Concentrated Sun Energy.

The Solution in Search of More Problems:
Climate Change

(I didn't like the way this posting developed and intend to change it. Meanwhile this will have to make do.)

There is increasing concern about unusually abrupt climate change, specifically global warming, based on a variety of observations worldwide. After long being called controversial, it is generally accepted now: even that it results (mainly) from growing releases of greenhouse gases which obstruct the dissipation into space of solar energy absorbed and converted to higher wavelength heat energy. The warming trend correlates with the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) since coal, then oil, was first burned on a large scale. Remaining "skepticism" about this human contribution should wane when the nuclear interests, tied to, often identical with, the oil companies are satisfied that solar competition cannot raise its (pretty) head.

The current sense of serious imminent danger need never have been reached. The solar radiation reaching earth continuously can provide all the energy needed by mankind; forever, easily. Solar power is popular. People (like roses) love sunshine. They do not like ozone in smog, cancer from radioactivity, climate changes or soot and other suspended particles in the air.

Solar power has also had enemies , as pointed out long ago, e.g. by Amory Lovins (in the scan immediately preceding the passage linked to here). These saw reasons to be concerned about the popularity of solar energy. And they are powerful; very powerful. They succeeded in aborting the birth of a solar age in the U.S. in the 1970s.

To bring about the transition to an economy based on the solar sources of energy, a strong grassroots movement arose, initiated by the (earlier) Earth Day organizers. The 1970s provided a really unusual opportunity, because of the crises, price shocks, boycott, gas station lines, that suddenly showed people the vulnerability of the oil based economy. It peaked on SUN Day (May 3, 1978) and was promptly dissipated thereafter. Without the possibility of a real grassroots movement standing up for the common good, there evidently will not be a solar age (if any).

Solar energy can be utilized in a great variety of ways, and classified according to no less. I do not really like any of the reviews describing/explaining them briefly on the web, including my own, but here are two link / link . There is a lesser, but still substantial number of ways of generating electricity. Some of these are suitable for what is termed utility scale, not necessarily the gigascale kind.

At least in the early stages, direct solar power is most easily cost competitve when generated at, or near, the point of consumption. Especially in conjunction with indirect solar sources, notably biomass derived alcohols, solar thermal power is likely to be the most easily competitive worldwide. Windpower looks like the early workhorse for many northern countries, that can also more readily afford the capital expenditure (besides, less hostility from the giant private utility companies). But others will be favored, especially based on specific local features.

Solar Power in the 70s

In case these statements surprise you, let me note that they are based on over 3 decades of experience; first as an active participant. By my job description as a senior researcher at the main Western laboratory of the US Department of Agriculture in Albany (adjacent to Berkeley), California, I was to pick my research topics (and discuss them with my boss). These had been remote from solar energy (and mainly scientific rather than developmental). But in the early 70s I was adding a (partial) 2nd floor to my Berkeley home and, when the first oil shock and boycott came down, considered ways to minimize heating oil and power needs. It led first to designing a greenhouse roof garden, then a likely way to concentrate sunlight. That looked too important to confine to my house, so I discussed it with colleagues at the lab, where energy and food production were now at the top of research priorities.

We came up with ways that should have made possible solar power generation for rural communities competitively with conventional utility power in many locations, in conjunction with intensive food production; without requiring major prior research, thus in the mid 1970s.

That sounded far out at the time, even for well informed people, but we were in an unusual position with respect to location (et al). Working as we did for the people as whole (we thought), we could discuss the difficulties honestly with a view to finding solutions. Among the main difficulties generally cited against wide solar feasibility was that large areas had to be covered with collectors and that these had to be heavy and tough to withstand the weather. But we were going to have them very light in food producing greenhouses, suspended over the crops and allow the part of the light spectrum required for photosynthesis (especially the red) to pass through the collection system. To the objection of solar radiation being too diffuse (low energy density), the answer was to concentrate (focus) the light onto a narrow tube through which a fluid is passed to carry the heat energy converted there to a heat exchanger for steam, then power generation by conventional turbines; or without the latter for thermal use.

