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Today's Stories August 2, 2006 John Ross Mexican Civil Resistance in Five Acts August 1, 2006 Michael Neumann What is to be Said?: War on the Blathersphere Robert Fisk Into the Meat Grinder: NATO and Lebanon Omar Barghouti The Massacre at Qana: Were Racism and Fundamentalism Factors? Marc Levy Whatever You Did in the War will Always be With You Diana Barahona / Jeb Sprague Reporters Without Borders and Washington's Coups Claud Cockburn Scenes from the Spanish Civil War Ross Eisenbrey When is a Raise Not a Raise? House Bill Actually Cuts Wages for Some Workers by $5.50 an Hour! Dave Lindorff Making the World Safe ... for Dictatorship John Chuckman Canada's Harper Blames the UN Dead Francis Boyle Prosecuting Israel: a War Crimes Tribunal May be the Only Deterrent to a Global War Phil Doe Bleak House Revisited: My Vacation in Water Court Stephen Soldz Psychologists, Guantanamo and Torture Website of the Day An Unfair War   July 31, 2006 Jonathan Cook Birth Pangs or Death Throes? Uri Avnery Syria in the Gunsight Robert Fisk Atrocity in Qana: Israel Kills 34 Kids Amina Mire The Struggle for Somalia: Warlords, Islamists, US Global Militarism and Women Marjorie Cohn Bush's Enemy Du Jour Sibel Edmonds / William Weaver All That's Given Up in the Name of Security John Ross Report from a Red Alert: Zapatistas at Critical Crossroads Stanley Rogouski Why Howard Dean Denounced Our Puppet in Iraq Gideon Levy Days of Darkness: the Cruel, Collective Punishment of Lebanon Ron Jacobs No One Is Illegal James Ridgeway / Alicia Ng Witch Hunting Russell Tice: 3 Films Brian Tokar The Visionary Life of Murray Bookchin Alexander Cockburn The Triumph of Crackpot Realism July 29 / 30, 2006 Weekend Edition Michael Neuman Humanitarian Intervention: The White Man's Burden Vijay Prashad Cry Havoc: Anyone Who Opposes Israel is Labeled a Terrorist Ramzi Kysia Lebanon's Children: Voices from an Invasion Werther The Manchurian Clergyman: Rev. John Hagee's War Robert Fisk Bush and Blair: "Keep It Up!" Patrick Cockburn Repeating the 1982 Fiasco Ralph Nader Big Oil's Biggest Score: Who Says Crime Doesn't Pay? Rachard Itani Professor of Propaganda: the Lies of Alan Dershowitz Eduardo Galeano One Country Bombed Two Countries Gary Leupp Cowboys Still in the Saddle: Neocon Plans in the MIddle East Eve Poretsky The Biggest Stick in the Middle East John Chuckman Delusional Expectations: How Israel Could Destroy Itself Fred Gardner San Diego v. Prop 215 Juan Santos Apocalypse No!: an Indigenist Perspective Punyapriya Dasgupta Israel's Foes as Beasts and Insects Liaquat Ali Khan The War Crime Machine: Defeating the IDF Israel Shamir Friends, True and False William A. Cook The Power of Evil Stanley Heller Bill Clinton Comes to Lieberman's Rescue Dave Lindorff Bush's War Crimes Dodge Moshe Adler Kelo, a Year Later: Property Sezied By Eminent Domain Must Remain Public Susie Day Comrade Bush: Back in the USSA Pat Williams The Right's Pre-Election Sleight of Hand Anthony Papa Collateral Damage from the War on Drugs John V. Whitbeck Imperial Overreach: Suez 1956 to Lebanon 2006 Jackie Corr Last Rites for Evel Knievel Myles Palmer Old Soul: James Hunter's "People Gonna Talk" Tom D'Antoni Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Orloski, Louise, Davies, Engel and Meyers Website of the Weekend Electronic Lebanon   July 28, 2006 Jonathan Cook The Lies Israel Tells Itself Uri Avnery Who is Winning? Questions and Answers About the War in Lebanon: Renee Bowyer When Condi Came to Ramallah Robert Fisk Smoke Signals from Bint Jbeil Patrick Cockburn Baghdad's Death Squads, Official and Otherwise Ramzy Baroud The War in Lebanon: More Than Meets the Eye Don Fitz Half-Hour Hurricanes: Where Were the Warnings About St. Louis's Ultra Storm? Elaine Cassel The Second Andrea Yates Verdict: Why the Jury Did the Right Thing David Price Much Ado About Landis: What Kind of Tour de France Was It? Mike Whitney Bull's Eye: Israel's Targeted Assassination of UN Peacekeepers Mickey Z. Power (Outage) to the People: Why Queens Went Dark Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Power of Arrogance in a World Without Deterrence Charles Glass Operation "Save Israel's High Command" Website of the Day Military Intelligence and You!   