Rassegna stampa in inglese.

1. ISRAEL’S LONG-TERM BATTLE
By Steven Erlanger
New York Times
August 3, 2006

Jerusalem — As Israeli troops press the ground offensive in southern Lebanon and
commandos make an unexpected raid far to the north in Baalbek, Israel is fighting
now to win the battle of perceptions.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wants to ensure that when a cease-fire is finally
arranged, Israel is seen as having won a decisive victory over Hezbollah. It is
important for him politically, especially after a slow and fumbling start to this
war. In part, Israel wants to recover from an image of an unimpressive military
venture against a tough, small, but well-trained group of fighters.

Israel also wants to send a message to the Palestinians, and to Hezbollah and its
sponsors, Syria and Iran, that attacks on Israel will be met with overwhelming
force, and that the cost is not worth the effort. How soon that message is perceived
will play a central role in its decision to stop the war.

As with all wars, however, any victory must be consolidated in political and
diplomatic arrangements, which remain uncertain, like the insertion of a
multinational force along the border.

For Hezbollah, victory means simply avoiding defeat. It will be perceived by many
Muslims to have won by keeping the capacity to fire even short-range rockets into
Israel.

Gidi Grinstein, a former Israeli negotiator and director of the Reut Institute, a
research group, calls it the “90-10 paradox.” Israel can eliminate 90 percent of
Hezbollah’s fighting capacity, but Hezbollah can still declare victory and claim
that it fought the mighty Israeli Army to a draw. “At the end of the war, they’ll
have a narrative, and so will we,” he said. “It’s all about perception.” Hezbollah
will argue that it withstood three to five weeks of fighting with the region’s most
powerful army, supported and equipped by the world’s most powerful army, that of the
United States. In that sense, a long war is better for Hezbollah.

Hezbollah and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, will be hailed by many in the Arab
and Muslim worlds as heroes and new Saladins, whose religious faith was transmuted
into astounding bravery rarely shown by the huge Arab armies of the secular Arab
states that fought Israel in the 1967 and 1973 wars.

Shlomo Avineri, a former Foreign Ministry official and professor of political
science at Hebrew University, said Israel could never prevail in an Arab narrative.
“If Israel had won in the first week, Hezbollah would say that it was a victory of
the United States, which provided Israel the time, weapons and money.” Israel’s
problem is much more complicated, Mr. Avineri said, because “everything is likely to
end in grays.” What will help define the real results, he said, is the mandate of
any multinational force and whether it calls for disarming Hezbollah.

An Israeli cabinet minister, who spoke anonymously because of the delicacy of the
topic, said, “The narrative at the end is part of the problem.” He added: “That’s
why we’re making up this balance sheet of accomplishments. Olmert said it very well
in the cabinet: ‘Ask Nasrallah and his colleagues if they would like to return to
the situation of three weeks ago, and they will say yes.”

But the end will be a far cry from Israel’s original intent, which Mr. Olmert stated
as the destruction or dismantling of Hezbollah. “Israel is trying to frame its
narrative now around the most minimal achievement, which is a major setback to the
fighting capacity of Hezbollah,” Mr. Grinstein said. “But the question and the
challenge is to frame a narrative of victory around more ambitious objectives.” To
“win,” Israel must be able to alter Hezbollah’s decision-making and remove the aura
of the invincible fighters who drove the Americans and French out of Beirut in 1983
and the Israelis out of Lebanon in 2000. Israel must also create enough distance
between Lebanese and Hezbollah interests to ensure that the Lebanese also press the
militia group not to provoke Israel to another round of costly warfare. “Hezbollah
serves two masters: Lebanon, where it lives, and Iran and Syria and the camp of
permanent resistance to Israel,” Mr. Grinstein said. “Most Lebanese don’t like the
second master, but if the two overlap, as they did before July 12, Hezbollah is
comfortable.” Israel is trying to underline the contradictions. Mr. Nasrallah is
widely considered to have miscalculated when he authorized the raid into Israel on
July 12, when two soldiers were captured. He said he thought Israel would respond as
in the past, with token tank fire. “Israel’s most significant accomplishment from
this war will be if it can severely compromise Hezbollah’s ability to fight Israel
from inside Lebanon,” Mr. Grinstein said.

Giora Eiland, Israel’s national security adviser under former Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon, predicts a solution in the next week or so “that is far from Israel’s
original intent.” He sees a political package negotiated at the United Nations that
includes an exchange of Lebanese prisoners, with Israel regaining its two soldiers;
a security zone in southern Lebanon under the control of a multinational force; an
Israeli promise not to violate Lebanon’s sovereignty; and “a general understanding
or commitment by the Lebanese government to be responsible for Hezbollah’s
behavior.” But “the most important thing will be missing from a deal,’’ he said,
“the dismantling of the military capacity of Hezbollah.” Israel also wants to get
its message across to Hezbollah’s Sunni cousin in the camp of permanent resistance —
Hamas, which leads the Palestinian Authority.

Yuval Diskin, the head of the Shin Bet counterterrorism organization, told the
cabinet that Israel needed to deepen its gains against Hezbollah so that the
Palestinians could feel them. “In the Middle East it is important to show the
potential terrorist in Balata,” a Palestinian refugee camp, “not only the strategic
victory, but the army’s achievements, in order to effect deterrence.” When Israel
pulled out of Gaza last summer, Hamas controlled the narrative, arguing that its
fighters had expelled Israel the way Hezbollah expelled Israel from Lebanon in 2000.
Israel’s withdrawal, in both cases, was perceived not as a gesture for peaceful
coexistence, as Israel had hoped, but as a sign of weakness.

