'new anti-Semitism' is encouraging nuclear Holocaust 

The measure of a human rights organisation is to be found not just in the strides it takes to seek justice for the oppressed and victimised but also in the compromises it makes to keep itself out of trouble. Because of the business that human rights defenders are in, they must be held to a standard higher than we demand of others. To its credit, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has risked much opprobrium for taking Israel to task for systematically breaking international law during its assault on Lebanon. That has culminated in a predictable campaign of harassment by pro-Israel organisations in the US that have accused its researchers of libelling Israel and being anti-Semitic. But name-calling, however distasteful, cannot justify HRW distorting its findings to placate the Israel lobby. But that seems to be just what is happening. Read more about How Human Rights Watch lost its way in Lebanon