July 27, 2006 Tanya Reinhart Israel's New Middle East Saul Landau Castro at 80: History Absolved Him, Now What? Ramzi Kysia Watching Lebanon Burn: Notes From a Free Fire Zone Tom Barry John Bolton: Israel's Man at the UN Joseph Grosso Israel and Iraq: Hillary's White House Ticket Sharon Smith Lebanon and the Future of the Antiwar Movement Gale Courey Toensing 9/11 Nablus: First, Destroy the Archives Christopher Reed Hirohito's Ghost: Japan's New Militarists Werther Hoosier Hooey: Is Terre Haute the Peshawar of the Midwest? Yusuf Mansur Can the Crime Justify the Act? Richard Harth Squeezing the Last Drops from Palestine Website of the Day Who's Arming Israel? July 26, 2006 Norman Solomon Applauding While Lebanon Burns: Richard Cohen's Blood Lust Barbara Olshanksy Gitmo: Justice Denied is Murder, and a War Crime David Nally The Detention of Ghazi Walid Falah: Israel Arrests Geography Professor from University of Akron Jonathan Cook Five Myths That Sanction Israel's War Crimes Patrick Cockburn Beware Iraqi Leaders Bearing Good News William Blum They Simply Can't Stop Lying, Can They? Joshua Frank Israel's Invasion Pretext Under Fire Gabriel Kolko Bankers Fear World Economic Breakdown Daniel Cassidy How the Irish Invented Dudes Michael Dickinson Arrested in Istanbul: "Sorry, We Thought You Were Israeli!" Robert Fisk Beirut as Munich Uri Avnery Is Beirut Burning? Website of the Day Free Ghazi Walid Falah   July 25, 2006 Harry Browne Acquittal!: Activists Found Not Guilty in Irish Ploughshares Case Marjorie Cohn Willful Blindness: Bush Greenlights War Crimes Robert Bryce Israel and the Irony of UN Resolutions Sharat G. Lin Chronology of the Latest Chrisis in the Middle East George Bisharat Most Lebanese Now Know Who Their Real Tormentor Is CounterPunch News Desk Class War in the Blathersphere Zena El-Khalil "Tell Them That I'm Not Leaving. We Love Lebanon" Larry Lack The Bottled Water Madness Mike Mejia The Secret Behind "State Secrets" Ashraf Isma'il Why Israel Is Losing Website of the Day Peace on Trial   July 24, 2006 Mark Levy The Whys and Wherefores of PTSD Robert Fisk Israelis Bomb Fleeing Villagers Maher Osseiran Beirut, 1982 Paul Craig Roberts Israel's Criminal Accomplice Patrick Cockburn More Than 100 Iraqis Being Killed Each Day Website of the Day sirnosir.com   July 22-23, 2006 Jonathan Cook Israel's Indiscriminate Onslaughts Paul Craig Roberts The Shame of Being an American Gilad Atzmon Israel's New Math Robert Fisk Elegy for Beirut Ralph Nader Here's How to Halt This Horror Fred Gardner The Double Standard on Depression Christopher Reed The Right's Use of Sexpot Schoolgirls Dr. Susan Block Bush's Fecal World Najla Said Do People Know How Much We Hurt? Uri Avnery "Stop that Shit" July 21, 2006 George Galloway John Cornford and the Fight for the Spanish Republic P. Sainath Indian Prime Minister Faces the Dead Farmer Problem Aseem Shrivastava The Iraq War is a Huge Success Alexander Cockburn Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel: Everything You Need to Know Website of the Day FromIsraeltoLebanon July 20, 2006 William S. Lind Why Hezbollah is Winning Robert Jensen Florida Puts History on Probation John Ross AMLO Presidente! Tom Hayden I Was Israel's Dupe Paul Craig Roberts The Unfolding Horror Show July 19, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Massacres Soar in Central Iraq: Maliki Government Discredited Trish Schuh Israel Targets, Flattens Beirut TV Station HQ Jonathan Cook Is Israel Using Arab Villages As Human Shields? Vicente Navarro The Spanish Civil War, 70 Years On: The Deafening Silence on Franco's Genocide July 17 / 18 2006 Mike