Jonathan Fighel, a former colonel who fought in Lebanon and was the military
governor of Jenin, said that in Lebanon, “the army is breaking the idea that
Hezbollah has superiority on the ground, as the resilience of Israelis in the north
is breaking Nasrallah’s claim that we’re a bunch of nobodies that will crack.” Much
will depend on the diplomatic solution and what follows on the ground, Mr. Avineri
said. “If Hezbollah continues to have freedom of movement and operation, the outcome
is a failure for Israel. But if you have a regime that makes it very hard for them
to operate militarily, it’s a different narrative.”

2. GROUND TO A HALT
By Robert Pape
New York Times, Opinion
August 3, 2006

Chicago – Israel has finally conceded that air power alone will not defeat
Hezbollah. Over the coming weeks, it will learn that ground power won’t work either.
The problem is not that the Israelis have insufficient military might, but that they
misunderstand the nature of the enemy.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Hezbollah is principally neither a political
party nor an Islamist militia. It is a broad movement that evolved in reaction to
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. At first it consisted of a small number
of Shiites supported by Iran. But as more and more Lebanese came to resent Israel’s
occupation, Hezbollah — never tight-knit — expanded into an umbrella organization
that tacitly coordinated the resistance operations of a loose collection of groups
with a variety of religious and secular aims.

In terms of structure and hierarchy, it is less comparable to, say, a religious cult
like the Taliban than to the multidimensional American civil-rights movement of the
1960’s. What made its rise so rapid, and will make it impossible to defeat
militarily, was not its international support but the fact that it evolved from a
reorientation of pre-existing Lebanese social groups.

Evidence of the broad nature of Hezbollah’s resistance to Israeli occupation can be
seen in the identity of its suicide attackers. Hezbollah conducted a broad campaign
of suicide bombings against American, French and Israeli targets from 1982 to 1986.
Altogether, these attacks — which included the infamous bombing of the Marine
barracks in 1983 — involved 41 suicide terrorists.

In writing my book on suicide attackers, I had researchers scour Lebanese sources to
collect martyr videos, pictures and testimonials and the biographies of the
Hezbollah bombers. Of the 41, we identified the names, birth places and other
personal data for 38. Shockingly, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists.
Twenty-seven were from leftist political groups like the Lebanese Communist Party
and the Arab Socialist Union. Three were Christians, including a female high-school
teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon.

What these suicide attackers — and their heirs today — shared was not a religious or
political ideology but simply a commitment to resisting a foreign occupation. Nearly
two decades of Israeli military presence did not root out Hezbollah. The only thing
that has proven to end suicide attacks, in Lebanon and elsewhere, is withdrawal by
the occupying force.

Thus the new Israeli land offensive may take ground and destroy weapons, but it has
little chance of destroying the Hezbollah movement. In fact, in the wake of the
bombings of civilians, the incursion will probably aid Hezbollah’s recruiting.

Equally important, Israel’s incursion is also squandering the good will it had
initially earned from so-called moderate Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The countries are the court of opinion that matters because, while Israel cannot
crush Hezbollah, it could achieve a more limited goal: ending Hezbollah’s
acquisition of more missiles through Syria.

Given Syria’s total control of its border with Lebanon, stemming the flow of weapons
is a job for diplomacy, not force. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, Sunni-led nations
that want stability in the region, are motivated to stop the rise of Hezbollah.
Under the right conditions, the United States might be able to help assemble an ad
hoc coalition of Syria’s neighbors to entice and bully it to prevent Iranian,
Chinese or other foreign missiles from entering Lebanon. It could also offer to
begin talks over the future of the Golan Heights.

But Israel must take the initiative. Unless it calls off the offensive and accepts a
genuine cease-fire, there are likely to be many, many dead Israelis in the coming
weeks — and a much stronger Hezbollah.

Robert A. Pape is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, and
the author of “Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.”

While the war in the Levant continues apace, Americans ought to focus for a moment
on the near-pathetic ignorance of the bipartisan governing elite that directs their
nation’s foreign policy. This vacuity was again highlighted last week by Sen.
Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Democratic Party chief Howard Dean. Sen. Schumer
boycotted Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s address to Congress, and Mr. Dean described
Maliki as an anti-Semite. Why? Well, because Maliki had damned Israel’s activities
in Lebanon but failed to condemn Hezbollah’s actions.

Now it is no surprise that the Democrats Schumer and Dean – along with President
Bush, Sen. McCain, and most Republicans – would side with Israel no matter what the
cost to U.S. interests, lives, and society (witness events in Seattle). That is the
venal and security-sapping given of contemporary American politics. No, the surprise
is that any educated American could have anticipated any other judgment from Prime
Minister Maliki. To the great dismay of our bipartisan, democracy-pushing political
paragons, the democratically elected leader of Iraq merely stated the obvious:
Iraqis regard Israel as an illegitimate, colonizing, land-and-water thieving state
that routinely murders large numbers of Muslim men, women, and children. The hard
but obvious reality is that Maliki was speaking for his constituents, and, to be
honest, for most of the Muslim world.

