Hubris in Retreat?

Good Morning. Some of you may not be getting these emails in as timely a way as Feedburner promises us (they're scheduled to ship out to your mailbox around 5:30 a.m. Eastern time). It's a problem with the so-called "Atom" feed. I have no idea what the technicalities mean, but we're working on it and hope to have it resolved soon. Meanwhile, a couple of new items:

• Morality Is Not On Israel's Side: Leave it to the Israeli press to have the more honest dialogue on the Lebanon war: This piece, almost unthinkable on the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post, and a likely invitation to asinine boycots and accusations of anti-Semitism were it to be written by an Arab and run in any one of a thousand dailies across the United States, appeared on July 25 in Haaretz, one of Israel's two principal dailies. See the full column by Ze'ev Maoz.
  

• Candide's Recommendations today are long-winded but varied: While Israel is deciding against a "wider offensive," Arab opinion is slouching toward Hezbollah. Alabama police wants to learn SWAT techniques from Israel. Several links about the Lebanon war in photographs. And a blog round-up. All here...

Check in with the Notebooks for roving updates. Have a good weekend.pt

Neither Israel Nor Hezbollah

Good Morning. Several new items today.

The American mentality of you're-either-with-us-or-you're-with-the-terrorists rears again, and wants you to choose sides in the Lebanon war. But it's a false choice. The only just one, as Pierre argues, is Neither Israel Nor Hezbollah.

24 hours before their worst day yet, Israeli soldiers were pictured brandishing captured Lebanese and Hezbollah flags on their return from Lebanon. The picture speaks of the gang-rape of Lebanon by an essentially Israeli-Hezbollah alliance of destruction.

The Accidental War: "This is madness, and it should end. It is madness because the likelihood of Israel achieving the war aims it has set for itself is negligible. However much punishment Mr Olmert inflicts on Hizbullah, he cannot force it to submit in a way that its leaders and followers will perceive as a humiliation. Israel’s first invasion of Lebanon turned into its Vietnam. It is plainly unwilling to occupy the place again. But airpower alone will never destroy every last rocket and prevent Hizbullah’s fighters from continuing to send them off. No other outside force looks capable of doing the job on Israel’s behalf. At present, the only way to disarm Hizbullah is therefore in the context of an agreement Hizbullah itself can be made to accept." See The Economist's lead editorial in full...

Rim Jobs: Candide's Recommendations include commentary and links on the latest in Lebanon, where Israel suffered its heaviest losses yet; on war bloggers; and on Washington State joining the regressive movement against gay marriage.

Candide's Notebooks updates throughout the day. Thanks for visiting.pt

Blankets in July

Good morning. Three new items today.

• A little worn out by the barrage of material on the bombings? Here's a dig from the heart's archives: The New York Times published this piece as an OpEd in 1982. I’d been out of Lebanon for three years and failing miserably at forgetting. I remember reading this back then, clipping it, savoring it, typing it over and sending it to my grandmother in Lebanon. There’s never been a better time to revive it, now that so many Lebanese have been made to feel like such strangers in their own land: "Turning lebanese: A Family Story," by Barbara Beway (with a poicture of Lebanon's mighty Sannin mountain]
  

• Candide's Notebooks contributor OhDave argues against the now-commonly peddled notion that siding against Israel means "siding with the terrorists" in "Wrong Question, Right Response."
  

• Candide's Recommendations: Links to the latest follies in Beirut, including Condi Rice's blanket idiocy, Hezbollah's Nasralla's television promise of launching missiles "beyond Haifa," and a terrific column in Beirut's Daily Star about Israel appearing to be, to some Muslims anyway, like the lesser enemy in this go-around. All here...

Remember: Candide's Recommendations are updated throughout the day. Thanks for visiting. pt

Terror's Weaponry

Good Morning. A few new items today, unfortunately still focused on Lebanon (we'll get awayt from that soon, I hope).

• The Tuesday Column looks at the myth of eternal enmity between Arabs and Jews: Compared with two millennia of enmity between Europeans, or two centuries of exported warfare by the United States, Arabs and Jews look like the new kids on the bloc of mutual disdain. They haven't at all been at it forever, nor are they doomed to be at it regardless of their recent history--much of it a history of hatreds seeded by European anti-Semitism and Euro-American realpolitik. See the full column...

• Terror's weaponry: The more the Israeli assault lasts, the more distant it gets from its presumed aim of destroying Hezbollah—the more impossible it becomes to destroy what the bombing campaign of the last twelve days can only recharge and redirect in proportion to the tonnage of savagery it is dropping on Lebanon. Who, the Lebanese are rightfully asking themselves, are the terrorists now? See "Pity the Nation..."

• Candide's recommendations: No Rice-Throwing, Please--and other fall-out from Condi Rice's pointless, two-weeks-too-late drop-kick into Lebanon. Also: Alan Dershowitz thinks civilians who don't leave their homes when asked to leave areas being bombed are complicit with terrorists. The links and more here.