The big problem then was supposed to be that focussing devices were very expensive, parabolic mirror troughs $200- $500 per square meter, (Fresnel) lenses even more. But that is where our expertise with polymeric material provided a decisive basic innovation; that very thin, light lenses would be inexpensive to produce by extrusion and embossing as they emerge from the extrusion die:

For pertinent text go here.

Why Don't We Have Solar Power Now?

The anti-solar interests evidently were taken by surprise, and they had to clamp down so fast and decisively that they didn't conceal their misdeeds. When we didn't take the hints and "stayed the course" (rather than cut and run) they began collective punishment, first against our whole research group, including those with no involvement in the solar project, and it didn't stop there. I won't go into details here (but many are available, e.g. in parts linked to). The diagrams above are from a solar summary attached to a 1980 request for an inquiry by the Human Rights Commission of the UN in Geneva (where the same people called the shots. The owners of the US government were "influential" abroad, too; still are). The diagrams had not yet been drawn that neatly (and no motion).

[ To view a larger, more detailed version of this image click on it. If you are using Internet Explorer, click then on the icon at the lower right of the resulting image. ]

The box above about the lenses is from the USDA's Agricultural Research of February 1978, It is a good feature of an article already meant as distortion, and appeared after the group had been told their jobs would be abolished, in an illegal manner. That issue of the journal was not available, as it usually was, at the visitors' entrance room to the lab. It had a photo of colleague Glen Bailey on the cover, behind a Fresnel lens we had "developed" in the few hours of commercial extrusion time allowed; and misinformed on in Lovins' Soft Energy Notes. Other parts of that solar summary can be found starting here .

The most widely heard complaint against almost all solar sources, including direct sun energy (sunnergy?), is that they are intermittent, thus require expensive storage. In our version, storage is cheaper than for "flat plate" and can be minimized, or eliminated, by wider use of the biomass (alcohol) which otherwise just serves for superheating steam.

The last time I wrote to compare different solar technologies , I evaluated the fuel cell as the important new thing. That seems to have been based in part on the hype then around it. But I still wouldn't discard it to the extent now prevalent. With it, other ways, such as windpower and photovoltaics (PV), would also turn into non intermittent technologies. Even without, PV with lens-focused light would probably have been able to compete widely for a long time by now, if not prevented by the dirty competition.

Vancity and Necessary Voices

Although I have been a member (and depositor) of Vancity, I found out about the Global Warming event through an e-mail from "Necessary Voices" which earlier had co-sponsored other interesting events. I had joined Vancity as soon as I found out about it; before becoming a Canadian citizen, first mainly because the cooperative aspect appeared strong, then because the people were so pleasant to deal with. I had been committed to cooperatives always as long as they were around, had met the love affair of my life (two decades) at a singles occasion of the Berkeley Co-op, which really was alive in the sixties. I considered trying to (co-)organize a solar inventors co-op against friendly advice. Necessary Voices had sponsored an event about co-ops and co-op education in Bologna (where my company in the British army had been among the earliest Allied troops toward the end of WWII. I tried to make contact with BC Cooperative HQ (just west of Granville Island). No sign of life, and I didn't broach it with my Vancity branch; maybe should have.

I had been asked by a colleague (Dr. Bob Lundin), whose wife was Co-op president (or candidate [I stand corrected; she won]) to write to the editor at the time of the California ballot initiative on nuclear safeguards. Other colleagues wanted to co-sign (with modification of details).

One of the Necessary Voices occasions was on/by BCSEA. I had vented some resentment about semantic tactics operated through the US Departmenrt of (Dirty, Obsolete) Energy (DoDOE) designed to make people forget solar. Thus the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), for which Glen Bailey had been invited to give the first seminar (on our work), was renamed Renewable (NREL) even though the sun is not renewable, nor needs to be; or the wind. If the few non solar (nor exhaustible) energies (like tidal) are to be included by the name, sustainable energy seemed preferable. Surprise: BCSEA turned out to stand not for Solar, but for Sustainable Energy Association. And I went with the likelihood that I would join. I didn't.

At the Italian Cultural Centre, where the two Global Warming talks were to be delivered, everything was well organized. A major challenge is that you get so used to all the Vancity people being friendly that you have to remind yourself to keep appreciating it. The speakers were good. William Rees, UBC professor applied system analysis to the human (and other) species, which didn't make us , or them, look very fit in any Darwinian sense. He was very persuasive in presenting evidence for global warming. Guy Dauncey, identified as writer and consultant, also presented his solutions and action required. It was a little too much, too fast, but while I still listened closely, I had only two marginal reservations.

