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Today's Stories August 8, 2006 Tim Llewellyn August 7, 2006 Uri Avnery Karim Makdisi Nadia Hijab Sharon Smith Magan Wiles George Beres Rachard Itani Norman Solomon Stan Cox Mickey Z. Jonathan Cook Website of
the Day
August 5 / 6, 2006 Virginia Tilley Uri Avnery Patrick Cockburn Sgt. Martin Smith Gary Leupp Neve Gordon Ralph Nader Peter Bouckaert Peter Montague David Krieger Michael Donnelly Fred Gardner Catherine Norris Imraan Siddiqi Missy Comley
Beattie Ira Kay Dave Lindorff Pratyush Chandra Ron Jacobs St. Clair / Donnelly Poets' Basement Website of the Day Video of the
Weekend
August 4, 2006 Ralph Nader Brian Cloughley Eliza Ernshire Roger Assaf George Bisharat Remi Kanazi Laura Carlsen Niranjan Ramakrishnan Derrick O'Keefe Mickey Z. Col. Dan Smith Website of the Day
Jonathan Cook Uri Avnery Saree Makdisi Robert Fisk Farrah Hassen Nicola Nasser Ron Jacobs Mitchel Cohen Seth Sandronsky Bruce K. Gagnon Alexander Cockburn
John Ross Chip Mitchell Saul Landau Naseer Aruri Winslow T.
Wheeler Matthias Gebauer Joshua Frank Bill Quigley Manuel Yang Shamai Leibowitz David Himmelstein Lara Marlowe Website of
the Day
August 1, 2006 Michael Neumann Robert Fisk Omar Barghouti Marc Levy Diana Barahona / Jeb Sprague Claud Cockburn Ross Eisenbrey Dave Lindorff John Chuckman Francis Boyle Phil Doe Stephen Soldz Website of the Day
July 31, 2006 Jonathan Cook Uri Avnery Robert Fisk Amina Mire Marjorie Cohn Sibel Edmonds / William Weaver John Ross Stanley Rogouski Gideon Levy Ron Jacobs James Ridgeway
/ Alicia Ng Brian Tokar Alexander Cockburn
July 29 / 30,
2006 Michael Neuman Vijay Prashad Ramzi Kysia Werther Robert Fisk Patrick Cockburn Ralph Nader Rachard Itani Eduardo Galeano Gary Leupp Eve Poretsky John Chuckman Fred Gardner Juan Santos Punyapriya Dasgupta Liaquat Ali
Khan Israel Shamir William A.
Cook Stanley Heller Dave Lindorff Moshe Adler Susie Day Pat Williams Anthony Papa John V. Whitbeck Jackie Corr Myles Palmer Tom D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
July 28, 2006 Jonathan Cook Uri Avnery Renee Bowyer Robert Fisk Patrick Cockburn Ramzy Baroud Don Fitz Elaine Cassel David Price Mike Whitney Mickey Z. Niranjan Ramakrishnan Charles Glass Website of
the Day
July 27, 2006 Tanya Reinhart Saul Landau Ramzi Kysia Tom Barry Joseph Grosso Sharon Smith Gale Courey
Toensing Christopher Reed Werther Yusuf Mansur Richard Harth Website of the Day
Norman
Solomon Barbara
Olshanksy David
Nally Jonathan
Cook Patrick
Cockburn William
Blum Joshua
Frank Gabriel
Kolko Daniel
Cassidy Michael
Dickinson Robert
Fisk Uri
Avnery Website
of the Day
July 25, 2006 Harry
Browne Marjorie
Cohn Robert
Bryce Sharat
G. Lin George
Bisharat CounterPunch
News Desk Zena
El-Khalil Larry
Lack Mike
Mejia Ashraf
Isma'il Website
of the Day
July 24, 2006 Mark
Levy Robert
Fisk Maher
Osseiran Paul
Craig Roberts Patrick
Cockburn Website
of the Day
July 22-23, 2006 Jonathan
Cook Paul
Craig Roberts Gilad
Atzmon Robert
Fisk Ralph
Nader Fred
Gardner Christopher
Reed Dr.
