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Today's Stories August 21, 2006 Jonathan Cook Caught in a Net of Delusion August 19 / 20, 2006 Weekend Edition Uri Avnery The 155th Victim Eliza Ernshire Terror and Freedom on the West Bank Virginia Tilley Inside 1701: What the UN Ceasefire Resolution Actually Says Kathy Kelly Funerals at Qana: a Journey to Southern Lebanon Marc Levy You are What You Dream: "Before you talk of heroes you must feel, taste, touch, smell the horror." Stephen Bradberry / Jeffrey Buchanan Hopes and Homes: Subject to Seizure on the Katrina's Anniversary Barbara Rose Johnston Banking on Violence: Guatemalan Genocide and US Security William Blum Perpetual Fear: Saved Again, Praise the Lord! Stephen Fleischman Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon Ralph Nader The Legacy of John Kenneth Galbraith Dave Lindorff Busted, Again: Bush is Two Times a Criminal Fred Gardner When Cannabis Failed to Sell David Krieger Nuclear Insecurity Dan La Botz The Minutemen: Mad at the Wrong Guys Poets' Basement Davies / Engel   August 18, 2006 Brian M. Downing American Generals and Iraq: Time to Call for a Rapid Withdrawal John Blair Divine Strike in the Bible Belt: Will They Bomb Bedford? Alan Hart The Lebanon War, a Post Mortem Craig Murray Hitting a Nerve: the Hair Gel Terror Hype Chris Dols Confronting Madison's NaziFest Emily Kirksey The Cuban Mirage: Self-Deception in Miami and Washington Joaquín Bustelo Forging a New Strategy for Immigrant Rights: Report from Chicago William S. Lind Beaten: Why the IDF Lost in Lebanon Podcast of the Day The F-22 PodCast Website of the Day Burn a Brick for Jesus   August 17, 2006 CounterPunch News Service "Goodbye to the Unipolar World": an Interview with Hasan Nasrallah Barucha Peller This Pain Has No Ceasefire Ramzy Baroud Lebanon: a Critical Battlefield for the New Middle East Rothem Shtarkman Gen. Dan Halutz: Inside Trader Craig Murray The UK Terror Plot: What's Really Going On? Samar Assad Gaza: One Year After Disengagement Mike Ferner Lt. Watada's Challenge Arnold Kohen A Second Rebirth for East Timor? Kevin Zeese Does the Invasion of Lebanon Foretell a Regional War? Missy Comley Beattie Open Wounds Uri Avnery From Mania to Depression Video of the Day Neil Young: After the Garden Website of the Day Art for Peace   August 16, 2006 Merav Yudilovitch Apocalypse Near: an Interview with Noam Chomsky on Lebanon Robert Fisk Behind the Lies of Bush and Blair: It Falls to Assad to Tell the Truth Mark Williams The Missiles of August: The Lebanon War and the Democratization of Missile Technology John Ross End Game Engulfs Mexico Christopher Brauchli The Poor Are Such a Nuisance John Walsh AIPAC Congratulates Itself for Slaughter in Lebanon Ron Jacobs Gee, Your Hair Smells Terror-ific!: Shampoo, Fear and Elections Rachard Itani It Ain't Over: What Did and Didn't Happen in Lebanon Felice Pace Forest Fires in the Klamath Mountains: The Real Threat is Not What You Expected Niranjan Ramakrishnan Lieberman the Enabler Frank, Sharma and Peterson Venezuela's Revolution of Hope: "In Two Years, Everything Has Changed!" Jonathan Cook Real Photo Fakers; Real War Crimes Website of the Day You Too Can Paint Like Jackson Pollock!   August 15, 2006 Andrew Ford Lyons Why Hezbollywood Was Born: Digitally Erasing a Massacre Binoy Kampmark Terrorism and the Art of Flying Robert Fisk Israel Wasn't Hoping for This Ralph Nader Bush to Israel: Take Your Time Destroying Lebanon Todd Chretien The US Antiwar Movement: Weak, Passive, Distracted Chris Floyd It's Bigger Than the Neo-Cons Mark Engler WTO: Best Left for Dead? George Galloway "You Don't Give a Damn:" the SkyNews Debate Laray Polk What's More Obscene: War or Sex? Trish Schuh Operation Change of Location?: Where Were the IDF Soldiers Captured? Website of the Day Jesus Never Existed August 14, 2006 Uri Avnery What the Hell Happened to the Israeli Army? Karim Makdisi The Flaws in the UN Resolution Kathy Kelly Approaching a Ceasefire Robert Fisk The Truce That Won't Last Norman Solomon Who's Afraid of Hillary Clinton? MoveOn, for One Sunsara Taylor Ned Lamont and the Antiwar Movement: False Hopes, Bad Terms and Ticking Clocks Robert