Why did I watch Fox last night?

I guess most of you figured out my political leanings by now. So for some weird reason, I let myself watch The O'Reilly Factor with his "consultant" (did he say?) Newt Gingrinch. He called him, "Mr. Speaker." Does one retain that title long after the fact, like Mr. President?

I'm sorry I've been out of the loop. I'm filling out job applications and making a bunch of calls trying to figure out what to do with myself. Thanks, Wally, for being so persistent to want to continue this dialogue. I am behind on e-mails and posts, so it might take a little while to catch up.

Newt talked about how biased the U.S. media is against Israel, which never mentions that 1 million Israelis fled during the war. All we see is the destruction in Lebanon.

Ummm. By the way, about a million Lebanese left their country as well. I'm trying to find real numbers. The media does show northern Israel being attacked, and has emptied, and has most of the people living in bomb shelters. Can someone fill me in on what's happening in Israel that we're not seeing?

Yes, I know that photos were doctored. I saw that, too. So that means the South and the Dahiye weren't destroyed??? Because they were and I'm talking to a friend who no longer has a house, and whose 4 little cousins died in the Bekaa.

I saw an interview with President Emile Lahoud last night also, where he said that Hizbollah is Lebanon. And that the Lebanese government and military will support them. When this broke out, July 12, the Lebanese government distanced themselves from Hizbollah, and said Hizbollah acted independently, and brought all this havoc upon Lebanon. But now with this cease-fire (and I have to say, I still don't know what the exact details of it are), the Arab world, including Lebanon, feels like they won. When I called a friend, Monday, he was like, "We won!!!!" Another friend, a Druze woman, was like, "What did we win? Destruction?" And she called him a Hizbollah-supporting ignorant.

President Lahoud said what I had been saying on this blog. The Lebanese government is Hizbollah. They cannot and will not disarm Hizbollah. So to that extent--it does look like Israel lost. But believe me, Lebanon lost too. But Hizbollah did win. And as you can see on the US media, they are a social organizaiton, giving out money to returning families. They've been running soup kitchens all over Beirut feeding people. World Vision and other international aid organziations talk about how it's difficult to run their operations, because they would have to coordinate with Hizbollah, who is the main provider of services to the displaced. But because of this useless and stupid "terrrorist" designation, they have to watch what they do. They can't work with or assist the most effective provider of social services to the refugees.

I love it when people on this blog call me a "terrorist sympathizer." As I've always said, the word "terrrorist" means nothing. It is part of this ideological battle of Axis of Evil and Islamo-Fascists, which justifies cutting off talks with Syria and Iran. Who are willing to talk and can maybe provide more stability to this whole situation. U.S. foreign policy does everything to hurt its own best interests in the region by using such polemic language and adopting such a chauvenistic attitude.

Newt Gingrich kept saying, "We lost--the U.S. and the democracies." If you buy into all this U.S. media propoganda that claims that Hizbollah is our enemy, then yes "We lost" because it's very true that Hizbollah won and is now much stronger. But this is stupid. Hizbollah is NOT our enemy. They are a social, political, and military group that defends and takes care of the disempowered and disenfranchised Shia of Lebanon. And Israel shouldn't be our friend, because that just attracts more terrorist aggression and threats toward us. The U.S. should be neutral in this conflict, and use its weight as the world hyperpower (or at least that's what it was before Iraq) to broker peace.

I've been watching some videos from the Washington Post. They're really nice. One talked about a Peace Cafe in Washington, D.C. where people were engaging in real dialogue. One Jewish-American woman was concerned about her brother who lives in northern Israel. At the end of the program, they said he got killed by a rocket when he was riding his bike around.