Whitney Israel's Shameful Attack on Gaza Kathleen Christison Atrocities in the Promised Land     July 14 / 15, 2006 Weekend Edition Alexander Cockburn How Venice is Dying Tanya Reinhart The IDF is Hungry for War Robert Fisk Beirut Waits: Is Damascus the Key? Daniel Cassidy How the Irish Invented Jazz Winslow Wheeler Pentagon Budget Gimmickry: When a Cut is Actually an Increase Hugh O'Shaughnessy In Amazonia: Slavery and Deforestation M. Shahid Alam Israel, the US and the New Orientalism William S. Lind Two Signposts in Iraq Ramzy Baroud Racism Plagues Media Coverage of Gaza Assault Gilad Atzmon Echoes of the Wehrmacht Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Railroading Your Rights Samar Assad A History of Israeli-Palestinian Prisoner Exchanges Ron Jacobs Japan and Pre-Emptive Strikes: Why Would They Want to Go There? Lee Ballinger A New Kind of Jim Crow? Walter Brasch A World Without Fajitas?: the Rightwing's Language Police Dave Lindorff The Bush Swingers?: They Broke the Law and People Died Clifton Ross Up from Below in Oaxaca Tom Crumpacker Planning for the Re-Colonization of Cuba Ricardo Alarcon The Mad Annexationist William Hughes Rev. Billy Graham: A War-Monger in the Pulpit Susie Day Bugging Hillary Farrah Hassen The Road to Gitmo: Dramatizing the Banality of Evil Poets' Basement Smith-Ferri, Engel and Davies   July 13, 2006 Rev. William Alberts Rationalizing War Crimes: Saying the Obvious to Conceal the Devious Ramzi Kysia Scenes from the Lebanese Front Rep. John P. Murtha What the Iraq War is Costing Us Radford / Santos Race, Class and the Battle for South Central Farm Stan Cox Marching Plague: the Critical Art Ensemble's Biological Defense Program Saul Landau Lies as Patriotism José Pertierra Is Venezuela the Real Target of Bush's New Cuba Plan? Website of the Day National Security Whistleblowers' Dirty Dozen Campaign   July 12, 2006 John Ross Mexico Splits in Half: the Election Hits the Streets John Stauber The CIA Propagandist and Former Prankster Stewart Brand: John Rendon's Long, Strange Trip in the Terror Wars Robert Boston Top 10 Powerbrokers of the Religious Right Wayne S. Smith Bush's New Cuba Plan: Embargoes, Blacklists and Assassination Plots John Graham Secrecy and the Curtain of Oz Ed Kinane Arrested for Failing to Obey a Lawful Order to Cease Protesting an Unlawful War: My Statement to the US District Court Kevin Prosen Goodbye Mr. Zeidler, You Will Be Missed Jonathan Cook Israel's Latest Bueaucratic Obscenity Website of the Day Addicted to Oil: Starring GW Bush   July 11, 2006 Dave Lindorff Does a State of War Give Bush the Right to Commit War Crimes? Dave Zirin Why I Wear My Zidane Jersey Mokhiber / Weissman Boeing's Criminal Agreement: Odd and Unusual Amira Hass A War on Families Clare Hanrahan The Last Free Fourth of July? Brian Cloughey Stop Blaming Pakistan Felice Pace The US Media and the World Cup Raed Jarrar Iraq: Raped Website of the Day Bad Boy of Gitmo   July 10, 2006 Paul Craig Roberts Courting Doom with North Korea Uri Avnery A One-Sided War Roger Burbach Democracy Betrayed: Electoral Fraud and Rebellion in Mexico Ron Jacobs The New SDS: Toward a Radical Youth Movement Joshua Frank Sectarian Flames in Iraq Missy Comley Beattie Bush's Stunning Admission to Larry King Alexander Cockburn The War in Iraq: a Dreadful Mistake July 8 / 9, 2006 Weekend Edition Stephen Green When War Criminals Retire Paul Craig Roberts Republic or Empire?: Lessons from Stanford Greg Moses Boots Down on the Rio Grande Ralph Nader The Wail of the Oceans Laura Carlsen Mexico's Election Lacks Credibility Conn Hallinan Dumping Musharraf: Is Pakistan Expendable? John Chuckman Afghanistan is No One's War Fred Gardner Big Pharma's Strange Holy Grail: Cannabis Without Euphoria? Dr. Tod Mikuriya Cannabis as a Frontline Treatment for Childhood Mental Disorders Pierre Tristam Missile Envy: Is N. Korea Bush's Most Reliable Ally? Lucinda Marshall Deep Sexing the News: the Rape of Iraq David