As Sy Hersh said at a talk today, and I'm paraphrasing, sometimes big wars get started almost by accident.

Tension grew when Israeli warplanes fired four rockets at a border crossing point between Lebanon and Syria yesterday - Iran has threatened Israel that it will respond ferociously if there is any incursion into Syrian territory. But Syria swiftly announced that there had been no attacks within its borders.

The right response is renewed strength-in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait?

United Nations, July 16: Lebanon accused the United States of blocking a Security Council statement calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, saying the impotence of the UN's most powerful body sent the wrong signal to small countries and the Arab world.

In the west, a loud chorus of voices has criticized Hizbullah for having undertaken Wednesday's operation to capture (presumably) as many Israeli soldiers as possible. I completely agree that that operation constituted (1) something of an infraction of international law, and also (2), in the circumstances, an act of escalation.

It chose not to respond in such a de-escalatory, problem-solving way. Instead, it responded in a way that was (1) itself a huge infraction of many aspects of international law and also (2) massively escalatory. Israel's response broke international law at both the jus ad bellum level and the jus in bello level. Like Hizbullah, it also ordered its forces to transgress the armistice line and the ceasefire undertakings ensconced in the armistice; and it did so, as we saw, in a very large-scale way. In addition, it did not-- as Hizbullah had done up till then-- limit its attacks to targets of clearly military status. Rather, as so often in the past, Israeli forces massively targeted civilian infrastructure in an explicit attempt to try to turn the political climate inside Lebanon against Hizbullah. And along the way, of course many tens of Lebanese civilians have lost their lives. In its follow-up actions, Hizbullah has also launched attacks that have killed Israeli civilians. In neither of these cases were the civilians in question being directly targeted. But in both cases, the parties have not taken due care to protect the lives of noncombatants. In both cases, too, the parties have targeted civilian infrastructure. (Though "targeting" is a generous term for what most of the Hizbullah rocketeers are actually capable of doing.)

Israel withdrew from Gaza last summer, they "displaced" 20,000 settlers, hard working simple farmers and families.

How about the truth for once sir? Instead of your anti-Semitic talking points.

It must be very hard on you to hate your own people.

people who "love the land" don't setup launch sites to attack people.

when the Israeli settlers got that land they didn't setup rocket launch sites

How many dead Israelis will it take to appear on CNN

I can't further my thoughts about the mainstream U.S. (media) reaction without grossly offending Talk Left, so I will refrain.

It is not legitimate to cut off 750,000 people from electricity. It is not legitimate to call on 20,000 people to run from their homes and turn their towns into ghost towns. It is not legitimate to penetrate Syria's airspace. It is not legitimate to kidnap half a government and a quarter of a parliament.

But who is really winning the war? Not Lebanon, you may say, with its more than 90 civilian dead and its infrastructure steadily destroyed in hundreds of Israeli air raids. But is Israel winning? Friday night's missile attack on an Israeli warship off the coast of Lebanon suggests otherwise.

It was a brisk start to Day Two of Israel's latest "war on terror", a conflict that uses some of the same language - and a few of the same lies - as George Bush's larger "war on terror". For just as we "degraded" Iraq - in 1991 as well as 2003 - so yesterday it was Lebanon's turn to be "degraded".

The two soldiers that triggered this latest outrage were seized in Shebaa Farms, a piece of territory next to the Golan Heights with claims by both Lebanon and Syria.

The entire American political establishment, Democrats no less than Republicans, and the mass media are proclaiming in unison that Israel is the victim and the militant Islamic groups, Hezbollah and Hamas, and their political allies, Syria and Iran, are the aggressors. They repeat endlessly that Israel is merely exercising its "right to defend itself," and the blockade and bombing of a sovereign country, Lebanon, was provoked by Hezbollah's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. They conveniently ignore the statements of the families of the captured Israeli soldiers, who have demanded that the Israeli government negotiate with Hezbollah for the release of their loved ones as part of a prisoner exchange, and criticized their own government for refusing to take diplomatic steps, wondering out loud whether the soldiers have been abandoned in the pursuit of expansionist aims. In Orwellian fashion, any form of Arab resistance against Israel is branded as "terrorism," while the indiscriminate bombing of cities, villages, roads, power plants, airports and bridges is called "self-defense."

This is simply because the extremist in Israel like Likud and the Settlers will not be happy until they obtain the "greater Israel"

"Tampa Student- it is very simple; the American people will never side with those they view as terrorists."

Hezbollah started this whole thing by aducting Israel soldiers.

