I confess I have not paid close enough attention to Israel's relations to Lebanon for a long time. All attention was focused in the American MSM on the Palestinian conflicts.

From reading this statement, however, I would be led to the conclusion that it is because Israel was doing nothing diplomatically with Lebanon. That is conceivable, but I find it hard to believe. I hope those who have followed the situation more closely can either provide confirmation of the contention in this piece or evidence to the contrary.

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Mr. Maoz:

I read your article twice. I had to read it twice, because you use such vague and equivocating language that your point is not always clear. So allow me to summarize. You feel that the real war is the battle for Israel's moral soul, not the disproportionate battle between Israel and Lebanon.

Hogwash.

First of all, moral considerations are irrelevant. Israel simply needs to figure out how it can live with its neighbors. This is a strategic question, not a moral one. Bombing them into submission is probably not the best strategy, but it is a far better strategy than speaking in vague generalities about morality, since that kind of talk is cheap and meaningless and never motivates state action (though it is often cited as a pretext).

Second, this is not just a matter for Jews and Israelis to ponder. The whole region is affected, not to mention the United States. The state of Israel cannot--dare I say, in good conscience?--accept billions of dollars in military aid, then talk as though the whole thing is just an ethical connundrum that the few righteous Jews need to straighten out with their warmongering peers.

Wake up, will you? Try to think about someone who isn't Jewish or Israeli. Try to look things squarely in the face. People are DYING in Lebanon. Hundreds of thousands are refugees. The country's infrastructure lies in ruins. This is awful--for the Lebanese. For the Lebanese and the Palestinians THINGS ARE BLOODY FUCKING AWFUL.

And all you can talk about is the future of Israel's moral soul? I know you mean well, but it's actually kind of sad how insular your thinking is.

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While Zeev Moaz is comtemplating Israels internal wrangling with its soul I think his article here and his reason for writing it would have more credibility if it were an actaul civil war being fought within the loosely defined borders of Israel. If it were Jews dying at the hand of other Jews and not thousands of innocent Lebanese murdered and injured by the poor stuggling Israeli Defense Forces, if it were Jewish bYpass roads and infrastructure in their cities and settlements being demolished I would probably give a damn what Moaz is saying. But igoring the truth isn''t good enough Moaz. Your reflective whitewash of what your nation has been doing to Palestinians, and now Lebenese, is just typical Jewsih handwringing of the cold hard facts. I know many Progressive and Liberl Jews who are against the Iraq war, I've been to candlight vigils with them, and other anti-war events, and I have not seen any of them at the vigils and events held to show oppostion to Israels war against the Lebenese people. In fact, several of them have told me unashamedly that they support what Israel is doing, support the Seperation wall, and blame Hezbollah for the massacres of Lebanese in Qana.
Well, at least my American Jewish friends aren't struggling so much with their concsience as Zeev Moaz is. In fact, I find it hard to call them friends as I am completley disgusted by their support for Israel apartheid and warmongering agression. The world is turning agianst Israel and their Israels paranoia will come to mean something soon.
Remember everyone, silence in the face of genocide and tyranny only means that you support what is happening, and one day, when they come for you, there will be no one to speak up in your defense, and you will have no reason to complain.

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Maoz is quite correct. All these military errors could have been avoided by USA/Israel adopting a firm policy of military force being used only as a last resort. For the Bushies and the Israeli government this has been turned on its head and the military has been used as a first resort. A small incursion by the other side could have and should have been dealt with as a police matter through the UN, etc. The USA/Israel war freaks got their way with the usual disasterous results. Governments that make these kinds of huge errors should be deposed by their own people in their own lawful ways. Criminals should not be running governments.

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Spielberg's film Munich, the most shameless piece of propaganda released in the last 50 years, also purported to be about Israel "wrestling with its soul", purportedly agonizing over the methodical assasination of the leaders of the Munich tragedy.

What Munich totally failed to do was give even one word to the side of the Palestinians and their struggle, which was what caused Munich in the first place. Instead, the Arabs were portrayed as violent, sub-human animals, and the poor Israelis as hand-wringing, soulsick patriots.

HUMBUG!

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"How do you know when an Israeli is lying? THEIR LIPS ARE MOVING!!!" Hmmm, where have we heard such anti-semitism before? Let me think... oh yes, Nazi Germany! Well chuckville or whatever your inbred name is, obviously you thought of that comment as soon as you removed your white hood eating your grits with mammy and pappy at the dinner table. Seriously, unless you have something to contribute based on some knowledge of the long tangled history of the Middle East, then just do us all a favour and stop wasting our time. Go back to your hog eating contest or whatever the fuck it is you kind of people do.

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The stages of the soul can be broken down into four-but there are more Stages of the Soul:

1. Infancy: the soul is egotistical and selfish
2. Childhood: these souls adhere to the teachings of others, they do good works, may even desire to love and please God, but often maybe rigid fundamentally minded thinkers and judgemental of others who disagree with their concept of God.
3. Adolescents: include but are not limited to Cynics, Atheists, Agnostics, social justice reformers and activists who follow the voice within themselves and take ACTION for the good of others.
4. Adulthood: The Way of the Mystic, who is one who LOVES God and knows God is within ALL others. Mystics see and understand the connection, interdependence of ALL to the One.

