Both Israel and USA broke international law in the Lebanon tragedy. Both administrations are guilty of crimes in Lebanon and both should be censured or otherwise punished by the international community. The Bushies are so used to breaking international law that they will continue to be war criminals until the international community takes appropriate action against everyone guilty of war crimes.

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This is stunning; as I have said before (quoting someone) "one mans' terrorist is another mans' freedom fighter". We are forced into a ridiculous political situation because our mono-brained politicians think that is right for us; we, the civilians, have to suffer the consequences of the decisions of a minuscule minority. If they want to go to war then let them bloody-well fight it; put bliar and whomever into a ring or some sort of combat arena and let them duke it out. Why should the young of any country have to die because their leaders can't get on with someone else?!?!?!?!?!?

Politicians? People who couldn't get a real job.

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This article hits the nail on the head - moral leadership is what's missing. As it says in Proverbs: "Without vision - the people will fall apart".

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On Sunday, 20 August 2006 at 8:30 PM from Jerusalem, Uri Avneri, the dean of anti-war activists, a globally respected analyst and the founder of Gush Shalom, www.gush-shalom.org spoke on a telephone conference call moderated by Rabbi Lerner of Tikkun, www.tikkun.org
to a few, thoughtful, committed American's seeking peace and justice in Israel and Palestine. During the 83 year olds commentary I often thought of what Rev. Naim Ateek wrote in the classic and prophetic release from 1989, Justice and Only Justice.

"The root cause of this war and everything else is the Israeli Palestinian conflict...The pretext for the war in Gaza was the capture of soldier... [But] this war had been prepared several years ago. The aim was to destroy Hezbollah and after thirty three days of fighting, Hezbollah has already returned to the Israeli borders and is fully armed. We are exactly where we were before; except now we have created a huge wave of hatred, disgust and loss of sympathy all over the world...Condoleezza Rice was back and forth dictating when to start, when to stop, what to do, what not to do. America is fully complicit...

"The war against Palestinians in Gaza was to destroy Hamas and they used the pretext of the captured soldier. Hezzbolah wanted to show solidarity with Hamas-and this must be seen in the terms that Hamas, and the Palestinians are Sunni and Hezbollah is Shia-and there has always been enmity between them, [but this move to solidarity announces] we are all fighting as Arabs together...


"Of course it was opportunistic for Hezbollah to connect with the Palestinian cause but all these struggles are connected and the results have a profound influence for all Arabs who look at it like this: the fifth strongest army in the world...could not overcome a guerilla army of a few thousand...This will have a profound effect on Palestinians, now they see that guerrilla's can overcome the mighty Israeli army...the profound emotional connection...and Arab solidarity –not because of the diverse dictators; each ready to sell out to America-but behind them are masses, millions of people who saw the onslaught on TV constantly, and their anger against the impotence of their government and anger against Israel because of the terrible devastation we have done them is what military minds never consider; the emotional outcome of war; the anger, fury, hatred will overcome any military victory, and this time there was none of that at all.

"Trading prisoners has always happened. Israel once exchanged 1,000 for 3...but this [onslaught] was not retaliation, this was a full scale war against guerillas which we cannot win. America has failed miserably in Iraq and Vietnam. Russia failed in Afghanistan. Guerilla warfare requires military and political means to be used and highly motivated guerillas can beat any highly equipped army.

"Hezbollah has deep roots in every town and they are allied with Syria and Iran for their arms. Just like the USA, which supports Israel with money and arms...Israel could be a pawn in a proxy war for USA and Lebanon a proxy of Iran...


"What we need is to make peace with Syria and give back the Golan Heights...We were close six years ago, but Barrack got cold feet and there have been no negotiations since. Peace with Syria means peace with Lebanon...The security of Israel depends on making peace with Palestine because that is the root of the whole problem. I have believed that for 57 years that we must make peace with Palestine and that they must have a free sovereign state. We must work with what ever leadership they elect, and that is Hamas. I have talked with Hamas and I am convinced that we can negotiate a peace and that includes East Jerusalem as the capital...

"Since the beginning of the world people working for peace have been viewed as naïve...

