Newsworthy

A quick survey of European and US media outlets this morning shows a paucity of news about Israel right now.

If there is news about the near east, it is presented in the following order:

1. How the social justice protests (AKA tent protests) in Israel are analogous of the 'Arab Spring' uprisings.

2. How Israel continues to attack Gaza with helicopter gunships and drones (not to mention the ongoing 'illegal blockade')

3. Occasionally buried in the second category of Israel-related news, somewhere after the third or fourth paragraph, is sometimes a mention of how Israel's attacks on Gaza are actually a retaliation for a renewal (did it ever really stop?) of terrorist rocket fire aimed at Israeli towns and cities. But even then it is framed in the tired, equovical language of 'the cycle of violence' which makes both sides seem equally culpable.

What almost nobody outside of Israel is reporting (at least not prominently) is that the rockets/missiles being fired from Gaza are now long range 'Grad' Ketyusha type weapons that are landing in/near large cities such as Ashqelon and Kiryat Gat... nowhere near the Gaza border.

So far the IDF response to these deliberate attacks on Israeli civilian population centers has been to bomb arms smuggling tunnels and other purely military targets.

But given that Hamas deliberately blurs the lines between military and civilian enclaves in Gaza... it is only a matter of time before the front page of the Guardian, New York Times and LA Times have color photos of poor, dead Palestinian civilians in Gaza as a result of Israel's brutal 'war crimes' because, well, that's newsworthy!