Is Maliki right or wrong? For Americans, that is the wrong question, and, in any
event, the answer will eventually be decided on the battlefield of a war that is –
to say the least – peripheral to U.S. national security interests. What should be of
interest to Americans is that their political leaders in both parties expected to
create a successor government to Saddam’s in Muslim Iraq that would not be Israel’s
foe. If Saddam spoke for Iraqis on any issue, it was on Israel. An expectation that
Maliki would deviate from that foreign-policy orientation could only have been
hatched in the muddled minds of those in the executive branch who promised a
cakewalk, casualty-free war, and the subservient Congress that eagerly went along
for the democracy-installing ride.

When Woodrow Wilson injected the toxic concept of self-determination into
international politics, he believed that the product of the self-determination
process would always be benign: Nifty little democratic governments that would
protect the lives and rights of their citizens and live in peace with one another.
Instead, it has produced nearly a century of unrelenting bloodletting.

Reality was never Wilson’s strong suit, and his successors are no closer to reality.
While it is commonplace to say that today’s neoconservatives are Wilsonian in their
policies, analysis, and expectations, it is truer to say that Wilsonianism is the
common view of America’s governing elites – thus we find Schumer, Dean, Bush, and
McCain on the same team of addled politicians. To be blunt, America’s democracy is
not an exportable commodity; it is unique to the United States and the product of
800 years of heroes and villains, war and civil war, racial strife and racial
reconciliation, and foolishness and common sense. As the Founders knew, it is
grounded in Britain’s political experience, Scottish commonsense philosophy, British
common law, Calvinist Protestant Christianity, and the absolute requirement of an
educated populace to evaluate – and when necessary check – the policies, ambitions,
and greed of elected officials. Parenthetically, the failure of Americans to rise up
to scorn and terminate the Bush administration’s (Democrat-supported) plans to
install American-style democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq suggests the country may be
wanting in the Founders’ educated-populace category.

To condemn Prime Minister Maliki for being anti-Israeli is, in essence, to reject
the way that democracy and self-determination have so far worked out in Iraq.
Indeed, America’s bipartisan democracy-mongers have made a consistent habit of
rejecting or ignoring the results of all the "democratic" elections that have been
held since 2000 in the Middle East. Each vote has yielded results that reflect the
overwhelmingly anti-Israeli views of Muslim electorates, either by producing actual
governments – Iraq and Palestine – or the marked political advance of Islamists in
Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. That our leaders are surprised by these
results can be explained by one of only two factors: their surprise is feigned and
therefore deceitful, or they are ignorant of the history of both America and the
Middle East.

Last week’s condemnation of Maliki reveals with stark clarity that the Muslim world
remains terra incognita for U.S. governing elites. Nearly 60 years after President
Truman recognized the state of Israel to win the domestic pro-Israel vote for the
then cash-strapped and vote-needy Democrats, Schumer and Dean have stayed true to
that cynical mission, a mission the Republicans have also signed on to heart and
soul. More important, the failure of America’s elites to see that no genuine U.S.
national interests are at stake in the Arab-Israeli conflict and that our model of
democracy has little or no relevance in the Islamic world except – as the Founders
foresaw – as a symbol, has put Americans in harm’s way at home and abroad. Indeed,
their reality-free foreign policy has made America a target for the hatred of
increasing numbers of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims.

Michael Scheuer is a 22-year veteran of the CIA and the author of ‘Imperial Hubris:
Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror.’

4. CRITICS DEBATE IF ISRAEL’S RESPONSE TO HEZBOLLAH AMBUSH IS JUSTIFIED
By Dion Nissenbaum
McClatchy Newspapers
August 2, 2006

Jerusalem – The disturbing images from Qana, Lebanon, of medics carrying the limp
bodies of pajama-clad children from the site of Israel’s deadliest air strike
brought into sharp relief a fundamental question hanging over the three-week
campaign:

Is Israel’s overpowering military action against Hezbollah a reasonable response to
the militant group’s July 12 ambush, in which two Israeli soldiers were captured and
three killed?

There’s little disagreement that Israel had every right to retaliate. But in three
weeks of Israeli strikes, hundreds of Lebanese civilians have died. Of the 835
killed as of Wednesday, most were civilians and more than a third were younger than
12, including 16 of 28 confirmed dead at Qana.

That has sparked criticism from world leaders, aid agencies and human rights groups
who view Israel’s overpowering response not only as unwarranted but also as
counterproductive.

"Carelessly seeking immediate tactical advantage at the cost of major strategic
risks and penalties is stupid and dangerous," Anthony Cordesman, a former U.S.
Defense Department analyst who’s now a scholar at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, wrote this week. "Creating more enemies than you kill is
self-defeating."

For Israel, the calculus is simple: Hezbollah isn’t just a troublesome militant
group with a few thousand fighters, it’s the vanguard of the nation’s most
formidable Middle East enemies, Iran and Syria.

Because Hezbollah is part of that larger threat, Israel says, it’s justified under
international law not just in its efforts to get its captured soldiers back but also
in attempting to eliminate the militant group altogether. Their response shouldn’t
be measured only against the July 12 raid, Israelis argue, but against the total
threat that it faces.

"What is proportional?" asked Meir Rosenne, a longtime Israeli diplomat and expert
on international law. "When you kill 10 Jews? 100 Jews? 1,000 Jews?"

Israel, Rosenne argues, "is 100 percent entitled to act in self-defense to take the
actions it has taken" to defeat Hezbollah.

