Voices for Creative Nonviolence is doing some organizing around the fighting in Lebanon/Israel/Gaza. Check out “Beyond the Escalation of Injustice”:vcnv.org/beyond-the-escalation-of-injustice which calls for “direct engagement.”
Through them I found a link to “Jihad Against Hezbollah”:www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3412, the new piece from Steven Zunes, a very knowledgable writer for Foreign Policy in Focus. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (this afternoon on the train) but it looks like good background material on the group.
Quaker Ranter
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Tag Archives ⇒ hezbollah
Forsaking Diplomacy
August 10, 2006
In the New York Times, a “glimpse behind the scenes of the Bush Administration’s support for war in Lebanon”:www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/washington/10rice.html:
bq.. Washington’s resistance to an immediate cease-fire and its staunch support of Israel have made it more difficult for [US “Secretary of State”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/secretary%20of%20state] Rice to work with other nations, including some American allies, as they search for a formula that will end the violence and produce a durable cease-fire.…
Several State Department officials have privately objected to the administration’s emphasis on Israel and have said that Washington is not talking to Syria to try to resolve the crisis. Damascus has long been a supporter of “Hezbollah”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/hezbollah, and previous conflicts between the group and Israel have been resolved through shuttle diplomacy with Syria.
p. The wars in “Lebanon”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/lebanon and “Iraq”:www.nonviolence.org/tag/iraq are causing irreparable harm to the U.S. image in the Middle East. High-sounding words about democracy ring hollow when we forsake diplomacy.