News from the front
Welcome to hell, where the children smile amid the gunfire

Ariel Sharon's version of reality includes "disappearings" of all Palestinian men between the ages of about 15 and 45, with some being beaten and released, the rest beaten and not released, or beaten and shot, or simply shot; arrests of ambulance and medical personnel while the injured lie dying for want of simple medical care; whole cities running out of food, medicines, and other basics of life; widespread reports of soldiers destroying or stealing simply for the apparent viciousness of it. Sniper fire and tanks directed at the birthplace of the Prince of Peace. An economy destroyed, a people who will never forget nor forgive this latest escalation of what British journalist Robert Fisk today called "the world's last colonial war -- between a settlement-planting nation and an occupied people."

And then, on this lovely spring day, I look at my local newspaper, whose version of "reality" is so completely out of sync with that of Sharon, Kristen Schurr, or even British and European media as to be surreal.

The Seattle Times' 20-paragraph front-page lead story is a wire service amalgam that manages to ignore the realities of what Israel is doing, other than to analyze which towns the army has occupied -- as if the order matters. The article also finds space to explore the future prospects for implementing the Oslo peace accords, for which the Times should be nominated for some sort of anti-Pulitzer for complete irrelevance.