"The ceasefire in Lebanon was holding by a thread last night after Israel sanctioned a commando raid in the east of the country. Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General, said Israel had violated the truce, and he was 'deeply concerned' about it."

The Guardian

For those familiar with Israeli aggression, the IDF violation was no surprise at all. For a week or so, every Israeli cabinet member and military official promised publicly that it is just a question of time before there is a 'second round'. Indeed, they must come up with something. Since the end of the hostilities, all Israeli political analysts and polls suggest that Israel's political and military leadership failed completely. If elections were to be held soon, both Labor and Kadima would simply disappear. It is no secret that with each passing day, Olmert's and Peretz's popularity continually slumps to new lows. Jerusalem Post.

One may wonder whether the Israelis are changing their spots, do they stop approving Olmert's policies just because peace is what they really prefer? The influential political commentator Ari Shavit provided an answer two weeks ago. Mr Olmert, so he says, had 'failed shamefully' and should resign. Shavit continues, "You cannot lead an entire nation to war promising victory, produce humiliating defeat and remain in power." As I mentioned more than once before, the Israeli politician has to cope with a demanding, bloodthirsty crowd.

This realisation throws some light over the reasons behind the failed Israeli operation in Lebanon just three days ago. Israelis are simply desperate to win. But it may also explain why Israeli government decided to expand its military operation pretty much at the same time it accepted the UN ceasefire resolution. Olmert knew that he must serve his voters with what they interpret as a clear-cut victory. This would mean either some severe form of revenge with lots of Arab casualties or a significant land invasion. Olmert, his 'national unity' government and the army leadership have to do something that would cover up four weeks of disastrous military campaign that failed to serve the Israeli public with even a single second of glory.

Indeed, the IDF military offensive doctrine is grounded on one basic axiom that was defined by David Ben Gurion in the early fifties: whatever it takes, Israel must always win! This axiom is indeed very powerful, yet, in reality, the Israeli army can't provide the goods anymore. In the last three decades the Israeli army is constantly being beaten time after time by enemies that are getting smaller and smaller.

Yet, one may mention that the IDF isn't very original in being defeated. The IDF fails exactly where the American army has been failing since Vietnam. Shockingly, the IDF has managed to copy every possible American mistake. It religiously adopted the new American military philosophy of a 'compact highly sophisticated fighting force'. Undeniably, this very doctrine is very effective in producing some gigantic collateral damage i.e., war crimes. Yet, in the long run, it fails miserably in wining wars. The new American military doctrine may win a battle or two but no more than that. In the most recent years it has been totally beaten in Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza and obviously in Lebanon.

Though the early stages of the Israeli campaign in Lebanon looked very much like the first few days of the second Gulf War (major air assault on civilian infrastructure and populated areas), there is at least one major noticeable difference. While America can stand and even ignore international criticism referring to its own war crimes, it isn't willing to suffer much international criticism for Israeli atrocities. While in the early stages of the war America was rushing to provide Israel with air convoys loaded with its most lethal conventional arsenal, we have learned towards the last week of the war that the American administration changed its mind, it suddenly refused to provide the IDF with a shipment of cluster bombs because it "would endanger the civilian population". Seemingly, there is a limit to what the Americans are willing to do for their 'closest friend' in the Middle East.

This is exactly where the Israeli limbo is. In order to maintain its status as a winning regional super power, Israel needs the blind support of America (politically, financially and logistically). Yet American blind support can be grunted to Israel only if the Jewish State is indeed a regional super power to start with. Olmert and his government are fully aware of this very complexity. They know that without being a regional super power in the first place, they have nothing to offer their almighty American brothers. Israel is crucial for the strategy of the Americans as long as it can wipe out all its enemies in six days at the most. The way things appear now, the Israeli Army is basically defeated by the two smallest nations in the Arab world, the Palestinian and the Lebanese ones.

As much as it clear to the Israelis, it is clear to the Americans that unlike the bold Hezbollah, the IDF soldier has lost his will to fight. The IDF is a spoiled, confused and tired army that is specializing solely in terrorizing civilian populations while being engaged in constant tactical withdraw. This Israeli Army is not trained to win wars anymore. Instead, its tank battalions are mainly engaged in daily shelling of schools and hospitals. Its Air Force uses the best American fighter planes to flatten neighborhoods and shoot deadly rockets at cars in the streets of Gaza. Its command units are expert in abducting democratically elected middle-aged Palestinian politicians. The IDF is basically a heavy army specializing in merciless regional bullying. Yet, it cannot win a war, and as such it has nothing to offer the American empire.