The WAWA blog has been reporting on the rapidly growing number 3 souls who are Israeli secular peace activists.

Many Israelis have been standing up and speaking out for decades against the occupation and oppression of the Israeli government.

2,000 years ago the zealots stood up to the empire/occupiers: Rome, in defense for the oppressed and voiceless, and were routinely crucified for disturbing the status quo.

Every Friday afternoon in west Jerusalem for the last 18 years, mostly secular, but also some devout Jewish "Women in Black" gather in public protest against the Israeli Occupation of Palestine.

Anarchists Against the Wall are young mostly secular Jews who STAND UP in solidarity with Palestinian land owners and Internationals against the building of the ILLEGAL separation wall where ever it does not follow the Green Line. They take bullets, gassings, billy club beatings and prison time, for doing so, but they do NOT back down.

It has been said fundamentalism is holding up evolution but the good news is many number 3 souls have WOKEN UP and are leading the way out of the dark and demented cycle of violence.

The globally accepted definition of insanity is to persist in the same behavior believeing you will get a different result.
Violence can ONLY begat more violence: when will America WAKE UP?

Only in solidarity can we hope to confront the injustices of the empire:

"We have it in out power to begin the world again" [Tom Paine]

ALL things are possible for those who LOVE, and without love you have nothing at all to give.

public service message from the Pro Bono
.org
WeAreWideAwake

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Thanks to the author...I really appreciate those of you right inside Israel who are speaking out and showing the other side. It reminds me of our efforts back in the 60's with the Vietnam war...(and our present situation with Bush and gang, although I find it more difficult now living in Canada and having two areas of confrontation!)

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The idea of a Jewish state is as obscenely racist as that of a Judenfrei state. The great majority of those who belong there - people born in the part of Palestine sequestered as Israel or genuinely descended from identifiable exiles born in it - would prefer the whole rotten experiment to be dismantled and forgotten. The state of Israel is artificially kept alive by the presence within its borders of nearly four million foreigners, and the forced exclusion of about four million exiled Palestinians. Rectify that injustice and the entire project would collapse. It is founded in racist injustice and kept alive by the American taxpayers. It is extremely unfortunate that Hezbollah's rockets are fired at cities rather than at the aggressors moving into Lebanon. Victims of the Hezbollah rockets include people who are in no way supportive of Zionism but simply unlucky enough to be where the rockets fall. Wrong target.

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My employer is Jewish with family living in Israel and I am free to read the family emails they are sending each other right now. (I am invited to read them) While I do my best to empathize with them all, and hope and pray for their safety, all I am seeing is a stubborn 'Go Israel' attitude.

I don't see much soul searching. They clearly want to see Hezbollah destroyed and the collateral damage - sorry, too bad.

But when you resort to passing around this 2003 rant by Bush administration comedian Dennis Miller to bolster you position, I believe it may be time for some introspection.

In his trademark manner, Miller creates the impression that only a complete idiot could take anything but a total pro-Israel position on the affairs of the Middle East. My Jewish friends, you make me wonder when you find consolation in this kind of agitprop.

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They continue to commit war crimes...these civilian bombings of theirs are no "accidents."

Ever since I was a little girl, I bought into the propaganda, that Israel was "only defending herself...she had that right."

Sorry. I no longer support Israel. She lost that right. She probably never had that right. she certainly lost it the first time she deliberately killed civilians.

I was just too blind to see.

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In order rationally to assess what might be driving events in Lebanon, let's step back from the actions of Israel and Hezbollah and look at the bigger picture. Hezbollah has been and probably still is an instrument of Iran (Syria's role is still unclear). Israel has been and still is an instrument of the United States (NOT the other way around). True enough, Israel's ability to defy pawn status is greater than Hezbollahs, or the PLO's, or Hamas' for that matter, whose master is the Islamic Fundamentalist Movement (IFM) that also runs Al Qaeda. The IFM and Iran have been at odds in the past, but perhaps not any longer: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" can operate in many and complex ways.

My point is simply that focusing on what may or may not be the intentions of pawns on the grand chessboard of the Middle East, without focusing on the movers of the pawns, consitutes what C Wright Mills called "crackpot reasoning" Those who stand to gain from what happens in Lebanon are the United States, Iran, and the Islamic Fundamentalist Movement. If Hezbollah is destroyed, which seems inevitable, Iran and the IFM draw closer. Syria will probably join the coalition. The ability of Iran to negotiate for a stronger role in the IFM will have been enhanced. Sympathy for Iran and the IFM will be enhanced throughout Europe and Asia.

The United States will achieve something it's wanted for a long time. Gaining a commitment from the Christian Lebanese to accept a U.S. military presence in Lebanon. In addition, the growth of pan-Arabic nationalism will once again have been seriously disrupted. The Neo-con world of Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations will have been reinforced, strengthening the Neo-con position on the global stage. Only in a world of perpetual conflict do they remain a powerful force.

