Israeli faith in Lebanon victory starts declining: poll (AFP)
Khaleej Times 11 August 2006 JERUSALEM - Israelis are less and less convinced their armed forces can defeat Hezbollah and increasingly critical of Prime Mininster Ehud Olmert, two opinion polls published on Friday found. In a survey published by the Haaretz daily, 73 percent of respondents said Israel could not claim to have won the war against the Lebanese militant group if the fighting stopped now. Only 48 percent of those polled said they were satisfied with Olmert's performance since the start of the offensive a month ago, while 40 percent said they were not and 12 percent did not voice an opinion. According to another opinion poll carried by the top-selling Yediot Aharonot daily, 45 percent of Israelis are dissatisfied with their country's conduct of the war. The polls revealed growing discontent over the way the military and the government are handled the offensive. In a poll published a week ago, 75 percent of Israelis predicted Israel would eventually prevail. Olmert has been criticised for reacting hastily to the deadly July 12 cross-border raid by Hezbollah that triggered the fighting and managing the offensive hesistantly since it got under way. Both opinion polls were conducted among a representative sample of 500 Israelis and carry a 4.5 percent margin of error. http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2006/August/middleeast_August295.xml§ion=middleeast _____________________________________________________________________________ Allister Sparks : Forget about Mideast peace The Star (South Africa) August 9, 2006. I left Israel after two weeks of intensive interviews there, and with Hamas leaders in Damascus, with feelings of dark foreboding. Foremost was the realisation that the Middle East peace process no longer exists. Both the Oslo Agreement and the "roadmap" are dead. Just as the only Palestinian negotiating partner capable of making a peace agreement stick has come to power, Israel has turned its back on negotiations. It refuses to speak to Hamas and has embarked instead on a policy of unilateralism. It is going to proclaim the boundaries of a tiny, fragmented Palestinian state - a unilateral declaration that stands no chance of acceptance by the Palestinian people or anyone else in the region. And to crush the earliest signs of resistance to this plan, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has embarked on a massive assault on the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, the appalling dimensions of which are driving the Islamic world deeper into the arms of the radical jihadists - just as George W Bush's "shock and awe" assault on Iraq has done. Put the two together and you have the twin prospects of terrorist vengeance against Western countries seen as being in cahoots with Israel, and the general destabilisation of the world's most important oil-producing region with serious economic implications for everyone, including South Africa. Israelis don't like having their conflict with the Palestinians compared with apartheid South Africa, and indeed in Israel proper there are no "Jews only" signs or other manifestations of what we used to call petty apartheid. There is no sense of apartheid on the streets of Tel Aviv. But cross the checkpoints into the West Bank and you find yourself in a bantustan. It looks like a bantustan and it feels like a bantustan, with rutted roads and shabby buildings and little infrastructure. I drove into Ramallah, which is supposed to be the Palestinian capital, and it reminded me of Mthatha, the one-time capital of Transkei. On the map, this putative Palestinian state constitutes 11% of the land area of what was once the Palestinian Mandated Territory which the United Nations divided more or less equally between Israelis and Arabs in 1947. Like Boputhatswana, it is fragmented into five separate pieces, but its total area of 1 649sq km is less than one-twentieth the size of Bophuthatswana with more than double the population. And while the old South African government threw money at its bantustans, building parliaments, government offices, universities, airports, independence stadiums and other cosmetic showpieces, the Israeli government spends not a cent on the Palestinian state in its midst. Instead Israel and the United States are together applying a massive economic squeeze on the Palestinians as collective punishment for voting Hamas into power in free-and-fair elections last January. Israel is refusing to hand over tax and customs revenues amounting to $60-million (about R400-million) a month to the Palestinian Authority as it is legally required to do under the 1994 Paris Protocol. At the same time the US Treasury is stopping international banks from transferring money collected from Arab sympathisers to the Hamas-controlled PA by threatening sanctions against their US subsidiaries. As a result more than a million Palestinians have not been paid their wages since January and public services are collapsing. Professor John Dugard, the distinguished South African lawyer who is the official United Nations rapporteur on conditions in the occupied territories, has warned of an acute humanitarian crisis developing there, with health and education services collapsing, unemployment and poverty increasing, and life generally becoming "intolerable". "In effect," says Dugard, "the Palestinian people have been subjected to economic sanctions - the first time that an occupied people have been so treated." Now the Israeli government is enclosing this wretched little bantustan inside a massive security wall. I have difficulty understanding how imprisoning 3,8-million people in such a truncated and fragmented mini-state with no control over its borders, no territorial contiguity, no seaport, no economic potential, no control over its water supplies or its airspace or its foreign policy, can be regarded as a formula for peace. A bitter Arab backlash is more likely - as there is certain to be also as a result of Olmert's massive bombardment of Gaza and Lebanon. Which raises the question of why Olmert has launched this grossly disproportionate response to the capture of three Israeli soldiers and a demand that they be exchanged for a few of the 10 000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails - the kind of exchange that has been done before. The reason seems clear. The policy of unilaterally defining Israel's boundaries with the Palestinian mini-state is coupled with a commitment to withdraw some 77 000 Israelis from some of the smaller settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, largely for demographic reasons. This is highly controversial in Israeli right-wing circles. The settlers and their supporters believe they play an essential role in providing security as a first line of defence. Ariel Sharon, who conceived the two-prong policy, could ride this criticism because of his reputation as Israel's toughest and most ruthless soldier. But Olmert, who inherits the policy from Sharon, has no such image. He is the first prime minister since Golda Meir not to have been a general in the Israeli Defence Force, and his deputy, Shimon Peres, is an ageing dove. So when the Arab militia grabbed those hostages Olmert decided to demonstrate that he can be every bit as ruthless as his predecessor. A display of testosterone to save his endangered policy. But in sowing the wind Olmert risks reaping the whirlwind - as do the Western powers which have supported him. Instead of crushing Hezbollah, Olmert has turned its leader, Sheik Hassan al-Nasrallah, into an Arab folk hero. New York Times correspondents across the Levant report how Nasrallah is being celebrated everywhere for sustaining his resistance for so long against the powerful Israeli army. There is an outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and public poetry readings showering praise on Nasrallah and slamming the US and the West for their inhumanity. Arab television networks have run reams of footage showing the bodies of babies being pulled from the ruins of Qana, of weeping mothers and shattered refugee families. And as the pressure from the Arab street has gained momentum, moderate Arab regimes which initially criticised Hezbollah for provoking an Israeli response changed their tune and joined the chorus of praise for Nasrallah. What that tells one is that the rulers of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia all know they are in mortal danger from the surge of radicalism among their own people. So, too, are the Western powers which gave Olmert the green light to continue his bombardment. Last week Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of al-Qaeda, broadcast a videotape on Arab television calling for vengeance against the whole Western world. "Just as they attack us everywhere, we will attack them everywhere," Zawahiri said. "The rockets and missiles ripping Muslim bodies apart in Gaza and Lebanon are not purely Israeli. They are coming from and are funded by all of the countries of the Crusader-Zionist alliance, and therefore everyone who participated in this crime must pay a price." Thus do both sides cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war. RESEARCH AND INFORMATION NETWORK (RAIN) Director : Abie Dawjee P O Box 26119, Isipingo Beach, Durban, South Africa 4115. tel: 0027 31 9029174. fax: 0027 31 9024523. mobile: 082 352 352 6 e-mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ********************************************************************* http://www.nkusa.org/activities/Statements/2006July18.cfm Naturei Karta July 18, 2006 Orthodox Jews demand end to Zionist atrocities in the Middle East New York "Y The brutal and indiscriminate attack upon the people and infrastructure of Lebanon by the Zionist State "Israel" is a crime against all basic standards of decency and humanity. The excuse given for this murderous invasion was the attack by Hezbollah on the IDF. What this might have to do with the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese innocent men, women and children, who are subjected to an ongoing living hell, is beyond comprehension. Indeed, this current aggression is only the second chapter of the recent viciousness; the first being the furious reinvasion of Gaza and the onslaught on its civilians and the ruination of its basic human services. Of course, voices may be heard that the IDF are simply responding. This, of course, ignores the question of the evil, implicit in punishing blameless people for the deeds of others. And it totally ignores the root of the problem, the dispossession and subjugation of the Palestinian people which began in 1948, was expanded in 1967 and continues unabated to this day. The crux of the matter is that beyond the immorality of the Zionist treatment of the Palestinians is the ultimate fact -- the ideology of Zionism and ensuing establishment of the Zionist state conflicts with the basic teachings of Judaism. Zionism is the transformation from Judaism, a G-dliness and spirituality, into a G-dlessness, materialism with nationalistic aspirations. Theodor Herzl and his cohorts, the fathers of this relatively new ideology of Zionism (approximately 100 years), have taken the Almighty out of the equation. The ultimate establishment of the Zionist State, the fulfilment of the Zionist ideology, takes this blasphemy a step further. The Jewish people were sent into exile by Divine decree. They where then expressly commanded by the Almighty, not to attempt to leave their exilic existence through any human intervention. They were expressly forbidden to create their own state, such as the Zionist state of "Israel". (Talmud, Tractate Kesuboth, p.111). The Jewish people are forbidden to oppress another people. The creation of the State of "Israel" came about through, the theft from, subjugation and oppression of, the Palestinian people. Torah Jewry, therefore, condemns the horrifying suffering inflicted upon both the Palestinian and Lebanese people. Because of all of the above, all attempts to achieve peace and stability for "Israel" are destined to fail. The Creator cannot be defied with impunity. The Rabbis stated, that the State of "Israel" will result in unending pain, suffering and bloodshed. May the Almighty protect His creations. The State of "Israel" does not speak in the name of Jews, they have stolen the name "Israel" from the Jewish people. Jews are commanded to be loyal citizens in every country in which they reside. Zionism and the State of "Israel", is the main cause of the exacerbation of anti Semitism universally. The government of the illegitimate State of "Israel", continually attempts to uproot the Torah and its statutes. They persistently oppress the Torah true Jews who reside in its borders. We pray that all misery in the Holy Land and Lebanon, shall come to an end and that Zionism, the root of the suffering, continue to fade from Jewish consciousness, to be replaced by the faith of Torah. We shall all witness soon the peaceful dismantlement of the Zionist State "Israel". May we merit seeing the day when all humanity will serve the Almighty in harmony and peace. Amen --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