But the Israeli military defeat has some further implications. Israel without a victorious army, has nothing to offer to world Jewry either. It can never present itself as the ultimate cosmic Judeo bunker. It is pretty shocking to prospect the relative silence of the infamous Zionist media shield. While just six weeks ago the loud supporters of Anglo-American interventionism were still pushing for democracy in the Arab world and beyond, they were enthusiastic about killing in the name of human rights and about Israel being the only democracy in the Middle East. Somehow, since the war began, since Israel revealed once again its murderous tendencies and Hezbollah proved to be the new Robin Hood, these voices are caving in. Many among the global Zionists do already understand now that the Anglo-American assault on the Arab world just suffered a major blow. Some of them probably grasp that it is just a question of time before more and more Europeans and Americans join the sacred battle against the Americanized Global Zionism, i.e., neo-conservatism.

The recent victory of the Hezbollah therefore must be realized as a major event with some global implications. While the Hezbollah regards itself a paramilitary organization concerned mainly with some local issues having to do with Israeli expansionism, it has managed to cause a serious blow to neo-conservatism as a political praxis as well as a philosophy. It has beaten the Zionized Anglo-American worldview. Standing up to Zionism and Americanism, it is the Lebanese, the Palestinians, the Iraqis, the Afghanis and the Iranians who happen to be at the vanguard of the war for humanity and humanism. For those who are yet to be convinced that this indeed the case, I will mention that the fact that it is Iran who rushed to pay 3 billion dollars to rebuild Lebanon after the destruction made by 'American interventionism' leaves no room for interpretation. While America spreads destruction and death all over the world, it is Iran and the Hezbollah that offers a new beginning.

Olmert knows very well that if Israel doesn't win this war, it is global Zionism that is defeated, he knows as well that without the backing of global Zionism, Israel is basically a dead entity. Olmert knows that without America, it won't take long before Israel turns into an historic event. Israel will have to win its mighty regional power status whatever it takes. Israeli is indeed in the very eye of the neo-conservative storm. And the Hezbollah is threatening something far greater than just the Jewish State. As the Israelis keep telling us, the fight in Lebanon will resume soon and every European leader knows it.

Even now, they all know who is going to be the aggressor when violence spreads again in the region. They are all clever enough to hesitate about whether they want to send their soldiers to the region. They know that if Israel must win, it is better to stay out of its way.

Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military. He is the author of two novels: A Guide to the Perplexed and the recently released My One and Only Love. Atzmon is also one of the most accomplished jazz saxophonists in Europe. His recent CD, Exile, was named the year's best jazz CD by the BBC. He now lives in London and can be reached at: atz@onetel.net.uk

* Why is Israel not held to the same standards as other nations?
* Why is it that those who resist an illegal occupation of their land are considered freedom fighters except for those who resist an illegal Israeli occpation? In that case they are considered terrorists.
* Why is it that when Israel abducts more than 9000 Palestinians this is called an arrest but when Hamas or Hezbollah abducts 2 Israeli soldiers it is called a kidnap?
* Why is it when Hamas or Hezbollah fires a rocket into Israel it is considered an act of provocation but when Israel deliberatelly shells a Palestinian beach and kills 7 members of one family it is considered an act of self-defense? Why does there exist such a double-standard? Why is that?
* Why is it okay for the United States to supply Israel with cluster bombs and precision guided missiles and billions more of military weapons but wrong for Iran or Syria to supply Hezbollah with Kytusha rockets?
* Why is it wrong for Iran to cultivate nuclear weapons when its neighbor, Israel, has hundreds of nuclear weapons aimed at it on land and on sea?
* Why is it that U.N. Security Resolutions against Hezbollah must be complied with but those against Israel are ignored? Why the double standard?

The answer to these questions, sadly to say, is that a great many Americans today have been so confused by the brainwashing propaganda of the past few decades that they no longer understand it. How long can we go on accepting this double standard?

If the United States wants to win this war on terrorism then getting tough with Israel would be the best step they could take. Politicallly, it is a hard choice, but ultimately a sensible and realistic one that would bring about true peace and justice in the Middle East.

Yes, we know that peoples all over the world have suffered worse crimes than ours, but they were not the Chosen People. We know that over 22 million Russians were killed under Stalin, 15 million Chinese were killed by the Japanese, millions elsewhere in the world suffered the same fate in the bloodiest 20th century.