More Motives, Same Solutions

Although I didn't need special persuasion on it, global warming certainly was a suitable topic to pick for the occasion. But if the solutions are indeed based on the clean, mainly solar, sources there are quite a few other problems served by the same solutions. I don't recall when the likelihood of global warming began to enter significantly into our considerations. Our main motives in the early 1970s was (1) the effects of dependence on an exhaustible energy source, the price and availability of which could be manipulated; and (2) especially for my insisting on "staying the course" in the face of the terror unleashed, was the imminent starvation of many millions , impressed upon me by Turner Alfrey (long before the first CNN Ethiopia show).

Other motives were obvious, still are, usually more so. The Exxon Valdez oil spill, with many to follow, now in front of the beautiful coast of Lebanon; the advisability of solar absorption cooling to prevent ozone layer depletion (before the Montreal conference and the Chinese crash program); the dangers from more nuclear fission reactors, not just in Iran, from which I feared especially the loss of democracy associated with them; or what I emphasized in the 80s, the flight of "3^rd World" peasants first to megalopolis slums, then to try to scale the fences/walls barring access to the "first"; with the likely increase in overt racial prejudice. That no longer has to be predicted. And the list could go on.

Let's end with the summarizing statement repeated often since the early 80s:

"What I know most surely, and am most clearly qualified to state categorically, is that solar energy could have been shown by existing (i.e. functioning) examples to be the best, immediately viable primary energy source for most of the U.S., for most people on earth, if it had not been obstructed deliberately and with powerful determination."

Uri Avnery, I.F. Stone, Yaari

I believe, and sure hope, that Uri Avnery is overdoing it when (in the passage quoted in the last paragraph of the preceding posting) he refers to the United States as the greatest enemy of the Moslem and Arab worlds. It's not really in the interest of Israelis to be its servants even if that's not all that accurate. In fact, US-Arab relations are probably better now than they will be next year.

Although we were both born in the same province of (1920s) Germany, we had come from very different early ideological backgrounds. But Avnery had moved from the "New Zionist" ultraright that wanted to conquer the land on both banks of the Jordan river by military force toward what is now The Left; while I moved from what was the mainstream Zionist far left that advocated a peaceful socialist bi-national state toward what I had begun to describe here in some detail. Lately that has amounted to a view of the Israeli-Palestinian problems pretty close to Avnery's stand. After a non-activist phase (that remains to be discussed) of more than half a century on those matters, I have now taken some actions. Thus I signed a petition for a boycott of products (et al) from the settlements in the occupied territories (which were designed to prevent an equitable peace with the Palestinians), but not a resolution for a boycott of Israel itself, which also included a really preposterous feature.

My abandonment of political activism (in disgust) barely preceded my first arrival in North America in 1950 to continue my interrupted studies. I still viewed myself as a left socialist and was known as such, one of few not to hide that during Joe McCarthy's heyday. It took no special heroism, since I had no intention of staying in the US after completing my studies; by which time it turned out that Joe McCarthy was finished; later also my determination to leave. I was completely preoccupied with my research, and the US system really seemed to work in the late fifties with labor unions achieving a lot for working people (and "the economy"). Most people still viewed me as Left, but I did not feel as part of what was called "The Movement" in Berkeley, though many of my friends were. Whether I learned the proper lessons from the savage reaction of the power "elite" to the easy way to solar power we came up with in our lab remains to be seen.

Not all that is termed left nowadays necessarily looks left to those familiar with earlier versions of the left. I don't know whether Uri Avnery is a socialist now, without which you would hardly have counted as really left, at least not in Europe or Israel about 1950. If I had to name someone of the left in the US then, I.F. Stone might be the first I would pick. I certainly felt close to his positions at the time. I am likely to have been somewhat more skeptical already about the Soviet Union (and associated parties) still deserving to be viewed as left. But on practical points, such as opposition to the anti-Soviet war cries, or McCarthyism, I tended to agree with him, probably in part influenced by his writing. Also, we had some causes in common during my activist past. And Stone liked Uri Avnery's attitude on the Arab Israeli conflict, at least at the time of the (1967) six day war.


