Here is an article round up from Haaretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers. Let's start with Hamas's reaction to the Qana bombing, echoed from Reuters: "In the face of this open war against the Arab and Muslim nations all options are open, including striking the depth of the Zionist entity," Mushir al-Masri, a senior Hamas lawmaker, told Reuters. Asked if that meant suicide bombings against Israelis, Masri said: "All options are open. Every means is allowed. This is a crime and state-terror and a crossing of all red lines."
Just wonderful. Does this mean a new round of suicide bombing at checkpoints? Onward to some op-ed. "Days of darkness": The devastation we are sowing in Lebanon doesn't touch anyone here and most of it is not even shown to Israelis. Those who want to know what Tyre looks like now have to turn to foreign channels - the BBC reporter brings chilling images from there, the likes of which won't be seen here. How can one not be shocked by the suffering of the other, at our hands, even when our north suffers? The death we are sowing at the same time, right now in Gaza, with close to 120 dead since the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, 27 last Wednesday alone, touches us even less. The hospitals in Gaza are full of burned children, but who cares? The darkness of the war in the north covers them, too. Since we've grown accustomed to thinking collective punishment a legitimate weapon, it is no wonder no debate has sparked here over the cruel punishment of Lebanon for Hezbollah's actions. If it was okay in Nablus, why not Beirut? The only criticism being heard about this war is over tactics. Everyone is a general now and they are mostly pushing the IDF to deepen its activities. Commentators, ex-generals and politicians compete at raising the stakes with extreme proposals. Haim Ramon "doesn't understand" why there is still electricity in Baalbek; Eli Yishai proposes turning south Lebanon into a "sandbox"; Yoav Limor, a Channel 1 military correspondent, proposes an exhibition of Hezbollah corpses and the next day to conduct a parade of prisoners in their underwear, "to strengthen the home front's morale." It's not difficult to guess what we would think about an Arab TV station whose commentators would say something like that, but another few casualties or failures by the IDF, and Limor's proposal will be implemented. Is there any better sign of how we have lost our senses and our humanity? A bereaved father, Haim Avraham, whose son was kidnapped and killed by Hezbollah in October 2000, fires an artillery shell into Lebanon for the reporters. It's vengeance for his son. His image, embracing the decorated artillery shell is one of the most disgraceful images of this war. And it's only the first. A group of young girls also have their picture taken decorating IDF shells with slogans. Maariv, which has turned into the Fox News of Israel, fills its pages with chauvinist slogans reminiscent of particularly inferior propaganda machines, such as "Israel is strong" - which is indicative of weakness, actually - while a TV commentator calls for the bombing of a TV station.
"The next improvisation": Now, the government and the General Staff are pondering how to bring an end to this campaign. The diplomatic formula currently on the table is for the deployment of a multinational force along the border with Lebanon. The way Olmert is responding to this plan encapsulates his behavior throughout the war: more improvisation than deep thought. Initially, the prime minister scornfully rejected the idea, a week later he took it back, and is now very much interested in it. Israel appears to be increasingly wishing for the placement of a multinational force along the northern border. Such a deployment is being presented as a desired achievement of the war. There is doubt about whether this wish - whose actual implementation is a question in and of itself - is another shot from the hip or the result of an orderly thought process. Since its establishment, Israel's defense doctrine has been based on the concept of self-defense. Prime ministers, from David Ben-Gurion to Ariel Sharon, refused to place the safeguarding of Israel's security in the hands of foreigners. Israel's wish to protect itself with its own forces and its willingness to do so at any cost is what clearly identifies it and secures it. Now comes Olmert with a new approach. Perhaps it is wiser, perhaps it is more reflective of the reality, but it is inconceivable that it will become the main diplomatic effort without a thorough discussion, while taking into account, among all else, its implications on the Israeli-Palestinian front.
"A barrage of accusations": The journalists and politicians shooting at us - so far only with words - are demanding every Israeli Arab denounce Hezbollah and call it a terror organization. He must also prove the denunciation is sincere and not lip service, heaven forbid. And to convince the Jewish master of his innocence, the Arab must also express solidarity with the IDF's war and its destructive acts. The feeling of togetherness in the mixed cities, Haifa and Acre, is not being acknowledged. The joint work of Jewish and Arab rescue teams, policemen, doctors and nurses is ignored. The killing in Nazareth and the devastation in Majdal Krum are only good for the Foreign Ministry's public relations campaign overseas. All we are required to do is denounce - and even that may do us no good.
"All of Islam on our head": Because the theory of it all being intertwined has been pulled out of the moth-eaten drawers and already, someone - with that tempting simplicity - has tied what is happening in Palestine with what is happening in Lebanon, or the streets of Iraq. As if each of those places brimming with pus does not have its own reasons for its infection. But what is more convenient than to shout "Islam" to blur the differences. Who will notice that even in Lebanon, let alone Iraq or Saudi Arabia they have a problem with the all-encompassing packaging of "Islamic terror." Is it Sunni or Shi'ite, Shi'ite-nationalist or global Shi'ite, political Sunni or transnational Sunni? Is Hamas terror or Islamic Jihad terror religious, or against occupation and what about the campaign in Saudi Arabia against the extremist Wahhabi? Those opening such a broad umbrella to include all the organizations that must be fought are going to lose the enormous forces that exist in each country for self-defense against those groups. Those are the same forces that prevented the Iranian revolution from spreading, the same forces that are struggling in each country, against the Al-Qaida cells and local terror, the same forces that have gradually imposed rules of behavior on Hezbollah. But the Lebanese government, which might understand the complex political structure of itself and the Lebanese state, might not understand the need to "defeat terror." Like beggars, its representatives, symbols of the only democracy in the Middle East, stood at the Rome Conference to hear an explanation that this is not their war but a war against terror. That the 700,000 or 1 million local refugees, who might right now be sowing the seeds of the next civil war, are not interesting, and that without "defeating terror" there won't be a cease-fire. Let the Lebanese ask the Palestinians - they know the slogan very well. First eliminate the terror and then maybe, if there is time and we're in the mood and if it doesn't complicate other plans, we'll also talk a little about political solutions. Rice was right. "We" cannot return to the status quo that existed before the war. It is more correct to say it is impossible to return there, because this war is already producing the offspring who will register at the same schools where the war in Iraq or Afghanistan was learned. There, too, they began with a big boom of "shock and awe."
Haaretz Roundup | 