Israel loses. Whatever happens in Lebanon in the short run, Israel faces enemies no longer localized in a fashion that allows attacking their bases to diminish their attacks. Israelis have long been aware of their long-term desperate situation. The important debate within Israel hfor yearshas been, Which is more risky: Absorbing Palestinians, who will certainly constitute a fifth column to some degree? or alienating the CIA who have made it clear that such an choice would be unacceptable? The decision in Israel, of course, was the wrong one. But it had little to do with issues of morality, religion, or even nationalism.

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The World Zionist Organization and Congress were founded in 1890. This group of terrorists took it apon themselves to create a new "Israel". To understand the origins of Zionism, the World Zionist Organization has a complete document of their own history at http://www.thelikud.org/Archives/
Structure%20of%20the%20World%20Zionist%20Organization.htm

They rose to power in the last stages of WW I when British PM Balfour, a Christian Zionist himself, could not get the help of Russian Jews and turned to the World Zionist Organization in 1918. From this, the creation of a monster was born in the Irgun and Sturn terror organizations that used terrorism to drive out the British and Palistinians from Palistine (to this day, the zionist people celebrate the bombing of the King David Hotel which killed 92 innocent people on 7/22/46 which the Irgun zionist terrorist organization, dressed as Arabs, exploded a bomb at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem) see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/
0,,173-2277717,00.html .

Israel was created by terrorists and is run by terrorists. A zionist terror timeline created by Ralphe Bunche, the UN commissioner for Palestine for the period from 1944-48 can be viewed at http://www.doublestandards.org/text/unbunche.html

The Lavon affair in 1954, Israeli agents working in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including a United States diplomatic facility, and left evidence behind implicating Arabs as the culprits. The ruse would have worked, had not one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to capture and identify one of the bombers, which in turn led to the round up of an Israeli spy ring.

The attack on the USS Liberty in which Zionists killed 34 Americans while trying to sink the ship.

The Death of Peace Activist Rachel Corrie where on 3/17/03 Israelis run over her with a bulldozer. According to Greg Schnabel of Chicago who was with her, "Rachel was alone in front of the house as we were trying to get them to stop. She waved for bulldozer to stop and waved. She fell down and the bulldozer kept going. We yelled 'stop, stop', and the bulldozer didn't stop at all. It had completely run over her and then it reversed and ran back over her."

AIPAC has been a connection for Israel spies for a long time and has given military secrets to enemies of the US for decades. The current AIPAC investigation is just another in a long line of Israeli espionage against the United States.

Today's attitude of Zionism can be seen in many publications such as the Jerusalem Post:
"Yesha rabbis call for 'extermination of the enemy'
By JPOST.COM STAFF

The Yesha Rabbinical Council blamed the attack on the north on Wednesday morning on a "weakening of our grip on the land of Israel."

The rabbis saw the attack as a "direct continuation of relinquishing [territory] and weakness."

The Council called on the IDF to ignore Christian morals and "exterminate the enemy in the north and the south." They advised that an emergency government be established to "fight the true enemy as is appropriate, and to rescind orders to destroy and evict Jews."

The OCCUPIED territories have been against international law but the Zionists have claimed the land and precious water for themselves, leaving little of the territory for Palistinians to live in and little water too. However, we know that Zionists such as Dershowitz consider the non-Jewish life to be worth less than g-d's choosen. Gentiles are nothing more than usefull idiots to be used for a purpose in regaining the territory of Greater Israel as stated in Genesis 15:18-21.

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I think this article is nothing more then a subtle attempt to continue to attempt to link the very notion of Judaism with Israel - which is also hogwash, since Judaism, like Christianity and Islam, are global religions that no one country can claim - propaganda needs aside.

I think the major goal of the upper tier of Israel - their own military-industrial complex - simply want to seize the lower section of Lebanon for it's water. And what I see is an ethnic cleansing program in the South of Lebanon, and I just hope that the Lebanese get their land back. What Israel is doing has shifted the balance of opinion very far against that country - and the people who support them, regardless of religion, are either ignorant or bloodthristy - drive out the Arabs and take their land?

You won't hear this discussed in the US media, but see todays ATO - http://www.atimes.com/

On top of all this we have this ridiculous PR war that is being carried out in the media full tilt - and not only are the neocons in the White House salivating over a chance to start a war in Syria, not only are the oil majors pulling in more profits then ever before, but the other benefit is the removal of the domestic spying issue from the media - now, if it had been Monica, you know it still would be on the front page every day. Read the language in this article - it's calm, reasonable and says nothing at all about the death and destruction- that PR for you.

The US corporate media are betraying the American people - they are they real anti-Americans, along with the corrupt creeps in the Administration. This war could have been shut down weeks ago with one word from the Bush Admin - but he just loves to see the blood flow - that's right world, we've got a mad American dictator-tool running things, and he seems desperate to turn the MidEast into a total war zone. Sorry.

