Beyond the extraordinary over-attention given to affairs in the Middle East, are the usual realities which are neglected. In the case of political encampments like Z, these realities are viewed as absolute heresy. The following is general but with plenty of "moral" relevance. Reality one, human nature is rarely "humane". Reality two, the closer a group's culture is to our earlier anything-goes triba culture, the more brutal it is. Recent books by Steven Pinker have revealed some of the sober realities of non-modern tribes (and the liberal backlash, www.anth.ucsb.edu/chagnon.html). Exhibit A here is Islam. Take an honest look at the treatment of women, nature, and outsiders amongst Islamic cultures. It isn't subtle but it is politely not-talked about in the main stream media or social science research and the left uses this as some kind of validation. See if you can find even tacit acknowledgement of any of the sober observations amongst years of Chomsky's work. Under the recent onslaught of Islamic violence newspapers like the NYT have opened up some on this. A recent NYT piece, "The Bride Price" looked at the selling of young girls in Afganistan. The younger the higher the price. Nicholas Kristof has had a number of similiar pieces. A recent NYT article interviewed Palestian jihad'ers living in Syria. Basically the relentless theme was kill anything asociated with team Israel-US or team Shia. Wonderful bunch. Then there was a piece also on an ex-Moslem now living in California giving her scorching view of Islamic culture. She had brilliant analogies on how profoundly different Israeli culture was from Moslem culture, starting with their lack of violent response to the Germans after WW II. She might have also mentioned that it isn't wise to have 8 kids as recent reports suggested Palestian couple are. And of course she has received death threats. Reality three, is that the dominant form of human terrrorism is anti-terrorism. The role-back on death in the last 100 years has been biggest factor for life on the planet (a plus for us, very negative for the rest of nature). See any meaningful scientific assessment - you might start with the September 2005 issue of Scientific American. How did the relentless disease-misery package get rolled back? And who did it? That is how we quadrupled the population and that is how the Middle East - in particular the Moslem portion - has rapidly grown its population (and beyond its ability to support it or wisdom to restrain it). A small but significant example would be the work of former President Jimmy Carter. To someone like Chomsky, he was at least a half-time Nazi (in a Nazi-like country like our own). In fact he has greatly reduced human disease-born suffering on a scale of millions. How would the Moslem's of the Middle East survive if people didn't buy the oil they were living over (and can't extract for themselves)? We should get off the oil (and it is easy) and that would leave a profound survival situation in the Middle East. Look around your residence and make a pile of all the things you have that were made or designed in Moslem countries in the Middle East. Better yet see if you can identify a single life saving technology developed by these people. The best situation for Israel/Israeli's is to get the hell out of the Middle East. Move to North Dakota (it would help the US) and leave the violent and dysfunctional Islamic people's in the Middle East to perhaps struggle and improve their way of life and future. As is, their existence just allows the Moslems a reason to re-enrage themselves (a Z-thing). If the military strength's were reversed the Israeli's would be slaughtered and many Moslems would celebrate. Yes, it is that subtle. Chomsky has an appropriate Sudan-who's-the-terrorist piece. I will comment directly on that later. Here it is worth pointing out that he misses the obvious. Who put the pharmaceutical plant there in the first place? Who's humanitarian interests allowed Sudan's life expectancy to drop during the last century? What were the lifestyle norms there say a couple of hundred years ago (the real ones, not the social science BS)? Which countries even care about what is going on Sudan now? What if anything have the Moslem countries done for Sudan? What did they do when West Pakistan went to slaughter off East Pakistan?

Thanks for a good post, and the initial post was also very good. Racism is, sadly, all over the media. It needs to be stressed over and over again, so that we one day hopefully can get rid of it. Organisations like FAIR are great for addressing this, and we need more like them. They are doing an impressive job, but it's limited what a few people can do and watch. Some media analyzing wouldn't hurt either. For instance in the early coverage of the war on Lebanon at least here in Norway they almost without exception first showed impacts in Israel from Hizbollah's rockets, then went to Lebanon to show the massive destruction from American-made Israeli bombs. This was a trick I suppose to try to make the case that Hizbollah strikes first, then Israel retaliates, by cheap TV tricks. Just to add on your comment about Israel deliberately killing civillians and overtly breaking the Geneva Conventions. A week or so ago the Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert came back from Lebanon, and almost shockingly got to appear on primetime-TV with his experiences. He showed a picture of a brand new ambulance with a bullethole in the window back where the patient is laying. He then said this was a shot from an Israeli sniper. I don't know what a bullethole from a sniper-rifle looks like, but that hole was mighty big, so he was probably telling the truth as far as I could tell. Fortunetely nobody were in the ambulance at that moment, but it goes to show that Israel have no guilt about shooting at civilians, not even at rescue personel. This is strictly forbinnen by the Geneva Conventions, and this is happening fairly often by the looks of things. I'd love to see an overview, if available anywhere about the number of Hizbollah rocket-hits at/near military sites and strategically important sites, and hits at/near civilian population centres. If we were to believe the media Hizbollah haven't fired a single rocket at military sites (we would hardly know they existed based on media reports), but based on what I've seen creap through the Israeli sencorship Hizbollah are mainly firing at military and strategically important sites. The media is just very lousy to report these things. The only mention I've seen here about their attack on the Israeli warship recently was a short notice on text-TV for instance. The last majour attack on an Israeli warship wasn't covered much better either. Then, of course, there is no analysis whatsoever (apart from military advice to Israel) about the reasons for the conflict, the bigger picture, the US-Israeli plans etc etc. This does not exist in the Western media as far as I can tell.

Thanks for this post Justin. It is very good. It will prove helpful I am sure in future discussions. Also appreciated Rahul's piece. I think the points you and he make need to be made consistently. The racism buried in the language used---even unwittingly by many---to describe the US and Israeli state terror in the region effectively allows people to get away with murder.

Killing civilians is a time-honoured act of warfare. You kill civilians to produce terror and increased anxiety in the general populace so that they will in turn be induced through their fear to pressure the existing government to abandon its war. Great political pressure is derived from such acts, and both sides readily employ the tactic....because it works. The Dark Empire has used this tactic directly or via proxies on many many occasions - WWII against the Germans, South/Central America, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now Iraq and Lebanon. And the cycle of death and hatred goes on...and on.