Today, the Israeli government sent ground troops into Gaza, after an intense 8-day air offensive on Hamas. Two recent Boing Boing posts related to this topic drew intense discussions with an extremely high number of comments, so I thought I'd open up a new thread today — clearly you, our community, have a lot to say about this, and about alternative resources for news, information, and insight on the conflict.
Among the resources I've pointed to before: Global Voices' special coverage on the Gaza conflict. Rocketboom did special coverage from the region earlier in 2008, worth re-watching for FAQ about those homemade rockets from Hamas. Last week, representatives of the Israeli government held press conferences of a sort on Twitter, and today Twitter is abuzz with tweets pointing to Al Jazeera's new "Gaza coverage" twitterbot. CNN is reporting that some of the weapons being used by Israel to attack mixed civilian and military targets come from the United States. There are an awful lot of protests, pro- and against, going on around the world.
A request in advance to those joining the discussion thread here on Boing Boing: keep it civil, respectful, on-topic, and please avoid personal attacks and moralizing. The road to Godwin's law is a short one. Let's not go there. Predictably, there is much fawning about in mainstream outlets over amateur op-eds on YouTube. If you *really* want endless rivers of unmoderated attack-comments, please just go there, instead. And to members of our international audience who have friends or fam on either side of the battle lines, my heart goes out to you. (Thanks, Derek Bledsoe)
Image: Israeli flag holder on right, courtesy formsixteen. Palestinian flag holder on left, courtesy jilliancyork.
