For many Americans, the recent assault on Gaza and Lebanon makes perfect sense. Two attacks on Israeli soldiers by groups in Gaza and Lebanon, and the subsequent capture of three Israeli prisoners, were “unspeakable provocations.” But a sordid feeling overcomes all those who have been closely watching the events unfold in the Occupied Territories and Lebanon. The Israeli government, reinforced by American steadfastness and the international community’s capitulation, set the rules for the one-sided catastrophe. Read more about The Politics of Proportionality 

The smell of displacement and poverty emanates from the Sanayeh Park ten meters before we reach it. At first sight, the children’s view, running after a flock of pigeons nibbling the bread crumbs, doesn’t tell that those children hadn’t have any sleep for days, after they have been ripped off from their little pillows and toys. Mahdi, a young kid at the age of six, complains, while devouring his “Mankousheh” (thyme sandwich), only from the mosquitoes and fleas that are biting his little body and the strong heat. His brother Ali, eight years old, looks more in control. He says firmly “our house is just below the bridge leading to the Airport, when Israel attacked us, we came here..” Read more about The Sanayeh Park: The Lawn are Mattresses and the Trees Ceiling 

On Tuesday, when at least 35 Lebanese were killed, we had the BBC’s Ben Brown in Beirut giving a blow-by-blow account of every facet of the evacuation of foreign nationals in general and British nationals in particular. If anyone doubted the racism of our Western media, here it was proudly on display. The BBC apparently considers their Beirut reporter’s first duty to find out what meals HMS Gloucester’s chef will be preparing for the evacuees. Lebanese and Palestinian civilians die unnoticed by the Western media while we learn of onboard sleeping arrangements on the ship bound for Cyprus. Read more about The racist subtext of the evacuation story 

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 

Nazareth hit the international headlines for the first time in this vicious war being waged by Israel mostly on Lebanese civilians. Reporter Matthew Price, corsetted in a blue flak jacket in Haifa, told BBC viewers that for the first time Hizbullah had targetted Nazareth late on Sunday. “Nazareth is a mostly Christian town”, he added. Before the strike close to Nazareth late on Sunday night, several Arab villages in the north had been hit by Hizbullah rockets trying to reach these factories. The BBC saw the need to mention these attacks nor the fact that “mostly Muslim” villages had been hit. So why did the strike against Nazareth — and its mistaken Christian status — became part of the story for the BBC? Read more about Notes from northern Israel: In the line of media fire 

During the course of the G8 Summit meeting in the European city of St. Petersburg, world leaders have been forced to address the crisis in the Middle East caused principally by Israel’s military aggression, both in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in Lebanon. While the response of the United States has been predictably devoid of criticism against Israel, messages coming from the European Union appear to be taking a different turn. Time will tell whether Israel’s current atrocities will generate more than just strong words. But history can be shaped as well. Just as what happened in the 1980’s concerning apartheid South Africa, Europe, its leaders and its citizens must take the opportunity to raise their voices against injustice and oppression. Read more about European citizens must raise their voice 

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 

“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 

Activists in Beirut launched a week-long protest at Martyrs Square Wednesday in solidarity with the people of Palestine, hours after Israeli forces entered South Lebanon. More than 100 people gathered to express solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, who in recent weeks have experienced an unprecedented Israeli military assault. As the sit-in commenced in Beirut, Israeli continued to escalate its military action in the Gaza Strip killing 18 Palestinians including 9 members of one family who died in an air strike on a home in Gaza. Read more about Beirut in solidarity with besieged Gazans