Israel is hardly the first power to use air strikes to try to weaken its enemy. The
U.S. and Britain reduced Nazi Germany’s cities to rubble and ashes, the U.S. dropped
two atomic bombs on Japan and American warplanes pounded Vietnam. The U.S. also uses
the tactic in Iraq and Afghanistan. NATO came under heavy criticism for its 79-day
bombing campaign in 1999 to drive Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic from power.

Like Israel, NATO hit several controversial targets, including a television station,
a convoy of refugees and the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.

Now, as then, human rights groups condemned the air strikes as potential war crimes.
The validity of that loaded charge rests on a number of factors.

Israel places the blame on Hezbollah, which fires its rockets from Lebanese towns
and villages – a clear violation of international law, which bans using civilians as
human shields.

But international law also requires the attacker to weigh whether the price to
innocent civilians will outweigh a strike’s military advantage.

In Qana, Israel contends, Hezbollah was firing rockets near the apartment building
that collapsed on dozens of refugees sheltering in the basement. In defense of its
action, Israel released video of Hezbollah rockets being fired from Qana two days
before the air strike. But so far it’s offered no evidence to support its claim that
rockets were fired near the building at the time of the strike.

Even if Hezbollah had fired from the area, Israel still would have to weigh the
costs to human life against the military gains, experts said.

The Israeli military is investigating the attack and, under international pressure,
imposed a 48-hour pause on such air strikes, which expired Wednesday.

Israeli leaders said they didn’t know that so many civilians were in the area. And
they contend that they gave civilians plenty of time to escape by dropping thousands
of fliers across southern Lebanon urging people to leave.

Even so, said Fred Abrahams, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, that doesn’t
relieve Israel of its responsibility to ensure that each air strike avoids civilian
deaths as much as possible.

"You cannot say, we warned you to leave the area south of the Litani and then you
can assume everyone who is left is a fighter," Abrahams said. "You are not lifted of
the responsibility to distinguish between civilians and fighters."

Even if the civilian deaths are justified, they may not be smart policy, said Sarah
Sewall, an expert on humanitarian law at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School
of Government. Such tactics may anger allies around the world and alienate Lebanese
civilians caught in the middle.

"The more powerful argument that is masked with some of the legal appeals is one
that Americans will understand," Sewall said. "If Israel’s intention is to disable
Hezbollah’s military capability, their actions – which seem to be killing largely
civilians who are not part of that threat – seem to be counterproductive."

Beyond the human rights arguments, critics such as Cordesman said Israel’s campaign
has failed to inflict serious damage to Hezbollah.

"There isn’t much faith in the Israeli strategy," Cordesman said. "Essentially, what
Israel has succeeded in doing is, having failed in the air and failed on the ground,
it now has thrust the United States into trying to win it diplomatically. The truth
is there isn’t any clear option."

5. FUTURE OF ORTHODOX JEWISH VOTE HAS IMPLICATIONS FOR GOP
By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post
August 3, 2006

Republicans are hoping a strong defense of Israel translates into greater support
among Jewish voters this fall, but the biggest political benefits are likely to come
long after the 2006 campaign concludes, according to political and demographic
experts studying Jewish voting trends.

The Jewish group proving most receptive to Republican overtures over the past decade
is among the smallest: Orthodox Jews. Right now, they account for roughly 10 percent
of the estimated 5.3 million Jews in the United States, hardly enough to tip most
elections.

This is likely to change significantly in the years ahead because Orthodox Jews are
the fastest-growing segment of the Jewish population, raising the possibility that
one of the most reliable Democratic voting blocs will be increasingly in play in
future elections, according to surveys of Jewish voting and religious and social
habits.

"The likelihood is there will be a very quick jump in the number of orthodox as the
baby boomers age and die," said David A. Harris of the American Jewish Committee, a
nonpartisan organization that conducts an annual survey of Jews. "They will be
increasingly replaced by Orthodox children who are more" in line with Republicans.

This unfolding transformation of the Jewish community is coloring the debate over
the latest Middle East conflict, Republican and Democratic lawmakers said. Both
parties are emphasizing their commitment to Israel and looking for opportunities to
portray the opposition as insufficiently supportive.

Some Democrats, for instance, called on GOP leaders to prevent Iraqi Prime Minister
Nouri al-Maliki from addressing the joint session of Congress last week because he
differs with U.S. policy on Israel, a stance praised by the Union of Orthodox Jewish
Congregations of America. Rep. Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.) called the Democratic effort
"an attack on what I believe is the growing sentiment among the Jewish community
that Republicans have really been there" for Israel.

Only those races in states with large Jewish populations are affected in
particularly visible ways by the fight for the Orthodox Jewish vote. In the New
Jersey U.S. Senate race, for instance, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations is
providing the Democratic and Republican candidates a forum before rabbis and other
leaders that could help sway the close election. Republican Tom Kean Jr. appeared
before the group last week; his opponent, Sen. Robert Menendez (D), is scheduled to
appear this month. There are 485,00 Jews in New Jersey, and polls suggest the
contest is a tossup.

But elsewhere, the competition for Jewish support is playing out in some less
visible but surprising ways.

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), a conservative Roman Catholic, is also looking for a
boost from the Jewish vote in his uphill campaign for reelection. Trailing in the
polls, Santorum has seized on the explosion of Middle East violence to emphasize
years of support for Israel and many of the state’s 280,000 Jews, who live mostly in
and around Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

He recently brought state Jewish leaders to a series of private meetings in
Washington with top Republicans, including presidential national security adviser
Stephen J. Hadley. He blasted his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey Jr., for failing to
speak out forcefully enough in defense of Israel. "At a critical time in the
America-Israel relationship, when you are a candidate for one of the hottest Senate
races in the country, you have an obligation to step up and speak into this moment,"
Santorum said in an interview. Instead, he said, Casey shows "weakness."