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It's about annexation, stupid!
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

Officially, Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon is an act of self-defense against Hezbollah's threat, aimed at creating a security buffer zone until the arrival of a "multinational force with an enforcement capability". But increasingly, as the initial goal of a narrow strip of only a few kilometers has now been extended up to the Litani River deep in Lebanon, the real motives behind Israel's invasion are becoming crystal-clear.

It's about (de facto) annexation, stupid. This is a war to annex a major chunk of Lebanese territory without necessarily saying so, under the pretext of security buffer and deterrence against future attacks on Israel.

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Does Israel have a soul? I begin to wonder what got into the author's mind to scribble in the den.

I have come to realise that when anyone talks against Israel he is tagged as an antisemite...
it is so funny and sometimes disgusting to see the way the word anti-semitism is sabotaged

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If I can't get along with my neighbors, and opt instead for a security buffer, I'm probably obligated to create it in my own yard. I don't believe city ordinances would allow me to level everybody else's homes to make it.

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All Zeev Maoz is trying to do is to talk the warmongerers down, much as one would try to "talk down" a kidnaper who has taken hostages.

I support his efforts.

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For the criticism of Hezballah by the way on its firing rockets that hit civilian, not military positions, I think the problem is very obvious. Hezballah has to struggle with relatively primitive "V2" style rocket technology. Israel is given all the best weapons, smart bombs, laser bombs, etc., by the USA. Interestingly, despite this, Israel still manages to hit many civilian targets despite having the most accurate weapons.
What does this tell you anyhow?

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The Zeev Maoz post is sincerely delusional.

At the top, this has zip to do with “heart and soul” and everything to do with petrodollars exploited thru religious psyop brainwash.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14233.htm
http://szamko.gnn.tv/blogs/17155/Pipeline_Time

One more time: significant wars are fought over public wealth (blood money) for private power. Wars that profit from religion as pretext for killing and land grabs are the most two-faced of all.

To put it bluntly, Israeli hijack and occupation of Arab lands is seen by many as a transparent ruse that amounts to retread colonialism masked by religion. This perception gets added traction from the fact well over 90% of all Jews worldwide and in Israel have little to no genetic connection to the Mid East and thus are not even “Semites” (European and Russian Jews are almost all descended from Kazaria where the population converted to Judaism over 1200 years ago as a way of uniting their country).

If you look at who really financed and foisted Zionism into the Mid East it was Gilded Age cartel robber barons such as Lionel Rothschild (see his forebear quotes) and others responsible for the Sikes-Picot land thefts. Some of this super-privileged class was “Jewish” but their only religion was and remains naked power at the lethal cost of fellow Jews and anyone else inconvenient to their plans.

The denial bubble is sweet for those that extort blood money from this serial travesty but it is a horror show for virtually everyone else.

“I DON’T CARE WHO THE GOVERNMENT IS. LET ME CONTROL THE MONEY AND I WILL CONTROL THE COUNTRY.”
MAYER AMSCHEL ROTHSCHILD (attributed to the German godfather of the Rothschild banking cartel and grandfather to his heir Lord Baron Nathaniel Mayer de Rothschild: the de facto owner of the Bank of England and a key promoter of the U.S. “Federal Reserve” Act. 1744-1812)

”I CARE NOT WHAT PUPPET IS PLACED ON THE THRONE OF ENGLAND TO RULE THE EMPIRE,…THE MAN THAT CONTROLS BRITAIN’S MONEY SUPPLY CONTROLS THE BRITISH EMPIRE. AND I CONTROL THE MONEY SUPPLY.”
LORD BARON NATHANIEL MAYER DE ROTHSCHILD (as English head of a world Rothschild banking cartel and a chief promoter of the U.S. “Federal Reserve” Act. 1840-1915)

“COMPETITION IS A SIN.”
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER (cartel robber baron and promoter of the U.S. “Federal Reserve” Act in alliance with the Rothschild bloc. 1839-1937)

“WE WILL HAVE WORLD GOVERNMENT WHETHER OR NOT WE LIKE IT. THE ONLY QUESTION IS WHETHER WORLD GOVERNMENT WILL BE ACHIEVED BY CONQUEST OR CONSENT.”
JAMES PAUL WARBURG (in testimony before the US Senate. Warburg was an agent of the Rockefeller-Rothschild bloc and chief architect of the “Federal Reserve” Corporation, an unconstitutional private bank monopoly set up for cartel hegemony. James Paul Warburg was the son of Paul Moritz Warburg, nephew of Felix Warburg and of Jacob Schiff, both of the Rothschild front Kuhn, Loeb & Co that financed and setup Lenin and Trotsky’s “Bolshevik Communist Revolution” thru James' brother Max, banker to the German government. February 17, 1950.)

“BRITAIN IS THE SLAVE OF AN INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL BLOC.”
BRITISH PRIME MINISTER DAVID LLOYD GEORGE (on the money cartel June 20, 1934)

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Many interesting posts - most long on criticism of both sides and very short on plausible solutions. What shall both sides do in order to attain lasting peace that does not breed resentment and renewed violence?