Swanson Command Rape: the Ordeal of Suzanne Swift Heather Gray The Spiral of Violence: What the Dead Might Tell Us Dave Zirin / John Cox French Soccer and the Future of Europe: Le Pen's Racists vs. Zindane and Henry Mark Engler Mexico's Fear of Democracy: Elites, Fraud and the Status Quo Michael Lettieri Mexico: Don't Discount a Recount Ron Jacobs 2008 Might Be Too Late: the Case for Impeachment Now Jamal Juma' Globalizing the Occupation Jeffrey St. Clair Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week Poets' Basement Engel and Kirbach   July 7, 2006 John Ross Anatomy of a Fraud Foretold: Mexico's Surreal Elections July 6, 2006 Nick Dearden Profiting from the Occupation: the Corporate Interests Behind the War on Palestine John Stanton Nationalize the Defense Industry Ralph Nader The Politics of the Minimum Wage Laray Polk Cambodia Then; Gaza Now Saul Landau Who Mourned the Victims of the US Covert War on Chile? Joshua Frank Sweet Angst, Power Chords and Politics: Farewell Sleater-Kinney William S. Lind To Be or Not to Be a State? Hamas and 4th Generation War Adelman / Lindorff Impeachment Comes to Main Street, USA Jonathan Cook An Experiment in Human Despair Website of the Day Adulterers in Chief? July 5, 2006 Mike Whitney Is Cheney Betting on Economic Collapse?: the Veep's Curious Investment Portfolio Saul Landau False Axioms: Star Democrats and Iraq Massacres Ramzy Baroud And Israel Shall Be Safe Again Missy Comley Beattie An Axis of Nuts: Ready, Aim, Fear Arthur Neslen A Way Out of the Gaza Crisis? Vincent Maruffi Party Politics in Connecticut: Lieberman, Lamont and the Greens Paul Cantor Aberrations: Hell, High Water and the Moral High Ground Paul D. Johnson Mystery Meat: Let's Be Honest About Food's Origin David Price Shouting Down Nazis in Olympia July 4, 2006 Col. Dan Smith Iraq and Independence Day: Lessons from the War of 1812 Chris Floyd American Power in Mahmudiyah Marjorie Cohn Israel's Collective Punishment of Gaza James Brooks Israel 9,000 Palestine 1: Destroying the Gaza Strip Medea Benjamin "Dictatress of the World:" Has America Become JQ Adams' Worst Nightmare? Matt Reichel An Independence Day Lesson for the American Left from France Elisa Salasin Why I am Fasting Today Rick Wilhelm Will Lieberman Apologize to Ralph Nader? Paul Craig Roberts Rape, Lies and Murder Website of the Day A Mighty Handsome Family   July 3, 2006 Robert Bryce Gaza in the Dark: Poor, Frustrated and Powerless Dr. Bouthaina Shaban "I Hope You're Not Here to Talk About the Palestinians" Julia Olmstead The Biofuel Illusion: Running on Top Soil Dave Lindorff The Real Meaning of the Hamdan Ruling: Bush Adm. Has Committed War Crimes Andres Gomez A Mockery of Justice Alan Singer Another Encounter with Chuck Schumer: Just as Hawkish as Hillary, But Nastier Alexander Cockburn Temple of Mammon, Planet of Doom July 1/2, 2006 Weekend Edition Paul Craig Roberts Bush's Assaults on Freedom: What's to Stop Him? Stephen T. Banko Echoes from Vietnam; Nightmares in Iraq Daniel Cassidy How the Irish Invented Slang: the Bunkum of Bunkum (for Dizzy Gillespie) Fawzia Afzal-Khan The Class Behind the Muslim Jeff Taylor The Sandy Foundation of the White House: a Bible-Believing Christian's View of Bush John Ross Mexico: There's a Riot Going On Greg Moses Psycho-Management Hits Mexico's Maquiladoras Laura Carlsen Mexico's Elections: a Choice for Change Justin E.H. Smith Lethal Injection and Other Fashion Trends Brian Cloughley Different Worlds: When Liberation is Worse Than Oppression Anthony Papa Punishing Addiction: No Walk in the Park for Dwight Gooden Mike Ferner Getting Busted for Wearing a Peace T-Shirt Jerry Tucker Liberalism's Long Goodbye: McGovern Hoists the White Flag Jane Goodall / Rick Asselta Remembering the Marshall Islands Phyllis Pollack Roll Over Beethoven: Chuck Berry is Back in Town Poets' Basement Salasin, Swindell, Ferri-Smith and Engel   June 30, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Supreme