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Bless your keyboard larry.
The big two million dollar question is: who is going to disarm Isreal as they repeatedly are the agressors. The news is starting to emerge in the Australian press, that the so called kidnapped soldiers used as the excuse to invade, were in fact arrested for snooping on the other side, just like they were doing on the weekend. They were in Lebanese army uniforms.. Keystone IDF? This time their fake Arabic accents gave them away to the local chicken farmers who let the local hizbollah guys (that is the whole village) know. They apprearently were after an Iranian shiite who was there to give money for reconstruction...

hoo hoo.

Check out the agreement Israel has with NATO which paralyses the Arabic front line states and which shows why Israel has to pretend its all defence. And before I get buried under an avalanche of anti semitism accusations, remember that the Semitic Palestinians first settled their lands 3000 years ago.. so if an Israeli kills a Palestinian is that anti semitic?

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The day that the USA informs Israel that " From now on you are on your own - no more aid (with US tax payers money" ) No more weapons - live with your neighbours - you have made your bed, now lie in it "
When that day comes - the Middle East will start the process of ridding itself of violence and continuous war.
In the mean time, it is presumed that Israel is going to pay for the damage it alone incurred in Lebanon and that it will pay for the UN security forces on its borders ??

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"One key to Israel's longterm security is to solidify its reputation as a nation committed to law and the protection of human rights."
This "one key" Larry talks about is the one key Israel has that works. It is the U.S. Israel Lobby and it's extremely effective public relations machinations. The U.S. corporate media is a willing partner to The Lobby and it will produce big time for The Lobby with all of it's pundits and it's forked touged radical guest like Mark Regev and Benyamin Netanyahu. Rarely does an Arabic viewpoint ever have a say so and more often than not The Lbby will produce an Israeli who pretends to speak for Arab interests. As for a Palestinian ever getting an equal shot for the Palestinain casue, forget it. There is no way the truth will ever be told on cable news.
No matter how atrocious Israel is as a terrorist nation as long as the American public are spoon fed a diet of Israel Lobby lies in correct proportions to lies about radical Islamo fascism and terrorism Israel can go on killing thousands more innocent people and waging war forever.

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Amerika and Western class oligarchies love class nationalism, "nationalism", which constitutes two corrupt forms, namely class democracy, class despotism, and class totalitarianism, proto fascism. Both serve Corporate Hierarchies, and Class Empire. Of course you need a hefty contribution of proxy imperial states and dicttorship to prop up Amerikan Class Empire.
Contrary to the Corporate Media, and their mercenary class elites, cheerleaders, we do not support democracy, but we are hated around the world for our fascist foreign policies since World War II, that began even before the cold war with Teddy Roosevelt murdering hundreds of thousand of Filipino's to substitute Spanish colonialism with American colonialism, then also called "democracy".
We supported all forms of dictators, fascist military regimes, and of course the proxy imperial army of Israel. Saddam was our dictator when he committed the atrocities, but then we turned a blind eye and now hypocritically impose a CIA regime in Iraq who try him for the crimes we were complicit with. In the same way, Amerika has turned a blind eye with Israel since its colonial creation, displacing Palestinians with massacres, occupaton, aggression, now extended twice into Lebanon.
What is worse their war crimes, international law breaking is not being prosecuted, nor our policy makers, who got us into the Iraq War. The U.N. is being corrupted with phony cease fires, phony resolutions that Amerika and Israel impose with their liberal Europen states too wimpy to stop this imperial policy, since they are rotted out by the same disease of class nationalism, class totalitarianism called Capitalist globalism.
The news that Amerika and Israel used any pretext to justify its invasion, and an illegal pretext, when Israel soldiers crossed into Lebanon, once too often, but which the Corproate Press never reveals, and seized the aggressor, not "kidnapped" and made offers to exchange prisoners to force Israel to stop murdering, occupying Palestinians. Instead they invaded, murdered over 100 plus civilians in Lebanon, because Bush wanted to use Israel to crush the defenders of Lebanon, the Hezbollah so that they can attack Syria and Iran.
This fascist totalitarian Class Empire, Amerika, and its Zionist imperial proxy army, Nazi Jews, have learned nothing from the Holocaust, and the ideology of fascism, except to embrace all the ideological elements of proto fascism to carry out their own fascist foreig policies. "Never again"???, hardly, it is "Ever again".....and we must be ready to contemplate the worst case. As far back as Golda Meir, Alan Hart wrote in Counterpunch, that Israel's policies of confrontation, provocations were institutionalized as policy, which only gives the Arabs one choice, to resist this fascism and aggression, that could lead Israel to set itsel up for final defeat. The scary thing was her response, that she, and probably Israel and the West would be complicit in, is that she would target every Arab capital with nuclear weapons, and take down the rest of the world with her for Israel's stupid policies of aggression, provocations. Already Israel has invaded once since the cease fire and the corporate press showed no moral standards, after their hypocritical attempt to blame Hizbollah for the second invasion by Israel.
If the neocons keep pushing us into war with Israel's fascist foreign policies, we will have a regional war that could end up in Israel's defeat and the Western world of enlightenment, degenerated to this level of rot burnt to a crisp. Wake up people, the democratic party en mass, supported Israel's aggression, we have a Congress of war criminals, two criminal class parties and a Fuehrer in the White House.
We need our own party, our own ideology, not based on class corruption, class despotism, class nationalism, class totalitarianism, and Empire. Time to resist