How do we address the Palestinian issue? How do you pacify generations of anger wrought from a sense of having land "stolen" out from under them? How about being oppressed by a country which derives most of its military sophistication from the US? How can Palestinians govern themselves with a paternalistic antagonizer constantly looking over their shoulders?


On the other hand, what shall be done to assuage the valid concerns of Israelis? Does anyone here honestly believe that simply contracting the actual geophysical dimensions of the country or lands occupied theirin will cause Hezbollah, Iran and other Islamic extremists to simply recant and stop calling for the total destruction of the Israel state and its people? What do Muslim extremistst think - we're simply going to stand by while another 6 million Jews disappear? I have seen very light or non-existent criticism here of those who would call for the destruction of Israel. The whole "idea of Israel" may have been poorly designed and implemented but the state exists now and must be accepted. Otherwise what is to be done? Shall Jews be shuttled from Israel to Lower Manhattan to start over?

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There are real solutions to the Mideast Conflict and Israel can survive. But to survive it should not be afraid to transform. This means accepting Palestinians and Arabs as equals. Giving them equal rights to own land, to vote, and if this means the country no longer is predominately Jewish, then that is what has to be accepted. if you try to make it exclusively or cling to it exclusively as "Jewish" then, you have a major problem. The world no longer can have a major country based on only one important discriminator such as race, color or creed. Now, this need to be just "Jewish" is the fundamental delusion of Israel. It plays itself out in myths of Jewish superiority, Jewish "higher values", continuous dark reminescences of the holocaust, and all the rest of it. The dark side of it is "the dirty stinky Arab." As for the current situation, the way Israel today has been suckled to the USA, its military completly dependent on US weapons and its economy dependent on US largesse, it's a country now where some type of change or moving beyond the same old warlike path will be very difficult

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Leon Kuhn: "Middle Eastern Think Tank"

http://xrl.us/qcfb

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Israel is about the only Western state which is proud of its own civilization and will go to any length to defend it. Naturally, this is offensive to the ivory tower which has long since betrayed its own civilization.

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Israel is a false founded state. Most of the populace of Israel besides the Arabs came from Europe and are not indigenous to the region. They are foreign invaders, modern ancestors of the ancient Khazari empire. The "Palestinians" have more claim to the area by birthright and really have much more indigenous rights.
All of them are wrong. The whole area needs secularization. At least over thirty five percent of Israelis are atheist. It's a good start. The whole area needs to be one big secularized state. Maybe even a democracy. In the end, it's the same old story. The haves oppress the have nots. And the USA because of its idiotic religiosities supports Israel. It would be interesting to see how things would change without that support...

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You forgot the third thing they do best and that is to contrive Propaganda.

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Aug. 3, 2006 -- On July 30, WMR reported that CIA and Mossad agents in Lebanon, working with forces loyal to Israeli ally and convicted murderer Samir Geagea, were stirring up trouble among refugees streaming into northern Lebanon from the south of the country. Geagea, who was once allied with former pro-Israeli Prime Minister Gen. Michel Aoun, has lost the support of his one time ally. According to informed Lebanese sources, the one-time fervently anti-Syrian Aoun continues to honor the memorandum of understanding drawn up between him and his Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and Hezbollah's Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Aoun controls the largest bloc of Maronite seats in the Lebanese parliament. After Hezbollah took two Israeli soldiers prisoners, Aoun said Hezbollah had engaged in a "pure military action," not a terrorist attack. Aoun also earned the ire of Israel and Washington by publicly calling for the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon to their original homes, something strongly resisted by Israel.

One of the reasons Israel is attacking Christian targets in Lebanon is to show its opposition to the tactical agreement between the FPM and Hezbollah. The attacks on Christian targets are a way to punish Israel's one-time allies. The FPM, as well as most other Lebanese political parties, are also acutely aware of Israeli and American involvement in a series of "false flag" assassinations of Lebanese politicians and journalists in order to stir up resentment against Syria. Israel and the United States can only rely on Geagea and Walid Jumblatt, the Lebanese Druze leader. One of the men arrested by Lebanese police for working with an Israeli assassination team involved in killing Lebanese politicians is a Lebanese Druze.

Aoun's MOU with Hezbollah is dangerous for Israel and the United States. Last November, Aoun was feted in Washington by neo-con members of the Bush administration and pro-Israel members of Congress for his leadership of the so-called "Cedar Revolution," the movement to chase Syria out of Lebanon after it was falsely accused of being behind the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. It was a tactical agreement between Hariri and Hezbollah, similar to that between Aoun and Hezbollah, that largely contributed to Jerusalem's and Washington's decision, and Saudi Arabia's acquiescence, to eliminate Hariri.

