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The executive order would affect doctors and hospitals serving the Medicare population of elderly Americans and people served by any other federally financed service.

It would require those health providers to join with the government to standardize the requirements for information technology systems coming into their facilities; set standards for care of specific health problems; and develop uniform methods of measuring and reporting the outcomes of treatments.

The brazen nature of the initial Hizbollah operation, coupled with the fact that it closely followed Hamas’s capture of one of its soldiers, lent it, in Israeli eyes, an entirely new meaning. Fearing a dangerous erosion of its military deterrence on two fronts simultaneously, the new government quickly escalated in an effort to achieve decisive outcomes against its adversaries. Hizbollah followed suit, for the first time launching rockets deep into Israel. Step by rapid step, the stakes and nature of the conflict have shifted: Israel increasingly sees it as a battle for its and the region’s future; Hizbollah – torn between its identity as a Lebanese/Shiite movement and a messianic Arab-Islamist one – has increasingly slipped into the latter. On both sides, a tactical fight is metamorphosing into an existential war.

The key to managing this conflict, therefore, is to ensure it reverts to more manageable size by producing a ceasefire that puts an immediate, reciprocal end to attacks.

AMY GOODMAN: And the rationale of the Israeli government in Lebanon, that Hezbollah has been raining down missiles in northern Israel and that they have to protect the Israeli people and protect them for all time by routing out Hezbollah?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: You know, it's insanity, and it's a lie because my government now is refusing to cease fire. How can you in one hand cry about missiles that are attacking yourself, you, your family in Haifa, in Afula, in Kiryat Shmona, and at the same time refuse to cease fire? The same aspiration, the same idea that you can just kill and annihilate all of Hezbollah is the same logic of Nasrallah, that will kill all Israel or this kind of nonsense. And there is a lot of mental disorder issues here. And that's why I don't think that the solution for this situation will come from within the Israeli politics. That's why we have to work both from external pressure and internal pressure. The external pressure will be led by Israelis and Jewish people around the world with all the other human rights activists, and the internal pressure will be led by soldiers who refuse to participate in these war crimes.

you mentioned this private meeting you had with General Halutz. We see him on the news a lot now talking about Lebanon. What transpires? Just you and him?

YONATAN SHAPIRA: Yeah, we were -- me and him -- in his commander's room, and he's a very charismatic person. Therefore, I think he's very dangerous. In that meeting, we discussed the whole issues and the situation in our country. I told him that I believe that these are war crimes and I do not want to participate in them and I think that he should, as well, not participate and not order any people to go to participate in those missions. I told him also that I believe that if Israel decided to occupy Palestinians, Israel is responsible for the life of the civilians, if Israel is responsible for the life, not just of the Israelis, but also the Palestinians. And then, in answering, he told me how he sees the different value of human beings, when Israeli citizens is on top, then Israeli soldiers, then Palestinian civilians and then Palestinian fighters.

And as a Jewish person who is also from a family that suffered lots and lost a lot in the Holocaust, and I was raised to be aware and not to follow any kind of racist leaders, I think that now it's very important to be mentioned that these leaders, this guy, this specific commander, is so dangerous for us, and Jewish people from all around the world must wake up and understand that in order to support Israel, in order to make sure that Israel will continue to exist, we must stop these guys. We must stop them, because now they continue to lead soldiers.

Young soldiers are being recruited today, and I saw just in the news how the commander, the same commander, is receiving them and hugging them, and sometimes I feel like it's something like sacrifying some [inaudible], some kind of worshiping, and in some way -- if I can say just last thing about the Jewish community here in the United States, some people say that instead of worshiping God, the Jewish God, the Jewish community here -- not all of them, but some of them -- are worshiping Israel, and this is very dangerous.