At Alternate Brain, Fixer, the 1st shift writer, briefly discusses the real meaning behind Israel’s attacks in Gaza and now Lebanon:

I will gladly give my life to defend this nation. I will not die for Israel.

JERUSALEM - Israel struck Beirut's airport and Hezbollah’s television station on Thursday and killed 22 civilians in raids on south Lebanon, intensifying its reprisals after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight. The Israeli military later said it had imposed a sea and air blockade on Lebanon to cut off supply routes to Hezbollah via Syria. Israel maintains Hezbollah is financed and equipped by Iran, with backing by Syria.

The United States was a primary sponsor of the United Nations initiative that recognized the historic right of Jews to live in Israel, their ancestral home. Since that day in 1947 when the UN developed the Partition Plan that split the British mandate of Palestine into two parts, there has been conflict. Some of it is religious, although Islam and Judaism have historically been able to co-exist in relative peace elsewhere than on the Levant. The real problem arose because some Arabic Palestinians were displaced during the partition, and were sponsored by a group of Egyptian military and political leaders who were still consolidating control in their own country and sought a cause to espouse. Bloody war ensued, and has been a problem ever since.

There are many separate forces at work in this conflict, but also many serendipitous interactions. Israel deserves the right to live. This is their ancestral home. They are surrounded by countries that admit to differing levels of hostility. The fact that the country is now perceived internationally as a bully is a product of clever marketing by several countries acting to incite the Palestinian issue.

Of all the many fraudulent reasons the Bu$h malAdministration advanced to justify its illegal war of aggression, Israel was never mentioned, yet they were urged on in this endeavor in great part by the Project for a New American Century, a far right wing cabal of cynical politicians, think tanks and allies, and a few ideologues dedicated to the survival of Israel and its development into a more powerful regional influence center. Quite a few of these same people pop up in member lists of organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic International Studies, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs

In order to achieve this goal of regional dominance, all the threats surrounding Israel must be reduced to political and military impotence. Iraq was the first step, since it was seen as the greater military goal by virtue of its central location, bordering Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which is the gateway to the oil terminals and production facilities of the Persian Gulf. Oil was the US goal, but it was the AIPAC moles within the US policy making apparatus that whispered in Mr Bush’s ear to conquer Iraq.

Israel seems to have decided that it must take the bull by the horns and start on a program of toughened military response to perceived or real threats. The depradations is Gaza and Lebanon are the first steps. Captured soldiers are just the handy excuse.