Altman got down and dirty in the trenches, volunteering at a different place each day of his trip, which was coordinated by Dani Neuman, executive director of the Haifa Foundation.
I am lying in my Tel Aviv bed long after midnight, soaking my pillow with tears.
My cries are echoing in the house. My folks are fast asleep. The war with Lebanon has finally hit me.
Recently, I sat behind a one-way mirror and watched a group of about 30 voters — half Democrats, half Republicans — respond to images and opinions about Israel\’s war in Lebanon. The overall results were as shocking as they were commonplace: the opinion of Israel among the Democrats was consistently 10 to 20 points lower than that of the Republicans.\n
As the people of northern Israel finally return to their homes, they\’re going back to more than empty streets, freshly dug gravesites and a beefed-up military presence. They\’re also coming home to a radically altered physical landscape.
The former army intelligence officer with an easy smile was busy as the face of Israel\’s foreign media outreach, giving more than 80 interviews to international media networks and newspapers during the war.
Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began in mid-July, a form of hate older than the Jewish state increasingly is rearing its ugly head: anti-Semitism.
It\’s hard to remember now, but we began this war with the sympathy of a large part of the international community. Some Arab leaders, for the first time in the history of the Middle East conflict, actually blamed other Arabs for initiating hostilities with Israel.
Olmert\’s perceived blunders have given the Israeli right a new lease on life. They believe the war has dealt a lethal blow to Olmert\’s plans for a major unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank.
How is Israel\’s security served by the creation of a failed state on its northern border? This is the question that has fallen like a dark shadow across the landscape of stunningly unanimous Israeli, Jewish, and American support for Israel\’s ongoing attack on Lebanon. Has Israel truly attacked Lebanon, or has it merely attacked Hezbollah as a terrorist organization operating from within Lebanon? On July 23, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seemed to answer that question for the benefit of his cabinet: \”We have no war with the Lebanese people, and we have no intention to harm their quality of life.\”
With the fighting along Israel\’s northern border showing no sign of letting up, Israel\’s most popular summer tourist region has been turned into a battle zone. Instead of the sounds of kids splashing in swimming pools and canyons, there is a constant booming of artillery shelling and tank fire. Instead of birds quietly hovering in the skies over the Hula Nature Reserve, attack helicopters and fighter jets streak across the sky headed north, into Lebanon.
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