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Johnson's contrast of Hezbollah and Israel is very good. His suggestion that Bush (or most of the Democrats) might come to see things in this way borders on fantasy. Its like saying "If we could only have gotten Hitler and the Rabi's together at the table, Hitler would have come to understand and respect the Jews." Sorry, thats not the way things work.

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A good chance to post a quote from David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, here talking to Hahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress.

This was well understood by Israel’s early leaders. David Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress:

If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?

If only the contemporary's understood so well what those involved in the creation of Israeli all those years ago took for granted.

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Israel acts with Honour ? What sort of crap is this, since when has Israel acted with honour ?
All it's ever done is murder people under the pretext of defence, whilst all the time slowly enlarging it's territory.
Honour ?? give us a break, WHEN it follows U.N resolutions, like EVERY other country is obligated to, THEN I may just listen you, until then, forget it.
Course murdering innocent people asleep in their homes, by demolishing their homes underneath them, no doubt is VERY HONOURABLE going by some standards we're seeing these days.
So is shooting kids in the head for throwing stones at you, WOW, yeah, I guess that's REAL HONOURABLE behavour, right ?
Just like targeting media correspondents who tell the truth for all the World to see.
Honour ???? You make me puke.

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Since the late 30s, the US along with the rest of the west, knew of Jewish oppression in Germany but did nothing. Jews, which had been good Germans and mixed with the population, were not allowed to escape Germany as the US and other western nations had closed their access to freedom. There were expectations that FDR would allow for many to come to the US to escape the escalating violence by the Nazis, but no word was uttered by him or any part of the US leadership. The Zionists were willing to watch the elimination of those that were not worthy of being considered a Jew since they mixed with the Gentiles who's god was not g-d nor was it really God. The Christian god was little more than idol worship.

At the end of WW II and the troops discovered what was already known by the leadership, that there was a massacre of several million Jews by Nazi Germany and like minded sympathizers, the west look to the Balfour declaration, (Balfour was a Christian Zionist himself), and his Zionist friends from the World Zionist Congress in WW I, to create a land that they could call their own, on land the British contended was their own. It was a simple way of the west to wash their hands of the holocaust they helped participate in. The Zionists, a militant reform Jewish terror group, moved into the "promised" land and expelled the Palestinians, (anyone that got in their way which included Arabs, Christians and Jews).

The history of Zionism is a sordid one and one that should not be confused with Judaism.

In the 1920s and 30s, Jewish people and their scholars were against Zionism because of the re-writing of the Talmud making it more hostile. There are several Jewish groups for peace that were excluded from the Zionist movement because they were people that wanted to blend in with society and live peaceful and fulfilling lives.

Zionism was a creation near the end of the 19th century. It's differences are available at a number of sites such as True Torah Jews agains Zionism ( http://www.jewsagainstzionism ), Jews not Zionists ( http://www.jewsnotzionists.org ) . The difference between their philosophies was written in an article "Israel by Jonathan Wallace" http://www.spectacle.org/1100/mess.html.

