Pablo

he says, "Israel’s attempt to mount an American-style whack-a-mole War on Terror on Hezbollah does not mesh with the reality on the ground." completely ignoring the fact that Hezbollah initiated the attack and stated its goal was to crush Hezbollah for good so that it didn't have the continued "whack a mole" attacks from Southern Lebanon. First off, Israel occupied Lebanon for two decades, still occupies Sheba farms, and has been violating the Lebanese border for ages. Hezbollah kidnapped 2GI's and Israel, blithely armed to the teeth by the US, responded by completely obliterating Southern Lebanon. Not only was Hezbollah not crushed by the attack (which killed alot of innocent Lebanese people), it was actually strengthened as the Lebanese people and alot of the rest of the world (from Iran to Venezuela) got behind Hezbollah. As for The Republic's "agenda", everyone has an agenda. The Republic's agenda is fighting against exploitation and hegemony, looking after the little guy, and exploring the kinds of opinions and ideas that most corporate media won't countenance.

Republic Article on Israeli Pathological Narcissism Israel in the bubble world Because of delusions and fantasies, Israel and the US both miss the real solutions to their existing problems By Dan Adleman Pathological narcissism occurs when an individual’s psychic horizons close in around him to form an insular, almost opaque bubbleworld. The mostly reflective surface of this glossy bubble provides a peculiarly obfuscated view of the outside world, which the narcissist looks to only to feed his all-pervasive pattern of self-inflating fantasies and behaviours. At the most extreme end of the narcissistic continuum, narcissists display what Freud referred to as “magical thinking,” a process whereby the narcissist is so convinced that the world revolves around his little bubble that he comes to believe that his petty thoughts and fantasies hold mystical sway over not only other people but also the very fabric of reality. It could be argued that Israel, which acts with absolute arrogance and antipathy towards both its neighbours and the Palestinians, is the ultimate political bubbleworld. While outside of the US, most everyone in the world recognizes that the Middle East is an absurdly fragile equilibrium that’s constantly adjusting to Israel’s and America’s impositions, the Israeli government has long been content to run roughshod over anyone who opposes its will. Israel has worked in concert with its partner in crime, the US government, to transform the entire Middle East in order to make the Jewish state’s intrusion more palatable. But recent events have illustrated that there are limits to how much the bedevilled people outside the bubble are willing to collude with plush, gated communities that not only explicitly exclude them but also treat them with callous disregard. Just as the bubble-headed Bush administration has recently run headfirst into brick walls in Afghanistan and Iraq, Israeli narcissism has discovered an insurmountable obstacle in the form of Hezbollah... Republic Article on Israeli Pathological Narcissism