good, thoughtful 2-page essay:

"Truly Inconvenient Truths

What we’re loath to talk about when we talk about Israel and Lebanon."

By Kurt Andersen

(New York Magazine, July 31/Aug. 7 issue)

Excerpts:

...concerning the Middle East, there is for most of us no obvious overriding analysis, let alone fix. Concerning Israel and the Palestinian territories, all the truths tend to be truly, deeply, tragically inconvenient.....INSANE ONGOING DUALITY: If only there were just two confusing, contradictory ideas and impulses at play as we Americans try to figure out what to think or do about the Middle East. The complications and flux of the new Great Game are harrowing—ironic, isn’t it, that someone as unsubtle and one-track-minded as George Bush helped usher in this complex new era?....So at this time of staggering new complexity comes a two-front Israeli war—which temporarily serves, like all wars, to make a complex situation seem simple....The Israelis, far better than us, are able to admit and discuss such ugly realities....

Nancy Soderberg, "from 1997 to 2001, a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, where she negotiated the Security Council’s endorsement of Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon" (my highlighting):

....The way forward in Lebanon is clear. First, the Syrians, the Lebanese and the Iranians must give up the fiction that Israel did not fully withdraw from Lebanon in 2000. Hezbollah justifies its terrorist attacks by claiming that Israel never withdrew from a small area called the Shebaa Farms.

In fact, however, the Shebaa Farms area is not in Lebanon; all international records clearly show it is part of Syria. When it was clear in 2000 that the Israelis were going to withdraw from Lebanon, Syrian and Lebanese officials circulated in the United Nations a crudely altered map purporting to show the area in Lebanon. The Security Council rejected that claim and confirmed the Israeli withdrawal. But myths have a way of surviving in the Middle East and the Arabs continue to use it as a justification for attacks.

Second, no cease-fire will hold unless the root cause of the current crisis is addressed: the continuing presence of armed Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon....

in full at:

from New York Times

Published: August 2, 2006

If you have run across any of the "it's all a Jewish financial conspiracy" types on the net (a small somewhat-related discussion on that on Prof. Etzioni's thread brought that to my mind: here), or have had the bad luck of having Mel-Gibson-type acquaintances or family members,

it might be fun to throw this article at them from the front page of today's New York Times Business section:

From Lebanese-American Financiers, Differing Views on the Strife

By LANDON THOMAS Jr.

Blurb: "The heirs of a mercantile economy adapt with special aplomb to Wall Street."

Excerpt: "....given Lebanon’s population of just 3.8 million, the success of the Lebanese in finance seems to want more of an explanation...."

Note that the most conservative guy cited even admits proudly to the label "neo-con," and wrote a policy paper endorsed by Perle and Feith.

Sometimes I suspect the New York Times editors assign these sort of stories with tongue-firmly-in-cheek, knowing fully what kind of stereotypes are being discussed out there, and just running up a collection of contrarian examples for the hell of it.

P.S. That's a permalink, it should work for free access indefinitely.

DAMASCUS, Syria, July 30 — The images of the dead children in southern Lebanon played across the television screens on Sunday over and over again —....The images were broadcast on all of the Arab-language satellite channels, but it was the most popular station, Al Jazeera, that made the starkest point. For several hours after rescuers reached Qana, Lebanon, the station took its anchors off the air and just continuously played images of the little bodies there.

“This is the new Middle East,” one report from the shattered town began, making a sarcastic reference to a phrase Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice uttered last week when visiting Beirut and rejecting calls for an immediate cease-fire. American weapons caused the deaths, the report said....

Arab public opinion, already holding that Americans do not care about Arab lives, given the dozens killed daily in Iraq, will undoubtedly sour even more on the United States.

“There is a feeling right now that this war is not really an Israeli war against Hezbollah, but an American war to get rid of Hezbollah,” said Hussein Amin, the chairman of the journalism department at the American University in Cairo. “I think most of the coverage, in showing the dead children repeatedly, is something that is going to provoke rage and anger throughout the Arab world.”....

continued at New York Times, July 31, "Child Victims Incite Anger in Lebanon and Beyond"

By Neil MacFarquhar from Damascus with Hassan M. Fattah from Beirut and Mona el-Maggar from Cairo. Highly recommended to read it in its entirety.

Also see

"News Analysis: From Carnage in Lebanon, a Concession" by Helene Cooper in today's New York Times; beginning excerpt:

Jerusalem, Monday, July 31 -Taken aback by the carnage from the Israeli bombing of Qana, Lebanon, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrung the first significant concession from Israel late on Sunday in its nearly three-week-old war against the Hezbollah militia: an immediate 48-hour suspension of aerial strikes.

The American decision to break the news on what was essentially an Israeli tactical change reflected the increased concern in the Bush administration about the rising civilian death toll in Lebanon and the havoc it is wreaking with America’s already shaky relations with the Arab world.

Indeed, while Mr. Ereli took pains to assure reporters that American officials had confirmation of the temporary suspension directly from Mr. Olmert’s office, Israeli officials had said nothing publicly about the suspension as of early Monday....