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 after similar movements in Italy and Germany, and Franco's Phalangist movement in Spain.) and played an instrumental role in the establishment of Lebanon as an independent state. During the Greater Lebanon period, two Jewish newspapers were founded, the Arabic language "Al-Alam al-Israili" (the Israelite World) and the French "Le Commerce du Levant", an economic periodical which still publishes (though it is now owned by non-Jews). The Jewish community of Beirut evolved in three distinct phases. Until 1908, the Jewish population in Beirut grew by migration from the Syrian interior and from other Ottoman cities like Izmir, Salonica, Istanbul, and Baghdad.