
Here are excerpts and links to calls for peace and an end to the current Mideast conflict as well as analyses from different corners of the world:
via Jewish Voice for Peace :
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via Tikkun:
Pro-Israel And Pro-Lebanon
By Mitchell Plitnick
July 31, 2006
Reprinted Courtesy of TomPaine.com
As Israel loses more soldiers in actions that
increasingly resemble the catastrophic 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the
question for Jews in Israel, America and the rest of the world becomes
not just whether Israeli actions are morally justified, but whether or
not they are strategically sound. The answer to both is no.
Sadly, the actions of the U.S. government have contributed to a
destabilization of the region that can only harm Israel. It has vetoed
two U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for a cease-fire and
immediate negotiations. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was quoted
as saying she did not see what purpose a cease-fire would serve. Such
comments leave the impression that halting the deaths of innocents
doesn't even factor into Rice's thinking.
This diplomatic failure by the U.S. has defined the Bush
administration's "strategy" in the region. The U.S. completely
supported Israel’s actions in closing off the Gaza Strip's land, sea
and air access shortly after a democratically elected Hamas government
took power at the beginning of 2006. This devastated an already
crippled economy in Gaza and weakened a Hamas government that had held
a shaky truce with Israel for more than a year and was moving toward
negotiations on implicitly recognizing Israel along its 1967 borders.
Meanwhile, ongoing skirmishes between Hezbollah and Israel over
Israel's continuing presence in the Sheba'a Farms region—which Israel
claims is Syrian territory, while Lebanon claims it as its own—were
simply ignored by the rest of the world. Instead of pushing for a
solution to these problems, the Bush administration preferred to let
them simmer. It boiled over when Palestinian groups and Hezbollah
attacked Israeli army posts inside Israel, taking Israeli soldiers
hostage.

All sides rightly condemned Hezbollah for those attacks and for the
deadly rocket attacks on Israeli towns. But those rocket attacks only
started after Israel started bombing Lebanese civilians. The
Israeli government is responsible for escalating the conflict, and it
showed total disregard for its own citizens, let alone the Lebanese, by
doing so. That doesn't excuse Hezbollah's actions, but Israel knew very
well that it was opening the door to civilian casualties of its own
when it hit Lebanon.
Now, more than two weeks after Israel invaded Lebanon and almost a
month since Israel began its assault on the Gaza Strip, Israeli leaders
have admitted that these operations have little to do with freeing
their captive soldiers. Instead, we hear daily of the "new Middle East"
which this war will create. This was attempted before, when in 1982
Israel attempted to install by force a government favorable to it in
South Lebanon. The results then, as now, were only an intensification
of the "old" Middle East violence. [read on...]
via Tikkun:
Advertisement to END THE SLAUGHTER IN ISRAEL, LEBANON and GAZA
READ the ad that
is running in the NY Times 7/31/06. With your help, we can reprint the
ad in the Washington Post and several newspapers in Israel, Palestine,
and Lebanon, but it can only happen if you donate now.
Explanatory Note: We at Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives ask you to join
our effort to place ads in national and international newspapers
calling for an end to the slaughter in Lebanon, Israel and the Occupied
Territories—and to use this moment not only to create a temporary cease
fire, but to resolve all outstanding issues between the various parties
in the Middle East. We are calling upon the international community to
foster a new approach to resolving conflicts. We approach these issues
from our commitment to a "Progressive Middle Path," recognizing that in
the context of the past 120 years, both sides have legitimate
grievances and both sides have acted with insensitivity and cruelty
toward the other. We do not accept that one side is the "righteous
victim" and the other side the "evil aggressor." But we do recognize
that at this moment Israel has far greater military power, and so we
ask for Israel to take the first steps toward ending the cycle of
hatred and violence, even as we condemn Hezbollah for initiating the
current escalation of violence. [read on...]
via Salon.com:
The Mideast death dance
Hamas and Hezbollah, Lebanon and Palestine, Syria and Iran, the U.S. and Israel: Unless these four pairs of actors turn away from their failed policies, the Middle East will sink further into violence and despair.
By Rami G. Khouri
July 15, 2006
You need to understand the relationship among four
pairs of actors to grasp the meaning of the escalating attacks by
Hamas, Hezbollah and Israel in recent days. The four pairs are Hamas
and Hezbollah; the Palestinian and Lebanese governments; Syria and
Iran; and Israel and the United States.