Avnery and I.F. Stone
Inserted September 16, 2006:

Recently I came across a review ("Holy War") I.F.Stone wrote of the special issue of Les Temps Modernes about "The Israeli-Arab Conflict" , which Jean Paul Sartre happened to publish right about the time of the June 1967 "Six Day War" between Israel and three Arab states (written just before, published just after). I had the issue in my home library in Berkeley, but was still so unaware of Avnery's role that I don't recall reading his contribution. There was an article by Eliezer (Bauer) Beeri, our first guide (madrikh מדריך) in Hazorea, which was probably the reason I decided to buy it. In early 1941, he had been relieved of trying to educate me (and Yossel and the other two dozen or so) so he could devote himself full time to Arabic language, culture and understanding.

There were five contributions by Arabs from different countries and five by Jews, all but one Israelis, without interaction between the two sides. All were of their respective left or moderates, thus not in positions of power. In his review, I.F. Stone clearly views Avnery's attitude as the most likely to lead to peace. After describing Arab fears (e.g. as brought forth in M. Laroui's article) that Zionist aspirations to get all Jews to Israel would lead to expansionist pressures at the expense of the Palestinian(s) Arabs, he writes: "The suggestion that Israel abandon its supra-nationalist dream finds its only echo on the other side of this collection of essays in Israel's No. 1 maverick and champion of Arab rights, Uri Avnery".

There is a brief sketch of Avnery's record up to that time from which I still learned and most of which is quoted here. Having started on "the far nationalist right, as a member of the Irgun terrorist group..... he has since swung over to the far left of Israeli opinion, to the point where he is considered anti-nationalist.......in 1959 he formed an Israeli committee to aid the Algerian rebels. At one time he organized a movement which asserted that the Israelis were no longer Jews but "Canaanites" and therefore one with the Arabs, forcibly converted remnants of the same indigenous stock. When this far-out conception attracted few Jews and even fewer Canaanites, he formed a "Semitic Action" movement which has now become "the Movement of New Forces." This polled 1.2 percent of the vote in the 1965 elections and by virtue of proportional representation put Avnery into Parliament. Avnery has been more successful as a publisher. He has made his weekly Haolam Hazeh ("This World") the largest in Israel". I believe it continued publication until the 1990s.

"Avnery writes in Les Temps Modernes that he would turn Israel into a secular, pluralist, and multi-national state. He would abolish the Law of Return which gives every Jew the right to enter Israel and automatically become a citizen". But then toward the end: "Yet Avnery, who asks Israel to give up its Zionist essence, turns out to be a Jewish nationalist, too." This is not being cited because I agree with Stone on that, but to point to a difficulty that even he doesn't avoid; the different, often diametrically opposed, meanings that different people or groups attach to terms such as nationalism and Zionism.

In an Irish context, nationalists tended to be those who rejected division of the island based on majority religious heritage. More generally for countries that had been divided into many feudal fiefdoms, such as Germany, Italy, it had originally meant those favoring national unification; in countries that "belonged" to an imperial overlord, it meant those who sought liberation, while it stood for a supporter of fascist-like authoritarianism to regimes like that in the Germany Avnery left in 1933, we later. But Albert Einstein, a determined opponent of such regimes, also used the term in that sense. He emphasized that a major reason why he could support the Jewish upbuilding (Aufbau) project in (British Mandatory) Palestine was because the "nationalist" influence was so insignificant. That, of course, was long ago, even before Uri Avnery joined those "nationalists". Having read quite a bit of what he wrote lately, I don't believe he views himself as a nationalist now, surely not in that latter sense.

The word Zionism has been aquiring even more diverse, usually ideologically loaded, meanings. Avnery probably is now non-Zionist, like me (or possibly he considers himself anti-). When I was a Zionist I/we meant by it that we go/had gone "up" to the (pre-state) "Land of Israel" (Aliyah), as a vanguard of all Jews, without waiting for a Messiah to arrange it for us at the end of days; that we would rebuild the land from its desolation and be ourselves rebuild by it. Jews were now to be an enlightened nation rather than a religious community. Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism in the 1890s wanted a "Judenstaat", i.e. state of the Jews, not necessarily where the State of Israel is now, under the tutelage of an imperial power and governed like what educated turn of the (19-20th) century liberal Europeans aspired to. Some now, also on the left, think being a Zionist means to be an overmilitarized bully who likes to destroy Palestinian or Lebanese buildings or villages with their people, as played on television again recently.

