Salon has become the liberal version of Fox News. Why? It's all about the money. Read carefully "10 Years of Salon" and you'll get it. Salon prints wild stories "exploding myths" like this one because it increases the "hits" exponentially resulting in additional advertising dollars. No in-depth reporting by Prothero to back up his wild claims - just a few anecdotes. Israel bashing sells and there's nothing more important to Salon's owners that getting rich - no matter the cost in journalistic ethics or integrity.

The articles don't even have to be logically valid. Amazing!

Too bad Salon. You went for the money when you could have made a big difference in this world! What's next? Selling Hezbollah T-shirts with clever sayings?

"Israel is the only country in that region where all these things are true! Ethnic Arabs sit in the Israeli legislature and have access to Israeli courts. They run businesses, own homes, participate fully in Israeli society. Now tell me how many countries in the Arab world where the same thing is true of Jews or Christians?"

Uh, see, Cosmo...the answer is LEBANON! Far more than Israel itself, it is the little defenceless Arab country of Lebanon which offers all these things to Jews, Christians, Druze, Shia, Sunnis, and non-believers. You know, the little country Israel is methodically and systematically destroying?

Witness also the way that Salon simply shut down their blog section for an entire month without so much as even a casual apology from the editorial staff, so that Pete Daou can go crawl up Hillary Clinton's ass and reserve a spot for the Salon staff in case she ever wins something again. See? Salon isn't all about the $$$...they can also be pathetically sycophantic if there is some kind of mainstream political "prestige" to gain.

If Prothero really wants to get to the tender marrow of the Jew/Arab issue from a macro- perspective, maybe he will do a piece on the young Muslim gentleman right here in America who just shot up the Jewish Center in Seattle yesterday, killing an innocent bystander and wounding a pregnant woman...oh, but then that isn't really relevant to this topic, is it?

Besides, it was surely the fault of the you-know-who's anyway. When you really think about it, as Americans and/or Jews, don't we all deserve to die merely for existing anyway? After all, by breathing air on planet earth we offend the peaceful Muslim community and their sacred customs. Remember, Jerusalem is the THIRD HOLIEST site in Islam. Obviously that makes it worthy of several decades of horrific suicidal warfare.

Whatever moral authority Israel had two week is gone. The death of hundreds and soon to be thousands of innocent Lebanese citizens is not only unforgivable, but will only breed more and more terrorists. The day that Israel can kill 10 fold for every one they loose are gone. They have made a Faustian bargain with the Bush Administration by embracing the PNAC Neo-Cons' apocalyptic foreign policy. This invasion of Lebanon was timed to help the Republicans hold on to power. Giving them a "good" war to run on since the other two they started have turned to shit.

The question is not whether Hezbollah is a terrorist group - of course it is! The question is whether Israel is helping themselves (or the United States) with this wholesale military offensive on Lebanon? Every time Israel over-reacts militarily, they play right into the radical Islamic agenda. Israel (and the United States) do more to discredit themselves than anything Hezbollah could do or say. The long term polarization on the region is their goal. Whoever can make time their ally wins. At this point Israel is make more enemies than friend for both themselves and the United States.

This Israeli brand of "preemptive war" is just another bloody and glaring example of the failure of the "Bush Doctrine". Preemptive war does not work! Not for the U.S.; not for Israel. "Let Israel finish the job!?" The sad irony is they are just making worse. They can't beat radical Islam with military force.

>After all, by breathing air on planet earth we offend the peaceful

>Muslim community and their sacred customs. Remember, Jerusalem is

>the THIRD HOLIEST site in Islam. Obviously that makes it worthy of

>several decades of horrific suicidal warfare.

Not only is it worthy of decades or suicidal warfare, it's worthy of centuries is not millenia of butchery and bloodshed - for Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Witness the violence of the firt century BCE to the first century CE as Roman administrators, politicians, and soldiers were murdered in the streets by sects like the Zealots, who resorted to such tactics because they couldn't fight openly against Rome's well-trained and well-equipped military. Also victim were regular Roman citizens, Hellenized Jews, and other Roman collaborators. Witness the multiple crusades at the dawn of the second millenium when the Pope decided that it was an abomination for infidel Muslims to rule in Jerusalem and the "holy lands," convincing Christian Europe to launch a series of brutal and bloody wars. And now we have no choice but to watch it happen again and again between the Israelis and Muslims, and why? Because of the viral, idiot idea of monotheism, that's why.

It's easy to kill when Your One True God tells you it's okay. It's easy to butcher fellow human beings over a piece of dirt when you think that Yaweh gave it to you (with the injunction that you tolerate no other people on that land, except as slaves) or when you think that Allah gave you the whole damn world (and that the only good unbeliever is a dead unbeliever) or when you think Christ is coming (so you better get a headstart on killing the minions of the Antichrist).

If we want to get the root of the Middle East crisis, it's found in the maniacal madness of monotheism.

Responding to rocket attacks on cities inside your own border is not "pre-emptive war". Hezbollah started this conflict by firing rockets into Israel and kidnapping Israeli soldiers. Only now that Lebanon is getting pounded by IDF bombs do they beg for an "immediate cease-fire".

If the Lebanese government wasn't prepared to deal with a military response by the IDF then they should have dealt with the Hezbollah guerillas themselves. That they did not and still refuse to is their- and Lebanon's- problem, even if Israel is the only one willing to try and solve it.