A new voice crying in the wilderness!

We've always known the English are capable of courage and straight thinking. That's why the BBC and their articulate but biased cohorts that we knew and loved so well prior to the last quarter century or so, has proven to be so outrageous an anomaly.

Now comes a new blog from a delightfully clear headed straight speaking Brit lady living and working in the holy land. I heartedly recommend a daily read of JANE'S FIGHTING TALK for a fresh look at the struggle for survival now underway in Israel. For example:

First question "Who ARE the refugees on the run from the bombing?"

• 1. They are in the main originally Palestinians, Shiite Moslem, who had fled Israel in the 1948 war of independence. The population is between 400 and 500,000; press reports say that 600,000 + refugees are on the move
• 2. They live in overcrowded refugee camps, villages and suburbs, mainly in south Lebanon and south Beirut. They survive through (a) UNWRA aid (b) menial labour (c) salaries and ex-gratia payments from Hezbollah – routed from Iran.
• 3. Palestinian refugees do not have Lebanese citizenship. (Not a well-known fact.)
• 4. They are excluded from Lebanese society. Palestinian refugees were banned from 73 professions (including law and medicine) in Lebanon until last year.
• 5. The Palestinian refugees provide Hezbollah its army and its civilian infrastructure. They provide their homes and land for bunkers, tunnels, and underground cells. Ready to fire rockets are tucked away in populated Hezbollah Shiite neighbourhoods, in apartment buildings, parking garages, out-houses, mosques and schools. Not exclusively, but mostly, Palestinian refugees and Hezbollah are one and the same.
• 6. Hezbollah is a closed area for the rest of Lebanon. It is entirely independent, providing its own services, its own policing, its education system, its own laws and its own army. The original Lebanese population has no connection with the refugees and their descendents. The Palestinian refugees have been mired in poverty and hopelessness, although shored up in recent years with millions of dollars worth of military equipment. Hezbollah is therefore extremely dangerous.

Has our arrogant and proud western media recently discussed any of these points at length? Do they even consider this might be information that could make a difference, or the free world would want to know this background? Does the media even care? Does any of this support their own corporate agendas? Or sell any more papers or adverts? The answers are obvious, I believe.

People of Good Will may always disagree on the means to an end. But IMHO this particular bully needs to be thrashed until he looses both the will and the capacity to fight. That has not yet occurred. Go IDF! Fight! Fight! Fight! (OK, it's almost football season here in the states, so cut me a little slack, will you?)

God bless you, Jane, as you almost single-handedly take on the slimy, pasty, yellow, lily-livered rats that now inhabit the empty halls of the once great BBC, et al.!

Cheers