Editorials

As much as the loss of innocent life universally provokes grief, horror, and rage, never is this more so than when the victims are children killed in cold calculation by adults. Even before Mohamed Merah had been tracked down to an apartment in Toulouse, the names and images of some of his victims had been [...]

Qais Azimy, a senior producer for Al Jazeera in Afghanistan, acknowledges that his outlet like most others, neglected to pay much attention to the victims in the recent massacre. In the days following the rogue US soldier’s shooting spree in Kandahar, most of the media, us included, focused on the “backlash” and how it might [...]

When it comes to press coverage, analysis, commentary, and blogging on the Arab Spring, objectivity has been a rare commodity — no more so than in the case of reporting the unrest/revolution/rebellion/civil war in Syria. The difficulty in getting a clear picture of what’s happening inside a country now wracked by violence — a country [...]

Correction: As a reader pointed out, the report I linked to at Haaretz is from 2009. My mistake. The 66 percent American Jewish support for an Israeli attack on Iran comes from the 2009 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion conducted by the American Jewish Committee. The 2011 survey puts that level of support at [...]

Over three days after 16 Afghan citizens were murdered, U.S. military officials have still not revealed the identity of the American soldier who is believed to have shot them. Earlier today the Associated Press reported: Afghan lawmakers have demanded that the shooter, identified by U.S. officials as a staff sergeant, face a public trial inside [...]

“The United States takes this as seriously as if it was our own citizens, and our children, who were murdered,” President Obama said today, referring to the 16 Afghan citizens who were apparently killed by a single American soldier before dawn on Sunday morning. “We’re heartbroken over the loss of innocent life.” Yet more than [...]

The latest round of violence was triggered by Israel’s assassination of Zuhair al-Qaisy secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees along with two associates in an airstrike on Gaza yesterday. Ynet reported: Minister of Home Front Defense Matan Vilnai stressed on Saturday that “the IDF is not planning on launching another military campaign in Gaza. “This [...]

After Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting at the White House with Barack Obama on Monday, Haaretz reported: The Iran issue was the focus of the talks. It permeated everything from the agenda of the one-on-one meeting to Netanyahu’s gift to Obama: a decorated copy of the Book of Esther, which will be read tomorrow night and Thursday [...]

Haaretz reports: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested the United States approve the sale of advanced refueling aircraft as well as GBU-28 bunker-piercing bombs to Israel during a recent meeting with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, a top U.S. official said on Tuesday. The American official said that U.S. President Barack Obama instructed Panetta to work directly [...]

The prominent Israeli Zionist, Rafael Castro, presents an interesting argument in Ynet. (Over at Mondoweiss there’s a discussion on whether this piece should have appeared in Ynet or The Onion — tough call.) And as for who this Castro really is? Who knows, but dafter ideas do with some frequency come from the mouths of [...]

Here’s a mangled piece of reporting from Josef Federman at the Associated Press. First the snippet, then the corrections: Israel’s foreign minister said Sunday that American pressure will not affect Israeli thinking on how to cope with the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Avigdor Lieberman delivered his assessment on the eve of a key [...]