By the latest official Israeli version I am aware of, a Zionist is a Jew who accepts "the centrality" of the State of Israel; and it is to be understood that this center includes everything, and that really all Jews are also Zionists. Shortly after the first Revisionist "New Zionist" terrorist became prime minister (Begin), I had to laugh when I was was "invited" in France to a meeting about Jews owing him ("Israel") l'inconditionalité. A Frenchman would not have to be prejudiced against Jews to find that outrageous. The corresponding term in the US is "100% for Israel", and its enforcers are not confined to that Zionist ultraright.

After Stone quotes Avnery writing that Herzl doesn't even mention Arabs in his Judenstaat book, he points to Akhad Ha-Am (whose "practical" or "spiritual" love of Zion preceded Herzl's idea) and his concern about the existing Arab population. "But as little attention was paid to him as was later accorded his successors in 'spiritual Zionism,' men like Buber and Judah Magnes who tried to preach Ichud 'unity,' i.e. with the Arabs".

Avnery, Stone and Meir Yaari
inserted up to September 21, 2006

Stone's judgment of the controversy over the origin of the Palestinian refugee problem looks very sound to me. Since he wrote, two more generations were born, the number of the
refugee population multiplied, and his complaint about Israeli indifference has to be understood with a view to the much smaller number of refugees then. "Even Meir Yaari, the head of Mapam, the leader of the 'Marxist' Zionists of Hashomer Hatzair, who long preached bi-nationalism, says Israel can only accept a minority of the Arab refugees because the essential reason for the creation of Israel was to 'welcome the mass of immigrant Jews returning to their historic fatherland!' If there is not room enough for both, the Jews must have precedence. This is what leads Gabran Majdalany, a Baath Socialist, to write that Israel is 'a racist state founded from its start on discrimination between Jew and non-Jew'."

He is more severe on Meir Yaari than I would have expected, even though I may have worse to criticise on other matters (not having been aware of this one). But Uri Avnery just published something related since I started this posting. Under the heading of Left, but...., initially about people who say they are of the left, but at the outset of the second Lebanon war in July found reason to support it (notably prominent Israeli writers, specifically "the trio" Amos Oz, A.B.Yehoshua and David Grossman), he first takes on the Israeli labor movement in general. He recalls that the Histadrut accepted no Arab members in pre-independence days and insisted on "Hebrew labor" in the Jewish enterprises. Underlying it is that "From the beginning of the Jewish Labor Movement in the country, the Left has suffered from an internal contradiction: it was both socialist and nationalist. Of the two components, nationalism was by far the more important".

Avnery sounds right, but.... What is he after? Why isn't he happy about these writers having come around to opposing the war which he had done from the outset. I am confident that I was ahead of Uri Avnery when as a member of the Histadrut in the early 40s I stood for acceptance of Arabs, but I see no reason why I shouldn't welcome his coming around to it. There are times when polarization, e.g. among those who prefer peace, is called for, but... why is this it?

He goes on first with the Kibbutzim in general: "That is true also for the most glorious of socialist creations: the kibbutz. No Arab was ever allowed to become a member. That was no accident: the kibbutzim saw themselves not only as a realization of a socialist dream, but also as fortresses in the Jewish struggle for the country". Then,

"The most leftist part of the kibbutz movement, Hashomer Hatsa'ir (the basis of the late Mapam party, now Meretz) had an official slogan: 'For Zionism, Socialism and the Brotherhood of Peoples'. The order was not accidental, either: it expressed the real priorities. Hashomer Hatsa'ir did indeed adore Stalin, 'the sun of the peoples', until his death, but its main creations were the settlements". Why this utter bullshit about the adoration of that sun?

