Six long, bloodstained days have passed since Israel launched its barbaric attack on Lebanon without succeeding in exacting a significant military toll on the resistance itself. Six days are exactly what it took Israel to deal a crushing and humiliating military defeat to the largely inferior armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan in June 1967, and to subsequently occupy the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights, and the Egyptian Sinai peninsula. How the “Middle East” has changed in the past 4 decades! Indeed, thanks to the Lebanese resistance, and to an extent its Palestinian counterpart, this volatile zone is undergoing radical transformation. Read more about A New Middle East is Born: But not exactly the one Shimon Peres had in mind
In much of the Western media, the Palestinians are written-off as a gang of unruly terrorists. However, the numbers give a different account. Since September of 2000, six out of every seven children killed in this decades-long conflict have been Palestinian. Terrorism constitutes acts of violence against civilians in furtherance of political objectives. Terrorism is a Palestinian suicide-bomber attacking a bus or a pizza parlor in Tel Aviv. Terrorism is also an Israeli warplane deliberately targeting the civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon. We lose all credibility when we rightfully condemn acts of terror carried out by individuals or groups, but offer support to a state that also targets the innocent. Read more about Tax dollars sent to Israel buy enemies for US
On the morning of Wednesday, 12 July 2006, members of Hizbullah penetrated the Israeli-Lebanese border, conducting a military operation that resulted in the killing of three Israeli soldiers and the abduction of two. Hizbullah demanded the release of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in exchange for releasing the two abducted soldiers. Since then, Israel has carried a savage military campaign against Lebanon, first under the excuse of retrieving the two soldiers, but now under the excuse of also destroying Hizbullah and making sure that it not operate against Israel, the same excuse it gave about the PLO when it invaded Lebanon in the summer of 1982. Read more about Today's war in Lebanon: The latest chapter of the original 1948 conflict
What is Israel’s running wild likely to achieve? Not much. As for the captured soldiers, any action other than negotiations is gambling with their lives, as their families now start to say out louder. As for the missiles shot from Gaza, the military could not stop them when it was sitting inside the Strip - obviously, it cannot stop them by casual incursions and air bombing. As for Lebanon, the disproportional Israeli reaction made Hezbollah fire missiles at the whole of northern Israel, both at communities that had enjoyed relative quiet since 2000 and at places that had never experienced any Lebanese missiles before. Read more about The Army Wants Action: The great fiasco
In an editorial this Saturday, The New York Times clearly crossed the line from its already biased reporting in support of Israel, to cheerleading for Israel, and even advocating that Israel conduct illegal, extrajudicial executions of Arab political leaders. Positions taken by the Times matter because it is the US’ most influential newspaper. The Times both reflects and helps to shape US policy and public opinion. The previous two days, the editorial and news departments at the Times had stated clear support for Israel’s assaults on Gaza and Lebanon. Read more about NY Times: Arab leaders to blame, fair game for assassination
It’s war again. As in the past, it’s an Israeli war in terms of the men and material; a joint Israeli-American war in terms of its declared and implied political aims. We must prepare for a long, bitter, and costly confrontation because the first aim of the war is to change the rules of the game radically in Lebanon, for starters, then in its neighbor Palestine, then in the rogue state Syria and rebellious Iran. Nothing but an excuse is the claim that this is a response to the successful capture by Hizballah fighters of two Israeli soldiers (with the aim of securing the release of Lebanese prisoners who have languished in Israeli jails for decades). Read more about What they want is the head of the resistance movement
I have been teaching in the Israeli universities for 25 years. Several of my students were high ranking officers in the army. I could see their growing frustration since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987. They detested this kind of confrontation, called euphemistically by the gurus of the American discipline of International Relations: ‘low intensity conflict’. It was too low to their taste. Even when the army used tanks and F-16s, it was a far cry from the war games the officers played in the Israeli Matkal – headquarters – and for which they bought, with American tax payer money – the most sophisticated and updated weaponry existing in the market. Read more about What Does Israel Want?
Whatever may be the fate of the captive soldier Gilad Shalit, the Israeli army’s war in Gaza is not about him. As senior security analyst Alex Fishman widely reported, the army was preparing for an attack months earlier and was constantly pushing for it, with the goal of destroying the Hamas infrastructure and its government. The army initiated an escalation on 8 June when it assassinated Abu Samhadana, a senior appointee of the Hamas government, and intensified its shelling of civilians in the Gaza Strip. The capture of the soldier released the safety-catch, and the operation began on 28 June. Read more about What are they fighting for?
As Americans commemorated their annual celebration of independence from colonial occupation, rejoicing in their democratic institutions, we Palestinians were yet again besieged by our occupiers, who destroy our roads and buildings, our power stations and water plants, and who attack our very means of civil administration. As I inspect the ruins of our infrastructure — the largess of donor nations and international efforts all turned to rubble once more by F-16s and American-made missiles — my thoughts again turn to the minds of Americans. What do they think of this? Read more about Aggression under false pretenses
“A wise enemy is better than a foolish friend,” says the old adage. It is one that Israel should heed. In its historic conflict with the Arabs, Israel got used to easy victories and was always tempted for more. It won wars on several fronts in 1947-48, 1967 and in 1973. In 1956, Israel spearheaded the tripartite Anglo-French-Israeli aggression on Egypt and in record speed defeated the Egyptian army, occupied the Gaza Strip and the entire Sinai up to the shores of the Suez Canal. A major part of Israel’s political planning was to build right from the beginning a military force strong enough to ensure superiority in all its confrontations with its neighbours. Read more about Israel should seek wise enemies
