Amos Oz Shoots Down the Doves

Good Sunday morning.

• Last Sunday Candide’s Notebooks published a piece on Amos Oz, one of Israel’s leading intellectuals and leaders of the peace movement, recalling an essay he wrote twenty-four years ago about the divide between Arabs and Israelis, and how to bridge it. On Wednesday, Oz wrote a brief essay for the Los Angeles Times in which he broke from his past criticism of Israeli military action in Lebanon, this time wholeheartedly supporting it because “a defeat of a militant Islamist terror organization may dramatically enhance the chances for peace in the region.” Cecilia Lucas, a graduate student in education at the University of California at Berkley and a new contributor to the Notebooks, responds to Amos Oz.
  

• The Israeli invasion of Lebanon is proceeding apace, with few clear-sighted views to recommend. Here's one of them, by Gideon Levy in Haaretz, who writes: "The war that the IDF has now declared on Lebanon and before it on Gaza, will never be considered another "war of no choice." Let's save that debate from the historians. This is unequivocally a war of choice. The IDF absorbed two painful blows, which were particularly humiliating, and in their wake went into a war that is all about restoring its lost dignity, which on our side is called "restoring deterrent capabilities." Neither in Lebanon nor certainly in Gaza, can anyone formulate the real goals of the war, so nobody knows for sure what will be considered victory or an achievement." See the full column, "Operation Peace for the IDF"...
  

Also:

• We have John Tierney's latest column on the Republican Party as Stem-Cell Poopers, or what Tierney calls "The Church Lady Party"
• Frank Rich Does "The Passion of the Embryo"
  

As always, check the Notebooks' Front Page for rolling updates.

Lebanon Plunders, 1982-2006

Good morning. One (long) new item today to accompany the picture of the young Lebanese girl, above, walking through the ruins of the village of Ferzoul in Lebanon's bekaa Valley.

• Reagan’s “Outrage,” Bush’s Silence: Here's the somewhat forgotten story of August 12, 1982, the day that saw the worst bombing of Beirut at the tail end of Irsael's 1982 invasion, promting Ronald Reagan's public "outrage" and direct involvement to demand a ceasefire. The article, with numerous links to original reporting from 1982, compares Reagan's reaction then to George Bush's reaction this go around, without quite mythologizing Reagan's role: for all the Gipper's outrage, it was 18,000 deaths too late, and it couldn;t prevent Sabra and Shatila, barely a month hence. What out-of-control surprisers are in store with this invasion as Israelis prepare to enter Lebanon with ground troops? See the full article here...
  

• Candide's Recommendations for Friday will be updated by 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Black Wednesday

Good Morning. Several new items, and the grimmest day yet in lebanon.

• Bush to Lebanon: Drop Dead. The Bush administration has decided to sit back and let the bombings carry on for at least a week, maybe many more, as Israel "vows to finish the job." Diplomacy is as dead as possibilities of peace, even when the bombing stops. Pierre writes about the degradation of American foreign policy's morality.
  

• The Perpetual Refugee is a terrific new blogger, a Lebanese businessman exiled in Canada who happens to be stuck in Beirut at the moment. Candide's Notebooks features two of his very best posts--one an obscene encounter with Irsaeli customs officials, the other, a moving tribute to his grandfather, Jido, shocked ouit of his house by the bombing campaign. See The Perpetual Refugee...
  

• Candide's Recommendations include the latest from Lebanon, including links to a Finacial Times interview with Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora, how the US government is charging Americans $300 to evacuate them, The Guardian's report on the destruction of an entire village in South Lebanon, Robert Fisk on seeing terror outside his Beirut window, The Toronto Globe and Mail Beirut correspondent blogging on an eerie walk through Solidere, the renovated Beirut neighbhood now gone dead again, and a London times report on the dead and rotting in Beirut's ruins. Also: The US deploying an anti-missile system in Okinawa, George Bush's stem-cell veto destroying hopes of curing Republicanism and its many derivative diseases any time soon, and the New York Times thinning out for shareholders' sake. All in Candide's Recommendations...

The Notebooks' Front Page updates throughout the day, in the recommendations box especially. Your suggestions and partricipation through comments are welcome.

Israel Is as Hezbollah Does

Good morning. Three new items at the Notebooks today.

• Pierre's Tuesday Column for the Daytona Beach News-Journal: "Israel Is as Hezbollah Does," or how Israel and Hezbollah are mutually assuring Lebanon's destruction while sparing each other the brunt of the barbarism they're inflicting.
  

• Candide's Notebooks contributor Ohdave could not resist giving Bush's expletive-buttered pre-lunch chat with Tony Blair his own just dessert: "An American president without an idea, and a British PM afraid to assert his."
  

• Candide's recommendations today include James Wolcott refusing to join "the Israeli division of the 101st Fighting Wankers," Michael Kinsley's last words before brain surgery, and The New Yorker's Adam Gopnick going Camus on Zidane's head-butt. All here. The recommendations are updated throughout the day.

How To Cure a Fanatic: The Amos Oz Solution

Good morning. Two new items today.

• The column was entitled “Arabs and Israelis—All Victims of Europe.” It was published in The New York Times on May 19, 1982. It was written by Amos Oz, the great Israeli writer. Pierre looks back at that column, how little has changed since, how much could change if Oz's ideas took hold. See "How to Cure a Fanatic"...
  

• Candide Recommends: The rain of terror continues in lebanon: Links to a Los Angeles Times report on Beirut's reconstructed dream, lost again; a profile of Hezbollah's Hasan Nasrallah; and how the New York Times discovers five years too late that the Bush administration was never about 9/11, but about profit and opportunism for the Executive's sake. The links here...