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
Democratic Left Movement (Lebanon) Atallah was expelled from the party on 26 September of that year. These activists who split from the LCP along with the leftist student groups and the intellectuals with no prior affiliation to the LCP, formed the Democratic Left Movement. An initial "temporary preparatory committee" for the movement emerged, which issued statements critical of Syrian intervention in Lebanon and called for the birth of a new left. In September 2004, the Democratic Left Movement was officially established. On 17 October, at a ceremony commemorating its foundation attended by figures across the political spectrum, Elias Atallah declared that the movement was