From the Lebanon Solidarity website: U.S. Citizens, Internationals and Lebanese risk safety to bring humanitarian aid to devasted Southern Lebanon On August 12, at 7 AM, Lebanese from throughout the country and international supporters who have come to Lebanon to… Read moreLebanese civil resistance organizes aid caravan
For all of the endless talk about religion as a cause of war in the Middle East, it is rare that a media account mentions the actual resources that are being fought over. This welcome exception from the Los Angeles… Read moreIsraeli air-strikes on irrigation works; designs on Lebanese water seen
From The Forward, Aug. 11: JERUSALEM — Young Israeli activists are fighting back against Hezbollah — with a boycott on smoking hash. Hashish, or oil resin from marijuana plants, is one of the primary recreational drugs available in Israel. It’s… Read moreIsraeli stoners boycott Hezbollah hash
Trees, it seems, can be ideological. But the ideology, as Grace Slick once sang, “doesn’t mean shit to a tree.” Or, as Gertrude Stein might have had it, a tree is a tree is a tree. In other words, even… Read moreHezbollah rockets ravage forests of Galilee
The carnage in Lebanon has pushed Gaza from the headlines. But lest we forget… From Reuters, Aug. 8: Hospitals in the Gaza Strip have seen a significant increase in war casualties with severe injuries over the past month and are… Read moreGaza: hospitals overwhelmed
How perversely ironic. Last Wednesday, Aug. 2, was Tisha b’Av, the Jewish holiday commemorating the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, as well as several other calamities in Jewish history. Yet this year, Tisha b’Av… Read moreJerusalem: fear at the Temple Mount
A note of irony. From IMEC News, July 31: In an official report, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Israeli soldiers took 600 Palestinian residents prisoners since the abduction of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from a military… Read more600 Palestinians taken prisoner in July
A glimmer of hope. From The Observer, Aug. 6 (emphasis added): Israeli pilots ‘deliberately miss’ targets Fliers admit aborting raids on civilian targets as concern grows over the reliability of intelligence At least two Israeli fighter pilots have deliberately missed… Read moreLebanon: passive resistance emerges in IDF
The undiscriminating nature of aerial warfare is producing some surreal ironies in the Israel-Lebanon mess. As we have noted, Israel appears to be loaning military support to Iraqi Kurds due to mutual enmity for the Arabs, leading Arabs and Turks… Read moreIronies of war: Israel kills Kurds, Hezbollah kills Arabs
Indigenous Middle Eastern Jewry, from Lebanon, Morocco, and Iran, have issued recent condemnations of the Israeli assaults on Lebanon and Palestine. The first here is from the Jews of Lebanon website. Lebanese Jewry goes back to 1000 B.C., and did… Read moreIndigenous Middle Eastern Jews condemn Israeli aggression
54 Lebanese civilians, including 37 children, were killed in an Israeli Air Force strike on a 3-story building in the city of Qana in south Lebanon on July 30. (NYT, July 30) From Israel’s largest newspaper,Yediot Aharonot, July 30: Yesha… Read moreSettler rabbis: Jewish law permits Qana carnage
From IRIN, July 29: Lebanon is facing an environmental crisis after an Israeli air strike on the Jiyeh power station, about 20km south of Beirut caused 10,000 tonnes of oil to spill into the Mediterranean sea. The air strikes on… Read moreLebanon: ecological disaster looms
