The Middle East: Thousands of years of beef and bloodshed. But as world citizens we must always remain engaged. Except when we can't be. The BBC and Al Jazeera are the only major foreign media currently carrying reports from inside the Gaza Strip. Guess you could count on the Twitter feeds for updates -- but not on Facebook. Israel is not allowing foreign journalists to enter Gaza during its campaign against Hamas, although the Israeli high court has already ruled it must. The group blog KABOBFest, pondering what you might call refugees refugeeing from refugee camps, highlights this harrowing Al Jazeera report from inside a make-shift Gazan civilians' camp at a United Nations school. Could this be the same school struck by Israel on Tuesday, killing at least 40 people?
A bit of a Mexican angle: Fresh (again) to the U.N. Security Council, Mexico through its foreign ministry called on both sides to make cease-fire and officially complained against what it deems Israel's "excessive use of force"; Subcomandante Marcos condemns the Israeli operation; and a war-nut at Israeli newspaper Haaretz comes up with a specious and unmerited Mexico-Texas analogy. Here in Mexico City, awful photos of dead Gazan children are being splashed upon the most red-note of the red-note dailies.
From inside Gaza, Haaretz correspondent Amira Hass, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, writes on a family trapped in their bombed-out home, bleeding for hours. The IDF wouldn't let them leave to seek help. Hundreds of thousands have no water. Read The New York Times's Tuesday editorial on the conflict for a cogent mainline analysis. But the two people who everyone should really be listening to right now is Queen Noor and Queen Rania, of Jordan. (Her Majesty has a YouTube channel.)