Aoun, as a one-time Israeli military ally, is well aware of Israel's tactics. Israeli military forces have discovered that entering Lebanon is not the cake walk it was during the Lebanese civil war. Aoun is also extremely knowledgeable about the pro-Israeli cells operating within the Bush administration and the neo-con think tanks and contrivances in Washington. These are the very same elements that supported the Cedar Revolution and include the American Enterprise Institute, where Michael Ledeen and Richard Perle nest; the neo-con supported US Committee for a Free Lebanon; Heritage Foundation; Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; Hudson Institute; Hoover Institution; Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

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It is almost beyond disbelief That the U.S. can't see what is lurking in Iraq and the entire middle-east. By our support of Isreal's destroying a Muslim country with our armaments, we will surely reap the whirlwind.

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Boycott Now!
By VIRGINIA TILLEY

Johannesburg, South Africa.

It is finally time. After years of internal arguments, confusion, and dithering, the time has come for a full-fledged international boycott of Israel. Good cause for a boycott has, of course, been in place for decades, as a raft of initiatives already attests. But Israel's war crimes are now so shocking, its extremism so clear, the suffering so great, the UN so helpless, and the international community's need to contain Israel's behavior so urgent and compelling, that the time for global action has matured. A coordinated movement of divestment, sanctions, and boycotts against Israel must convene to contain not only Israel's aggressive acts and crimes against humanitarian law but also, as in South Africa, its founding racist logics that inspired and still drive the entire Palestinian problem.

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Trauma. Say this word once more...trauma...let it roll over your tongue...trauma.
I was sexually abused as a child. I was small. Very small. The people who abused me were not. They were in charge of my life...I had to trust them, despite what they had done to me. I survived...yet remain broken.
That was way over 40 years ago. It happened in a country that had just committed the worst crimes against humanity in recorded history: Germany.
For over 40 years, I have tried to come to terms with what has happened to me. And today, I know, that I will carry the scars for the rest of my life.
Let's go back in time a bit further. It's the mid forties now. Millions of Jews have been exterminated. Their blood, their memories, the stories of their lives and families, their dreams and fears, are everywhere to be found, if you only listen and see. Their horror is so great that no abyss is deep enough to contain it. Nothing on this planet is made to contain such atrocity...nothing.
And still, life continues...goes on, as if nothing ever happened. The sun comes up, the seasons change, the rivers flow along their shores, as if blood had never been a part of them. And slowly the bullet holes in the facades of the building around me disappear. But the memories remain.
Today, we live in unjust times. The 'lie' shouts at us in big printed letters. Every day more violence. First here, then there...suddenly everywhere. It is memory time.
Sometimes, the trigger is subtle. I hardly notice it, at first. A certain kind of glance or touch...who knows what exactly sets it off. But there I go, tumble head first into the dark. The broken parts in me, the individual pieces that remember, carefully kept from each other to not overwhelm me by merging unexpectedly. The whole picture, the whole truth is such a frightening phenomena that parts within me belief that death would result instantly, if I would be made to see clearly. So, how do you heal from trauma? How do you grow up, unshattered, after having been combed with a blade, caressed with a baseball bat? How do you trust ever again, when you have watched the murder of your family and somehow, miraculously survived it?
To that, I have no answer. But I do understand the bottomless sense of powerlessness...the kind, that makes a brilliant mind create the atom bomb . And still, all the atomic weapons ignited simultaneously will not take away the rage I feel when pushed back into the place I was in when the trauma hit. And I know, that my rage exists to drown out the more vulnerable emotions of mine: my bottomless grief. Grief about the violations to my human birth rights. The right to dignity, love, trust, compassion, honesty and understanding. Utopia, I know.
What humans are capable of doing to each other is in direct proportion to what they have been exposed to. Dictators and mass murders are not born that way. They are bred and mutilated into it. And if enough members of a society have been disfigured in their humanity, a dictator can emerge as collective mirror, and will be carried by its members.
Rage is the result of repressed anger. If you never were allowed to express your justified anger about the violations to your human birth rights, the bomb becomes the icon, the way. And as the 'bomb' releases its rage, grief follows its murderous path, like dawn follows the night.
Why isn't it possible to see the relationship between the fragile human psyche, the rage of warfare and the necessity for humans to grief the losses they heap upon each other?
Projecting 'evil' into one another, across our borders or into our heavens is the fastest way to transform the entire planet into a holocaust. Let's not!

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August 5,2006
..The postings of jreinhart1, catnaping, Hal...throughout
the Internet there are many of a like mind....citing the same
facts.... exposing the fraudulent racist genocidal scam that
the Israelis have managed to pull of since 1948.
Perhaps this is like that scene from the old Disney Fantasia..
The Sorcerer's Apprentice...first a trickle... a few drops..then
a deluge....
Several dozen farm workers...simple peasants...butchered
by some high tech bomb....these are the actions of war
criminals...
We Americans finance these swaggering arrogant psychos,
to the tune of Billions of our tax dollars....and American
'peasants' can't even get the Fucking minimum wage
raised from $5.15/hour.
Is there a minimum wage in Israel???
There is no difference between Israel 2006 and The Third
Reich circa 1936 or South Africa circa 1976....
and the inevitable outcome will be the same.
I am neither Arab nor Muslim...don't give too much of a
good goddamn about either group for that matter...But what
is being done in Lebanon and Gaza and so on .....
is an evil acceptable only to the truly 'untermensch'.