To best understand what Zionism is, there is a definition from the World Zionist Organization itself and is a must read. It is at http://www.wzo.org.il/en/resources/view.asp?id=2086

The most unfortunate part of the holocaust is that Zionists have used that event not unlike how the Republicans are using 9/11. The jewish holocaust was a European regional ethnic cleansing event on a mass scale, but does not match the slaughter, by percentage, of indigenous people of the Americas or the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire (Turkey). Zionists took advantage of the tragedy of the Jews slaughtered by Germany in WW II, but, as the West, did nothing to help them in their time of need from the mid 1930s to 1942. Where were the Zionists? Why were Christians and Jews against zionism in the 1920s and 1930s? The World Zionist Organization/Congress was busy plotting to take land from the Palestinians since their inception, and had gotten an immense amount of help by PM Balfour, a "Christian" Zionist himself. They saw the German roundup of the Jewish population as an opportunity for the creation of a Zionist state. Zionists and Zionism are a terrorist group that believe in the use of terror to expand their land.

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I believe you are referring to Proverbs 21:18. It actually says , "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

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One key to Israel's longterm security is to solidify its reputation as a nation committed to law and the protection of human rights.

Israel committed to law and the protection of human rights ??? Surely you jest. Did not you now that these are the " Chosen People".

Chris

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..... to encourage it to act in a civilized manner when Bush et al are acting like Eichman. I find that ludicrous to the extreme. Maybe some other friends of Israel could do that bit of advice instead. I am unsure exactly who their friends are outside of the US, but be that as it may, they should do as this writer suggests.

I wouldn't have Bush do it until he begins acting in a civilized manner himself. That day will never come until he is impeached.

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and has in fact acted with a lot more dignity and self restraint than IDF, Mossad, Stern & other gangs.
One clear proof is that with crude weaponry they managed to kill more IDF soldiers than Israeli civilians, in sorry contrast to IDF's own record, despite haveing the world's most advanced weapons. Still, the gutless MSM lowlifes call them "terrorists", while Israel acts in "self-defense".

Moreover, as soon as the bombing stopped, they were out in force, clearing rubble, burying the dead, setting up makeshift clinics, schools and all the basic infrastructure that FEMA-Homeland Security under Mike Ripoff, I mean Chertoff (who directed over 200 million to his Israeli buddy's line of cruiseships to dock off new Orleans and just sit there empty) failed so miserably to provide.

What this country needs is to convince Hezbollah to come and set a few things straight that FEMA messed up so badly.

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I am Israel
Window Into Palestine



August 20, 2006

I am Israel — I came to a land without a people for a people without a land. Those people who happened to be here, had no right to be here, and my people showed them they had to leave or die, razing 480 Palestinian villages to the ground, erasing their history.

I am Israel — some of my people committed massacres and later became Prime Ministers to represent me. In 1948, Menachem Begin was in charge of the unit that slaughtered the inhabitants of Deir Yassin, including 100 men, women, and children. In 1953, Ariel Sharon led the slaughter of the inhabitants of Qibya, and in 1982 arranged for our allies to butcher around 2,000 in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla.

I am Israel — in 1967, I swallowed the remaining lands of Palestine - the West Bank and Gaza - and placed their inhabitants under an oppressive military rule, controlling and humiliating every aspect of their daily lives. Eventually, they should get the message that they are not welcome to stay, and join the millions of Palestinian refugees in the shanty camps of Lebanon and Jordan.

I am Israel — I have the power to control American policy. My American Israel Public Affairs Committee can make or break any politician of its choosing, and as you see, they all compete to please me. All the forces of the world are powerless against me, including the UN as I have the American veto to block any condemnation of my war crimes. As Sharon so eloquently
phrased it, "We control America".

I am Israel — I influence American mainstream media too, and you will always find the news tailored to my favor. I have invested millions of dollars into PR representation, and CNN, New York Times, and others have been doing an excellent job of promoting my propaganda. Look at other international news sources and you will see the difference.

I am Israel — and you Palestinians want to negotiate "peace"? But you are not as smart as me; I will negotiate, but will only let you have your municipalities while I control your borders, your water, your airspace, and anything else of importance. While we "negotiate," I will swallow your hilltops and fill them with settlements, populated by the most extremist of my extremists, armed to the teeth. These settlements will be connected with roads you cannot use, and you will be imprisoned in your little Bantustans between them, surrounded by checkpoints in every direction.

