{"article":{"id":169859,"heading":"The Most Dangerous Alliance in the World","author":"Norman Solomon","created":"2006-07-22 02:13:56","modified":"2006-07-25 18:20:09","last_modified":"Wed, 26 Jul 2006 02:20:09","article":"

Embarrassing. Shameful. A travesty. Those kinds of words begin to describe the alliance between the United States and Israel. Here are a few more: Government criminality. High-tech terror. Mass murder from the skies. The kind of premeditated action that the U.S. representative in Nuremberg at the International Conference on Military Trials -- Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson -- was talking about on August 12, 1945, when he declared that \"no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.\"

The United States and Israel. Right now, it's the most dangerous alliance in the world.

Of course, Israeli officials talk about murderous crimes against civilians by Hezbollah and Hamas. And Hezbollah and Hamas officials talk about murderous crimes against civilians by Israel. Plenty of real crimes to go around. At the same time, by any measure, Israelis have done a lot more killing than dying. (If you doubt that, take a look at the website of the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem and its documentation of deadly events.)

In American media, the current mumbling about the need for \"restraint\" is little better than window-dressing for bomb-dropping. The prevalent dynamic is based on a chain of rarely spoken lies, however conscious or unconscious: none more important than the lie that a religion can make one life worth more than another; render a human death unimportant; elevate certain war-inflicted agonies to spiritual significance.

\"Israel has overwhelming military superiority in both southern Lebanon and Gaza,\" the New York Times noted in mid-July. A pattern is deeply entrenched in U.S. media and politics: the smaller-scale killers condemned, the larger-scale killers justified with endless rationales.

Stripping away the righteous rhetoric, media manipulation and routine journalistic contortions, what remains in joint U.S.-Israeli policy is the unspoken assumption that might makes right. Myths spin around as convenient. Israel ceremoniously \"withdraws\" from Gaza, only to come back with missiles and troops however and whenever it pleases. The West Bank also continues to be a place of subjugation and resistance. And, as W.H. Auden observed, \"Those to whom evil is done \/ Do evil in return.\"

The Israeli leaders who launched this month's state-of-the-killing-art air assault on Gaza and Lebanon had to know that many civilians would be killed, many others wounded, many more terrorized. The smug moral posturing that Israel's military does not target specific civilians is moldy political grist -- and, in human terms, irrelevant to the totally predictable carnage.

\"There are terrorists who will blow up innocent people in order to achieve tactical objectives,\" President Bush said on July 13. Of course he was referring to actions by Hezbollah and Hamas. We're supposed to pretend that Israel does not also \"blow up innocent people in order to achieve tactical objectives.\"

Israel calls itself a Jewish state, and its leadership often claims to represent the interests of Jewish people. Killers who terrorize often claim to be acting on blessed behalf of others of the faith. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus... By now, such demagoguery ought to be transparent.

In the 40th year of Israel's unconscionable occupation of Palestinian territories, Israeli leaders have their agenda. What's ours?

It should include clearly opposing the most dangerous alliance in the world.

In the United States, evading the \"might makes right\" core of the alliance is easy. The dodge makes dropping bombs on Lebanon and Gaza that much easier for the Israeli government. As usual, you can hear it in the weasel-worded statements from even the better politicians on Capitol Hill. You can read it in New York Times editorials. Instead of saying that aggressive war by Israel \"is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy,\" the message is that aggressive war by Israel is accepted and embraced as an instrument of policy.

Most of all, you can hear it in the silence.