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If you are not a Native American ,please return to Eastern Slovakia, Africa, Ireland or whatever hole your flea-bitten immigrant ancestors came from.

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It seems to me the article “The War for Israel's Survival” is in a very convoluted way saying that Israel’s current warring on Lebanon stems from a neurotic feeling the Israelis as a group have of being threatened. May be. This group-neuroses makes Israel entrenched, literally and mentally, and lashing out in attack at any threat – real, exaggerated or imagined. Israel needs to come to grips with this neurotic stance, and start believing in the possibility of peace, even with continuing resource-discussions with its neighbours, e.g. over water. Only then may Israel find peace and harmony.

I’m sure that’s right, if the simplified interpretation is correct.

Yet to refer to this moral neurosis and the need to harmonize it, in the middle of bloody war, is seriously confusing the two levels of moral thinking and physical acting. There are unacceptable physical acts of war happening in Lebanon. They must be stopped as such. Only then the morally faulty assumptions behind it may be addressed. To start with the morals, hoping a solution on the moral level will stop the physical killing, is turning the matter upside down in a manner that will not work.

On a parallell: a drunk who’s gotten into a fight over a paranoid reaction, attacking in perceived self-defence against a taunt misconceived as a serious attack, must first be stopped fighting and causing harm, before his misconception has any chance of being understood by him. This I know. Trying to stop the fight by informing the raging fighter that he misunderstood, is sheer folly. First things first.


This for ye all:


Blaséed (not to be pronounced 'blessed')

People are dying in beautiful colours
and well-composed pictures
on my tv
It's such a hot summer-day
It's such a hot channel
It's such a dilemma
to give it Ocar or Emmy
or what else
reaction should be...

Ole Ullern

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I agree that a lot of the issues with Israeli lie beneath the corpses of 6 million Jews from the Holocaust. No doubt about it. First of all, we should all be honest, left or right, the Jews really were slaughtered and this was a terrible crime against them and humanity. The problem is however the irrationality of unresolved trauma and collective rage. When Iran's President said the Jewish state probably should have been a piece of Germany, he had a point. It would have been right and fair. But to come to the lands of Palestine, to blow things up to get the state you want, then to treat those people as the "unter menschen" (sub humans) along the lines of how you once were treated by the Germans, is no solution and is wrong. So, how do you resolve collective range and helplessness? I propose that the lens of rationality must be applied. Millions have been oppressed and killed, the American Indians, the slaves before them, the Ukranians who were starved by Stalin by the millions, the Armenians, the Tibetans, and more recently, in Cambodia, Darfur and Rwanda. But it is only Israel which has reacted by building its own exclusive walled off society protected by massive military might. One thing however is for certain, you cannot succed by becoming the oppressor from the role of the victim, but this Israel has yet to learn.

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Just Google "Two IDF soldiers were kidnapped in Lebanon"
Kidnapped in Israel or Captured in Lebanon? Official justification for Israel's invasion on thin ice
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? context=viewArticle&code=FRA20060725&articleId=2813

- remover the space from the link.

If this is true, I hope the press does report this very salient fact. And if true, I swear to God I am going to start being an anti-Israeli. Further I think our governments should look into the role one religious group, with extremist tendencies has in mass media ownership.

I AM SIMPLY TIRED OF BEING LIED TO!

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Israel's need for military, economic and political domination in the region in order for it to feel secure, and its refusal to recognize the legitimte grievances of the Palestinians will always undermine the legitimacy of Israel as a nation state in the eyes of the Muslim people.

In Muslim eyes, Israel is a colonial occupation of Arab land created by the former western colonial powers. Israel has to recognize the legitimacy of that grievance and deal with it directly.

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If what you say is true, then why are we giving billions and billions of dollars to Israel? Doesn't Israel claim to be democratic and non-discriminatory? I don't care if Israel is not Pakistan, but I thought they wanted to be like the USA or Western Europe.

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Racial supremicism has been a recurring theme in western domination. This allows a simultaneous rule of law for capital alongside disregard for property rights. Super-exploitation and slavery are also furthered.

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I have seen some posters who point out that some other countries, like Saudi Arabia, are discriminatory based on creed. Well, that's nice, but the point is that Israel claims to be a modern nation, espousing democratic values. That they are a nation like the USA, or Canada or other democracies that claim openness and fairness as an integral part of their society. This is also a major part of the justification as to why the USA gives Israel billions each year and pays 20% of its annual defense budget. I mean, we don't do that for Tajikistan, do we? So if Israel wants to continue being an apartheid state, then so be it, but why must it be this way at the expense of USA taxpayers? And why the big lies about democracy and shared values. USA dollars keep Israel an apartheid state, it would transform into a democratic society with equality for everyone if it had no choice. US dollars however keep a small cadre of Israeli right-wing zealots, many who have their fingers in the till of the massive defense complex, in power.