I am Israel — with the fourth strongest army in the world, possessing nuclear weapons. How dare your children confront my oppression with stones, don't you know my soldiers won't hesitate to blow their heads off? In 17 months, I have killed 900 of you and injured 17,000, mostly civilians, and have the mandate to continue since the international community remains
silent. Ignore, as I do, the hundreds of Israeli soldiers who are now refusing to carry out my control over your lands and people; their voices of conscience will not protect you.

I am Israel — and you want freedom? I have bullets, tanks, missiles, Apaches, and F-16's, to obliterate you. I have placed your towns under siege, confiscated your lands, uprooted your trees, demolished your homes, and you still demand freedom?...

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Israel has no credibility left to restore. Israel has revealed itself as the most disruptive influence in the Middle East and its claims of victimhood now fall on deaf ears because we now see that Israel is no more than a terroist state with ill-gotten stature, paid for with US dollars. For years now, the strikes on civilians by Israel have far outnumbered the deaths by suicide bombers. Kidnapping democratically elected government officials should be the cause for outrage but isn't and needs to be addressed by the ICC. As a long-time supporter of Israel, I must now plead ignorance, influenced as I was by the terrible treatment they suffered at the hands of the Nazis. It is now clear that their response to that abuse is to pass it on to the nearest vulnerable people, taking their land and making them pay for the actions of their tormentors. Clearly, Japan and Germany should have been called upon to relinquish some of their land for a Jewish state and it seems very cowardly to make the Arabs pay for the crimes of Germany and Japan. But of course, those states are able to resist Israeli aggression. We all share in this debacle and misplaced trust in Israel and should be prepared to address and rectify the continuing aggression on it's neighbors by Israel.

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The state that Zionism created has begun sensing its mortality and is thrashing around accordingly. The guardians of the state are clearly in the grip of fear and uncertainty. The indiscriminate bombings in Lebanon and Gaza and the resultant killing of civilians and destruction of infrastructure, the kidnapping of Hamas legislators, the targeting of a U.N. observer post, and the outrage on Qana were desperate acts. Each farther outside the bounds of common sense than the one before.

Completely out of the blue on repeated occasions and in leaflets dropped on the Lebanese, Israeli leaders have felt compelled to mention their power to erase Lebanon from the planet. The Israelis are blustering past the graveyard and their bully’s trepidation is bound to grow now that their adventure has gone badly. Prime Minister Olmert and his security cabinet moved in fits and starts. When the Israeli military’s nose was bloodied at Bint Jbail, they gave up on the idea of driving to the Litani River to establish their so-called buffer zone. Then the security cabinet realized the electrifying effect of this turn on the Arab people and they poured troops across the border. Even as they veered back to their original plan, deep down they knew that militarily speaking, only a Pyrrhic victory was available against Hizbollah.

One thing the Israeli assault on the Gaza and Lebanon has made clearer is the alignment of forces in the Arab and Muslim world. Ironically, in different fashions both Hamas and Hizbollah were creations of Israel. Hamas was supposed to act as a counterweight to the Palestine Liberation Organization when Israel considered the PLO the most immediate threat to their domination of the Arab majority. Hizbollah filled the gapping chasm Israel created with the 1982 invasion and years long occupation of southern Lebanon. Both Hamas and Hizbollah have, through years of disciplined work and organizing, woven themselves into the lives of the respective peoples they seek to liberate. What a stark contrast with the rich Arab boys who have created the cult they call al-Qaeda. The clownish Ayman al-Zawahiri rushed to his camcorder after Hizbollah faced down the Israeli military to spout some silly rhetoric about a caliphate from Spain to Iraq in front of a poster that screams, “Please remember us, we did 9/11!”