Rebuke: Bush Loses Gitmo Case Heather Williams Will Mexicans Ignore What Bolivians Learned? Burbach / Cantor Yellowback Democrats: the Party of Cut-and-Run (from Principle) Nick Dearden Crime in the Valley: Life on the Other Side of Palestine Michael J. Smith Under the Broadcast Flag: Intellectual Property as Intellectual Theft Brian Concannon The Return to Haiti: a Homecoming for Aristide? Virginia Tilley Israel's Appalling Act: Starving in the Dark   June 29, 2006 Bill Quigley Gutting New Orleans Ron Jacobs Killing a Nation to Rescue a Soldier Paul Craig Roberts The High Price of American Gullibility June 28, 2006 Jorge Mariscal Mexican-American Soldiers, Iraq and the Politics of Immigrant Bashing Greg Moses Down in Pinal County: Where the Pun's on Us Mark Weisbrot Mexico: Their Brand is Crisis Ramzy Baroud Re-Interpreting Iraq: the Latest Propaganda Campaign Dave Lindorff Redacting the Constitution: Why Signing Statements Matter William S. Lind Neither Shall the Sword: War in a Fouth Generation World Mike Ferner 50 Years Down the Wrong Direction: Taken for a Ride on the Interstate Highway System Zoltan Grossman Military Resistance: a Brief History   June 27, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Playing Politics with Timetables Benjamin / Jarrar Leading Dems Froth Over Amnesty Plan William Hughes Roadmap to Starvation Doug Giebel Showdown in Montana: Burns vs. Testor Uri Avnery The World Cup and Middle East Peace Alexander Cockburn Hitchens Hails the "Glorious War"   June 26, 2006 Don Santina American Rituals: Massacres, Baseball and Apple Pies Ralph Nader Beyond Binary Politics Dave Lindorff CounterPunch v. CounterPunch: Taking Impeachment on the Road Rafael Rodriguez-Cruz An Interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal on Hispanics and Latin America Evelyn Pringle Big Pharma's Big Graveyard: Drug Profits, Fraud and Death Jonathan Cook Israeli "Retaliation" and Double Standards   June 23, 2006 Youmans / Erakat Divestment, Corporate Engagement and Israel Dave Lindorff Cut and Run: a Winning Strategy Ron Jacobs Dogs of War Barking at the Moon Col. Dan Smith Iraq: Fool Me Twice   June 22, 2006 Marjorie Cohn Friendly Fire Ambush Winslow T. Wheeler Lockheed, the Senator and the F-22 Tanya Reinhart A Week of Israeli Restraint Mike Marqusee The Forest Gate Raid William Blum Why Bush's Iraq is Worse Than Saddam's       Subscribe Online

August 2, 2006 End the Occupation! Peace in the Middle East? By SAUL LANDAU A fog of rhetoric has impeded clear public vision of the latest Middle East war. Israeli spokespeople and White House echoers punctuate "explanatory" sentences with the "t" word, to connote the root of current evil, and the necessary violent remedy as well: more terrorism, directed by the state of Israel. The barrage of words and images syncopates with the barrage of bombs and rockets. The cacophony of babble tends to erase precedents and obscure facts: Palestine, not terrorism, remains the central conflictive issue in the area. On July 22, as Israel invaded Lebanon to crush the "Hezbollah terrorists"­ momentarily turning attention away from the "Hamas terrorists"--former Irgun warriors unveiled a plaque "commemorating the attack on the King David hotel in Jerusalem on July 22, 1946. On that day the Irgun 'resistance' to British rule in Palestine detonated a bomb inside the hotel." 