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 that all four hostages had been shot dead on 13 December 1995, nine days after an Indian military ambush that killed four of the original hostage-takers, including the man said to have been leading them, Abdul Hamid Turki. Journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark claim hoewver, in their book "The Meadow", that the remaining hostages were sold from Al-Faran to Ghulam Nabi Mir, also known as Azad Nabi, who held them for months before shooting them death on 24 December 1995. Ghulam Nabi Mir was at the time leader of pro-Indian Islamic guerilla group Muslim Mujahedin, a fraction of Hizbul