Under normal circumstances the impending death of a form of racism like Zionism (see the picture of young Israeli girls writing messages and drawing on missile warheads soon to rain down on Lebanon) and the establishment of a secular state on the territory Israel now occupies where Palestinian Arabs of various religious persuasions and Jews could peacefully co-exist as equals would be cause for human celebration. Unfortunately, the panic that clearly grips Israel means they will likely join in U.S. attacks on Damascus and Tehran and resort to the use of their nuclear arsenal when all else fails. And that, on a larger scale, is the dilemma that the whole world faces as the capitalist system spearheaded by the United States passes into history.

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It is absolutely true that Jews need a place of their own.
Palestine-Holy Land is probably the best choice due to the emotional (rather than historical, in which case any nation can claim whatever land they ever possessed in their respective histories) binds.
That said, Palestinians were given an awfully raw deal and the world owes them apology and reparations. It is not right that they should end up paying for the sins of European Jew haters.

The world (UN, USA, UK) made a colossal mistake in allowing the newly created state to be based on religion, ethnicity and outright apartheid.
This mistake ought to be remedied along with others.

Palestinians should be given a full Right of Return as guaranteed by the UN Resolution 194:
“The refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”
They should be paid reparations for death and suffering, the said calculations on the same principles as for the Holocaust survivors.
Israel must become a fully secular, democratic state and adopt a Constitution guaranteeing full and equal rights to all citizens, regardless of religion or race.

Then and only then should they be admitted to the broader community of nations.

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Disarm Israel.

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The singularity is a point of convergence of various evolutionary strands.
The mythology of linear history, which reaches its crescendo with armaggedon, the coming of the messiah, and the salvation of the elect, is in a battle to the death with the forces of reality, which show that time, unlike man, does not judge and does not build cultures based on exclusivity. Time is cyclical, and therefore, forgiving.
The mythology of persona-based power, which is at the root of capitalism, socialism, communism, and fascism, is in its own fight to the death with the compassion which comes with the unstoppable person-to-person connectivity of a shrinking world. When Jewish children meet Arab children on the internet or elsewhere, no propaganda machine can stop the change.
The mythology of scarcity (to be saited by the plundering of natural resources) is in a death dance with the rhythms of Mother Earth. Hence "global warming" and "peak oil."
The financial system of the world's only empire, denominated in dollars, is about to come head-to-head with Euro-based bourses in Russia and Iran, which are being supported by more and more countries. Will the result be the collapse of the dollar and world-wide depression?
We are talking about across-the-board transformation here; the Middle East and Global Warming are only symptoms of an endemic sickness of body, mind, and spirit running rife throughout the consciousness of homo sapiens.
The only question that remains is how painful and bloody this childbirth process is to be, and that largely depends on you and me.
Fight hard, but fight with integrity, not for any government or "ism," but for the good, the true, and the beautiful within yourself.

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Hezbollah crossed into sovereign territory and killed and kidnapped citizens of that country. Hezbollah has rocketed Israel and killed its citizens for years. It has also terrorized the non-Shiite citizens of Lebanon and has been a proxy for Syrian and Iranian intervention in Lebanon for decades.

Israel over-reacted to Shiite provocation and murder. Israel handled its invasion badly. Israel ought to be taking notes to prevent further such fiascos.

But Israel acted in self-defense. A fact that this commentator has conveniently omitted.

Let's face it: in today's climate, Israel can do no right. And even non-Zionist Arab-Americans (such as myself) are beginning to weary of the Left's knee-jerk damnation of Israel.

Honestly, whom should progressives support? The terror-spewing, sharia-addled misogynists of Hezbollah, or the moderately socialist and democracy-respecting government of Israel?

As long as Israel remains a democracy, I will consider it an example for other Middle-Eastern nations to emulate.

And I couldn't care less how Israel looks. I care how it acts.

In this case, in self-defense.

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It goes without saying, that Israel is perceived as a proxy of the USA in the Middle East and not a democratic country at this point. The reason being that Arabs in Israel have few rights and are subject to discrimination, let alone in the territories. But, what you are seeing on alternet is the pent up rage in America for the fact that the "other side" is never told in American media. Never is it told in the general media about the extermination of the Palestinians by making them live in sqalor in sub-human conditions and the appropriation of their lands. Never is it told about the targeted assasinations and the civilian killed in Mossad's raids. The list goes on and on. Support Israel if you feel you must, or join the legions of Jews who realize that the dream died in 1967, if not earlier.

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