91 people died, including 28 British subjects. (Harry de Quetteville, Telegraph July 22, 2006) "The Hebrew Resistance Movement" ops planted explosives in the hotel basement, claiming to have warned the hotel's occupants to leave. For unknown reasons the hotel remained full when the bombs exploded. A mistake; regrettable! Indeed, the Israeli government has continued to regret subsequent civilian killings. These unintentional mistakes have cost thousands of mostly Palestinian lives. By late July, Israeli bombs on Lebanese cities produced more deaths and almost a million refugees--another regrettable but necessary consequence of the war on terrorism. The media barrage of carnage reports from Lebanon and Israel--where Hezbollah rockets did considerably less destruction--obscures causes and possible solutions to the new Middle East war. Indeed, as the TV public wrung its collective hands in despair, none other than George Bush offered a way out. For W, the solution appeared as obvious. "See?" he poked British Minister Tony Blair at the St. Petersburg G-8 summit, "what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing that shit, and it's over." He didn't explain "they" or "shit." Nor did Bush seem aware that his recent epiphany on shit stopping clashed with his February 2005 epiphany after the assassination of Lebanese politician Rafik Hariri. Bush accused Syria of killing Hariri and demanded Damascus remove its forces from Lebanon. In his latest spiritual flash, Bush now apparently wants Syria to re-intervene in Lebanon to stop shit. (A UN investigation under Serge Brammertz found no evidence implicating Syria.) Was Bush only kidding around? NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that Bush "turns summit meetings into fraternity parties." At this kegger he even managed to give action--an unexpected back rub -- to German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, who proved by her negative body language that for all her conservatism, she was not a sorority girl. World leaders may demean Bush's intellect, but not ignore US power, despite its seemingly capricious zig zags. In 1982, with US backing, Israel ousted the PLO from Lebanon. In the interim, a Hezbollah militia arose to fill the military vacuum. In 1985, at the height of the Lebanese civil war and Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Christians asked Syria to send troops into southern Lebanon. The Israeli government responded with outrage. Defense Minister Shimon Peres "demanded that Israel deliver an ultimatum to the Syrians, to prevent them from reaching the Israeli border." Israeli journalist Uri Avneri recalls how "Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister, told me then that that was sheer nonsense, because the best that could happen to Israel was for the Syrian army to spread out along the border. Only thus could calm be assured, the same calm that reigned along our border with Syria." Rabin, however, did not follow the dictates of his own insight. The consensus at the time would not permit Syrian troops to mobilize near the Israeli border. Unlike Hezbollah, the Syrians, suggests Avneri, "are cautious, they do not act recklessly." Israelis might recall that under the misty cloud created by the utterance of the "t" word, there lies a cauldron of ugly facts. For 18 years, Hezbollah inflicted serious casualties on Israeli occupying forces as Israel unsuccessfully tried to "stabilize" Lebanon by creating a loyal puppet government. Even after they withdrew, the Israeli military made plans for another invasion. The expected "provocation" occurred on July 12 when Hezbollah fighters killed eight Israel soldiers and abducted two others near the Lebanese-Israeli border. Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah claimed the two captured soldiers should signify a negotiated prisoner exchange. "No military operation will return them," Nasrallah told a July 12 news conference in Beirut. "The prisoners will not be returned except through one way: indirect negotiations and a trade." This incident, according to Gilad Atzmon, led to the elaboration of a new "Hebraic arithmetic laws. For 2 kidnapped Israeli soldiers who are still kept alive, 500,000 innocent Lebanese civilians are displaced. For 2 abducted Israeli soldiers, Lebanon, a sovereign state, is brought back down on its knees. Its civil infrastructure is 'gone'. Some of its capital's residential quarters and southern villages are already wiped out. Indeed, 'two equals half a million' is the new arithmetic