Anderson Cooper's live report from the heart of Gaza was interrupted early Sunday morning when a large explosion nearly blew his broadcast off the air.
There's been a whole lot of cognitive dissonance going on in the Middle East on Sunday, as violence — and the death toll — continues to escalate despite reported efforts by both sides to reach a ceasefire. Today, an Israeli strike in Gaza City aimed at a militant allegedly involved in rocket attacks against Israel killed 12 Palestinians. According to a Palestinian health official, the 12 dead included five women and four children, and the Israeli Defense Force admitted that the targeted Hamas commander was not injured.
As the violence between Israel and Palestine headed into its fifth day last night, owner of various awful news properties Rupert Murdoch asked a very thought-provoking and interesting question about the media's coverage of the conflict.
Fighting between Israel and the Palestinian people entered its fourth day today, and eight Palestinians were killed by Israeli fighter jets targeting Hamas government compounds, tunnels and transformers. That brought the overall death toll to at least 45, with all but three of those being Palestinians.
Operation Pillar of Defense (or Pillar of Cloud if you're Israeli), the worst conflict between Israel and Gaza since 2008, escalated overnight as the IDF continued to strike dozens of targets inside the Strip, resulting in dozens of rockets being fired by Palestinian militants at Israeli towns and villages.
If you speak Hebrew, the Israeli Defense Forces would like you to refer to the wave of assassination strikes it commenced in Gaza today as "Pillar of Cloud," a Biblical reference to the form God adopted in order to protect the Children of Israel and strike terror into the heart of Egyptians. If you speak English, it would prefer you to use the less fanatical "Pillar of Defense."
Following four days of intensive rocket strikes from the Gaza Strip on neighboring towns and villages, and just hours after an Egypt-mediated truce, Israel announced it was launching a "widespread campaign" to root out "terror sites and operatives in the Gaza Strip, chief among them Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets."
Two Sundays ago, the New York Times ran an article about Mitt Romney and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The two have known each other for about 35 years. They went through Boston Consulting Group's "boot camp" together. They "can almost speak in shorthand." They finish each other's sentences and once accidentally ate from opposite ends of the same long strand of spaghetti. Their lives are an endless geopolitical meet-cute: Romney wants to run the nuclear big-box store of the United States, but he has enough love in his heart that he'd never crush the beautiful Middle Eastern shop around the corner.
[Israel has begun to expel the pro-Palestine activists it rounded up in a Monday raid on a flotilla of boats carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, currently under an Israeli blockade. Nine activists were killed by Israeli commandos. Pic via AP]