Isn't he aware of the danger that if he (mis)informs people of something so completely devoid of reality, maybe they'll soon disbelieve all else he says. I am already beginning to doubt that he really was born in Westphalia, even that there is a place called Beckum there. During my four years of "Volksschule" in Dortmund, the largest metropolis in all the erstwhile kingdom, we had a big map of Westphalia next to the blackboard, and I recall no evidence of something called Beckum; nor ever heard of it. And surely, if the Dortmunders had to seek superior wisdom, they might send to Cologne, or Worms, Amsterdam; but Beckum?

Anyway, the family is supposed to have left Westphalia for Hanover. Take a look at the table below of the football (soccer) Bundesliga {I am deleting most of that months later. It was too elaborate a practical joke even when set down, and is meaningless now when Hanover had risen to about the middle of the league.

Platz Mannschaft ges G U V Tore Diff. Punkte

1 FC Nürnberg 3 2 1 0 4:0 +4 7

18 Hannover 96 3 0 0 3 2:11 -9 0


That's where Uri learned to play ball. Of course every football team may at some point be at the bottom of the heap, but with more than 5 times the number of goals lost than gained, and the same for weeks on end! Could that represent the fate of the peace movement, if Avnery becomes its sole leader; if that is the point of knocking all the "Left, But..."s. Let's hope, meanwhile assume, that some of his September writing has been a fleeting aberration.

As to the adoration of the Stalinesque "sun of the peoples" , let me recount that after several years as an independent non-Zionist socialist, I joined Mapam in early 1948. It had just been founded "on the basis of" not just the Hashomer Hatza'ir, but also of Akhdut Avodah (or B Faction of Mapai) and the much smaller, but prestigious Po'aley Zion Left (plus, e.g., the "Socialist League", a sort of City Auxiliary of the Hashomer Hatza'ir ; which thus could remain purely a youth- and Kibbutz- organization). At a meeting of the First Seminar of Mapam "Young Brigade" Activists in Tel Aviv, the chairman asked if anyone knew Preminger (later Peri}, one of the three Communist members of the first Knesset, just constituted.

I was the only one who knew him, originally from the short period in 1942 when I had thought of joining, but more from his coming to meet a co-worker (Oskar, an old Vienna friend of his, also party member). The story was that he and his faction in the party was thinking of quitting and possibly joining Mapam; and that they were meeting nearby right then to discuss it. Will I go and try to pull them in. A group of them had been in Yugoslavia on some solidarity work project when overnight Tito was turned from major hero to utter villain and his party thrown out of the Cominform, the successor of the Communist (3rd) International. I agreed, and a character called Benni said he'll come along. I did what I could to make them join. After a few days they did.
So I could claim (assuming that my spiel had been what done it) to have won one Knesset member for my cause, just like Uri Avneri. But that brought the total Mapam representation to 20, more than he (or Mapam) will ever get in the future (I dare predict). What is significant here, however, is that welcoming such Tito lovers excludes the possibility of Avneri's bull about adoration of Tito's mortal enemy (as do other things like the torture of Oren in Stalin's Prague).

A short time later, as I prepared to leave for study in the US, Benni came up to me on the street to say that Mapam wants me to infiltrate the CP in the US. That is what made me abandon political activism for decades. 1 1/2 years earlier, one of my first assignments when I got to my (11th) batallion was to go through a card file, where I discovered that Eli Simon had been killed in action at Nebi Yusha. People who had been with the batallion during that time told me how he died, the clearest case I am aware of of the popular conception of a heroic soldier. There is a sense of solidarity with anyone I had a fighting association with, and that seems to be the norm. But he had also stopped me years earlier, when I was 16-17, on Haifa's Masada street and we had a long friendly conversation, although he was by several years my senior, and he knew I had decided not to join the PKP, of which he was a highly respected member. That was the decisive reason for disregarding the Benni assignment Also, part of what repelled me in the Communist practice was that they engaged in stuff like that; and I didn't think Mapam did.

Years later, it occurred to me that Benni most likely didn't act forMapam. They sure had more appropriate people to try to persuade me. So what did he really represent?

For What did the Bell Toll

Many in Israel now believe that the US government's role has not been to moderate Israeli militaristic tendencies, and that it may really have been interested, possibly directly involved, in fostering them. There is not only apprehension of some about the possible loss of American confidencc and largesse following the Lebanon failures, but also the misgivings of those who resent that this is what the vaunted hard won independence has come to.