-- Norman Solomon is the author of the new book \"War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.\" For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"http:\/\/nyc.indymedia.org\/en\/2006\/07\/73557.html","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"After getting out of Lebanon, writer June Rugh told Reuters on Tuesday: "As an American, I'm embarrassed and ashamed. My administration is letting it happen [by giving] tacit permission for Israel to destroy a country." The news service quoted another American evacuee, Andrew Muha, who had been in southern Lebanon. He said: "It's a travesty. There's a million homeless in Lebanon and the intense amount of bombing has brought an entire country to its knees."","numcomment":12,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2006\/07\/169859.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":169863,"heading":"The Devil (George Warmonger Bush) on Arming Irgun Zvai Leumi \/ Likud Extremist \/ IDF Nazis","article":"The Devil (George Warmonger Bush): "Sorry to Oil the Arming of Irgun Zvai Leumi \/ Likud Extremist \/ IDF IAF Nazis in IsraOIl but Oil comes First. Fill her Up ???????"","author":"The Devil (George Warmonger Bush)","parent_id":169859,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2006-07-22 02:32:55","modified":"2006-07-22 02:32:55","fileurl":""},{"id":169886,"heading":"US = 666 (a better equation)","article":"What a party! Let's see, I got the Zionists thinking they're the chosen and murdering Christ's children in Palestine and Lebanon, thus, firing up the Son of God's people to fight back with more extremism. By doing this I got the extremists to provoke the Zionist's even more. I got everybody else thinking that what Israel is doing is different from what Hitler did (thank you Krastner, Stern Gang, et. al. But the best of all is that nobody has a clue that I'm the one who benefits from all this chaos. These people are so stupid they didn't even learn from Iraq, where I successfully used one of my puppets to justify my muder of innocent civilians, all for cesar's gold. And then I got my false prophet's misleading my own people into thinking this is all justified by Christianity. And nobody suspects who I am because they're still living off some falsely interpreted drivel that I am a single, solitary male, a Jew at that. The world will continue to suffer and fill my coffers or I just might have to get all of these pawns to justify my decision to blow it up. And anybody who challenges me is considered a terrorist and is condemned to torture and suffering in the name of international security. I love it, Love! \r\n\r\nAh Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!","author":"The Beast","parent_id":169859,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2006-07-22 12:37:02","modified":"2006-07-22 12:37:02","fileurl":""},{"id":169894,"heading":""Christian Identity" Naziboy above?!","article":"Maybe Gehrig can help pinpoint this slimeball's affiliation. What hate group does he belong to?\r\n\r\n\r\n","author":"shetizdayen indeebay","parent_id":169859,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2006-07-22 13:11:55","modified":"2006-07-22 13:11:55","fileurl":""},{"id":169971,"heading":"The Western media is indeed a problem","article":"American media unquestioningly defends Israeli violence\r\nBy David Walsh\r\n21 July 2006\r\n\r\nUse this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author\r\n\r\nOver the past week, the American mass media has obediently fallen into line in defense of Israeli violence and aggression. As hundreds of civilians have died in Lebanon and an estimated half a million been made homeless by Israeli bombs and shells, the US media has consistently painted the conflict as a defensive action by the Zionist regime against provocations by \u201cterrorists.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe American public is deliberately being kept ignorant about the history and reality of the situation in the Middle East, as part of the combined effort by Washington and Tel Aviv to impose their brutal will on the people of the region.\r\n\r\nThe major television networks and cable channels, through which much of the population receives its information about world events, have played an especially foul role in concealing the real political and social questions. To watch the television news channels and network news programs for a single afternoon and evening is largely to bathe in ignorance and reaction.\r\n\r\nThis begins with the manner in which the Middle East conflict is portrayed. The language and phrases used are carefully calibrated to conform to the arguments of the Israeli government and its sponsors in the US.\r\n\r\nThe television news programs inevitably present the current conflict as a struggle between Israel and \u201cterrorists.\u201d Right-winger and xenophobe Lou Dobbs of CNN, for example, on Wednesday evening, in the course of a one-hour program, repeats this thought no less than eight times: \u201cIsrael tonight is stepping up its offensive against terrorists in Gaza,\u201d \u201cIsraeli troops tonight are fighting Hezbollah terrorists in one of the biggest ground battles of this conflict,\u201d \u201cHezbollah terrorists tonight are firing a barrage of rockets at cities and towns in northern Israel,\u201d and so forth (from CNN transcripts).