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By Nir Rosen
$17.16
By Barbara Slavin
$16.47
$20
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U.S. Army/Pfc. Ryan Hallgarth
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With hostile families, militias and even police on the hunt for gay people, conditions in Iraq are worse than in Saudi Arabia and Iran, the BBC reports.
Posted on Sep 12, 2012
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By William Pfaff — The major threat in the Middle East to international peace is Syria’s civil war, not the rhetorical battles between Iran and an Israel that claims to be straining against its American leash.
Posted on Sep 11, 2012
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AP
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Israel is blaming Iran, its longtime adversary, for the deaths of seven Israeli tourists in a bomb attack on a bus in Burgas, Bulgaria. The bus was carrying 40 members of an Israeli group from the airport to their hotels when the blast occurred.
Posted on Jul 19, 2012
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RT
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The mainstream media was bound to gag on the WikiLeaks editor’s new talk show, which is taped under house arrest, airs on Vladimir Putin’s Russia TV and features Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as its first guest. But the Times review in particular has Glenn Greenwald tweeting nonstop.
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Wikimedia Commons
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The CIA has lost a foothold, and some measure of its critical anonymity, in Lebanon after some of the spy agency’s operatives were exposed in recent months. Last June, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah triumphantly announced that at least two agents had been nabbed within his organization’s ranks ... (more)
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YouTube
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Oh good, the nutty Rev. Terry Jones is near our HQ here in Los Angeles. The Florida pastor, who drew widespread ire earlier this month with his Quran-burning and Prophet Muhammad mock trial publicity stunts ...
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Wikimedia Commons
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Following a recent spate of violence in the relentless Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel is trying out a new anti-rocket defense system known as Iron Dome to guard the city of Beersheba, according to The New York Times.
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AP / Ben Curtis
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More juicy stuff from the WikiLeaks mine: Lebanon’s defense minister aided Israel in 2008 by offering advice to Israeli officials on how best to combat the Shiite paramilitary group inside Lebanon.
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AP / Hussein Malla
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made quite a provocative gesture by staging a pro-Hezbollah rally at a Lebanese border town near Israel on Thursday—a scene that was not lost on the Israeli military.
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AP / Hussein Malla
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By Juan Cole — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Middle East’s populist answer to the American tea party, has stirred controversy with his trip to Lebanon, which will begin Wednesday.
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bbc.co.uk
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On Tuesday, violence erupted at the border between Lebanon and Israel, leaving five people dead and marking the first significant clash between the neighboring nations since 2006. Both sides claimed that the other had provoked the incident ... (continued)
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In this clip from Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to members of AIPAC on Tuesday, the Israeli prime minister leads the audience through a thought exercise comparing Israel to New Jersey in an effort to sketch out how he views Israel’s security issues.
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AP / Mohammed Zaatari
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By Robert Fisk — It looks like a hop, skip and a jump. There’s the first electrified fence, then the dirt strip to identify footprints, then the tarmac road, then one more electrified fence, and then acres and acres of trees. Orchards rather than tanks. Galilee spreads beyond, soft and moist and dark green in the winter afternoon—a peaceful Israel, you might think.
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Wikimedia Commons/Vladanr
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Young hip-hop artists in Lebanon are using their music to deal with their lives in the wake of years of violence, reaching across religious and sectarian divisions and promoting nonviolence, and they’ve joined forces with pro-peace organizations while they’re at it.
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AP / Ben Curtis
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Hezbollah is reportedly prepping for another possible conflict with Israel, stocking up on arms and reinforcing fixed positions, as fears grow that the Netanyahu government will launch a new assault against Lebanon as a precursor to any attack against Iran and its nuclear facilities.
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chinadaily.com
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Although the Taliban apparently enjoys good funding these days, thanks in part to drug money, the BBC reported Monday that al-Qaida is struggling by comparison, according to “terrorist financing official” (?) David Cohen.