Susan Block Najla
Said Uri
Avnery July 21, 2006 George
Galloway P.
Sainath Aseem
Shrivastava Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day July 20, 2006 William
S. Lind Robert
Jensen John
Ross Tom
Hayden Paul
Craig Roberts July 19, 2006 Patrick
Cockburn Trish
Schuh Jonathan
Cook Vicente
Navarro July 17 / 18 2006 Mike
Whitney Kathleen Christison Atrocities in the Promised Land
July 14 / 15,
2006 Alexander Cockburn Tanya Reinhart Robert Fisk Daniel Cassidy Winslow Wheeler Hugh O'Shaughnessy M. Shahid Alam William S. Lind Ramzy Baroud Gilad Atzmon Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Samar Assad Ron Jacobs Lee Ballinger Walter Brasch Dave Lindorff Clifton Ross Tom Crumpacker Ricardo Alarcon William Hughes Susie Day Farrah Hassen Poets' Basement
July 13, 2006 Rev. William
Alberts Ramzi Kysia Rep. John P. Murtha Radford / Santos Stan Cox Saul Landau José
Pertierra Website of
the Day
July 12, 2006 John Ross John Stauber Robert Boston Wayne S. Smith John Graham Kevin Prosen Jonathan Cook Website of
the Day
July 11, 2006 Dave Lindorff Dave Zirin Mokhiber / Weissman Amira Hass Clare Hanrahan Brian Cloughey Felice Pace Raed Jarrar Website of the Day
July 10, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Uri Avnery Roger Burbach Ron Jacobs Joshua Frank Missy Comley Beattie Alexander Cockburn
Stephen Green Paul Craig
Roberts Greg Moses Ralph Nader Laura Carlsen Conn Hallinan John Chuckman Fred Gardner Dr. Tod Mikuriya Pierre Tristam Lucinda Marshall David Swanson Heather Gray Dave Zirin
/ John Cox Mark Engler Michael Lettieri Ron Jacobs Jamal Juma' Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement
July 7, 2006 John Ross July 6, 2006 Nick Dearden John Stanton Ralph Nader Laray Polk Saul Landau Joshua Frank William S. Lind Adelman / Lindorff Jonathan Cook Website of
the Day
Mike Whitney Saul Landau Ramzy Baroud Missy Comley Beattie Arthur Neslen Vincent Maruffi Paul Cantor Paul D. Johnson David Price
Col. Dan Smith Chris Floyd Marjorie Cohn James Brooks Medea Benjamin Matt Reichel Elisa Salasin Rick Wilhelm Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
July 3, 2006 Robert Bryce Dr. Bouthaina Shaban Julia Olmstead Dave Lindorff Andres Gomez Alan Singer Alexander Cockburn
Paul Craig
Roberts Stephen T.
Banko Daniel Cassidy Fawzia Afzal-Khan Jeff Taylor John Ross Greg Moses Laura Carlsen Justin E.H.
Smith Brian Cloughley Anthony Papa Mike Ferner Jerry Tucker Jane Goodall / Rick Asselta Phyllis Pollack Poets' Basement
June 30, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Heather Williams Burbach / Cantor Nick Dearden Michael J.
Smith Brian Concannon Virginia Tilley
Bill Quigley Ron Jacobs Paul Craig
Roberts June 28, 2006 Jorge Mariscal Greg Moses Mark Weisbrot Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff William S.
Lind Mike Ferner Zoltan Grossman
Marjorie Cohn Benjamin /
Jarrar William Hughes Doug Giebel Uri Avnery Alexander Cockburn
June 26, 2006 Don Santina Ralph Nader Dave Lindorff Rafael Rodriguez-Cruz Evelyn Pringle Jonathan Cook
June 23, 2006 Youmans / Erakat Dave Lindorff Ron Jacobs Col. Dan Smith
June 22, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Winslow T.
