For all of the endless talk about religion as a cause of war in the Middle East, it is rare that a media account mentions the actual resources that are being fought over. This welcome exception from the Los Angeles Times, Aug. 10:

QASMIYA, Lebanon — Israeli bombing has knocked out irrigation canals supplying Litani River water to more than 10,000 acres of farmland and 23 villages in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, prompting accusations here that Israel is using its war against Hezbollah to lay claim to Lebanon's prime watersheds.

From The Forward, Aug. 11:

JERUSALEM — Young Israeli activists are fighting back against Hezbollah — with a boycott on smoking hash.

Trees, it seems, can be ideological. But the ideology, as Grace Slick once sang, "doesn't mean shit to a tree." Or, as Gertrude Stein might have had it, a tree is a tree is a tree. In other words, even if it is a Zionist symbol, it is still holding down topsoil and protecting groundwater. And the fact that forests are burning in this arid part of the planet is not a good thing, no matter what side of an international border they are on, or what they symbolize. From the New York Times, Aug. 8 (emphasis added):

The carnage in Lebanon has pushed Gaza from the headlines. But lest we forget... From Reuters, Aug. 8:

Hospitals in the Gaza Strip have seen a significant increase in war casualties with severe injuries over the past month and are running out of medical supplies, British medical aid agency Merlin said today.

How perversely ironic. Last Wednesday, Aug. 2, was Tisha b'Av, the Jewish holiday commemorating the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, as well as several other calamities in Jewish history. Yet this year, Tisha b'Av came as Jews were inflicting a calamity on their Lebanese neighbors, and Israel's chief rabbis issued a decree officially exempting soliders fighting on the front from having to fast for the holy day. (YNet, Aug. 1) Meanwhile, the paradox of Tisha b'Av falling in the middle of the assault on Lebanon (and the near-forgotten Gaza Strip) has jacked up the always-high level of paranoia at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. From YNet, Aug. 2:

A note of irony. From IMEC News, July 31:

In an official report, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Israeli soldiers took 600 Palestinian residents prisoners since the abduction of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from a military post in the southern Gaza Strip last month.

A glimmer of hope. From The Observer, Aug. 6 (emphasis added):

Israeli pilots 'deliberately miss' targets
Fliers admit aborting raids on civilian targets as concern grows over the reliability of intelligence
At least two Israeli fighter pilots have deliberately missed civilian targets in Lebanon as disquiet grows in the military about flawed intelligence, The Observer has learnt. Sources say the pilots were worried that targets had been wrongly identified as Hizbollah facilities.

The undiscriminating nature of aerial warfare is producing some surreal ironies in the Israel-Lebanon mess. As we have noted, Israel appears to be loaning military support to Iraqi Kurds due to mutual enmity for the Arabs, leading Arabs and Turks alike to increasingly view Kurdish separatism as a Jewish conspiracy. Yet the latest Israeli air strike on Lebanon's Bekaa Valley wiped out a bunch of Syrian Kurdish migrant fruit pickers. From Reuters, Aug. 4: