When asked “Are you using cluster bombs in Lebanon?” Israeli ambassador Daniel Ayalon replied on Sunday: “No, we are not. We are not using anything which is not approved by the UN Conventions and Charters.” (Ayalon, along with former House speaker Newt Gingrich, was questioned by IPA’s Sam Hussseini and reporters from NBC and CNN…

STEPHEN ZUNES Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus and author of the book Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism.” His most recent piece is “Jihad Against Hezbollah,” in which he writes: “Just as Washington’s concerns about the threat from Iraq grew in inverse correlation to its military…

BRENDAN SMITH JEREMY BRECHER Legal scholar Brendan Smith and historian Jeremy Brecher are co-authors of the recent article “A Road to Peace in Lebanon?” and co-editors of the book In The Name Of Democracy. Brecher said today: “If the U.S.-French Security Council proposal crashes, that will create enormous pressure for a plan — pushed by…

MARYLIA KELLEY Kelley is executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) located in Livermore, California. She said today: “On August 6 and 9, 61 years after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cites of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people from around the globe will gather to stop nuclear weapons and war.…

Today, the Washington Post ran an op-ed headlined “The Rules of War,” by Moshe Yaalon, former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces and now a distinguished military fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.(Full article) Yaalon was head of Israeli army intelligence when Israel bombed a civilian shelter in Qana in…

CESAR CHELALA Chelala, an international public health consultant, wrote a recent article titled “In Gaza and Lebanon, Children Have Become Pawns,” which states: “Despite a formidable set of international laws protecting children’s rights, including the Convention of the Rights of the Child signed by Israel, Palestinian children are still paying a high price in the…

FRANCISCO G. ARUCA Host of a daily Spanish-language radio program, Radio Progreso in Miami, Aruca said today: “The Cuban-American community is not a monolith. Many of us are in favor of lifting the embargo and having a dialogue and negotiations.” More Information SAUL LANDAU Landau is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and…

ROBERT NAIMAN Naiman is national coordinator of the new D.C.-based advocacy group Just Foreign Policy, which issued a statement today saying: “Under international law the UN Security Council is supposed to act to stop crimes against peace but [it] cannot do so in this case because it is paralyzed by the veto of the Bush…

JUDITH BROWN CHOMSKY Judith Brown Chomsky is a cooperating attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is litigating a class action lawsuit in U.S. federal court in connection with Israel’s 1996 shelling of a UN compound also in Qana, Lebanon, which killed more than 100 civilians. She said today: “Ten years ago the U.S.…

RANA EL-KHATIB Now living in Beirut, el-Khatib is working with the YMCA focusing on getting relief and medical supplies to displaced people in Lebanon. She wrote a recent article, “Israel Sows Seeds of Hatred,” which was published in the Toronto Star. Her family is originally from Haifa. A book of her poetry is titled Branded:…