Wheeler Tanya Reinhart Mike Marqusee William Blum
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August 8, 2006 "Israel Has Made Itself the Least Safe Place in the World for a Jew to Live"Into the Valley of DeathBy TIM LLEWELLYN
Israel's capacity to shed Arab blood has remained undiminished since its creation, winning it territory but no real friends or security and promising it a violent and unrewarding existence. One main lesson of the past three weeks---the first Middle East conflict fought on Israeli rather than Arab lands---is that Israel's aggression can no longer be conducted with impunity. The tragedies of Jewish history may explain Israel's leaders' actions, perhaps, their endemic paranoia and inability to deal with their neighbors in any other manner than aggressive superiority. What is hard to explain is why the United States and the United Kingdom, this latter newly and firmly in the pillory as Israel's second most loyal and uncritical supporter, and their media, for the most part, fail to ask most of the correct questions about the roots and nature of the horror that has been revisited on Lebanon, and to a much lesser extent on northern Israel (no false equivalence here). It is not surprising the nascent UN Security Council resolution is being endlessly kicked around like a soggy medicine ball in a back alley. The Shapeless Thing will find itself added to the pile of similar failed discards that have been deployed to try to simultaneously evade, avoid and solve the Lebanese-Israel problem. One stands back in awe as at Balaclava while the French volunteer to lead this latest ride into the Valley of Death. Consider UN SC 1559, of 2004, which called, inter alia, for "the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias." This unique interference by the Security Council in Lebanon's internal affairs, was jointly sponsored by the US, anxious to diminish Syria, and France, equally keen to reassert itself in an old possession it has never got out of its sentimental old post-colonial heart, to punish Syria for doing in Lebanon what France nor anyone else could, bring security, and to rejoin the top table of nations, as France saw it, after its spat with Washington over Iraq. The Lebanese Government, Russia and China all opposed (but did not vote against) Resolution 1559, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry representative of the time pointing out presciently that if there were a threat to Lebanon it did not come from Syria. If UN Security Council resolutions are so sacrosanct, we might well ask why all the enthusiasm for 1559 and its successors when somehow interest in 242 and 338, of some 39 years vintage, calling for Israel's withdrawal from Arab territories occupied in 1967, and condemning the acquisition of territory by force, has waned to the point of vanishing? Any new resolution acceptable to the US and therefore Israel, and which places foreign troops-especially the French, co-authors of 1559---on the Lebanese side of the border only, thus consolidating and promulgating gains Israel has made, will be unacceptable to Hezbollah. Hezbollah will remain after this Israeli onslaught the single biggest and best-armed construct in the fragile consensus of warlords and fiefdoms that holds Lebanon together at the best of times. These are not the best of times. If it does not wish the Lebanese Army to deploy south to the Israeli line, in collaboration with foreign forces there with an enemy's permission and co-operation, such deployment will not happen, certainly not to effect. If it is tried, in the ensuing chaos Israel will tire of the arrangement and the clashes with Hezbollah will continue at some early future stage in among or over the heads of the unfortunate peacekeepers. Any army volunteering for this mission should dust off the 1983 files, when Hezbollah-inchoate blew the US Marines and the French paras to kingdom come. Another question no-one asks: is Lebanon a nation-state in the sense the US , the UK and France would have us believe? Is it not rather a provenly frail arrangement that holds together when the going is good (as it was, mostly, under Syrian aegis between 1990 and 2005), with the reluctant co-operation of all the sectarian movements, interest groups and chiefs? And that as the most powerful players in this game, Syria and Hezbollah can build or wreck as they see fit? It may not be a Good Thing or a Nice Thing but it is a long, observable fact of the Levant. Long after Israel has decided to take a rest and/or hand over for a while to some unfortunate patsy of a peace force, Hezbollah and Syria, together and separately, will be at the heart of Lebanon's future. More