timelines are more about myths than truth

where does one start in a timeline with the palestian/israel coinflict, this one begins where the Israelis say that it started. It ignores the beginnings of the current conflict, the deaths on a beach of a palestinian family from Israeli artillery fire which caused Hamas to call off its truce. The American/Israel lobby wins again and no one bats an eyelid.


Where is the moral equivilance or fairness when the NYT can devote numerous columns to the deaths of 9 israelis in Haifia, then brush off the deaths of over 70 civilians in Lebanon with barely a line.

"They yesterday heard an Israeli Radio broadcast of an ultimatum, demanding the evacuation of southern Lebanon.

"We hear shells and aeroplanes and bombing on the village and we don't know what's happening outside, if people are being killed or houses are being destroyed. We can't move," she told The Age last night.

"(Bang) Can you hear that? (Bang) That's bombing. If we leave by car, they will shell the car. That's what they did to the 20 people from Marwahin. You feel that you're not safe, even if you leave the house.

"(Bang) Can you hear that? It's within the village, within 500 metres of our house.



I know that the answers are not cut and dried, but to declare one side guilty while ignoring the abuses on the other as GW did at the G8 summit smacks of fairly typical hypocrisy that has become a natural hallmark of the US position in the middle east. The US is marginallized in this whole affair because the Israelis will simply ignore any calls for restraint (and the calls from the US asre about as meek as one can imagine), knowing that they will receive unconditional backing no matter what they may do, where as Arab/Palestinian calls will be roundly rejected. To then tie this all into the continueing call for military action against Iran (and from some Syria) smacks of the Iraq misadventurre all over again. The road to peace in the middle east did not lie through Bagdhad, it has always been through the rubble strewn, blockaded checkpoints of the Westbank and Gaza.

For Condellese Rice to say over the weekend that that area is simply in flux is too gruesome for words, and for her to also say that the Iraq invasion has made the area safer, more stable and that these current events are just long awaited deck chair rearrangements that needed to be carried out is just, to use her word, "grotesque"



from the "anti-semetic" BBC





for the opposite side, which blames hamas for the massacre, and for lots of excuses for many more massacres: