Today's
Stories
July 21, 2006
George Galloway
John Cornford and the Fight for the Spanish Republic
P. Sainath
Indian Prime Minister Faces the Dead Farmer Problem
Aseem Shrivastava
The Iraq War is a Huge Success
Alexander Cockburn
Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need to Know
Website of the Day
FromIsraeltoLebanon
July 20, 2006
William S. Lind
Why Hezbollah is Winning
Robert Jensen
Florida Puts History on Probation
John Ross
AMLO Presidente!
Tom Hayden
I Was Israel's Dupe
Paul Craig Roberts
The Unfolding Horror Show
July 19, 2006
Patrick Cockburn
Massacres Soar in Central Iraq: Maliki Government Discredited
Trish Schuh
Israel Targets, Flattens Beirut TV Station HQ
Jonathan Cook
Is Israel Using Arab Villages As Human Shields?
Vicente Navarro
The Spanish Civil War, 70 Years On: The Deafening Silence on Franco's Genocide
July 17 / 18 2006
Mike Whitney
Israel's Shameful Attack on Gaza
Kathleen Christison Atrocities in the Promised Land
July 14 / 15,
2006
Weekend Edition
Alexander Cockburn
How
Venice is Dying
Tanya Reinhart
The IDF is Hungry for War
Robert Fisk
Beirut Waits: Is Damascus the Key?
Daniel Cassidy
How the Irish Invented Jazz
Winslow Wheeler
Pentagon Budget Gimmickry: When a Cut is Actually an Increase
Hugh O'Shaughnessy
In Amazonia: Slavery and Deforestation
M. Shahid Alam
Israel, the US and the New Orientalism
William S. Lind
Two Signposts in Iraq
Ramzy Baroud
Racism Plagues Media Coverage of Gaza Assault
Gilad Atzmon
Echoes of the Wehrmacht
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
Railroading Your Rights
Samar Assad
A History of Israeli-Palestinian Prisoner Exchanges
Ron Jacobs
Japan and Pre-Emptive Strikes: Why Would They Want to Go There?
Lee Ballinger
A New Kind of Jim Crow?
Walter Brasch
A World Without Fajitas?: the Rightwing's Language Police
Dave Lindorff
The Bush Swingers?: They Broke the Law and People Died
Clifton Ross
Up from Below in Oaxaca
Tom Crumpacker
Planning for the Re-Colonization of Cuba
Ricardo Alarcon
The Mad Annexationist
William Hughes
Rev. Billy Graham: A War-Monger in the Pulpit
Susie Day
Bugging Hillary
Farrah Hassen
The Road to Gitmo: Dramatizing the Banality of Evil
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Engel and Davies
July 13, 2006
Saul Landau
Lies as Patriotism?
Youmans / Erakat
Divestment, Corporate Engagement
and Israel
Dave Lindorff
Cut and Run: a Winning Strategy
Ron Jacobs
Dogs of War Barking at the Moon
Col. Dan Smith
Iraq: Fool Me Twice
June 22, 2006
Marjorie Cohn
Friendly Fire Ambush
Winslow T. Wheeler
Lockheed, the Senator and the F-22
Tanya Reinhart
A Week of Israeli Restraint
Mike Marqusee
The Forest Gate Raid
William Blum
Why Bush's Iraq is Worse Than Saddam's
July 12, 2006
John Ross
Mexico
Splits in Half: the Election Hits the Streets
John Stauber
The CIA Propagandist and Former Prankster Stewart Brand: John
Rendon's Long, Strange Trip in the Terror Wars
Robert Boston
Top 10 Powerbrokers of the Religious Right
Wayne S. Smith
Bush's New Cuba Plan: Embargoes, Blacklists and Assassination
Plots
John Graham
Secrecy and the Curtain of Oz
Ed Kinane
Arrested for Failing to Obey a Lawful Order to Cease Protesting
an Unlawful War: My Statement to the US District Court
Kevin Prosen
Goodbye Mr. Zeidler, You Will Be Missed
Jonathan Cook
Israel's
Latest Bueaucratic Obscenity
Website of
the Day
Addicted
to Oil: Starring GW Bush
July 11, 2006
Dave Lindorff
Does
a State of War Give Bush the Right to Commit War Crimes?
Dave Zirin
Why
I Wear My Zidane Jersey
Mokhiber / Weissman
Boeing's Criminal Agreement: Odd and Unusual
Amira Hass
A War on Families
Clare Hanrahan
The Last Free Fourth of July?
Brian Cloughey
Stop Blaming Pakistan
Felice Pace
The US Media and the World Cup
Raed Jarrar
Iraq:
Raped
Website of the Day
Bad Boy of Gitmo
July 10, 2006
Paul Craig
Roberts
Courting
Doom with North Korea
Uri Avnery
A
One-Sided War
Roger Burbach
Democracy
Betrayed: Electoral Fraud and Rebellion in Mexico
Ron Jacobs
The New SDS: Toward a Radical Youth Movement
Joshua Frank
Sectarian Flames in Iraq
Missy Comley Beattie
Bush's Stunning Admission to Larry King
Alexander Cockburn
The
War in Iraq: a Dreadful Mistake
July 8 / 9, 2006
Weekend Edition
Stephen Green
When
War Criminals Retire
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republic or Empire?: Lessons from Stanford
Greg Moses
Boots Down on the Rio Grande
Ralph Nader
The
Wail of the Oceans
Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Election Lacks Credibility
Conn Hallinan
Dumping Musharraf: Is Pakistan Expendable?
John Chuckman
Afghanistan is No One's War
Fred Gardner
Big Pharma's Strange Holy Grail: Cannabis Without Euphoria?
Dr. Tod Mikuriya
Cannabis as a Frontline Treatment for Childhood Mental Disorders
Pierre Tristam
Missile Envy: Is N. Korea Bush's Most Reliable Ally?
Lucinda Marshall
Deep Sexing the News: the Rape of Iraq
David Swanson
Command Rape: the Ordeal of Suzanne Swift
Heather Gray
The Spiral of Violence: What the Dead Might Tell Us
Dave Zirin
/ John Cox
French Soccer and the Future of Europe: Le Pen's Racists vs.
Zindane and Henry
Mark Engler
Mexico's Fear of Democracy: Elites, Fraud and the Status Quo
Michael Lettieri
Mexico: Don't Discount a Recount
Ron Jacobs
2008 Might Be Too Late: the Case for Impeachment Now
Jamal Juma'
Globalizing the Occupation
Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Engel and Kirbach
July 7, 2006
John Ross
Anatomy
of a Fraud Foretold: Mexico's Surreal Elections
July 6, 2006
Nick Dearden
Profiting from the Occupation: the Corporate Interests Behind
the War on Palestine
John Stanton
Nationalize
the Defense Industry
Ralph Nader
The Politics of the Minimum Wage
Laray Polk
Cambodia Then; Gaza Now
Saul Landau
Who Mourned the Victims of the US Covert War on Chile?
Joshua Frank
Sweet Angst, Power Chords and Politics: Farewell Sleater-Kinney
William S. Lind
To Be or Not to Be a State? Hamas and 4th Generation War
Adelman / Lindorff
Impeachment Comes to Main Street, USA
Jonathan Cook
An
Experiment in Human Despair
Website of
the Day
Adulterers in Chief?
July 5, 2006
Mike Whitney
Is
Cheney Betting on Economic Collapse?: the Veep's Curious Investment
Portfolio
Saul Landau
False
Axioms: Star Democrats and Iraq Massacres
Ramzy Baroud
And
Israel Shall Be Safe Again
Missy Comley Beattie
An Axis of Nuts: Ready, Aim, Fear
Arthur Neslen
A Way Out of the Gaza Crisis?
Vincent Maruffi
Party Politics in Connecticut: Lieberman, Lamont and the Greens
Paul Cantor
Aberrations:
Hell, High Water and the Moral High Ground
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: Let's Be Honest About Food's Origin
David Price
Shouting
Down Nazis in Olympia
July 4, 2006
Col. Dan Smith
Iraq
and Independence Day: Lessons from the War of 1812
Chris Floyd
American
Power in Mahmudiyah
Marjorie Cohn
Israel's
Collective Punishment of Gaza
James Brooks
Israel 9,000 Palestine 1: Destroying the Gaza Strip
Medea Benjamin
"Dictatress
of the World:" Has America Become JQ Adams' Worst Nightmare?
Matt Reichel
An Independence Day Lesson for the American Left from France
Elisa Salasin
Why I am Fasting Today
Rick Wilhelm
Will Lieberman Apologize to Ralph Nader?
Paul Craig
Roberts
Rape,
Lies and Murder
Website of the Day
A Mighty Handsome Family
July 3, 2006
Robert Bryce
Gaza
in the Dark: Poor, Frustrated and Powerless
Dr. Bouthaina Shaban
"I Hope You're Not Here to Talk About the Palestinians"
Julia Olmstead
The Biofuel Illusion: Running on Top Soil
Dave Lindorff
The Real Meaning of the Hamdan Ruling: Bush Adm. Has Committed
War Crimes
Andres Gomez
A Mockery of Justice
Alan Singer
Another Encounter with Chuck Schumer: Just as Hawkish as Hillary,
But Nastier
Alexander Cockburn
Temple
of Mammon, Planet of Doom
July 1/2, 2006
Weekend Edition
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Assaults on Freedom: What's to Stop Him?
Stephen T.
Banko
Echoes
from Vietnam; Nightmares in Iraq
Daniel Cassidy
How the Irish Invented Slang: the Bunkum of Bunkum (for Dizzy
Gillespie)
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Class Behind the Muslim
Jeff Taylor
The Sandy Foundation of the White House: a Bible-Believing Christian's
View of Bush
John Ross
Mexico: There's a Riot Going On
Greg Moses
Psycho-Management Hits Mexico's Maquiladoras
Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Elections: a Choice for Change
Justin E.H.
Smith
Lethal Injection and Other Fashion Trends
Brian Cloughley
Different Worlds: When Liberation is Worse Than Oppression
Anthony Papa
Punishing Addiction: No Walk in the Park for Dwight Gooden
Mike Ferner
Getting Busted for Wearing a Peace T-Shirt
Jerry Tucker
Liberalism's Long Goodbye: McGovern Hoists the White Flag
Jane Goodall / Rick Asselta
Remembering the Marshall Islands
Phyllis Pollack
Roll Over Beethoven: Chuck Berry is Back in Town
Poets' Basement
Salasin, Swindell, Ferri-Smith and Engel
June 30, 2006
Marjorie Cohn
Supreme
Rebuke: Bush Loses Gitmo Case
Heather Williams
Will
Mexicans Ignore What Bolivians Learned?
Burbach / Cantor
Yellowback
Democrats: the Party of Cut-and-Run (from Principle)
Nick Dearden
Crime in the Valley: Life on the Other Side of Palestine
Michael J.
Smith
Under the Broadcast Flag: Intellectual Property as Intellectual
Theft
Brian Concannon
The Return to Haiti: a Homecoming for Aristide?
Virginia Tilley
Israel's Appalling Act: Starving in the Dark
June 29, 2006
Bill Quigley
Gutting
New Orleans
Ron Jacobs
Killing a Nation to Rescue a Soldier
Paul Craig
Roberts
The High Price of American Gullibility
June 28, 2006
Jorge Mariscal
Mexican-American
Soldiers, Iraq and the Politics of Immigrant Bashing
Greg Moses
Down
in Pinal County: Where the Pun's on Us
Mark Weisbrot
Mexico: Their Brand is Crisis
Ramzy Baroud
Re-Interpreting
Iraq: the Latest Propaganda Campaign
Dave Lindorff
Redacting the Constitution: Why Signing Statements Matter
William S.
Lind
Neither Shall the Sword: War in a Fouth Generation World
Mike Ferner
50 Years Down the Wrong Direction: Taken for a Ride on the Interstate
Highway System
Zoltan Grossman
Military Resistance: a Brief History
June 27, 2006
Marjorie Cohn
Playing
Politics with Timetables
Benjamin /
Jarrar
Leading
Dems Froth Over Amnesty Plan
William Hughes
Roadmap to Starvation
Doug Giebel
Showdown in Montana: Burns vs. Testor
Uri Avnery
The World Cup and Middle East Peace
Alexander Cockburn
Hitchens Hails the "Glorious War"
June 26, 2006
Don Santina
American
Rituals: Massacres, Baseball and Apple Pies
Ralph Nader
Beyond Binary Politics
Dave Lindorff
CounterPunch v. CounterPunch: Taking Impeachment on the Road
Rafael Rodriguez-Cruz
An Interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal on Hispanics and Latin America
Evelyn Pringle
Big
Pharma's Big Graveyard: Drug Profits, Fraud and Death
Jonathan Cook
Israeli
"Retaliation" and Double Standards
June 23, 2006
Youmans / Erakat
Divestment, Corporate Engagement
and Israel
Dave Lindorff
Cut
and Run: a Winning Strategy
Ron Jacobs
Dogs of War Barking at the Moon
Col. Dan Smith
Iraq:
Fool Me Twice
June 22, 2006
Marjorie Cohn
Friendly Fire Ambush
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Lockheed,
the Senator and the F-22
Tanya Reinhart
A Week of Israeli Restraint
Mike Marqusee
The
Forest Gate Raid
William Blum
Why Bush's Iraq is Worse Than Saddam's
June 21, 2006
Ramzy Baroud
Zarqawi's Death: Myth vs. Reality
Patrick Cockburn
Embassy Work as Death Sentence
Gary Leupp
Making the Case for Impeachment
Greg Moses
Elite Logic at the Border
June 20, 2006
Fred Gardner
The Long War on Aspirin
Omar Waraich
Ode to Joy: Watching Blair Sink
Christopher Reed
Japan Nixes Payments to Its Wartime
Slaves
CP Newswire
Coca Cola Takes a Hit
Jonathan Cook
Israel Engineers Another Cover-Up
June 19, 2006
Bill Quigley
HUD's Bulldozers and the Poor of
New Orleans
John Walsh
Tears of a Clown: Al Franken's War
Mike Whitney
The Zoom Lens War: Bush's Baghdad
Photo Op
Alexander Cockburn
The Left and the Blathersphere
June 16 / 18, 2006
Weekend Edition
Kathy / Bill Christision
The
Power of the Israel Lobby
Joseph Nevins
On the Migrant Trail: No More Walls, No More Deaths
Farrah Hassen
An Interview with Syria's Ambassador to the US, Dr. Imad Moustapha
Greg Moses
The Real Mission of the Uniformed Ghost at the Border
Nicole Colson
"There's No Hope at Gitmo"
John Scagliotti
How MoveOn Wastes Its Donors' Money
Mokhiber / Weissmann
Corporate Democrats
June 15, 2006
Kathy Kelly
Look
Them in the Eye: Honest Abe and the Residents of Ramadi
Norman Solomon
Premature Triangulation: Hillary's Big Problem
Ron Jacobs
Publicity
Stunts as Public Policy
Sam Bahour
Cover Up on Gaza Beach
Ramzy Baroud
Palestine on the Brink
CounterPunch Wire
Death Squads at Colombia's Universities
Gabriel Kolko
Why
a Global Economic Deluge Looms
Website of the Day
Antje Duvekot: Music You've Been Waiting Years to Hear
June 14, 2006
Nicole Colson
"They
Want the Fear Level at a High Pitch": An Interview with Lawyer
Lynne Stewart
Jonathan Cook
Israeli
Law and Order
Joseph Schechla
Bulldozing Palestine: an Open Letter to Caterpillar, Inc.
Michael Carmichael
Bolton at Oxford: Jeered and Taunted
Evelyn Pringle
Karl and George, the Teflon Partnership
Ward Churchill
My Trial By Media: Turning Quibbles Over Footnotes into Felonies
Rev. William E. Alberts
Decoding the Coders of Christ: Jesus the Political Insurgent?
Website of the Day
Marines Iraq Snuff Film
June 13, 2006
Medea Benjamin
Take
Back America Suppresses Anti-War Dissenters at HRC Speech
Anthony Alessandrini
The
Evil of Banality: the General, the New York Times and the Gitmo
Suicides
Paul D'Amato
The
Meaning of Haditha
Dave Lindorff
The Strange Death of Zarqawi: Was He Killed So He Wouldn't Talk?
John Ross
Elections and the World Cup: If Team Mexico Advances, Will Anyone
Show Up to Vote for Lopez Obrador?
Gabriel Garcia
Venezuela and Drug Trafficking: Bush Bashes Chavez Despite Positive
Results
Hilton Obenzinger
DIvestment is a Stand for Equality in Israel
Yitzhak Laor
The Secret of Authority
Juan Antonio Ocasio
Rivera
Puerto Rico at the UN
Jennifer Van Bergen
The
Story Behind Zarqawi's Death: What's the Legality of the Assassination?
Website of the Day
Paul Wright: a Real American Freedom Fighter
June 12, 2006
Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's
Armageddon Wish: a Final End to History?
Patrick Cockburn
The
US Already Misses Zarqawi
Mike Marqusee
Rebranding
a Team: English Nationalism and the World Cup
Lee Sustar
"I
Never Had the American Dream:" Left with No Future by GM and
Delphi
Robert Fisk
Has
Racism Invaded Canada?
Michael J. Smith
Enter Sandman; Exit Kosland
Felice Pace
NPR's Warped Covereage of the MIddle East
Jennifer Loewenstein
Setting
the Record Straight on Hamas
Website of the Day
Our Way Home
June 10 / 11, 2006
Weekend Edition
Robert Fisk
Zarqawi's
End is not a Famous Victory
Diane Christian
Zarqawi's Face
Joe Allen
The American Way of Atrocities: Marine Corps' Killer Virtues
Ralph Nader
Let Us All Praise the Dixie Chicks
Fred Gardner
Tylenol Toxicity Terror
Dave Lindorff
Nothing New About Haditha
Dave Zirin / John
Cox
Will Racism Spoil the World Cup?
Dennis Perrin
Death is Patriotic: Necro-Porn, Live on CNN
Greg Moses
Militarizing the Border: Why Operation Jump Start Worries Me
John Chuckman
Terror in Toronto or Tempest in a Teapot?
Michael J. Smith
Babes in Kosland: Dem Blogfest, Day Two
Roger Burbach
Bachelet in DC: Chilean President Refuses to Back Down to Bush
Ira Moskowitz
Israeli Court Finds Mad-Dog US Prof Libeled CounterPuncher Neve
Gordon
Sam Bahour
The Gaza Air Strikes: Begging for a Response
Seth Sandronsky
Grocery Chains and Bush's Ownership Society: Profits Fall, Stores
Close
Michael Berg
A Father's Day Message: Both Parties Have Betrayed America
Kirsten Roberts
Desmond Dekker and the Music of the Shantytowns
Ron Jacobs
Who's Fooling Who?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Jones, Davies, Engel and Louise
Website of the Weekend
Miles and Trane, So What?
| July 21, 2006
A perilous excursion into the distant past, starting seven whole weeks ago
Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need To Know
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
As the tv networks give unlimited airtime to Israel’s apologists, the message rolls out that no nation, least of all Israel, can permit bombardment or armed incursion across its borders without retaliation.
The guiding rule in this tsunami of drivel is that the viewers should be denied the slightest access to any historical context, or indeed to anything that happened prior to June 28, which was when the capture of an Israeli soldier and the killing of two others by Hamas hit the headlines, followed soon thereafter by an attack by a unit of Hezbollah’s fighters.
Memory is supposed to stop in its tracks at June 28, 2006.
Let’s go on a brief excursion into pre-history. I’m talking about June 20, 2006, when Israeli aircraft fired at least one missile at a car in an attempted extrajudicial assassination attempt on a road between Jabalya and Gaza City. The missile missed the car. Instead it killed three Palestinian children and wounded 15.
Back we go again to June 13, 2006. Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a van in another attempted extrajudicial assassination. The successive barrages killed nine innocent Palestinians.
Now we’re really in the dark ages, reaching far, far back to June 9, 2006, when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing 8 civilians and injuring 32.
That’s just a brief trip down Memory Lane, and we trip over the bodies of twenty dead and forty-seven wounded, all of them Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Israel regrets… But no! Israel doesn’t regret in the least. Most of the time it doesn’t even bother to pretend to regret. It says, “We reserve the right to slaughter Palestinians whenever we want. We reserve the right to assassinate their leaders, crush their homes, steal their water, tear out their olive groves, and when they try to resist we call them terrorists intent on wrecking the ‘peace process’”.
Now Israel says it wants to wipe out Hezbollah. It wishes no harm to the people of Lebanon, just so long as they’re not supporters of Hezbollah, or standing anywhere in the neighborhood of a person or a house or a car or a truck or a road or a bus or a field, or a power station or a port that might, in the mind of an Israeli commander or pilot, have something to do with Hezbollah. In any of those eventualities all bets are off. You or your wife or your mother or your baby get fried.
Israel regrets… But no! As noted above, it doesn’t regret in the least. Neither does George Bush, nor Condoleezza Rice nor John Bolton who is the moral savage who brings shame on his country each day that he sits as America’s ambassador (unconfirmed) at the UN and who has just told the world that a dead Israel civilian is worth a whole more in terms of moral outrage than a Lebanese one.
None of them regrets. They say Hezbollah is a cancer in the body of Lebanon. Sometimes, to kill the cancer, you end up killing the body. Or bodies. Bodies of babies. Lots of them. Go to the website fromisraeltolebanon.info and take a look. Then sign the petition on the site calling on the governments of the world to stop this barbarity.
You can say that Israel brought Hezbollah into the world. You can prove it too, though this too involves another frightening excursion into history.
This time we have to go far, almost unimaginably far, back into history. Back to 1982, before the dinosaurs, before CNN, before Fox TV, before O’Reilly and Limbaugh. But not before the neo-cons who at that time had already crawled from the primal slime and were doing exactly what they are doing now: advising an American president to give Israel the green light to “solve its security problems” by destroying Lebanon.
In 1982 Israel had a problem. Yasir Arafat, headquartered in Beirut, was making ready to announce that the PLO was prepared to sit down with Israel and embark on peaceful, good faith negotiations towards a two-state solution.
Israel didn’t want a two-state solution, which meant -- if UN resolutions were to be taken seriously -- a Palestinian state right next door, with water, and contiguous territory. So Israel decided chase the PLO right out of Lebanon. It announced that the Palestinian fighters had broken the year-long cease-fire by lobbing some shells into northern Israel.
Palestinians had done nothing of the sort. I remember this very well, because Brian Urquhart, at that time assistant secretary general of the United Nations, in charge of UN observers on Israel’s northern border, invited me to his office on the 38th floor of the UN hq in mid-Manhattan and showed me all the current reports from the zone. For over a year there’d been no shelling from north of the border. Israel was lying.
With or without a pretext Israel wanted to invade Lebanon. So it did, and rolled up to Beirut. It shelled Lebanese towns and villages and bombed them from the air. Sharon’s forces killed maybe 20,000 people, and let Lebanese Christians slaughter hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Chatilla.
The killing got so bad that even Ronald Reagan awoke from his slumbers and called Tel Aviv to tell Israel to stop. Sharon gave the White House the finger by bombing Beirut at the precise times -- 2.42 and 3.38 -- of two UN resolutions calling for a peaceful settlement on the matter of Palestine.
When the dust settled over the rubble, Israel bunkered down several miles inside Lebanese sovereign territory, which it illegally occupied, in defiance of all UN resolutions, for years, supervising a brutal local militia and running its own version of Abu Graibh, the torture center at the prison of Al-Khiam.
Occupy a country, torture its citizens and in the end you face resistance. In Israel’s case it was Hezbollah, and in the end Hezbollah ran Israel out of Lebanon, which is why a lot of Lebanese regard Hezbollah not as terrorists but as courageous liberators.
The years roll by and Israel does its successful best to destroy all possibility of a viable two-state solution. It builds illegal settlements. It chops up Palestine with Jews-only roads. It collars all the water. It cordons off Jerusalem. It steals even more land by bisecting Palestinian territory with its “fence”. Anyone trying to organize resistance gets jailed, tortured, or blown up.
Sick of their terrible trials, Palestinians elect Hamas, whose leaders make it perfectly clear that they are ready to deal on the basis of the old two-state solution, which of course is the one thing Israel cannot endure. Israel doesn’t want any “peaceful solution” that gives the Palestinians anything more than a few trashed out acres surrounded with barbed wire and tanks, between the Israeli settlements whose goons can murder them pretty much at will.
So here we are, 24 years after Sharon did his best to destroy Lebanon in 1982, and his heirs are doing it all over again. Since they can’t endure the idea of any just settlement for Palestinians, it’s the only thing they know how to do. Call Lebanon a terror-haven and bomb it back to the stone age. Call Gaza a terror-haven and bomb its power plant, first stop on the journey back to the stone age. Bomb Damascus. Bomb Teheran.
Of course they won’t destroy Hezbollah. Every time they kill another Lebanese family, they multiply hatred of Israel and support for Hezbollah. They’ve even unified the parliament in Baghdad, which just voted unanimously -- Sunnis and Shi’ites and Kurds alike -- to deplore Israel’s conduct and to call for a ceasefire.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these little excursions into history, even though history is dangerous, which is why the US press gives it a wide birth. But even without the benefit of historical instruction, a majority of Americans in CNN’s instant poll –- about 55 per cent out of 800,000 as of midday, July 19 -- don’t like what Israel is up to.
Dislike is one thing, but at least in the short term it doesn’t help much. Israel’s 1982 attack on Lebanon grew unpopular in the US, after the first few days. But forcing the US to pressure Israel to settle the basic problem takes political courage, and virtually no US politician is prepared to buck the Israel lobby, however many families in Lebanon and Gaza may be sacrificed on the altar of such cowardice.
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