\r\n\r\nWithout fail, as well, any reference to the fighting must place the blame for its eruption on Hamas and Hezbollah, not long-term Israeli ambitions. Bob Schieffer, on the CBS Evening News Wednesday, for example, almost in passing, refers to Hezbollah as the group that \u201cstarted the trouble in Lebanon.\u201d Tucker Carlson of MSNBC explains that Hezbollah \u201csparked the conflict.\u201d On CNN, Miles O\u2019Brien comments, \u201cAt the same time, Israeli troops have moved into central Gaza. Six Palestinians killed in that offensive. That operation began last month after Palestinian militants kidnapped an Israeli soldier.\u201d\r\n\r\nNo hint emerges from any of the television news programs that underlying the massive Israeli operation might be geopolitical aims, that what we see unfolding is an operation that has been long in the planning and only waiting for a pretext. Such a possibility is not even suggested.\r\n\r\nThe news on American television is nothing but propaganda. It has, in fact, a totalitarian character. No effort is made to educate the public. The news is delivered for the most part by ignorant individuals, unaware of history and social reality, simply repeating lines fed to them.\r\n\r\nWhen there is any question about the nature and scope of the current operation in Lebanon and Gaza, the television news programs simply turn to the State Department or the Israeli government itself for clarification.\r\n\r\nFor example, when is an invasion not an invasion? When the Tel Aviv regime says so. O\u2019Brien of CNN, on the Israeli incursion into Lebanon, July 19: \u201cIsraeli troops are on that side. They say it\u2019s not an invasion, they say it\u2019s part of an effort to root-out Hezbollah bunkers, strongholds and those rockets which continue to besiege the northern part of Israel.\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd when is the destruction of a country\u2019s infrastructure no such thing? Also when the Israelis say so. Israel is not responsible for the destruction of bridges, roads, tunnels, apartment complexes, port facilities, factories. The \u201cterrorists\u201d are responsible. Israeli hands could not be cleaner. A parade of Zionist government officials appears on American television: on Wednesday alone, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres (to borrow a phrase from Philip Roth, speaking with \u201call the cold authority of that voice dipped in sludge\u201d), former prime ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, Israeli ambassador to the US, Dan Gillerman.\r\n\r\nAll the veteran Israeli leaders have blood on their hands. They bandy about the word \u201cterrorist,\u201d but the state of Israel was formed through explicitly terrorist means and the various political figures have personally participated in or presided over deadly military operations against the Palestinian, Lebanese and Jordanian populations.\r\n\r\nThey are all well-trained practitioners of the Big Lie\u2014that tiny Israel is under siege from its barbarous Arab neighbors. They know the \u201chot buttons\u201d to push. They interact with their US interviewers like members of the same club. Israel, they seem to suggest, is \u201cAmerica in the Middle East,\u201d practically the 51st state.\r\n\r\nPeres appears at least twice on US television Wednesday, on \u201cHardball with Chris Matthews\u201d on MSNBC and \u201cLarry King Live\u201d on CNN. Both interviewers are deferential to the veteran war criminal. Peres claims to King, \u201cIsrael didn\u2019t start the war. Israel didn\u2019t attack anybody. We gave back to Lebanon all the land, all the water.... We were living for six years in total peace. We didn\u2019t hurt anybody.\u201d\r\n\r\nPeres, of course, is lying. Israeli history in relation to Lebanon is one of provocation, violence and criminality. Before Israel\u2019s establishment, Zionist leaders envisioned a greater Israel that would include the southern portion of Lebanon as far as the Litani River (perhaps Israel\u2019s military goal today in any invasion). In the 1950s, the Israeli government considered the fracturing of Lebanon, the establishment of a Christian state and the annexation of the southern part of the country.\r\n\r\nBetween 1968 and 1974, the Lebanese army recorded more than 3,000 violations of Lebanese territory by Israeli armed forces; 880 Palestinians and Lebanese were killed in the attacks. Some 150 Palestinian camps and villages in southern Lebanon were razed and olive groves and crops destroyed.\r\n\r\nIn March 1978, Israel invaded Lebanon, killing more than 2,000 people and making some 250,000 homeless. In one of the most gruesome crimes of modern times, the Israelis allowed their allies in the fascist Southern Lebanon Army to enter the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla in September 1982, where the latter carried out the slaughter of an estimated 2,000 men, women and children. An Israeli inquiry later found that Defense Minister Ariel Sharon bore \u201cpersonal responsibility\u201d for the massacre. The Israeli military proceeded to occupy southern Lebanon for another 18 years, during which time countless Lebanese and Palestinians suffered at their hands.