questions, rarely asked: we hear this one, a lot: why should Israel tolerate a burgeoning armed force with rockets on its northern approaches? We do not hear asked back, why should Arabs tolerate the most powerful state in the Middle East's history clanking its armor and peering through its intrusive lenses into their territory and sending over bombs, troops and jet-fighters at will? It can be argued the Arabs have no choice in the matter, but they have now -- Lebanon has chosen how it wishes to resist Israel, quite effectively over the past 10 years or so, and the Arabs of the region are pleased that at last someone has registered with Israel that aggression is no longer dressed with impunity. The Arabs cannot win, they will suffer, but at last it is not without damaging retaliation. More importantly, what business is it of anyone's how Lebanon defends itself, given its neighbor to the south and its record since 1948? We hear, from such experts as Fergal Keane of the BBC, writing in The Spectator of August 4, that Iran and Syria "meddle" in Lebanon. Indeed they do, Fergal. The resistance that finally cleared Israel out of South Lebanon after 22 years would not have been formed without them, and would not be sustained today. Do not then the US in strident particular and the West in general "meddle" in the region, by sustaining Israel as the military master of the Middle East? Are we are right to castigate the indigenous peoples of the region for taking a lively interest in their own futures? Does anyone look at maps or read history? Hezbollah miscalculated three weeks ago (so did Israel). It had not gauged the momentum that had built up behind 1559, especially after Syria so badly overplayed its hand in Lebanon, was deeply implicated in the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri, in February and was forced out of Lebanon. Weakness was perceived and the train of war was fired up and set in motion. By the mid-2000s, Syria was overplaying its hand in Lebanon and it deserved its comeuppance; but anyone who thought Syria would or even could go away was staring into a mirror distorted by wishful thinking. Syria's role in Lebanon is crucial and everlasting, whether the rest of the world likes it or not; Hezbollah IS Lebanon, is OF Lebanon, and cannot be quelled or removed or subsumed: it is not an alien body, like the PLO, which was removed from Lebanon by Israel and Syria, which delivered the coup de grace to Yasir Arafat in 1983. Hezbollah fighters, even if reduced, and so far not much sign of that, grow in Lebanese homes on Lebanese soil. There are tens of thousands of boys now aged ten to fourteen who in five years time will make up numbers and will have been forged in the fury that Israel has so mistakenly and shortsightedly administered. You do not have to support this view to know its truth and hope that American and British politicians might absorb it, if only in the pragmatic interests of their own citizenry. Hezbollah and Hamas, beyond Lebanon, have become the voice of the Arab world in lieu of the nation states, kingdoms and republics who dropped the interests of their peoples long ago. Though these Arabs of the Street and their new heroes cannot turn soon the tide of American-Israeli-Western military and political pressure, they have put us and Israel on notice that for the first time in modern history the Middle East conflict is being fought on Israeli as well as Arab land, and that the highly mechanized delivery of death by machine that has been the fate of the Arabs since 1917 -- yes, 1917 -- comes no longer without cost, human and economic, for everyone. Israel has made itself the least safe place in the world for a Jew to live, a terrible reflection on the calamity of Zionism for its own people and others. Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East Correspondent,
based in Beirut and Nicosia in the 70s,80s and early 90s, covered
his first Middle East story in Southern Lebanon in May, 1974.
Lebanese Shi'ite villagers were shrieking at Lebanese Army soldiers
to protect them from Israeli shells,which were falling all around,
and the PLO guerrillas who were provoking those attacks. They
could not then and cannot in the future. The lesson of thirty-two
years is that these people's only effective protectors were and
will remain Hezbollah, whatever hasty arrangements the UN tries
to make this week on Israel's behalf. Without Hezbollah, and
without a solution to Israel's seemingly irreversible expansion
across the region, there will be no solution in Southern Lebanon
or anywhere else nearby. He can be reached at Timllew@aol.com
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.                    |
