(BBN Editors Note - We have received emails from members stateside and abroad who are frustrated about what they see as the imbalanced news coverage of the Israeli conflict in Gaza, and the incessant bombing of civilians including Palestinian children, women and men. The frustration is with U.
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Fighting between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian gunmen scared Palestinian schoolgirls in the West Bank city of Nablus as they crouched in the hallway while there was gunfire outside the school. One person on each side of the gun battle died in the fighting.
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(hupo) Helen Thomas was the dean of the White House Press corp. She has a fifty-year history of tough-minded journalism and is one of the very, very few journalists in the mainstream press who has had the guts to question US policy towards Israel. On Monday she was pressured into resigning, "effective immediately". On Friday she was asked by a guy who stuck a video camera in her face for any comments on Israel and she said, "Tell them to get the get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people [the Palestinians] are occupied and it's their land.  More...

BBN linked to Al Jazeera English for extended coverage and diverse perspective of Israel attack on Gaza and the continuous conflict. . . . .  More...

(nyt) THE shocking level of the last wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence, which ended with this weekend’s cease-fire, reminds us why a final resolution to the so-called Middle East crisis is so important. It is vital not just to break this cycle of destruction and injustice, but also to deny the religious extremists in the region who feed on the conflict an excuse to advance their own causes. But everywhere one looks, among the speeches and the desperate diplomacy, there is no real way forward. A just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians is possible, but it lies in the history of the people of this conflicted land, and not in the tired rhetoric of partition and two-state solutions. Although it’s hard to realize after the horrors we’ve just witnessed, the state of war between the Jews and Palestinians has not always existed.  More...

(nydn) A member of the famed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was forced to display his fleet-footed skills to convince Israeli airport security he was no Islamic terrorist. New Yorker Abdur-Rahim Jackson said he was detained Sunday at the Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv because security officials were suspicious of his Muslim first name. Jackson, 31, who is African-American, said he was grilled about his name and asked twice to dance before he was allowed to enter the country. "It was really an embarrassing and unpleasant position to be in," Jackson said Tuesday. "To be greeted like this because of my name, it took me back a little bit.  More...

(ajz) Gaza's one-and-a-half million residents have been struggling to cope without electricity and other necessities on the fourth day of an Israeli blockade. As hospitals began to run short of power and sewage spilled on to the streets, Israel's prime minister said he would "not allow a humanitarian crisis in Gaza". On Monday evening, Israel said that it would allow some deliveries of fuel and medicine into the territory on Tuesday. Ehud Olmert promised that humanitarian aid would reach "hospitals, clinics, young children and helpless people", but did not say when. But Olmert also said that he had no intentions of letting Gazans "live comfortable and pleasant lives" until rocket attacks from the territory ceased.  More...