We know that Zionism is an atheist Marxist creation using Judaism as its weapon; that we were founded upon terrorism and our leaders became Israel's prime ministers and Nobel Peace Prize winners; that less than 10 percent of Jews worldwide supported the Zionist cause for decades until World War II. We know that the crimes committed by Hitler equally affected Communists, gypsies, the handicapped, and political prisoners. That does not matter - we are special. The rest of the world will not touch us because they are terrified of the label "anti-Semite". World leaders are terrified of this ad hominem even though we are mostly not Semitic peoples. Jews of Israel, the Sephardim Jews, were almost nonexistent when we arrived from Russia, Poland, Austria-Hungary and elsewhere in the 20th century and demanded Arab land. They had spread out and moved on. We did not come from Yemen, Ethiopia or Iraq, but who cares? We are the victims and that is all that counts.

Time and again we wonder at how far American gullibility will take us. We push it to the limits on cable television and get away with it repeatedly. We know that the majority of the world is aware we blatantly lie when we express our "deepest regrets" because "terrorists" were hiding in the villages we destroyed. We even have the gall to pick the same targets as a decade ago, ignoring the cries of outrage from America and the West. We'll just repeat the mantra "a tragic mistake".

Honestly, we too are rather surprised to see that America patiently sits back and buys our words each time. We have trained our diplomats well, not only in the art of deception to the media, but by using powerful strong-arm, behind-the-scenes tactics to mold the views of US Congressmen and women in our favor.

We have worked on this for decades and it has been perfected for the one place it counts: Our bank America. We rely upon those weapons; we need to create constant conflict so as to receive a perpetual $13 billion annual aid package from the US, including unsecured loans that we have never been, nor ever will be, required to pay back. We are living a dream: What we want is given to us on a silver patter because we are Jews, and we have the holocaust.

The above is only daring in that it is never voiced publicly in the West. The world is watching as Israel incinerates the Lebanese, next the Syrians and Palestinians, then Iran. Diplomats call for peace, a cease-fire, and negotiations. They speak the language of noncommittance. It takes a few brave men and women in leadership positions to dare to speak the truth. Israel is in the position of dominating the US government to an extent never before seen in history, creating a regime who will fully fund a "new Middle East" which in reality means Eretz Israel consisting of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia and even Cyprus by some accounts.

There is nothing speculative about these plans for hegemony - everything has been laid out, written down, and presented for years. Academics who dare write the facts know that their tenured careers are over. This war will not end with a cease-fire next week. This war will not end with a security zone controlled by the UN. This war will not end if Hezbollah and Hamas disappeared tomorrow. This war will not end as long as leaders and diplomats continue to fear the trump card charge of anti-Semitism by Israel.

So when hundreds of children are torn apart by uranium-tipped missiles provided courtesy of the US government, look in the mirror. Have you dared to offend Israel? Have you risked? Ask yourself what role you may have played in contributing to this global disaster. Nothing will change until you do.

- Tanya Cariina Hsu is a British Saudi-US Political analyst. She lives in Riyadh.

And earlier this month, in a perhaps less insulting, but more politically significant move, Costa Rica moved its embassy back to Tel-Aviv from Jerusalem.

Tisk, tisk. Their house of illegitimate cards built on Arab blood falls apart before their eyes.

When this whole thing started in Lebanon last month, I predicted it was the beginning of the end for Israel. Was I right, or what?

Now's the time, if you're an uncommitted Zionist, to bail out while you still can.

Now those unexploded cluster bombs litter the villages of southern Lebanon, just waiting for the small children to pick them up and die, or perhaps just be crippled for life, like Sukna, Hassan and Merwa Saleh.

And, please promise not to be shocked, but the origin of these weapons...is the United States.

"You see what America is sending us," [Aisa Hussain] said bitterly. "This is their idea of democracy."

The statements from Avi Dichter - a former chief of Israel's FBI, known as the Shabak - seemed directly to contradict the prime minister, who said on Sunday before the weekly Cabinet meeting that members of the government should not discuss possible Golan negotiations.

Mr. Dichter's remarks prompted Mr. Olmert to state plainly again that no such talks would be in the offing so long as the Assad regime supports terrorists.

The incoherence from Jerusalem on the negotiations question got even knottier last night after Israel's Channel 10 news reported that a delegation of private businessmen last week approached a Labor Party leader and current defense minister, Amir Peretz, with an offer from President Assad himself to restart talks on the Golan Heights.

"I think that a process of discussions with Syria is legitimate. If it turns out that there is someone to talk to, I think that the idea is very suitable," Mr. Dichter said on Israel Army Radio. "Israel can initiate it. Ultimately, initiatives of this kind are of a third party and there is an abundance of third parties in the world. If a third party approaches us, we must reply in the positive."

Mr. Olmert, however, responded a few hours later during a tour of northern Israel. He warned against "false hopes" and said his country would not start an "adventure when terror is on their side."

"When Syria stops support for terror, when it stops giving missiles to terror organizations, then we will be happy to negotiate with them," he said, according to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.

The latest twists and turns regarding the Golan suggest two possibilities.The remarks from Mr. Dichter, one of Mr. Olmert's closest confidants in the government, could be seen as a trial balloon to anticipate a response from Syria.

A year ago, when the country's army was beating a retreat from Lebanon, Syria's ambassadors were openly asking the U.S. State Department to broker talks on the Golan with Israel. Also, the prospect of prying Syria away from Hezbollah and Iran in exchange for the high ground of the Golan still appeals to many doves here.

"There is a long history of governments being elected to one thing and then doing something different," an authority on the Middle East, Martin Kramer, said, referring to Mr. Olmert's admission last week that any plans for a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank were on hold.

"The Palestinians and Syrians are two tracks. When the train of state is derailed from one, they put it into the other. It is not something that is without precedent. The problem is that the Olmert government was not on a Palestinian or Syrian track. They were on a third rail, unilateral withdrawal," Mr. Kramer, a scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who is currently in Tel Aviv, said.

Another possibility, however, is that Mr. Olmert's government is rapidly imploding after the cease-fire last week with Lebanon. While Israeli Cabinets in the past have seen private spats spill out into the open, the disagreement between Messrs. Dichter and Olmert comes after an avalanche of scandals have engulfed the country's leaders.

In the last 10 days, the justice minister has resigned amid charges of sexual harassment; members of the Knesset have grilled the military's chief of staff over a stock trade he made the day of the launch of the air war on July 12, and Mr. Olmert has fended off questions about whether he bent planning laws in exchange for an apartment he rents in Jerusalem from a property developer for an inappropriately low rent.

All the while, the independent commission investigating the government's conduct in the war has yet to make a finding, and Israel's newspapers are filled with accounts of how soldiers here were not supplied with adequate rations and had to scavenge in south Lebanon's towns for food while in the field.

Meanwhile, Israel's enemies are crowing. Last week, Mr. Assad gave a speech bragging of the success of the resistance. Yesterday, the other main sponsor of Hezbollah, Iran, conducted its second day of war games and its supreme leader again rebuffed the United Nations' calls for his country to suspend the enrichment of uranium.

Last night Israelis awaited what was promised by Iran to be a "multi-faceted response" to the formal request from the U.N. Security Council last month regarding their nuclear program.

[During a tour of the north of Israel yesterday, Mr. Olmert appeared cool toward an inquiry into the war, saying second-guessing would undermine the army, the Associated Press reported.

"I won't play this game, the game of beating ourselves up," he said.

Mr. Olmert's tour stops included Kiryat Shemona, one of the hardest-hit border towns, and the Arab village of Maghar, which also came under Hezbollah rocket fire during the fighting.

Facing local officials, Mr. Olmert pledged speedy reconstruction and defended his government's performance. He also appeared to pin some of the blame on his predecessors, saying his government had been in power for just two months when the war broke out.

"We knew for years that there was a great danger, but for some reason, we didn't translate that understanding into action, like we just did," he said. "We knew what Iran was doing, what Syria was doing, arming Hezbollah. We acted as if we didn't know."

In other developments:

- Nearly all of the 180,000 Lebanese who took refuge in Syria during the war had returned by Sunday, leaving only 2,500 to 5,000 refugees there, a U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman, Jack Redden, said.

- Lebanon needs about $3.5 billion to repair buildings and infrastructure damaged during the war, and the rebuilding effort was being hampered by lack of government leadership, the Lebanese official in charge of reconstruction, Fadel al-Shalaq, told CNN.

- The deputy leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Naim Kassem, said in a television interview that one of his sons was badly wounded during fighting against Israeli troops.

- Israel handed over to U.N. peacekeepers five Lebanese men who were captured during an Israeli commando raid on August 1 in Baalbek.At least 16 Lebanese were killed in the raid on what authorities in the Bekaa Valley city said was in Iranian-built hospital. Israel said the building was a Hezbollah base.]

Okay. Back to reality. Hizbullah is minding its own business (or at least fostering that public image) and has embarked on public relief operation to counteract the devastation visited on the people of Lebanon by Israel's recent invasion and bombing campaign. The Hizbullah aid and recovery effort is so successful that some wags suggest that Nasrallah be hired to take over from FEMA in the event the U.S. is hit with another storm like Katrina. How inept are you when Hizbullah is able to organize a better public relief effort? But I digress.

