International reactions to the 2006 Lebanon War 39% disapproved, and 16% were not sure. When asked to think about the events of the past week in the Middle East, 54% of Americans answered that their sympathies are more with Israel, 11% answered more with Arab nations, 11% both, 11% neither, and 13% not sure. In August 2006, University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer accused Israel of using the kidnapping of its soldiers by Hezbollah as an excuse to attack Lebanon and start the 2006 Lebanon War. Mearsheimer stated that "Israel had been planning to strike at Hezbollah for months. Key Israelis had briefed the administration about
History of the Jews in Lebanon an open society tolerant of Judaism, none of the Jews involved in the project agreed to be identified, nor were the non-Jewish construction workers willing to show their faces or be photographed. The international media and even some members of the Jewish community (in and out of Lebanon) questioned who would pray there. The self-declared head of the Jewish Community Council, Isaac Arazi, who left Lebanon in 1983, eventually came forward but refused to show his face on camera in a television interview, fearing that his business would suffer if clients knew they had been dealing with a Jew. Philanthropist