I'm grateful for all the friends who send me daily links to material that is worth reading/watching/archiving, etc… They really enrich the arguments here, but what's better than sharing friends are reading and sharing? Here is some of this material:

Deception as a Way of Life – Israeli Myths: In a state established on a founding myth — that the native Palestinian population left of their own accord rather than that they were ethnically cleansed — and in one that seeks its legitimacy through a host of other lies, such as that the occupation of the West Bank is benign and that Gaza's has ended, deception becomes a political way of life. And so it is in the "relative calm" that has followed Israel's month-long pounding of Lebanon, a calm in which Israelis may no longer be dying but the Lebanese most assuredly are as explosions of US-made cluster bombs greet the south's returning refugees and the anonymous residents of Gaza perish by the dozens each and every week under the relentless and indiscriminate strikes of the Israeli air force while the rest slowly starve in their open-air prison… Read the full article By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth – Palestine [Hat tip: Ann]

We knew how the war started but we never know how it is going to end: One month before Israel started the war in Lebanon on July 12th, this 32 years old man, a Post-doctoral Associate at the Department of Geological Sciences (University of Missouri-Columbia), traveled to his country to develop field investigations concerning earthquake potential in the Middle East and northwest Africa. It was also a opportunity for him to visit his family in Roum, within the Jezzine district, which lies at the northern end of south Lebanon, where he was born and his parent live currently. But Tony Nemer did not know he would come back to Columbia on August 2nd witnessing a war. His face mirrors the sorrow and worrying of leaving his people in such a condition, but fortunately also his strength as a go-getter is able to share with us his thought, feeling and experiences on this war… Read the complete interview By Laura Ramiro Cid.

"You don't see, you don't feel, and you don't look" — An Israeli Combat Soldier Breaks the Silence: Yehuda Saul, told me he had made it his personal mission to speak out against the Israeli army when its actions were immoral. The Canadian American-Israeli veteran said that his "arch-conservative family" had slated him for a career in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). But during his third year of service the young platoon sergeant witnessed a scene of looting and killing at a combat mission in Hebron that had troubled him so much that he decided to leave the army…. We had three well-positioned posts in Palestinian neighborhoods. We posted snipers and grenade guns. My post was at a former Palestinian school in Hebron. Our mission was to target Palestinian houses. I remember being shocked when I heard this. "You mean we should shoot into the neighborhoods, where people live?" I thought about the safety rules I had learned during training. In order to shoot live grenades, no one should be within a distance of one mile on each side of the target. And now I was supposed to shoot into a neighborhood where people lived. The grenade gun is not an accurate weapon. One grenade kills everyone within the radius of eight meters, and injures everyone within the radius of 16 meters. At night, after the Palestinians shot, we received the order to pull the trigger. On the first day, during the four to five seconds before the grenades hit, you prayed that you didn't hurt anyone innocent. On the second day you are less tense, and on the third day even less. And after a week, it's a game… When you are a combat soldier in the Occupied Territories, you can't see Palestinians as equal human beings. Because then you couldn't hop through a roof in the middle of the night, wake up a family, force the women into one corner and the men into another, and tear apart the place. At least when you stand at a checkpoint you see the shape of human beings: One head, two hands, and two legs. But when I was shooting live grenades into neighborhoods where people lived every night – why, that was a computer game! Read full article by By Daniel Sturm [hat tip: Sam]

When Criticism of Cluster Bombs is "Anti-Semitic": The Israeli paper Ha'aretz reports that the head of Germany's Jewish community accused a minister in Angela Merkel's German government of "anti-Semitism" because of the minister's statement on Israel's use of cluster bombs. Development Aid Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul had asked for a United Nations probe into Israel's use of cluster bombs in civilian areas of Lebanon… Read full article by By Stanley Heller

Criticize Israel? You're an Anti-Semite!
How can we have a real discussion about Mideast peace if speaking honestly about Israel is out of bounds? Publish something sharply critical of Israeli government policies and you'll find out. If you're lucky, you'll merely discover that you've been uninvited to some dinner parties. If you're less lucky, you'll be the subject of an all-out attack by neoconservative pundits and accused of rabid anti-Semitism. This, at least, is what happened to Ken Roth. Roth — whose father fled Nazi Germany — is executive director of Human Rights Watch, America's largest and most respected human rights organization. (Disclosure: I have worked in the past as a paid consultant for the group.) In July, after the Israeli offensive in Lebanon began, Human Rights Watch did the same thing it has done in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Congo, Uganda and countless other conflict zones around the globe: It sent researchers to monitor the conflict and report on any abuses committed by either side… Read full article by Rosa Brooks (LA Times) [Hat tip: Editerette13]

Israelis believed Nasrallah over Peretz: Polls conducted by Dr. Udi Lebel, political psychology lecturer, found sad picture of Israeli PR… During the poll, entitled "the management of Israeli PR during the second Lebanon war," members of six groups were asked to watch video recordings of Israeli PR in Israel and abroad, and to answer questions. Lebel says he held polls in the past on issues of strategic press, political psychology, and army-media relations. The result of his latest poll show that Israeli PR was so lacking, that in my cases the public was forced to rely on the reports of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Lebel says a good media leader relies on three points – gripping the audience, being watchable, and giving the feeling of certainty. The participants of the poll were asked who gave the a sense of certainty regarding the continuance of the war, and who was most authentic. The results were unequivocal: The Israeli public chose Nasrallah's speeches as giving it both… Read full story by Anat Breshkovsky [Hat tip: Ganesh]