The NYT's top story, "Israelis and Palestinians Clash Despite Cease-Fire," is notable for its brevity. It's as though journalists and editors are already saying: We give up, what else can we add, this story is never-changing, just as the insanity of the slaughter is endless--an insanity that includes such unextraordinary obscenities as, "Palestinian witnesses said by telephone that Israeli tank shells hit as residents returned to inspect homes that they had evacuated."
God--Yahweh and Allah, one in the celestial same--is, as usual, sanctioning the one-sided slaughter. Praise Jesus, His diplomatic Will be done. Allah sounds more like His Old Testament self in Saudi Arabia and Egypt these days, while in Qatar and Turkey, Allah's schizophrenia is in miraculous remission. The pious beseech, and so far the realpolitik of all their kneeling, prostrating, carpet-laying and candle-lighting is a biblical rout of 64 dead Israelis, nearly all of them soldiers, versus about 1,400 massacred Palestinians, mostly civilians.
But back to the NYT's remarkable brevity. Really, what else can one say? One can load up another story with yet more meaningless details of impotent diplomatic tugs of war and recount more familiar atrocities and retell the imbalances and repeat that this conflict won't die until Israel gets genuinely serious about a two-state solution. Yada fucking yada-yada. Why not just report the 72-hour cease-fire as a 90-minute foreseeability, and leave it at that--while also leaving, as the world is doing, the virtually defenseless Palestinians to themselves.