Geography Archives: Lebanon

“. . . a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.” — The Goldstone Report “I can promise you that throughout the war, […]

The all too predictable dynamics surrounding a potential new Iran sanctions resolution in the United Nations Security Council continue to play out just as we have anticipated.  As some commentators are leaping on media stories that one of China’s diplomats took part in a P-5+1 conference call yesterday about a possible resolution, the Wall Street […]

Yesterday, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) concluded its annual policy conference in Washington, DC.  This year saw the largest-ever turnout for AIPAC’s annual conference, with 7,800 people in attendance, an important percentage of whom were not Jewish but evangelical Protestant Christians.  At the climax of the conference, participants deployed to Capitol Hill to […]

It is intriguing to see how whoever the United States and Israel find interfering with their imperial or dispossession plans is quickly demonized and becomes a threat and target for that Real-Axis-of-Evil (RAE), and hence their NATO allies and, with less intensity, much of the rest of the “international community” (IC, meaning ruling elites, not […]

Kayed al-Ghoul, a member of the Central Committee of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, says that, in the event of aggression against Iran, the Occupying Power will likely attack the Gaza Strip and Lebanon to prevent any reactions and to disarm the resistance forces. Al-Ghoul remarked in an interview televised by Al […]

Tomorrow, Wednesday, 10 March 2010, at 10:00 a.m. the trial of Member of Knesset Mohammed Barakeh, and chairman of Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality — Communist Party of Israel) will open.  Adalah Attorneys Hassan Jabareen and Orna Kohn are representing MK Barakeh in this case. The Attorney General indicted MK Barakeh in […]

  Sukant Chandan interviews Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled and Palestinian Gaza resident and revolutionary Shireen Said for International Women’s Day 2010 Leila Khaled: “Palestinian women have a fundamental role in uniting Palestinians” The Palestinian people’s oppression continues due primarily to the financial, diplomatic, and military support that the Zionist state receives from the USA and […]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Brasilia to mount a full court press on the Brazilian government to support a United Nations Security Council resolution imposing tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities.  (Brazil is presently one of the Council’s ten non-permanent members.)  And, as accumulating media reports indicate, she was politely but […]

Daughters are God’s irony on men.  Not His vengeance or His revenge on us, but surely His irony. Daughters, when they come, are never expected and seldom asked for, especially if she is a first child.  Always a surprise, usually more for the father than the mother, who, if she suspects at all, keeps it […]

Last week, just after we had completed our regional tour to Beirut, Damascus, and Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his own journey to Damascus, for highly publicized meetings with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, HAMAS Political Bureau chief Khalid Mishal, and a “resistance” summit with Assad and Hizballah Secretary General Shaykh Hassan Nasrallah.  Ahmadinejad’s trip […]

Does Israel want another war in Lebanon and/or Gaza?  Certainly, the Israeli posture toward both Lebanon and Gaza has grown increasingly provocative.  Violations of Lebanese airspace by Israeli military aircraft are not new, but have increased dramatically in recent weeks.  For the past several weeks, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri has been warning of escalating […]

The Israeli attack on Gaza in December 2008/January 2009 was not merely a military assault on a primarily civilian population, impoverished and the victim of occupation and besiegement these past 42 years.  It was also part of an ongoing assault on international humanitarian law by a highly coordinated team of Israeli lawyers, military officers, PR […]

We just returned from a trip to the Middle East, which included stops in Lebanon, Syria, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.  We will be writing about our meetings, discussions, and observations on this trip in future posts.  First, though, we want to express our gratitude to the Faculty of World Studies at the University […]

It is almost a commonplace, at least for the real — as opposed to the cruise-missile — left, that the flow of information, opinion, and moral indignation in the United States adapts well to the demands of state policy.  If the state is hostile to Iran, even openly trying to engage in “regime change,” and […]

Imagine for a moment what the reaction would be if Iranian intelligence was almost universally believed to have assassinated a leader of one of the organisations fighting the Tehran government in a western-friendly state.  Then consider how Britain, let alone the US, might respond if the killers had carried out the operation using forged or […]

The Main Points of the Speech We reiterate on this occasion our condolences for the loss of our dear martyrs, and our congratulations as well, for they are ultimately the first victors.  They are our glory and pride. I will discuss current challenges and our strategy for addressing them.  When we remember these leaders and […]

When the ceasefire went into effect on the Lebanese-Israeli border in 2006, nobody believed — not for a moment — that this was the end of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.  After all, none of Israel’s objectives were met in 2006: Israel Defense Forces’ soldiers were still held captive in Lebanon; and far from being […]

The Arab International Forum to Support the Resistance concluded in Beirut on January 17, 2010, followed by a proclamation of its final appeal in Maroun al-Ras in southern Lebanon, directed via loudspeakers toward the Palestinian people in occupied Palestine 48.  In its closing statement, the forum called for resistance to occupation and aggression, stressing the […]

An important and perhaps growing feature of official and strong-interest-group propaganda is the resort to personal attacks and flak to keep dissidents at bay and inconvenient thoughts out of sight and mind.  This has been notable over many years in the case of pro-Israel propaganda, where we can observe a positive correlation between upward spikes […]

“One thing is clear: the developments in Iran today are not comparable to the time before the downfall of the Shah.  Back then, the country was united against the Shah.  There were no two sides to speak of.  If there had been two sides, the US would have conveniently arranged for a coup.  Today in […]