I was just wondering does Al-Jazeera and the other Arab media cover this or do the just cover the Israelis attacks. If they do cover it, do they blame the infighting on Israel and the west.

Slover

Mitchel Prothero says "Suddenly, you're not documenting a noble struggle against occupation, you're just some foreigner."

What "noble struggle"? These are global terrorists driven by religion, ideology, and education to hate Israel, Jews, and the West. These are the people who danced in the streets, literally, on 9/11. These are the people sworn to destroy and occupy Israel, regardless of any peace offer or land settlement. These are people living "free" in Gaza, no longer occupied by Israel.

Michel Prothero is living in another universe, and the internecine warfare he witnessed in his hotel lobby may have awakened him from his dreamworld.

-- Fred

The Qassam rockets and, recently, Katusha rockets that are now daily reminders to Israelis of their enhanced security won by vacating Gaza are launched to kill Israelis, not lettuce. Although most do end up in the lettuce, others do kill their intended targets with typically little or no mass media attention afterwards. The kill ratio should improve soon with recently imported Iranian expertise and a small but growing al Qaeda presence in Gaza. While it is true that Hamas has mostly maintained a cease fire, the al Aqsa Martyrs’s Brigade and Jihad Islami take up the slack with at least the tacit approval of Hamas if not material support. Media people like the author of this article do not acknowledge this and other facts damaging to the Arab side of the conflict and hence are usually well liked by their Gaza hosts. Reporting on the PA summarily executing accused collaborators in public and dragging their bodies behind cars for greater effect or the “Jews-are-insects-apes-and-monkeys” rhetoric of the PA’s daily radio and television broadcasts and textbooks for Palestinian Arab children are other ways the author could fall out of grace with his Arab hosts. But I think he is pretty skilled at avoiding that mistake as are almost all of his media colleagues.

What are his motives? Consider his statements:

Palestinians are the easiest people in the world to cover as a journalist. They respect the work, know journalists take risks to tell their story, and, frankly, know that stories of their suffering under Israeli oppression are good P.R.

Good P.R., got it. Too bad the Israelis left and they are still killing people. Not so good P.R., perhaps?

Say what you will about Hamas, their call for the destruction of Israel, their tendency to send suicide bombers to kill Israeli civilians and their ghetto rocket program.

What I say: deciding to destroy a democratic nation, sending children as bombs to kill civilians, and terrorizing cities with rockets, all of these things put you on the same level as the 9/11 attackers.

the guy next to me started muttering, "La ilaha illah Allah." There is no God but God. Over the next few minutes, all four men began saying it slowly and in tandem. A sign of devotion but also a soothing mantra and I found myself quietly joining in

So, by the end, our man in Gaza is one of them. So much for objective analysis.

Prothero's sophomoric, self-indulgent, pseudo gonzo file makes me want some kind of quality control filter installed on Salon.com. Sounds like an email to the homeboys from someone wanting to flaunt his testosterone.

Has Mitchell ever been to any other shoot-em-up spot? This lacks context, lacks nuance, lacks analysis. I understand that it must be exciting to be on the spot as fighting unfolds....but there's no point when the analysis is so shoddy. (Yawn: Blood and bullets makes a fellow want to pray even though an alien god may ignore him in a forsaken place undergoing meltdown.. ain't this dude heavy. And he talks to us in slangy blogspeak so we don't get confused.)

Quoting another journo's droll comments is dead lazy, Mitch. Makes us want to know what else that clever and experienced guy had to say. Please, Salon, post what the brave local freelancers write...let's get some better-informed pros on this scene. Prefer news reports to be I-less in Gaza.

Fatima Huxley and Ruth Less

What Hotel was that you were staying at in Gaza City. I hope to go there in April. Did you have problems getting in? Any advice?