Promoted by Steven D. Title says it all. We get all excited in our media when Saddam is captured or Zarqawi killed, or Abu Ghraib is exposed, but only for a brief moment, then we hit the snooze button. Rarely does our media highlight the underlying basis for why much of the Arab world despises us, and that has to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like it or not, Israel is seen as an American puppet (or we’re seen as an Israeli one) in the Arab street.
The least we can do is take notice of the stories that incite them against America. Our media likes to simplify the world for us: over here are the good guys (Israel) , and over here are the terrorists (Palestinians). So they only pay attention to the conflict when the good guys are attacked, not when the bad guys get blown up. The reality is, as you know, more complex than that, and we desperately need to understand both sides of this conflict.
GAZA (Reuters) – Islamic militant group Hamas called off a 16-month-old truce with Israel after attacks blamed on Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians, including children playing on a beach.
Israel’s army, which had been shelling northern Gaza to curb rocket fire by militants, said it was investigating the deaths.
…
Renewed violence could bury Western hopes of pressuring Hamas to soften its stand and raise questions over a referendum that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas planned on a statehood proposal implicitly recognizing Israel.
“The Israeli massacres represent a direct opening battle,” Hamas’s armed wing said in a statement echoed by its political leaders.
- “The earthquake in the Zionist cities will resume and the herds of occupiers have no choice but to prepare the coffins or the departing luggage.”
Palestinian officials said Israeli air strikes and artillery fire killed 10 Palestinians in Gaza, the highest Palestinian toll in a single day since 2004. Seven people, including five from the same family, were killed in what Palestinian officials said was Israeli shellfire from boats on to a crowded beach.
Among the dead were three children, aged 1, 3 and 10. Their sister, who had been swimming, survived. Twenty people were wounded. Covered in blood, children screamed as adults carried the wounded and dead from the sand.
Ten Palestinian civilians, including five children, died from shellfire as they were picnicking on a northern Gaza beach and 45 persons were wounded in the attack.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
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