A number of Jewish donors, especially those in the Orthodox community, are assisting
Santorum and others behind the scenes. In the short term, the biggest political
benefit of the GOP’s outreach to the Jewish community has been financial, Democratic
and Republican officials said.

Gary Erlbaum, owner of Greentree Properties in Ardmore, Pa., and other Jewish
fundraisers have helped raise well over $1 million for Santorum and rally support
for him in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. "If he could get a majority of Jewish voters
in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, he would win the election, but there is nothing
assured about that," said Erlbaum, who is raising money for some Democratic
candidates, also. Erlbaum is major backer of the Orthodox community in his state.

"In conversations with friends of mine who tilt to the left . . . Rick Santorum
could be the No. 1 savior of Israel and they would not vote for him," he said.
However, he added, "I think generally speaking, the Orthodox community is more
supportive."

But it might take years for Republicans to benefit in elections.

Researchers commissioned by the American Jewish Committee found that the group most
receptive to the GOP message is Orthodox Jews. They are much more likely to base
their political decisions on a candidate’s view on Israel than other Jews,
researchers have found.

The number of Jewish adults between 18 and 29 who describe themselves as Orthodox is
16 percent, nearly double those ages 30 to 39, the AJC-commissioned study found. The
percentages are believed to be even higher among Jews under the age of 18, who
account for about 20 percent of the overall Jewish population, according to Nathan
Diament, director of public policy at the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of
America. These Jews, who regularly attend synagogue and tend to be conservative on
social issues, are also having children at a higher rate than other Jews, Harris
said.

In many ways, their views are in sync with those of Christians who attend church
regularly, which is one of the most reliable indicators of how a person votes in
politics today. The more frequently a person attends church or synagogue, the more
likely he or she is to vote Republican, polls show.

"Suddenly the Jewish landscape, based on current trends, will look very different,"
Harris said. "That has implications for voting patterns [and] party affiliation."

Democrats agree Republicans under President Bush are making inroads among Orthodox
Jews. "Absolutely it is problematic," said Ira Foreman, of the National Democratic
Jewish Council. "But I would much rather be where we are." Foreman and others said
Republican efforts to shake overall Jewish allegiance to Democrats have largely
failed because of domestic issues such as abortion rights and concerns about the
blending of religious and government activities.

"If you [as a candidate] are not a very strong supporter of Israel, you are
disqualified" from getting much, if any, of the Jewish vote, said Steve Rabinowitz,
a Democratic strategist. "Once you reach that threshold, for the vast majority of
the Jewish community, it switches to domestic issues on which Republicans routinely
get killed."

Bush has made small gains among Jews since his first election, but short of what
some GOP strategists had envisioned. A staunch supporter of Israel who won the
backing of a few prominent Democratic Jews such as former New York City mayor Ed
Koch, Bush captured between 22 and 26 percent of the Jewish vote in 2004, based on
various exit polling surveys. In 2000, he won 19 percent.

Because there are only about a half-million Orthodox Jews, it is virtually
impossible for pollsters to collect a large enough sample to determine their precise
voting patterns. But several who have studied the issue estimate that Bush won a
strong majority of Orthodox Jewish votes in 2004, a reversal from 2000 when Sen.
Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), an Orthodox Jew, was running on the national
Democratic ticket.

One trend Democrats and Republicans agree on is that older Jews are voting almost 9
to 1 for Democrats and are unlikely to change their views.

"The single most hostile [Jewish] community to Republicans is the 70-and-older
community," said Matthew Brooks, of the Republican Jewish Coalition. "That segment
will not be part of the electorate going forward much longer."

6. MOUNUMENTAL HOPE AND GRINDING DESPAIR
By Jon B. Alterman
Washington Post, Opinion
August 3, 2006

We often think of American history in terms of turning points. We are attacked, we
fight back, and the world often changes as a result. These turning points are few
and far between: 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the Civil War. We often build memorials in
quiet, grassy places that invite contemplation. With the luxury of distance, we
ponder how to remember both our suffering and our triumphs, and we imagine our
future.

The Middle East has been battered so many times in the last century, there is not
one site of mourning but many; everywhere is sacred ground. Running through the
national narratives of Israelis, Lebanese, Palestinians and others are streams of
suffering and victimhood that have few landmarks. Each attack and each death simply
flows into those streams, dynamic yet permanent parts of the slowly undulating
landscape.

The Middle East is now perched on the edge of chaos. Violence in Iraq has only grown
more dire, Gaza is under seige, and Lebanon is once again in flames. Iran brandishes
venomous anti-Semitism while playing coy on its nuclear ambitions. Meanwhile,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice solemnly proclaims "The birth pangs of a new
Middle East." The administration hopes that the current violence will not be in
vain, but instead helps mark a departure from the region’s oppressive past to a more
optimistic future. The administration hopes to be constructing a monument. The signs
are not auspicious.

Several years ago in Beirut, I met a young columnist named Samir Kassir. Samir was
brilliant, outspoken, and dynamic, and in later years he emerged as Lebanon’s
boldest critic of Syria’s presence in his country. When Lebanese took to the streets
in March 2005 to demand independence from Syrian influence, Samir electrified the
crowd of more than a million gathered in Martyrs’ Square in downtown Beirut.