The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement of 18 August 1988 states: "Today it is Palestine, tomorrow it will be one country or another. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying. ... It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region ... They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionism....

Posted by Tampa Student July 16, 2006 11:39 PM "Tampa Student- it is very simple; the American people will never side with those they view as terrorists." Well, yes. Once an entire culture has been demonized, collectively devalued, and dehumanized, it is possible to ignore just about any atrocity committed towards them.

Yes- there is something about suicide bombers killing innocents that will never gain them sympathy.

This is the world of the apocalypse. It is the world where those on either extreme become indistinguishable. And if we do not find a new way to speak, and soon, there will be untold suffering--not only for many innocents in the Middle East but eventually innocents at home. It was the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon that spawned and empowered Hezbollah. It was the decades-long occupation and humiliation of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank by Israel that spawned and empowered Hamas, and it is the brutal American occupation that has bred the legions of extremists in Iraq. And when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah promises "open war" against Israel, as he did in an address shortly after his Beirut offices were bombed, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he won't cease his attack until Israel is secure, it is time to run for cover, especially when George W. Bush is our best hope for peace.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Monday for the deployment of an international force in southern Lebanon, in order to end the spiraling conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. But Israel reiterated Monday its opposition to the initiative. The Prime Minister's Office said Sunday night that Israel would not agree to the deployment of any troops in south Lebanon, save for the Lebanese army. Israel is concerned that an international force would make it more difficult for the IDF to respond to future attacks from Lebanese territory.

... But does the fact that Hezbollah is a cynical organization that exploits the misery of Palestinians for its own purposes justify the disproportionate reaction? The concept that we have totally forgotten is proportionality. While we're in no hurry to get to the negotiating table, we're eager to get to the battlefield and the killing without delay, without taking any time to think. That deepens suspicions that we need a war every few years, with terrifying repetition, even if afterward we end up back in exactly the same position.

The war we declared on Lebanon has already exacted from us, and of course from Lebanon, too, a heavy price. Did anyone give any thought to the question whether it should be paid?

Everyone knows how this war begins, but does anyone know how it ends? Heavy casualties in the Israeli rear? A war with Syria? A general war? Is it all worth it? Look what a new rookie government can do in such a short time.

Behind the operations in Lebanon and Gaza is the same foolish idea about pressure on the population leading to political changes that Israel wants. In the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict, that concept has only led us from one disaster to the next.

By most accounts, the IDF has already destroyed most of the bridges in southern Lebanon.

Now Major General Udi Adam issues this warning (7.54PM Israel): "We want to say to the population in the south of Lebanon, we want to avoid innocent victims, so we recommend them to leave their villages and homes and go to the north of the country and let us work in the south of Lebanon, because in two or three hours we are going to attack the south of Lebanon heavily."

And how exactly are these terrorized civilians meant to flee before the IDF begins its "work"?

... As to Israel's intention of forcing Lebanon to curb Hizbollah by inflicting damage and punishment on it, the attacks by Israel on Lebanese army and navy units on 17 July questions the very existence of such a policy. If Lebanon is to be "encouraged" to rein in Hizbollah, attacking the Lebanese armed forces makes no sense.

This suggests that the continual large-scale bombing could be preparation for a major ground assault by the IDF within the next few days. It is also possible that Israel will extend its air attacks to specific targets in Syria, such as air bases used in the transit of weapons and equipment to Hizbollah. Indeed, it is not inconceivable that the IDF will undertake a long-range air-strike on one or more of the missile factories in Iran, as a warning sign to Tehran to curtail its support for Hizbollah.

The continued Israeli attacks on Lebanese infrastructure and the possible targeting of selected sites in Syria and Iran will have little or no effect on Hizbollah and will combine to increase greatly the anti-Israeli and anti-American mood across the region. This will not stop Israel, the more so because of the strong support available from Washington. ...

... It is probably true that only outside intervention will prevent a substantial escalation in the coming days, but there is no sign that such intervention will come from Washington or London....

... Unless Hizbollah decides that it has achieved sufficient political progress by demonstrating Israel's vulnerability, it is unlikely to hold back. Even if it does, the IDF will not willingly exercise restraint - the memories of its previous defeat in the 1980s are a heavy, embittering weight on the minds of senior Israeli military officers. That is one reason why the current crisis is so dangerous and could well escalate across the region.

The point has not been whether some Arab extremists want Israel gone. Thats a matter of fact. Also a matter of fact which you refuse to acknowledge is that there are Israeli extremists who want the Palestinians gone.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this most recent episode has been the condemnation of Hizbollah by the moderate Arab regimes, a stark break from the past.