Simplistically, President George W. Bush has depicted this latest
round of war as a clash between good and evil, while the Israeli
government has tried to blame Palestinians and Lebanese who only want
to make war against a peace-loving Israel. The more nuanced and complex
reality is that, collectively, these four pairs of actors play roles in
the ongoing fighting, as we witness the culmination of four decades of
failed policies that have kept the Middle East tense, angry and
violent. [read on...]
via The Independent:
Oren Ben-Dor: Who are the real terrorists in the Middle East?
What exactly is being defended? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state?
Published: 26 July 2006
As its citizens are being killed, Israel is, yet again, inflicting death and destruction on Lebanon. It tries to portray this horror as necessary for its self-defence. Indeed, the casual observer might regard the rocket attacks on Israeli cities such as Haifa and my own home town, Nahariya, as justifying this claim.
While states should defend their citizens, states which fail this duty should be questioned and, if necessary, reconfigured. Israel is a state which, instead of defending its citizens, puts all of them, Jews as well as non-Jews, in danger.
What exactly is being defended by the violence in Gaza and Lebanon? Is it the citizens of Israel or the nature of the Israeli state? I suggest the latter.
[read on...]
via Shalom Center:
SAVING LIVES IS OUR HIGHEST DUTY: So Send Peacekeepers NOW!
Dear Friends,
We are taught: "pekuakh nefesh, saving lives" is our highest duty.
This war is killing people now. And the rage it creates will kill more people later.
As Akiba and the sages taught: Learn for the sake of acting. The action site will come toward the end of this letter.
This war marks not only a crisis in the future of Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine, but also a crisis in the moral universe of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
There is a teaching in the Talmud: "If someone comes to kill you, kill him first." Then the Talmud continues: "But if you can prevent his killing you by wounding him rather than killing him, and nevertheless you kill him, you become a murderer."
Violence in self-defense, the rabbis are teaching, is legitimate - perhaps even required. But only self-defense that uses the smallest degree of force that would stop an attack.
This is wisdom for Jews and for the Jewish state, but not only for Jews. Something like it arises in all religious traditions that do not prohibit the use of violence altogether, even in self-defense.
So we all face today the question whether the present government of Israel and the present leadership of Hezbollah are following this precept.
I think not. I think the attacks on Lebanese infrastructure far from the Israeli-Lebanese border, like those on the civilian infrastructure of Gaza just a few weeks ago, are going far over the line of legitimate self-defense.
And I think the rocket attacks by Hezbollah against Haifa and many other Israeli towns, as well as the original attack across the international frontier, also go far over the line of any conceivable "self-defense." [read on...]

via NYTimes:
Op-Ed Columnist
Shock and Awe
Published: July 31, 2006
For Americans who care deeply about Israel, one of the truly
nightmarish things about the war in Lebanon has been watching Israel
repeat the same mistakes the United States made in Iraq. It's as if
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been possessed by the deranged spirit of
Donald Rumsfeld.
Yes, I know that there are big differences in the origins of the two
wars. There's no question of this war having been sold on false
pretenses; unlike America in Iraq, Israel is clearly acting in
self-defense.
But both Clausewitz and Sherman were right: war
is both a continuation of policy by other means, and all hell. It's a
terrible mistake to start a major military operation, regardless of the
moral justification, unless you have very good reason to believe that
the action will improve matters.
The most compelling argument
against an invasion of Iraq wasn't the suspicion many of us had, which
turned out to be correct, that the administration's case for war was
fraudulent. It was the fact that the real reason government officials
and many pundits wanted a war — their belief that if the United States
used its military might to "hit someone" in the Arab world, never mind
exactly who, it would shock and awe Islamic radicals into giving up
terrorism — was, all too obviously, a childish fantasy.
And the
results of going to war on the basis of that fantasy were predictably
disastrous: the fiasco in Iraq has ended up demonstrating the limits of
U.S. power, strengthening radical Islam — especially radical Shiites
allied with Iran, a group that includes Hezbollah — and losing America
the moral high ground.
What I never expected was that Israel — a
nation that has unfortunately had plenty of experience with both war
and insurgency — would be susceptible to similar fantasies. Yet that's
what seems to have happened.