Two and a half months later, Samir got into his white Alfa Romeo and started it up.
A bomb exploded under the front seat, killing him instantly. Two of weeks later, I
went to visit his widow in their apartment. "Where did it happen?" I asked. "Just
there, on the street, next to the grocery store," she said. I looked out the window,
and except for a missing awning there was no sign of the blast. All I saw was an
unusually heavy cluster of posters of Samir’s confident face, which I had seen
scattered around East Beirut. The posters contained no name, just the caption,
"Martyr of the Intifada of Independence." No other caption was necessary. Everyone
knew who he was, and people were all too familiar with the idea of martyrdom.

Samir was not a martyr in the tradition of Hezbollah or Hamas. He was a writer, and
a Christian. He did not carry a gun. His weapons were his keen intellect and his
persistent optimism; in that way, he was armed to the teeth.

The region does not need more martyrs, but it is getting more of them — men, women
and children, cut down in all-too-familiar rounds of violence and counterattack.
People do not worship history here; there is too much of it, and more is made every
day. History is not something that is studied or revered; it is a tool that is
shaped to steel the next generation for its own rounds of suffering.

We all know that current violence will end, and people will return to their lives.
On bright clear days, it will be hard to imagine not only the rubble and waste, but
the fear that now grips people.

That fear is not what is debilitating for people in the Middle East right now.
People have certainly felt it before.

What is debilitating is the idea that their current suffering will not produce
change that it will all be in vain. They fear that they will not build monuments out
of the rubble, but instead their nightmares will only be small drops in the streams
of suffering that run through their nations’ lives.

Jon B. Alterman is director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies.

7. BOTH SIDES IN BATTLE FOR HEARTS AND MINDS
By Kim Murphy
Los Angeles Times
August 3, 2006

Beirut — Viewers of Hezbollah’s Al Manar television may have been surprised this
week to see the image of a dead guerrilla flash on their screens. "This is the
corpse of one of the members of Hezbollah’s special forces," the accompanying text
said.

"Hassan Nasrallah lies," it continued, referring to Hezbollah’s leader. "We’re not
the ones who are hiding the real numbers of our dead."

With that, Israel returned Al Manar viewers to their regular programming.

Not to be outdone by Israeli propagandists, Al Manar newscasters Wednesday night
broadcast lists of Israeli "lies" about how many Lebanese fighters had been killed,
how many Hezbollah rockets had been seized and which Lebanese villages had been
captured. They also aired an image of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert bearing a
Hitler-like mustache.

In a war whose casualties, terrain and objectives are increasingly unclear, the
conflict in Lebanon has moved inevitably into a battle of nerves, with Israel and
Hezbollah each seeking psychological advantage with every weapon available,
including surreptitious television broadcasts, text messages and voice recordings.

The telephone calls start as early as 5:30 a.m., waking their Lebanese targets from
a sound sleep. "We don’t want to harm you," a recorded voice says. "We’re bombing
the infrastructure so Hezbollah will have no means of firing its rockets."

"We know you wanted to hit Israel," said another anonymous message that Beirut
resident Tilda abu Rizk got the other day. "But you have confronted a house made of
steel. This is the Israel Defense Forces."

During three recent TV broadcasts, Israel has hacked into Hezbollah’s Al Manar
channel. Israel has also broadcast radio messages over Lebanese airwaves, with one
warning that "Hassan sent men to fight the Israeli army, an army of steel, without
preparing them. Stop listening to patriotic chants for a moment, think about it and
come back to Earth."

Hezbollah has struck back, keeping Al Manar on the air from hidden locations despite
repeated Israeli airstrikes. It broadcasts Israeli news reports of public
uncertainty in Israel about the war.

"They do not want their people and our own people to see the magnitude of the human,
material and moral losses they suffered in this war," Nasrallah, the Shiite Muslim
cleric who heads Hezbollah, said in a broadcast Saturday. "This is part of the
psychological warfare employed by the enemy. These are facts that the enemy cannot
hide from its people or from us or from the entire world for a long time."

Psychological operations are a key part of any war, but they are crucial in this
conflict, where success hinges on whether Hezbollah is seen by the Lebanese public
as a savior or a liability.

Israel’s punishing air campaign has been aimed not only at eroding Hezbollah’s
military capability, many analysts say, but also at convincing the Lebanese public
that support for the militia’s attacks against Israel is misdirected and far too
costly.

Hezbollah aims to show the world that it has the resilience and public backing
needed to survive in a battle with one of the best-equipped armed forces in the
world.

In one of his boldest moves, Nasrallah appeared on Al Manar after a massive Israeli
airstrike on his living quarters and offices. "The surprises I promised you will
start now," he said in a live broadcast. "The Israeli war vessels that inflicted
damage on our infrastructure … will burn and sink in front of you."

Within minutes, an Israeli warship off the Lebanese coast was struck by a missile.

"Psychological warfare has been going on since day one," said Charles Harb, a
professor of social and behavioral sciences at the American University of Beirut.
"All of the pressure for the U.N. to leave the country, the rush that was happening
in terms of evacuation from south Lebanon, this is all a part of psychological
warfare.

"Israelis have been calling, leaving messages. ‘This is the state of Israel.
Hezbollah is your enemy. If you stay away from Hezbollah people, you will be safe.’
" The friendly sounding phone calls and text messages, Harb said, are a classic
psychological ploy.