the Israelis insist upon imposing on the region." US TV viewers have not seen this Israeli point of view. But approximately one billion Arabs see daily images of Israeli brutality in Palestine, a land stolen from Arab people. On Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, they watch graphic examples of suffering in Gaza. Arabs understand that the US campaign for democracy in the Middle East means that if the "wrong" party prevails, Washington won't recognize the power of the ballot. Since Hamas carried the "terrorist" label, Bush agreed that the Israelis should nullify the elections by force in Gaza. While US TV tends to elicit empathy with Israelis who have lost loved ones or homes, Arab TV portrays a heroic Hezbollah and its images bring forth sympathy for Palestinian and Lebanese victims of Israeli bombings. The US media uncritically accepts Bush's version of Syria as a source of terror. In the Arab world, Syria has emerged as the place that offers refuge to more than 100,000 Lebanese fleeing from Israeli aggression. On top of that, Syria has taken in some 450,000 escaping Iraqis. Americans, thanks to their media, have bought the line that evil Syria and "nuclear Iran" are the twin sources of Middle East evil, as if they control the behavior of Hezbollah militants living in southern Lebanon. Media rhetoric, like that of the White House, focuses on terrorism. Fox news makes it sound as if for decades Israel has had to use disproportionate violence on Palestinians. Israel "had" to build a wall to keep terrorists out. In fact, Palestinian casualties far outnumber Israeli dead and wounded. But dead and wounded terrorists don't count. As the US military experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq worsen, and Bush uses the "t" word even more frequently than in the past, the real source of Middle East conflict remains the same. Israel remains intransigent about Palestine and about Syria's Golan Height which Israel occupies in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions 224 and 338. The Israeli government never tires of seizing opportunities to break Palestinian will, usually with the claims that it is defending its own security. It rained more bombs and rockets on Gaza just before it invaded Lebanon. It withheld water and medicine from the people there. The Arab world watched this. When Hezbollah attacked, many Arabs saw this as an act of solidarity with Palestinians. They did not believe that Israel marched into Lebanon, bombed and shelled civilian targets, mostly in poor Shi'ite areas, just to get two soldiers released. When Ms. Rice left Lebanon in late July, she did not demand that Israel cease its destruction campaign. Instead, the United States rushed a fresh bomb supply to the Israeli Air Force. This has converted US policy to "democratize" the Middle East into a sick joke. At a July 25 press conference, with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who offered solidarity to the Lebanese people, standing next to him, Bush responded to a reporter's question about Hezbollah. "The terrorists are afraid of democracies," Bush declared. "And what you've witnessed in Israel, in my judgment, is the act of a terrorist organization trying to stop the advance of democracy in the regionPeople fear democracy if your vision is based upon kind of a totalitarian view of the world. And that's the ultimate challenge facing Iraq and Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories, and that is, will the free world, and the neighborhood, work in concert to help develop sustainable democracy?" Huh? Perhaps, Bush needs a sticker pasted on his forehead. Every time he looks in the mirror he would see, "It's the occupation of Palestine, stupid!" Saul Landau is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. His forthcoming book, A Bush and Botox World, will be published by CounterPunch Press this fall.

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