\r\n\r\nFor the American television networks, however, history began when Hamas guerrillas seized a single Israeli soldier on June 25.\r\n\r\nDefense of civilian deaths\r\n\r\nOn Wednesday, Netanyahu, the extreme right-winger beloved of the neo-fascists in the Republican Party, defends the killing of civilians to MSNBC\u2019s Tucker Carlson. In keeping with the Zionist regime\u2019s line (and the line of every imperialist bully), civilian deaths are the fault of the \u201cterrorists,\u201d who insist on mingling with the general population. \u201cIf you have to take out a rocket emplacement in a crowded neighborhood, you have to do it,\u201d explains Netanyahu, to which Carlson audibly adds, \u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d Carlson is an empty-headed yuppie, formerly of CNN where he was most famous for his bow tie, who suggested in 2001 that torture \u201cmay be the lesser of two evils.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhen Lebanese casualties are mentioned by the television news, they are inevitably balanced by reports of Israeli deaths and wounded, as though the figures were equivalent. On Wednesday afternoon, the Fox News Channel\u2019s John Gibson, a fanatical right-winger, intones, \u201cHezbollah attacked the holy city of Nazareth,\u201d where a rocket killed two Israeli Arabs. The various news commentators are astounded to learn that local residents blame Israel, first, for not providing bomb shelters for the predominantly Arab population, and, second, for launching its attacks on Gaza and Lebanon.\r\n\r\n\u201cHundreds dead, more than a thousand wounded, half a million displaced\u201d proclaim the various anchormen and women, not bothering to explain that the overwhelming majority of those suffering are Lebanese civilians. With a vast military preponderance, the Israelis are targeting a virtually defenseless population. Wednesday witnesses the highest daily toll of civilian casualties yet, with some 70 killed, and this fact is barely mentioned.\r\n\r\nIf the American television networks had the slightest honesty, they would have begun their news programs Wednesday with the fact that Louise Arbour of the UN High Commission on Human Rights suggested that Israel might be guilty of war crimes. She declared that the obligation to protect civilians during hostilities is entrenched in international law, \u201cwhich defines war crimes and crimes against humanity.\u201d Moreover, she argued that individual political leaders could find themselves charged with war crimes, adding, \u201cI think one must issue a sobering signal to those who are behind these initiatives to examine very closely their personal exposure,\u201d she told the BBC.\r\n\r\nThe International Red Cross, the enforcer of the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war, also declared Wednesday that Israel had violated the principle of proportionality provided for in the Conventions and their protocols.\r\n\r\nUS television reports none of this on Wednesday.\r\n\r\nThe fighting is invariably described as \u201cfierce exchanges between Hezbollah guerillas and the Israelis,\u201d again, as though there were some sort of equivalence between the Islamic movement\u2019s Katyusha rockets and mortars, and the Zionist military\u2019s F-16 bombers, Apache helicopter gunships, artillery, tanks and armored personnel carriers.\r\n\r\nAlmost unavoidably, glimpses of the truth appear on American television news programs. Certain reporters on the spot in Lebanon, obviously affected by the mass suffering, provide some picture of what life is like under the Israeli siege.\r\n\r\nNic Robertson of CNN reports on the bombing of a food distribution warehouse in Beirut, which burns for hours. He warns of a \u201chumanitarian crisis in the making,\u201d with half a million people out of a population of 4 million displaced, \u201cairports bombed, ports blockaded.\u201d Cooking gas is difficult to find, he reports, and food will run out. CBS News carries a report from southern Lebanon\u2014a father has lost two children to an Israeli bomb. Over the bomb crater, the father demands to know, \u201cDo you see Hezbollah fighters here?\u201d David Wright of ABC News notes, \u201cCivilians have borne the weight of this war.\u201d\r\n\r\nOne of the most moving encounters appears on ABC, with an Ethiopian woman, who works as a maid in Beirut. The young woman is crying, obviously terrified, cowering in a doorway. The reporter notes, with sympathy, \u201cNo ship is coming for her.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe hostility of the Lebanese population to the Israeli war and the backing of the resistance cannot be entirely evaded. CBS News notes that Hezbollah is \u201cdrawing support from the war meant to destroy it.