The aim is to make it look as if Hezbollah, and Shiite Muslim refugees in general,
is an "out group," he said, while making recipients of the phone calls feel that
they are part of the "in group" allied with the government against them.

The hitch, he said, is that the rising number of civilian casualties, and especially
the attack in Qana, Lebanon, that left dozens dead, many of them children, had the
opposite effect, leaving a large number of Lebanese feeling like the "out group."

Israeli psychologist Irwin Mansdorf, writing this week in the Jerusalem Post, said
Hezbollah had engaged in psychological warfare of its own by firing small rockets
into Israel whose aim is in large part to undermine public support for the conflict.

But the calculation has been off the mark, he said.

"Israelis, having endured some very intense years of home-front violence, seem no
longer to be the same people that shook and cowed in fear at Saddam’s Scuds in
1991," Mansdorf wrote. "Israelis appear to have been inoculated against the fear of
terror, and have developed psychological antibodies to repel the emotional impact of
Hezbollah’s missiles."

Ibrahim Farhat, public relations director at Al Manar, said the Israelis had
succeeded in creating static and other signal interruptions "at least 10 times" on
TV broadcasts since the start of the war and had managed to broadcast their own
images for a few minutes on three occasions.

The Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that the Israel Defense Forces had confirmed
that the hacking was the work of the army’s intelligence corps. It said the surprise
images were aired only in Lebanon and not on Al Manar’s satellite broadcasts.

Al Manar weighed in Wednesday with shots of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and images
of President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as well as Olmert with the
offensive mustache.

"Oh, coward," intones a deep, slow and thunderous voice, "you will never protect the
settlements."

8. U.S. RIPPED FOR INACTION ON SYRIAN, ISRAELI FRONT
By Ori Nir
Forward
August 4, 2006 Issue

Washington — As Jerusalem mobilizes reserves and Damascus puts its troops on the
highest state of alert, the Bush administration is not taking overt steps to prevent
Israel’s war with Hezbollah from spilling over into Syria.

Even as Israeli officials repeatedly accuse Damascus of supporting Hezbollah and
Hamas, Jerusalem insists it has no intentions of attacking Syria. In turn, spokesmen
for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad are sending similar messages back in
the other direction.

But both sides are suspicious of the other’s intentions and are concerned about an
armed conflict being sparked unintentionally.

In the past, when tensions between Jerusalem and Damascus approached a boiling
point, the United States intervened, typically by sending an envoy with chilling
messages for leaders in both countries. This time, however, despite Israeli requests
for American intervention, the Bush administration has not sent a senior official to
Syria and shows no signs of upgrading its low-level contact with Damascus.

Assad has declared a willingness to hold comprehensive talks with Israel, and
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz reportedly has pressed his government to
explore the Syrian option. But elements in the Bush administration are said to
oppose any steps to relieve the pressure on Syria.

In recent internal discussions, according to one well-placed source who spoke on
condition of anonymity, some administration officials went so far as to advocate
that America encourage Israel to attack Syria in order to induce the fall of Assad’s
regime. It was impossible to corroborate that information with other independent
sources, but some Israeli media reports suggested that officials in the Bush
administration have encouraged Jerusalem to consider strikes against Syria. Several
hawkish pro-Israel scholars and pundits, including Michael Oren and Daniel Pipes,
have written columns in favor of such an approach.

Top Israeli and American officials have disagreed repeatedly over the appropriate
policy toward Syria. Upset over Syria’s alleged support for anti-Israel terrorist
groups and anti-American forces in Iraq, the Bush administration in the past several
years has considered pushing for regime change in Damascus. Israel, on the other
hand, continues to seek stability in Syria, viewing Assad as "the devil it knows"
and objecting to the creation of a political void that could be filled by Islamists
or by sheer chaos.

Some Israeli diplomats have been saying — both before the current crisis and in
recent days — that the administration is making a mistake by not having a more
nuanced policy toward Syria. Engagement with Syria, one Israeli diplomat said, does
not necessarily have to lead to major rewards. America can pursue a modest, gradual
process in which small carrots — or simply the holding back of sanctions — would be
offered for small Syrian steps, the Israeli official said.

According to diplomatic sources in Israel and in Washington, in the past three weeks
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government has turned to the Bush
administration to intervene with Syria, only to end up relying on other third
parties because of the White House’s policy of isolating Damascus.

"We have had incidents before, when Israel and Syria, unintentionally, stumbled into
confrontation," said William Brown, former ambassador to Israel. Brown is now
president of Hebrew University’s Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the
Advancement of Peace.

"People in such situations can do screwball things," Brown said. He noted that in
the past small-scale attacks ended up ballooning into broader confrontations.

Last Tuesday night, Israel reportedly airlifted hundreds of soldiers by helicopters
to attack Hezbollah bases in the Bekaa area, in northeast Lebanon, not far from the
Syrian border. One poorly aimed bomb, Brown said, could spark an unintended
confrontation that could be very difficult to contain.

The Israeli maneuvers came a day after Assad called on his army to maintain the
highest level of alert. Speaking to troops while marking the annual "army day,"
Assad vowed to "assist the brothers" who are fighting Israel’s occupation. "This is
the time of the national patriotic resistance," he said, adding that "the resistance
continues as long as our land is occupied and our rights are denied." On the day of
the attacks, Israel’s vice premier, Shimon Peres, speaking in Washington, said that
he "is not impressed by the Syrian threat." Peres said that the Syrian military is
weak and that its equipment is old. "I don’t think that Syria will go for war," he
flatly told reporters. He also taunted Assad by calling him "the son of a wise man,"
a reference to a late Syrian leader, Hafez Assad.

