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
1995 kidnapping of Western tourists in Kashmir 1995 kidnapping of Western tourists in Kashmir Six Western tourists were kidnapped by Al-Faran, a Kashmiri Islamist militant organisation from the Liddarwat area of Pahalgam in the Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir on 4 July 1995. In 1989, an armed insurgency started in Jammu and Kashmir. The six victims included two British tourists, Keith Mangan (from Middlesbrough) and Paul Wells; two Americans, John Childs of Simsbury, Connecticut and Donald Hutchings of Spokane, Washington; a German, Dirk Hasert; and a Norwegian, Hans Christian Ostrø. Mangan's and Hutchings' wives were left behind by the kidnappers as their husbands were abducted. A