Jensen Outside the Frame: The Limits of George Lakoff's Politics Mike Whitney The Litani Gambit: Ceasefire or Trojan Horse? P. Sainath An Indian Farmer About to Commit Suicide Writes a Note of Clarification Goretti Horgan The Raytheon Nine: Irish Antiwar Protesters Face "Terrorism" Charges Christopher Reed London Fog: Doubts Hang Over Terror Plot   August 12 / 13, 2006 Weekend Edition Jean Bricmont The De-Zionization of the American Mind Norman Finkelstein Should Alan Dershowitz Target Himself for Assassination? Robert Fisk How the London Terror Scare Looks from Beirut Adrian Grima Forget the 50 Civilians: Watching Lebanon from Malta Barucha Peller Letter from Lebanon: the Proximity of Death Omar Barghouti The UN, Lebanon and Palestine Adam Engel Tearing Down the Master's House: an Interview with Derrick Jensen Conn Hallinan How the Irish Could Save the Middle East John Stauber Meet the GOP's Latest Smear Machine: Vets for Freedom Rev. William Alberts Bush's Primetime Lies Still Go Unchallenged by the Press Fred Gardner Hollywood Does Cannabis: "Weeds," the First Season Lucinda Marshall Penis Politics: Does Dick Cheney Want Us All to Fly Nude? Ron Jacobs Kill the Precedent: an Interview with Rapper Nate Mezmer CounterPunch News Service Kerala Throws Out Coke and Pepsi Poets' Basement Katz, Davies and Orloski August 11, 2006 Col. Dan Smith Crimes Against Peace: Beyond Nuremberg John Ross Class War in Mexico City's Gridlock Michael Donnelly Sore Loserman, Redux William S. Lind Collapse of the Flanks Linda Milazzo Chertoff's New Math: Hair Gel Plot Might Have "Killed 100s of Thousands" Rep. Cynthia McKinney Something is Happening Around the World Azmi Bishara When the Skies Rain Death Henri Picciotto Jewish Dissidents Must Challenge Israel CounterPunch News Wire The Warrior Lawyer: Tom Crumpacker, 1934-2006 Dave Lindorff War Crimes in Lebanon Jonathan Cook From High Wycombe to Nazrareth: How I Found Myself with the Islamic Fascists   August 10, 2006 Uri Avnery The Buck Stops Where? Dave Marsh Who Are Mr and Mrs Lamont? Gabriel Kolko Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Arthur Versluis How Neocons' Nazi Hero Schmitt Spawned Bush's Totalitarian Lunge Jennifer Loewenstein Awakening the Resistance August 9, 2006 Linda Schade Incumbents Beware: Peace Voters Mean Business Jackie Mason Defends Mel Gibson; Ridicules Abe Foxman Jonathan Cook Hypocrisy and the Clamor Against Hizbullah Gilad Atzmon Operation Security Roof Charles Hirschkind Doing the Lebanese a Favor Tom Barry Right-wingers Ramp Up War on Migrants Cockburn & St. Clair The Sweetness of Lieberman's Defeat   August 8, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Requiem for Baghdad Paul Larudee The Lebanese Nakba and Israeli Ambitions Joan Roelofs The Malleable US Constitution: a Deterrent to Democracy? Dimi Reider An Interview with IDF Refusenik Sgt. Zohar Milchgrub John A. Murphy The Democrats: a Party on the Run ... from Its Own Members! Eliot Katz The View from the Big Woods: In Which a NYC Antiwar Poet Takes a Summer Vacation in Canada's Boreal Forest Tim Llewellyn Into the Valley of Death Website of the Day Galloway Speaks!   August 7, 2006 Uri Avnery The Junkies of War Karim Makdisi The Draft UN Resolutions: the View from Beirut Nadia Hijab What Israel and the US Wanted May Not Be At All What They Get Sharon Smith Birth Pangs and Dead Babies Magan Wiles Encounter at an Israeli Checkpoint George Beres A New Kind of Bigotry: Lebanon War Exposes Strange Religious Bedfellows Rachard Itani Nice Try, Mr. Bolton Norman Solomon Some Nukes Are A-Okay with the US Media Stan Cox Presidential Doping Scandal Erupts! Mickey Z. Go Ahead, Please Stare at Her Chest Jonathan Cook The Deadly US-Israeli Shell Game at the UN Website of the Day Sam Husseini Interrogates Newt Gingrich on Lebanon   August 5 / 6, 2006 Virginia Tilley Boycott Now!: the Case for Boycotting Israel Uri Avnery The Black Flag Patrick Cockburn Yes, It is a Crusade!: Blair's Mad Speech on Iraq Sgt. Martin Smith Military Training and Atrocities: Bad Apples from a Rotten Tree Gary Leupp America's Heroes on Trial Neve Gordon The New McCarthyism: Academic Freedom After 9/11 Ralph Nader Hey Joe!: the Ghosts of Lieberman's Past Peter Bouckaert For Israel, Innocent Civilians Are Fair Game Peter Montague Nukes Rising: Bush Oversees a Global Nuclear Expansion David Krieger Global Hiroshima: the Stakes Have Been Raised Michael Donnelly "Sir! No Sir!": the Story of the GI Anti-War Movement Fred Gardner Dr. Denney Sues the DEA Catherine Norris Seeking Justice Abroad: Spanish Courts Issue Arrest Warrants for the Butchers of Guatemala Imraan Siddiqi The Smokescreens of War: Moral Superiority, 9/11 and Islamic-Fascism Missy Comley Beattie One Year After the Death of Chase Comley Ira Kay Where is Geography? Getting Beyond the Place Name Game Dave Lindorff Let's Build a Wall Pratyush Chandra Nuclear Fascism in India Ron Jacobs Keeping It Radical St. Clair / Donnelly Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Katz and Davies Website of the Day Defend Bear Butte

August 21 , 2006 Caught in a Net of Delusion After Lebanon, Israel is Looking for More Wars By JONATHAN COOK Nazareth. Late last month, a fortnight into Israel’s war against Lebanon, the Hebrew media published a story that passed observers by. Scientists in Haifa, according to the report, have developed a “missile-trapping” steel net that can shield buildings from rocket attacks. The Israeli government, it claimed , would be able to use the net to protect vital infrastructure -- oil refineries, hospitals, military installations, and public offices -- while private citizens could buy a net to protect their own homes. The fact that the government and scientists are seriously investing their hopes in such schemes tells us more about Israel’s vision of the “new Middle East” than acres of analysis. Israel regards the “home front” -- its civilian population -- as its Achilles’ heel in the army’s oppression of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, its intermittent invasions of south Lebanon, and its planned attacks further afield. The military needs the unconditional support of the country’s citizenry and media to sanction its unremitting aggression against Israel’s “enemies”, but fears that the resolve of the home front is vulnerable to the threat posed by rockets landing in Israel, whether the home-made Qassams fired by Palestinians over the walls of their prison in Gaza or the Katyushas launched by Hizbullah from Lebanon. Certainly Israel’s leaders are not ready to examine the reasons for the rocket menace -- or to search for solutions other than of the missile-catching variety. The bloody nose Israel received in south Lebanon has not shaken its leaders’ confidence in their restless militarism. If anything, their humiliation has given them cause to pursue their adventures more vigorously in an attempt to reassert the myth of Israeli invincibility, to distract domestic attention from Israel’s defeat at the hands of Hizbullah, and to prove the Israeli army’s continuing usefulness to its generous American benefactor. If Israel’s soldiers ever leave south Lebanon, expect a rapid return to the situation before the war of almost daily violations of Lebanese airspace by its warplanes and spy drones, plus air strikes to “rein in” Hizbullah and regular attempts on its leader Hassan Nasrallah’s life. Expect more buzzing by the same warplanes of President Bashar al-Assad’s palace in Damascus, assassination attempts against Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Meshal and attacks on Hizbullah “supply lines” in Syria. Expect more apocalyptic warnings, and worse, to Iran over its assumed attempt to join Israel in the exclusive club of nuclear armed states. And, of course, expect many more attacks by ground and air of Gaza and the West Bank, with the inevitable devastating toll on Palestinian lives. Despite its comeuppance in Lebanon, Israel is not planning to reconfigure its relationship with its neighbors. It is not seeking a new Middle East in which it will have to endure the same birth pangs as the “Arabs”. It does not want to engage in a peace process that might force it to restore, in more than appearance, the occupied territories to the Palestinians. Instead it is preparing for more asymmetrical warfare -- aerial bombardments of the kind so beloved by American arms manufacturers. The weekend’s swift-moving events should be interpreted in this light. Israel, as might have been expected, was the first to break the United Nations ceasefire on Saturday when its commandoes attacked Hizbullah positions near Baalbek in north-east Lebanon, including air strikes on roads and bridges. It was not surprising that this gross violation of the ceasefire passed with little more than a murmur of condemnation. The UN’s Terje Roed-Larsen referred to it as an “unwelcome development” and “unhelpful”. The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, whose current job it is to monitor the ceasefire, refused to comment, saying the attack occurred outside the area of its jurisdiction -- an implicit admission of how grave a violation it really was. Meanwhile in the media, the Associated Press called the military assault “a bold operation”, and BBC World described it as a “raid” and the ensuing firefight between Israeli troops and Hizbullah as “clashes”. Much later in its reports, the BBC noted that it was also a “serious breach” of the ceasefire, neglecting to mention who was responsible for the violation. That may have been because the BBC’s report was immediately followed by Israeli spokesman Mark Regev accusing Hizbullah, not Israel, of violating the ceasefire. Predictably he accused Hizbullah of receiving transfers of weapons that the Israeli army operation was supposedly designed to foil. In fact, this was no simple “clash” during an intelligence-gathering mission, as early reports in the Israeli media made clear before the official story was established. Israeli special forces launched the covert operation to capture a Hizbullah leader, Sheikh Mohammed Yazbak, way beyond the Litani River, the northern extent of Israel’s supposed “buffer zone”. The hit squad were disguised not only as Arabs -- a regular ploy by units called “mistarvim” -- but as Lebanese soldiers driving in Lebanese army vehicles. When their cover was blown, Hizbullah opened fire, killing one Israeli and wounding two more in a fierce gun battle. (It is worth noting that, according to the later official version, Israel’s elite forces were exposed only as they completed their intelligence work and were returning home. Why would Israel be using special forces, apparently in a non-belligerent fashion, in a dangerous ground operation when shipments of weapons crossing from Syria can easily be spotted by Israel’s spy drones and its warplanes?) It is difficult to see how this operation could be characterized as “defensive” except in the language employed by Israel’s army -- which, after all, is misleadingly known as the Israel Defence Forces. UN Resolution 1701, the legal basis of the ceasefire, calls on Israel to halt “all offensive military operations”. How much more offensive could the operation be? But, more significantly, what is Israel’s intention towards the United Nation’s ceasefire when it chooses to violate it not only by assaulting Hizbullah positions in an area outside the “buffer zone” it has invaded but also then implicates the Lebanese army in the attack? Is there not a danger that Hizbullah fighters may now fire on Lebanese troops fearing that they are undercover Israeli soldiers? Does Israel’s deceit not further weaken the standing of the Lebanese army, which under Resolution 1701 is supposed to be policing south Lebanon on Israel’s behalf? Could reluctance on the part of Lebanon’s army to engage Hizbullah as a result not potentially provide an excuse for Israel to renew hostilities? And what would have been said had Israel launched the same operation disguised as UN peacekeepers, the international force arriving to augment the Lebanese soldiers already in the area? These questions need urgent answers but, as usual, they were not raised by diplomats or the media. On the same day, the Israeli army also launched another “raid”, this time in Ramallah in the West Bank. There they “arrested”, in the media’s continuing complicity in the corrupted language of occupation, the Palestinians’ deputy prime minister. His “offence” is belonging to the political wing of Hamas, the party democratically elected by the Palestinian people earlier this year to run their government in defiance of Israeli wishes. Even the Israeli daily Haaretz newspaper characterized Nasser Shaer as a “relative moderate” -- the “relative” presumably a reference, in Israeli eyes, to the fact that he belongs to Hamas. Shaer had only avoided the fate of other captured Hamas cabinet ministers and legislators by hiding for the past six weeks from the army -- a fitting metaphor for the fate of a fledgling Palestinian democracy under the jackboot of Israeli oppression. A leading legislator from the rival Fatah party, Saeb Erekat, pointed out the obvious: that the seizure of half the cabinet was making it impossible for Fatah, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, to negotiate with Hamas over joining a government of national unity. Such a coalition might offer the Palestinians a desperately needed route out of their international isolation and prepare the path for negotiations with Israel on future withdrawals from occupied Palestinian territory. Israel’s interest in stifling such a government, therefore, speaks for itself. And ordinary Israelis still wonder why the Palestinians fire their makeshift rockets into Israel. Duh! On the diplomatic front, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, rejected out of hand a peace initiative from the Arab League that it hopes to bring before the Security Council next month. The Arab League proposal follows a similar attempt at a comprehensive peace plan by the Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, in 2002 that was also instantly brushed aside by Israel. On this occasion, Gillerman claimed there was no point in a new peace process; Israel, he said, wanted to concentrate on disarming Hizbullah under UN Resolution 1701. Presumably that means more provocative “raids”, like the one on Saturday, in violation of the ceasefire. Where does all this “defensive” Israeli activity leave us? Answer: on the verge of more war and carnage, whether inflicted on the Palestinians, on Lebanon, on Syria, on Iran, or on all of them. Iran’s head of the army warned on Saturday that he was preparing for an attack by Israel. It’s probably a wise assumption on his part, especially as US officials were suggesting at the weekend that the UN Security Council is about to adopt sanctions that will include military force to stop Iran’s assumed nuclear ambitions. In fact, Israel looks ready to pick a fight with just about anyone in its neighborhood whose complicity in the White House’s new Middle East has not already been assured, either like Jordan and Egypt by the monthly pay cheques direct from Washington, or like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states by the cash-guzzling pipelines bringing oil to the West. The official enemies -- those who refuse to prostrate themselves before Western oil interests and Israeli regional hegemony -- must be brought to their knees just as Iraq already has been. What will these wars achieve? That is the hardest question to answer, because every possible outcome appears to spell catastrophe for the region, including for Israel, and ultimately for the West. If Israel received a bloody nose from a month of taking on a few thousand Hizbullah fighters on their home turf, what can the combined might of Israel and the US hope to achieve in a battleground that drags in the whole Middle East? How will Israel survive in a region torn apart by war, by a new Shiite ascendancy that makes the old colonially devised mosaic of Arab states redundant and by the consequent tectonic shifts in identity and borders? President Bush observed at the weekend that, although it may look like Hizbullah won the war with Israel, it will take time to see who is the true victor. He may be right, but it is hard to believe that either Israel or the United States can build a missile-catching net big enough to withstand the fall-out from the looming war. Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His book, “Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State”, is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

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