Syria is hearing the reassuring messages from Israel but is paying more attention to
the belligerent bravado of the past three weeks, said Moshe Maoz, a leading Israeli
expert on Syria.

"The Syrian government is very suspicious. It does not believe Israel’s reassuring
statements. The Syrians often suspect ‘Zionist conspiracies,’" he said.

According to Maoz, America’s insistence to isolate Syria and avoid any contact with
Assad’s regime is not in Israel’s interest. "Israel needs an effective channel to
Syria," he said. "But in recent years, America has become more of a spoiler than an
arbitrator in trying to improve relations between Israel and Syria."

Like many other foreign policy experts, Maoz advocates harnessing the resolution of
the current crisis to a broader resolution to Israel’s conflict with Syria and the
Palestinians. "The Syrians are ready for peace negotiations with Israel. Maybe it’s
time to try it," Maoz said.

But sources close to the White House say that the Bush administration rejects the
idea of "rewarding" Damascus by facilitating negotiations with Jerusalem over the
return of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967.

Barak Ben-Zur, a former senior officer in Israeli military intelligence and in
Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service, said that the Bush administration might
be missing an opportunity by not taking advantage of Syria’s current sense of
vulnerability to extract Syrian concessions. "America has various issues to settle
with the Syrians. It can apply pressure or offer enticements to get the Syrians to
cooperate both on issues such as Iraq and on the current crisis," he said. "Why not
try to manipulate them? Why not use this golden opportunity, when the Syrians feel
threatened?"

According to Ben-Zur, "there certainly is a potential to work with now.
Unfortunately, the Americans insist on having no direct dealing with Syria."

Some pro-Israel commentators, however, are arguing for a military response to Syrian
support for Hezbollah.

"Rather than travel down the road of predictable failure, something quite different
needs to be tried," Pipes wrote Tuesday in The New York Sun. "My suggestion? Shift
attention to Syria from Lebanon, and put Damascus on notice that it is responsible
for Hezbollah violence."

Pipes proposed warning Damascus that Syrian targets would be bombed each time Israel
was hit by Hezbollah. "Such targets," he wrote, "could include the terrorist,
military, and governmental infrastructures."

9. U.S. FEELS THE PRESSURE FOR QUICK CEASEFIRE IN LEBANON
By David Millikin
Agence France Presse (France)
August 3, 2006

Washington – The United States, caught between growing European anger over the
rising death toll in Lebanon and an Israel determined to battle on against
Hezbollah, has shown its first signs of impatience with its Israeli allies’
unwillingness to accept a quick end to the fighting.

Washington clearly remains Israel’s staunchest backer as the conflict sparked by
Hezbollah attacks on northern Israel enters its fourth week.

But with Israeli forces expanding their offensive this week by sending commandos
deep into Lebanon and the death toll among Lebanese passing 800, the pressure has
intensified from other US allies to bring a quick end to the war.

The European Union demanded on Tuesday an immediate cessation of hostilities, while
at the United Nations the United States and France have been struggling to narrow
their differences over the deployment of an international stabilization force in
southern Lebanon.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who since the start of the fighting has
opposed calls for an immediate ceasefire, indicated some impatience with the
Israelis late Tuesday when she insisted an end to the fighting should be achievable
within "days, not weeks".

And she expressed optimism that differences with France and other allies on the
conditions for a ceasefire and the deployment of an international military force to
prevent future Hezbollah attacks on Israel were surmountable.

At UN headquarters in New York, the Security Council’s permanent members met
Wednesday and said a resolution setting out a possible settlement of the crisis was
close.

"We are getting closer, much closer," said French ambassador Jean-Marc de La
Sabliere.

At the same time, though, Israeli leaders said they would fight as long as it takes
to dismantle Hezbollah’s military capabilities.

Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, speaking late Tuesday after meeting with Rice in
Washington, said it would still take weeks to achieve Israel’s military objectives
against Hezbollah and before a ceasefire could come into effect.

"I can’t give you a date, but I hope it will be a matter of weeks, not of months,"
he said.

Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon was more precise on Wednesday, telling Israeli
public radio: "The offensive in Lebanon will last until the end of next week … at
the minimum".

Peres laid out Israel’s pre-conditions for a ceasefire — insisting that Hezbollah
first be disabled as a military threat to his country.

"To have a ceasefire … means that the Hezbollah will not return to the southern
part of Lebanon as they used to be … and there will be a dismantling of the
Hezbollah’s military force," he said.

This position had been echoed by Rice and US President George W. Bush since the
beginning of the crisis, with the secretary of state repeatedly insisting that a
ceasefire had to coincide with Lebanon’s regular army taking control of southern
Lebanon from Hezbollah.

But on Tuesday, Rice eased closer to the Europeans by indicating a ceasefire could
come before the full dismantling of Hezbollah as long as there was "an expectation"
that this would follow an end to the fighting.

"No one is saying that we’re going to have a situation by the time that there’s a
ceasefire — that the Lebanese army is in full control of the territory or that the
Lebanese government is able to extend its authority throughout the country," she
said.

"But you have to have expectations that that will be the case. It has to be clear to
everyone that that’s the basis for a ceasefire or for a cessation of the
hostil