Meanwhile, on p. A17

All hell is breaking loose in Lebanon.

Now, I would like to state for the record that I really have no idea what is going on in Nahr-el-Bared at the moment. One man was quoted as saying that his house inside the 'refugee camp' was taken over by four foreign Fatah Islam fighters, one from Saudi, one from Yemen, and one from Sudan...for all I know, this is perfectly factual and the whole place really is crawling with terrorist fighters from all over the Muslim world, or for all I know, this guy's accent recognition is a little off, and this is just more neighborhood infighting, or possibly... I just don't know.

But what seems clear is that the whole damn place is in serious trouble, there's shooting in the streets, some unknown number of Palestinian civilians is dead, at least fifteen thousand people have been displaced (or displaced 'again', as they see it), from a place that they called home, even if it is in a country that denies them citizenship, or the right to practice middle-class professions. And the world seems pretty OK with this, at least to judge by the tucking of the whole story back in the latter pages of the newspaper's world news section, and the fact that none of the leftish media sites usually obsessed with Palestinian suffering seem to feel any need to cover the situation at all.

I am not even being snarky about this--well, yes I am. If Israel were doing as Lebanon is doing, we would have bells, whistles, and a parade down Market Street about it. But it's pretty shabby of the anti-Semites of the world to so obviously lose interest in their stalking goats when they're being shot at by other Arabs, who obviously must have a really good reason, like national survival, or a terrorist threat or something. I mean, the U.S. is even giving the Lebanese military equipment! You'd think this would count for something, at least with the hard-core left.

(Well, no, you wouldn't. I note that at A.N.S.W.E.R.'s site, they're upset that people are demanding U.S. intervention in Darfur when the U.S. is still collaborating with Israel to destroy the Palestinian people. I have an idea. Can we send some Israeli troops to Darfur to move around refugees and set up checkpoints? I mean, they could just set up checkpoints, and maybe do some humanitarian aid, but as soon as it happened, all my neighborhood nutjobs would demand that something be done RIGHT away. Maybe this would be a good job for conscientious objectors or something.)

Sheesh.