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By Robert Fisk — Everyone trusted Salah Ezzedine. A billionaire Shiite Muslim businessman and financier from southern Lebanon, he organized pilgrimages to Mecca, ran a major Beirut publishing house and a children’s television station, held major investments in east European oil and iron conglomerates and—much more to the point—was a close personal friend of very senior leaders of Hezbollah.
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AP photo / Yves Logghe
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The world saw two major elections on Sunday—one on a continental scale, the other much smaller but no less talked about. The European Parliament will tilt further to the right after an election with near record-low turnout. In Lebanon, meanwhile, it appears that the U.S.-backed governing coalition will survive a strong effort by Hezbollah to win a majority.
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AP photo / Hasan Sarbakhshian
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By Chris Hedges — Bibi Netanyahu’s assumption of power in Israel sets the stage for a huge campaign by the Israeli government, and its well-oiled lobby groups in Washington, to push us into a war with Iran, but a stable relationship with Iran would do more to protect Israel and our interests in the Middle East.
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By William Pfaff — The people of Gaza and Israel suffer at the hands of leaders whose bewildering and savage decisions have no rationally achievable purpose.
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AP photo / Abdel Kareem Hana
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By Chris Hedges — Israel will, from now on, speak to the Palestinians in the language of death. And the language of death is all the Palestinians will be able to speak back. The slaughter—let’s stop pretending this is a war—is empowering an array of radical Islamists inside and outside of Gaza.
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AP photo / Rina Castelnuovo, pool
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By Bill Boyarsky — The president-elect has struggled to stay out of the Gaza fight, but based on everything he said during the campaign, he appears determined to stand up for Israel.
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By William Pfaff — The evidence suggests that American policy under Barack Obama will be a continuation of the neoconservative foreign policy of the Bush administration, given a human face.
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AP file photo
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By Chris Hedges — The world is far more complex than our childish vision of good and evil. We as a nation and a culture have no monopoly on virtue. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, when viewed from the receiving end, are state-sponsored acts of terrorism.
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AP photo / Hasan Sarbakhshian
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By Scott Ritter — Now that the presidential election has liberated Barack Obama from the need to play to the fickle whim of domestic politics, he should put away the saber and take a more enlightened approach to Iran.
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msnbc.msn.com
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Just before the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, al-Qaida has released a lengthy videotape featuring the group’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, providing updates about how the holy war is faring around the globe and laying into Iran for “cooperating with the Americans” and with the American-approved governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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By William Pfaff — The Bush administration has lived by a strategy of tension, and will go out of office bequeathing the wars it has started and the ill will it has created to its successors, to compromise those who come after.
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By William Pfaff — The West’s response to the situation in Georgia evades acknowledgement of the damage Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili has done to the United States and NATO, and to Georgia itself, which for the foreseeable future will now be a nation of limited sovereignty, and an awkward embarrassment to its Western allies.
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In “Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies,” Barbara Slavin, a leading Middle East reporter for USA Today, offers a refreshingly nuanced and revelatory taxonomy of power within theocratic Iran that sheds light on its leaders and their ambitions.
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Link TV’s Mosaic Intelligence Report is back with an in-depth look at the recent prisoner swap between Lebanon and Israel, comparing and contrasting how the leaders and people of both nations viewed the exchange and investigating what it might mean for Hezbollah and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in particular.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Cabinet has agreed to a German-brokered prisoner exchange with Hezbollah. It is believed that under the terms of the deal, Israel would receive the bodies of two captured soldiers in return for the release of five Lebanese prisoners and the bodies of 10 more.
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Mosaic’s Jamal Dajani points out that while President Bush recently likened diplomacy to “appeasement,” the government of Israel has been cutting deals with two of its sworn enemies: Hezbollah and Hamas.
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By William Pfaff — Israel’s colonization and annexation of the Palestinian territories over the last 40 years, and opposition to the creation of an independent Palestinian state, have turned Israel into an Arab-Jewish state under Jewish control.