\u201d Even a Fox News report from a park in Beirut, where the homeless are camped out, has to admit that there are \u201cno hard feelings toward Hezbollah.\u201d An aid worker tells the Fox reporter, \u201cthe refugees here adore Hezbollah.\u201d\r\n\r\nA British ITN report on the devastation of Lebanon, shown on MSNBC, however, is the most forthright piece of reporting to appear on the US television networks Wednesday.\r\n\r\nGenuine bloodthirstiness also raises its head. Carlson of MSNBC casually asks the former prime minister Netanyahu if the latter doesn\u2019t think it would be a good idea if Israel were to bomb Syria. Carlson likes the question so much, he asks it twice on his program.\r\n\r\nBillionaire reactionary Steve Forbes, who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, appears on Fox News to advocate \u201cletting \u2019em fight\u201d in the Middle East. Crushing Hezbollah will be good for stocks, we learn.\r\n\r\nBrit Hume of Fox News somewhat mournfully asks his usual panel of Fred Barnes, Mort Kondracke and Mara Liasson \u201chow long can the US hold out\u201d against the pictures of refugees and devastation in Lebanon before it is forced to pressure Israel into considering a ceasefire. Not long, they regretfully reply.\r\n\r\nThe Israeli embassy, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the entire Zionist lobbying enterprise expend vast amount of time and money to intervene in and manipulate the US media. The lobbying in and of itself would not be successful if its aims did not coincide with American imperialist policy. Apart from that, the pro-Israel operation would simply be considered a criminal conspiracy.\r\n\r\nHow else to explain certain stories that suddenly appear on each television network and cable channel simultaneously? On Wednesday, for example, the various American news programs, as though on cue, run stories on the supposed threat posed by Hezbollah terrorist attacks in the US.\r\n\r\nEach of the networks or channels treats the story with its own particular touch. Rupert Murdoch\u2019s Fox News pulls no punches. \u201cYour World with Neil Cavuto,\u201d an afternoon program, asks Wednesday, \u201cAre Hezbollah cells a bigger threat than Al-Qaeda?\u201d Brian Levin, \u201cterror analyst,\u201d and Wayne Simmons, a former CIA operative, unsurprisingly, answer in the affirmative. Simmons suggests, without providing a shred of evidence, that Hezbollah is \u201cmuch more of a threat than Al-Qaeda.\u201d Fox subsequently runs a headline, \u201cFBI hunts for Hezbollah sleeper cells inside US.\u201d\r\n\r\nNot to be outdone, CNN asks its viewers, to most of whom the question has no doubt never occurred before: \u201cHow concerned are you about Hezbollah attacks in the US?\u201d The cable channel\u2019s Wolf Blitzer, formerly the Jerusalem Post correspondent in Washington, warns of \u201cfears that Hezbollah is going to hit the US.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe CBS Evening News with Bob Schieffer also introduces the allegation with a sensational headline, \u201cHezbollah in the US,\u201d only later to half-debunk the story by pointing out that Hezbollah supporters in the US have never been charged or suspected of any terrorist attacks.\r\n\r\nAnother carefully coordinated story appears on CNN and other channels Wednesday: about a group of American Jews emigrating to Israel. CNN reports, \u201cFor Jehuda Saar, a father of three, the fighting only strengthened his resolve to pick up his family and leave New Jersey.\u201d Saar comments, \u201cWithout shooting one bullet, without holding a gun, we\u2019re Israel\u2019s best weapon against any detractor, anyone that wants to destroy Israel.\u201d However, 22-year-old Steven Rubin is more than eager to \u201cshoot bullets\u201d and \u201chold a gun\u201d; he plans to join the Israeli army.\r\n\r\nRubin tells CNN that the current fighting \u201conly makes me want to go there more. And it validates everything I\u2019ve been thinking for the existence of the state of Israel to see how important everything is at this point.\u201d More than a few of Israel\u2019s most fanatical settlers come from Brooklyn, Queens, New Jersey and Long Island.\r\n\r\nConveniently, Arye Mekel, Israeli Consul General is on hand for the departure of the group of \u00e9migr\u00e9s at Kennedy Airport in New York. He tells CNN: \u201cFor us, for Israel, it\u2019s a huge boost to our morale, feeling that fellow Jews around the world are not deterred.\u201d\r\n\r\nOne afternoon, one evening of US television news...","author":"Moriah","parent_id":169859,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2006-07-22 20:53:45","modified":"2013-11-11 00:42:25","fileurl":""},{"id":170077,"heading":"Ode to Beirut","article":" BEIRUT -- In the year 551, the magnificent, wealthy city of Berytus - headquarters of the imperial East Mediterranean Roman fleet - was struck by a massive earthquake. In its aftermath, the sea withdrew several miles and the survivors - ancestors of the present-day Lebanese - walked out on the sands to loot the long-sunken merchant ships revealed in front of them.