Thomas Ricks writes the following on his Foreign Policy blog. Bleak beyond belief: Ariel Siegelman, an Israeli specialist in counterterrorism, offers the best explanation I’ve seen so far for what Israel was trying to do in the Gaza attack: For almost three years [after the 2006 Lebanon war], there were no illusions; we knew that…
Showing all posts tagged Lebanon
When history should be remembered
An eminently sensible editorial from Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper this week: The drama that unfolded during the demolition of a Palestinian house in East Jerusalem on Tuesday aptly illustrates the futility of Israel’s renewed policy of destroying the family homes of Palestinian attackers. The Israeli supreme court had ordered police to tear down part of…
We’ve got to keep on talking
Lebanese Chess is a fascinating blog written by a Lebanese Australian. His recent post is titled, “A week of speeches“: Khatami, Halper and Loewenstein … three public speakers at Australia’s main political university, the Australian National University (ANU), in a week. I went to see them all, and nothing much out of the three surprised…
The war isn’t over
Israel deliberately flooded Lebanese farmlands with excess rainwater from an Israeli orchard, located off the southern town of Mais al-Jabal early Tuesday, ruining crops and properties, the state-run national news agency said.
What do the Palestinians think?
An alternative reading of the acclaimed Israeli film, Waltz with Bashir: To say that Palestinians are absent in Waltz with Bashir, to say that it is a film that deals not with Palestinians but with Israelis who served in Lebanon, only barely begins to describe the violence that this film commits against Palestinians. There is…
The ease with which they lie
Israeli officials are wonderful at lying, telling the world that black is white or that “there is no humanitarian crisis” in Gaza. This kind of deception has an infamous pedigree. The lobby group, Australian Committee for Truth in the Middle East, has just published its latest missive and included the following necessary history lesson: Let…
Death matters much
Robert Fisk asks: When did we stop caring about civilian deaths during wartime? He writes: I wonder if we are “normalising” war. It’s not just that Israel has yet again got away with the killing of hundreds of children in Gaza. And after its own foreign minister said that Israel’s army had been allowed to…