The New york Times' Steven Erlanger reported on August 13 that "Itamar Rabinovich, a former ambassador to Washington, said bluntly: Two notions have died. First, unilateralism, and second, separation by the fence. Missiles dwarf the fence. Israelis also fear there has been damage done to their relationship with the United States, where some may complain that the Israelis were given time to clobber Hezbollah and did not get the job done. Mr. Rabinovich is more sanguine. Part of the reckoning will be our reputation as a strategic partner, when we tell the Americans, Give us the tools and we’ll do the job,’ he said".

Doron Rosenblum asserts in Haaretz: "Israel is not Sparta, and this is a good thing. It was not established in order to be a spearhead against global Islam, or in order to serve as an alert squad for the Western world. It was established in order to live in it" (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/751959.html) .

The converse, also in Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/749293.html: "For decades, Israel has enjoyed an extremely close relationship with the United States. These ties have grown even stronger during George W. Bush's presidency. Israeli leaders should not, however, take American support for granted. There is, of course, a tremendous reservoir of good will and genuine affection for Israel among Americans; but sentiment and habit alone are not a sufficient basis for an enduring U.S.-Israel alliance. The hard truth is that Israel must appear to be, and be, a winner in order to remain a valuable strategic partner for the United States". The authors of that are apparently not Israeli, but what in current parlance are called "friends of Israel", in Washington, DC. But Israeli examples, not much less brutally stated, to this effect also abound.
Comment #10 to that article came from Langley (probably the one outside Vancouver): "Title: puppet army? Name: Duncan City: Langley State: Canada: "Israel has to win, to remain uncle sam`s favourite puppet? Most nations would be deeply offended by this article. Imagine your sons and daughters are dying to maintain Israel`s fielty to its overlord in Washington. If Israel made peace with its neighbours, it could do without Washington`s blood money".

Many believe that the liberation of the two soldiers abducted by Hezbullah was not the reason, but rather the pretext, for Israeli operations planned well (though badly) in advance and for the benefit largely of American military strategists, possibly with them. That could have been to show that a regular army can defeat a guerrilla one, contrary to predominant thinking / experience; and that an aerial bombing campaign can be militarily decisive by itself. That would also help explain why an air force officer (Halutz) had been picked as Tzahal's Chief of Staff for the first time ever.

Following a very difficult operation with most casualties (33 killed), started after passage of the UN cease fire resolution (1701), there was griping "when the soldiers heard the words of several senior officers. 'This was a Battle of Awareness against the Hizbullah' an unnamed senior officer told Yediot Aharonot two days ago [August 14]. 'We have proven that this legend, as if a regular army cannot fight guerillas, is not true'."

American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh does not hide that Hizbullah's largely Iranian armaments presented a real danger, but he also writes ( http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060821fa_fact ) in the New Yorker: "despite calls from several governments for the United States to take the lead in negotiations to end the fighting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that a ceasefire should be put off until "the conditions are conducive." The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground".

Uri Avnery asks ( http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1156064172 ): "What made the trio Olmert-Peretz-Halutz decide to start a war only a few hours after the capture of the two soldiers? - Was it agreed with the Americans in advance to go to war the moment a credible pretext presented itself? - Did the Americans push Israel into the war, and, later on, demand that it go on and on as far as possible? - Was it Condoleezza Rice who decided in fact when to start and when to stop? - Did the US want to get us entangled with Syria? - Did the US use us for its campaign against Iran?"
Elsewhere ( http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1156640109 ) he calls for serious consideration of Syrian president Assad's statement that "Every new Arab generation hates Israel more than the previous one." ....(later on, Avnery again) ....The Second Lebanon War is considered by many as a "War by Proxy". That's to say: Hizbullah is the Dobermann of Iran, we are the Rottweiler of America. Hizbullah gets money, rockets and support from the Islamic Republic, we get money, cluster bombs and support from the United States of America" (which he concedes to be an exaggeration).
"What interest do we have to get involved in this struggle? What interest do we have in being regarded - accurately - as the servants of the greatest enemy of the Muslim world in general and the Arab world in particular? We want to live here in 100 years, in 500 years. Our most basic national interests demand that we extend our hands to the Arab nations that accept us, and act together with them for the rehabilitation of this region. That was true 59 years ago, and that will be true 59 years hence".