Having helped transform Hizbullah from a band of terrorists into the rock stars of the Muslim world, Israel persists with being stupid. Ehud Olmert either never learned or forgot the first rule of crisis management--i.e., when you're in a hole, stop digging. With the reputation of the Isreali Defense Force in tattters after the debacle in Lebanon, Israeli leaders apparently decided to go all out to secure their reputation as the supreme rogue state in the Middle East. How else to explain the following?

Israel kidnaps elected official: The Palestinian's Deputy Prime Minister, Nasser Al Shaer was kidnapped by the Israeli army on Saturday, after hiding since the start of Israel's Palestine offensive in June. He was seized in a raid at his home in the West Bank town on Ramallah.

Israel breaches ceasefire: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Israel's latest attack on Lebanon a violation of the UN backed truce that ended the 34-day war. "The secretary-general is deeply concerned about a violation by the Israeli side of the cessation of hostilities as laid out in Security Council resolution 1701," a spokesman for Annan said in a statement posted on the United Nations Web site.

I realize Israeli officials will justify the kidnapping as the capture of a wanted terrorist and the attack in Lebanon as an effort to prevent Hizbullah from rearming. Unfortunately for Jerusalem's sake, these acts feed the image of Israel as a renegade state that operates outside the normal boundaries of international law.

If you had a friend you cared deeply about engaging in self-destructive behavior you would do an intervention--sit them down and try to talk some sense into them. Apparently that is not an option with Israel. Witness what happens when a reporter tells the public that Israel was trying to manipulate public perceptions during the recent invasion of Lebanon:

Kurtz: One other note. On Reliable Sources two weeks ago, "Washington Post" Pentagon reporter Tom Ricks said he'd been told by U.S. military analysts that Israel was leaving some Hezbollah rocket launchers intact because the killing of Israeli civilians provided an image of moral equivalency in the war. "Post" editor Len Downie, responding to a letter from former New York mayor, Ed Koch, says he told Ricks he should not have made those statements.

Ricks told the New York Sun that he accurately reported the comments from analysts but that, quote, "I wish I hadn't said them, and I intend from now on to keep my mouth shut about it."

The last thing Israel needs now are a bunch of sycophants and fawning relatives telling it how great and good it is. They need to stop acting like adolescent fools and find the moral high ground they once occuppied. One key to Israel's longterm security is to solidify its reputation as a nation committed to law and the protection of human rights. When Israeli civilians were being blown up on buses and in market places during the Intifada, international public pressure forced Hamas and Hizbullah to shift away from suicide bombings.

When Israel acts with honor and restraint it has little difficulty portraying its enemies as crazy terrorists. But, when Israel lowers itself to the level of the terrorists, it is Israel, not the terrorists, who suffer. And let there be no doubt, Israel is suffering.

The time has come to look to the past for some answers. When Israel kidnapped Adolf Eichmann, the mastermind of the Final Solution, in the 1960s, the Israelis gave the Nazi a defense counsel, a public trial, and a chance to confront his accusers. That was a moment of greatness for Israel because it provided a graphic demonstration of the difference between a terrorist state and a civilized nation. Israel gave a mass murderer due process and, in the course of events, provided the ultimate condemnation of the Nazi regime.

Now we have the spectacle of Hizbullah acting with statesmanship and restraint while the Israelis destroy their credibility among the international community. That is a truth Israel's true friends need to communicate to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the strongest terms possible. And they need to do it soon.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

Ramon has been a key political ally of Olmert's, and a chief supporter of his since-shelved plan to unilaterally withdraw from much of the West Bank by 2010. His resignation on Sunday from the justice minister's job came as Olmert faced intense criticism over the government's handling of the recently ended war in Lebanon. Ramon, who has remained in parliament, has waived his parliamentary immunity in the case.

The indictment was issued the same day police began questioning President Moshe Katsav in a separate sexual misconduct case, and at a time when other leading officials are under suspicion.

Olmert himself is being investigated in connection with a Jerusalem property deal. Tzahi Hanegbi, another prominent member of Olmert's Kadima party, was informed earlier this week he would be charged with fraud, bribery and perjury. And Army chief Dan Halutz has come under fire for selling his stock portfolio in the hours preceding the war. All of the men have denied any wrongdoing.

Cabinet minister Meir Sheetrit, a former justice minister, was appointed on Wednesday to replace Ramon at the Justice Ministry.