Submitted by Brodsky on Sun, 07/20/2008 - 00:31
Few people can grasp Israeli society and emotions better than Daniel Gordis . His website entitled, "Dispatches from an Anxious State," brings the Israeli experience to the lay-person. Rather than raw political analysis, the reader is engaged in a real story from Gordis's life and that of his family since moving to Israel in 1998. While the Web is abuzz with different interpretations of the political meaning of the prisoner swap between Israel and Hizballah - did Hizballah win; did Olmert cave; was the return of the remains of two kidnapped and killed Israeli soldiers worth the release of the notorious Samir Kuntar?
Submitted by Brodsky on Tue, 07/15/2008 - 18:19
Bradley Burston of Israel's daily newspaper, Haaretz, wrote this article about Israel's prisoner swap with Hizballah including Samir Kuntar. It is well-worth the read. The original can be viewed at Haaretz.
The pleasure that Hezbollah takes in torture
Torture takes many forms. We take it and we hand it out, we live with it and we live with ourselves knowing that we may be subjecting our loved ones to it, that our loved ones may be engaging in it, that innocent people on every side may be torture's direct victims.
The pleasure that Hezbollah takes in torture
By, Bradley Burston
July 15, 2008Torture takes many forms. We take it and we hand it out, we live with it and we live with ourselves knowing that we may be subjecting our loved ones to it, that our loved ones may be engaging in it, that innocent people on every side may be torture's direct victims. Iran and the United States: Foreign Policy during the Khomeini Years
Two weeks after Khomeini’s return to Tehran, on 14 February 1979, 150 members of the Marxist, leftist, Feda’iyan-e Khalq overran the American embassy. Khomeini quickly denounced the attack and dispatched Ibrahim Yazidi, who rounded up hundreds of students from Tehran University and led a counter-attack to free the Americans. Khomeini and his band of mullahs leveled their criticism at the leftists. That same year on 4 November, three hundred Islamic students overran the embassy and took 66 Americans hostage. This time Khomeini gave his approval within two days. Why did he react in the opposite manner to a seemingly similar scenario? On 22 October the United States admitted the Shah for medical treatment for his advanced cancer. While this was perceived as a slap at revolutionary Iran, it alone does not explain Khomeini’s rationale. At the time of the hostage crisis, the admission of the Shah was usually tagged onto the end of listed Iranian grievances – and the hostages were not released when the Shah was forced out of America after completing his treatment on 15 December, nor were they released when he died in Egypt on 27 July 1980.17
Iran and the United States: Foreign Policy during the Khomeini Years
Iran and the United States share a relatively brief but troubled history. America’s involvement in Iran began in the aftermath of the Second World War and intensified as the American-Soviet Cold War smoldered during the later half of the 20th Century. Iran never loomed large upon the horizon of the American public’s list of foreign concerns. For the United States, the defining moment in their relationship came on 4 November 1979, when on the heals of the Iranian Revolution, 66 Americans were seized from their embassy in Iran and held hostage for 444 days.1 Americans saw this as a blatant and undeserved attack and felt powerless as the hostage crisis dragged on. This left a terrible scar on the American psyche and has colored foreign policy decisions towards Iran ever since. Americans today, for the most part, remain cloaked in a shroud of ignorance, ever asking, ‘Why do they hate us?’ For Iranians, America’s 1953 bloodless coup d’état that toppled Mosaddeq was a pivotal moment, creating a legacy etched into the Iranian consciousness. While Mosaddeq’s strategy for oil nationalization relied heavily upon American economic aid, in Iran he is remembered as the man who stood up to the West. The coup brought the Shah back. Iranians who looked to the United States to rid themselves of Britain’s yoke woke up to the new reality that they had merely replaced the British with the Americans. The Iranian sense that other nations have constantly meddled in their internal affairs has remained a driving force behind foreign policy decisions since the 1979 revolution.
A new generation of Iranian intellectuals emerged in the 1960s, reversing previously held convictions and espousing the view that the West was the cause of Iran’s problems.2 By 1977, Iran had become a tinderbox due to economic conditions, the Iranian people’s dissatisfaction with the Shah’s modernization efforts, and disenchantment with the influence of Western values penetrating the country. With nearly all segments of society rising to challenge the Shah, many sought to mold and control the revolutionary explosion.