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I challenge any to find as racist a legal system. Interestingly the countries most recently burdened with such laws seem to be South Africa, the U.S. south, and Australia.Two of them anglo countries that are most beligerant towards asian semites and aryans.

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I have read a number of comments claiming that Israel is a racist and apartheid-like state. Using the words of the well respected Muslim author Irshad Maji I would like to respectfully share some thoughts:

"In a state practicing apartheid, would Arab Muslim legislators wield veto power over anything? At only 20 percent of the population, would Arabs even be eligible for election if they squirmed under the thumb of apartheid? Would an apartheid state extend voting rights to women and the poor in local elections, which Israel did for the first time in the history of Palestinian Arabs? Would the vast majority of Arab Israeli citizens turn out to vote in national elections, as they've usually done? Would an apartheid state have several Arab political parties, as Israel does? Would the judiciary be free of political interference? In the 2003 Israeli elections, two Arab parties found themselves disqualified for expressly supporting terrorism against the Jewish state. Israel's supreme court overturned both diqualifications.

Would an apartheid state award its top literary prize to an Arab? Israel honored Emile Habibi in 1986, before any intifida might have made the choice politically shrewd. Would an apartheid state encourage Hebrew-speaking schoolchildren ot learn Arabic? Would road signs throughout the land appear in both languages? (Even the proudly bilingual Canada doesn't meet that standard.) Would an apartheid state be home to universities where Arabs and Jews mingle at will, or apartment blocks where they live side by side. Would an apartheid state bestow benefits and legal protections on Palestinians who live outside of Israel but work inside its borders? Would human rights organizatins operate openly in an apartheid state? They do in Israel. For that matter, even military officials go public with their criticisms of government policies?

... Even the late eminence grise of Palestinian nationalism, Edward Said stated flat out that 'Israel is not South Africa...' How could it be when an Israel publisher had translated Said's seminal work Orientalism, into Hebrew? I'll cap this point with a question that Said himself asked of Arabs: 'Why don't we fight harder for freedom of opinions in our own societies, a freedom, no one needs to be told, that scarcely exists?' "

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They are routinely jailed. What a crock. You must truly be brainwashed.

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Probably enough has been said about Israel, but little of it concerns common sense. People are too busy defending their allegiances -- or their cash supporters -- to mention the obvious: decaying empires love foreign wars to distract their populations.

Everyone can get behind a foreign war. "Go get the bad guy! He threatens our freedom!" -- so we troop off to Afghanistan, to Viet Nam, to Iraq, to Cuba, to Grenada, to Lebanon, or wherever. Flags come out, patriotism blares over the radios, and we consider it a great victory when political objectives are achieved.

Yet the situation itself never changes. Soon a new war is needed.

Israel's policy has been for some years now to hold off its Arab nations with two powers: its submarine-delivered nuclear missiles and the military might of the United States. Jews and Muslims know their faiths are incompatible and that one alone can rule the Middle East.

An intelligent policy for Israel would be to admit that only ethnic Jews belong in Israel, and to exclude all others and cease trying to influence broader policy in the region. This contradicts the Western mandate of multiculturalism and would make Israel an obvious "bad guy" according to centuries of Judeo-Christian thought, so this cannot be publically admitted. A grotesque compromise results.

When Muslims look at the United States, they see a country that elects exclusively church-going leaders. They see a right wing dominated by radical Christian interests, and a left predominantly financed and driven by radical Jewish interests. They see AIPAC, the American-Israeli Political Action Committee, be accused of stealing state secrets and executing phone taps, and no vast action being taken.

It is no surprise that when Osama bin Laden refers to America as "the Crusaders" he is given rounds of applause. He predicted that combined Jewish and Christian forces would attack Islam, and with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq he has been proven right. Furthermore, he is about to be proven right again, because there will be no resolution to the current Israel-Lebanon "crisis."

A world without either Jews or Muslims would be a form of poverty. Both groups have made immense contributions to culture and learning disproportionate to their numbers (for the record: so have Europeans, to a wider degree). Both have respectable traditions of learning and culture and religious discipline that are admirable on every continent. Both are incompatible with the other.

Islam is a religion of self-negation; Judaism is a religion of self-affirmation. Islam is a religion of struggle for the higher soul shared by all life, where Judaism is a religion for struggle of individual definition. While once ethnically similar, the two groups have diverged -- Jews have become increasingly European in character, where Muslims have become increasingly Asiatic. Compatibility is not an option.

Jewish populations have thrived in some Muslim countries, thanks to tolerant leaders and the tendency of those populations to keep to themselves and avoid offending local conventions (sensible behavior for any long-term guests). The same cannot be said of Israel, but this reflects the split between Jewish and Muslim populations: Israel has pursued modernity and technological wealth, where Muslims have pursued tradition and religion. Thus in Israel the role of Muslim is most commonly similar to that of Mexicans in the United States, as imported browner labor to which a pittance is paid.

This is a situation that, despite its popularity with voters, will not end well...

->continue here

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