\r\n\r\nThat was when a tidal wall higher than a tsunami returned to swamp the city and kill them all. So savagely was the old Beirut damaged that the Emperor Justinian sent gold from Constantinople as compensation to every family left alive.\r\n\r\nSome cities seem forever doomed. When the Crusaders arrived at Beirut on their way to Jerusalem in the 11th century, they slaughtered every man, woman and child in the city. In the First World War, Ottoman Beirut suffered a terrible famine; the Turkish army had commandeered all the grain and the Allied powers blockaded the coast. I still have some ancient postcards I bought here 30 years ago of stick-like children standing in an orphanage, naked and abandoned.\r\n\r\nAn American woman living in Beirut in 1916 described how she "passed women and children lying by the roadside with closed eyes and ghastly, pale faces. It was a common thing to find people searching the garbage heaps for orange peel, old bones or other refuse, and eating them greedily when found. Everywhere women could be seen seeking eatable weeds among the grass along the roads..."\r\n\r\nHow does this happen to Beirut? For 30 years, I've watched this place die and then rise from the grave and then die again, its apartment blocks pitted with so many bullets they looked like Irish lace, its people massacring each other.\r\n\r\nI lived here through 15 years of civil war that took 150,000 lives, and two Israeli invasions and years of Israeli bombardments that cost the lives of a further 20,000 of its people. I have seen them armless, legless, headless, knifed, bombed and splashed across the walls of houses. Yet they are a fine, educated, moral people whose generosity amazes every foreigner, whose gentleness puts any Westerner to shame, and whose suffering we almost always ignore.\r\n\r\nThey look like us, the people of Beirut. They have light-coloured skin and speak beautiful English and French. They travel the world. Their women are gorgeous and their food exquisite. But what are we saying of their fate today as the Israelis - in some of their cruellest attacks on this city and the surrounding countryside - tear them from their homes, bomb them on river bridges, cut them off from food and water and electricity? We say that they started this latest war, and we compare their appalling casualties - 240 in all of Lebanon by last night - with Israel's 24 dead, as if the figures are the same.\r\n\r\nAnd then, most disgraceful of all, we leave the Lebanese to their fate like a diseased people and spend our time evacuating our precious foreigners while tut-tutting about Israel's "disproportionate" response to the capture of its soldiers by Hizbollah.\r\n\r\nI walked through the deserted city centre of Beirut yesterday and it reminded more than ever of a film lot, a place of dreams too beautiful to last, a phoenix from the ashes of civil war whose plumage was so brightly coloured that it blinded its own people. This part of the city - once a Dresden of ruins - was rebuilt by Rafiq Hariri, the prime minister who was murdered scarcely a mile away on 14 February last year.\r\n\r\nRead More\r\nhttp:\/\/counterpunch.com\/Fisk07222006.html\r\n","author":"We love you Lebanon!","parent_id":169859,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2006-07-23 17:48:37","modified":"2006-07-23 17:48:37","fileurl":""},{"id":170368,"heading":"More about Lebananon","article":"the Lebanese government allowed Hezbollah to build its headquarters and underground bunkers in the populated neighborhoods of Beirut. It allowed Hezbollah to import 13,000 missiles to be fired into Israel\u2019s cities and towns. The 75,000-man Lebanese army has not sealed off the Syrian border and, according to reports, has allowed Syria to re-supply Hezbollah in the midst of its aggression. The Lebanese government has allowed Hezbollah to build underground fortresses on its southern border in position to attack. It has allowed Hezbollah to launch rockets into the towns of northern Israel to terrorize and kill innocent civilians.\r\n\r\nIsrael has done nothing to provoke this attack from Lebananese territory. But in the midst of Hezbollah\u2019s aggression against Israel, Lebanon\u2019s prime minister has joined the attackers, blaming Israel for Lebanon\u2019s misery instead of its source. ","author":"Not so innocent","parent_id":169859,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2006-07-25 15:29:39","modified":"2013-11-11 00:42:30","fileurl":""},{"id":170389,"heading":"Israel provoked the attack by Hizbullah","article":"by attacking Gaza. ","author":"ISRAEL = MURDER","parent_id":169859,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2006-07-25 16:51:05","modified":"2006-07-25 16:51:05","fileurl":""},{"id":170391,"heading":"with hte force and might of the Arab world","article":"So all this time, when you were whining "poor poor pitifulPalestinians" you were lying? And all this time, when we said "its not just the Palestinians- its the Arab world against the state of Israel" , we were right?","author":"behind them, they ain't underdogs then","parent_id":169859,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2006-07-25 16:54:14","modified":"2006-07-25 16:54:14","fileurl":""}]}