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AP photo / Hasan Jamali
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The Lebanese government and the Hezbollah opposition group came to a power-sharing agreement Wednesday, potentially marking the end to the country’s two-year-old political crisis, which only weeks ago erupted in clashes that left 65 people dead. The move, which some analysts say may benefit Hezbollah more than the Western-backed government, has been hailed by the parties directly involved and others, including the U.S. as well.
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Hezbollah was the obvious winner of the recent fighting in Lebanon, but the conflict reflected a broader trend in the Middle East. For all of President Bush’s bluster, Iran is stronger and more influential than when he took office.
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Emad Hajjaj, Jordan —
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AP photo / Hussein Malla
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By Scott Ritter — Imad Mughniyeh was once America’s most-wanted terrorist, and his crimes were truly abhorrent. But his assassination, Ritter argues, will only lead to more violence.
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The Mosaic Intelligence Report looks at the killing of Emad Moghniyeh, whom the United States considered a leading terrorist. Hezbollah has vowed to avenge him, and Israel has put its military and embassies on high alert.
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plusnews.fr
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A government probe of Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon has not only found that the war was a blunder but revealed “serious failings” in the political and military leadership of the country. The panel criticized the unnecessary loss of life and found that Israel’s ability to deter its enemies had been seriously damaged. Above, inquiry leader Eliyahu Winograd.
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The Mosaic Intelligence Report notes that with tensions inflamed throughout the Middle East, a recent string of violent attacks in Lebanon has gone mostly unnoticed. Combined with reports of increased arms shipments to various factions, does it mean another civil war is in the offing?
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By Joe Conason — The ascension of George W., according to many Bush loyalists, was a return of mature and wise foreign policy. Tell that to the ailing Middle East, whose future is now being pondered in a U.S. meeting that seems destined to fail.
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Six U.N. peacekeepers from the Spanish army were killed Sunday when their vehicle was attacked with an explosive device. Condoleezza Rice, her French and Spanish counterparts and even Hezbollah have all condemned the attack. No one has claimed responsibility. Tensions have been high in Lebanon with Lebanese forces battling an extremist militant group for over a month.
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Israel has come under rocket fire from Lebanon, but says it will show restraint. Hezbollah has denied responsibility for the attack, the first since the Israel-Lebanon war last year. Israel and Lebanon have blamed the Palestinians, but no group has claimed responsibility yet.
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Jeff Pflueger
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By Dahr Jamail — Israel’s 2006 military campaign in Lebanon was meant to injure and embarrass Hezbollah, but in the months since, the militant organization has only grown in popularity and prestige among many Lebanese.
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bcm.bc.edu
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By Jon Wiener — Palestinian intellectual, political figure and former PLO official Sari Nusseibeh (above) talks with Jon Wiener, historian and contributor to The Nation, about Nusseibeh’s new memoir, future prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and the 2006 July War in Lebanon—a war, he says, that “both sides lost.”
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A massive procession made up of tens of thousands of Shiites marched to the holy city of Najaf on Monday to protest the U.S. occupation on the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. One might recall that these are the very Iraqis who, having been oppressed by Saddam Hussein, were supposed to greet us as liberators.
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haaretz.com
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, while speaking with a commission investigating the Lebanon war, said he made the decision to invade four months before soldiers were abducted. Olmert testified that he agreed with a contingency plan to respond dramatically should Hezbollah take predictably aggressive action.
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Israel will shore up its defenses by staging simulated chemical and nuclear attacks around the country in March. The large-scale rehearsal probably reflects increased security concerns in light of Iran’s nuclear developments and recent clashes with Hezbollah forces.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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Saudi Arabia and Iran have joined forces to mediate tensions in Lebanon in an odd turn of events that is sure to addle the Bush administration. While the U.S. strongly opposes Iran’s regional influence, Saudi Arabia is but the latest American ally to cozy up to Tehran in the interest of stability.
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hrw.org
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A preliminary investigation by the State Department has found that Israel’s cluster bombing of civilian areas of Lebanon violated terms of an arms agreement with the United States. Israel receives roughly $2 billion annually in military assistance from the U.S., but Washington places classified conditions on how American munitions can be used.
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