Understanding the conflict

Talking Points versus Understanding Most people do not pay attention to politics and history until they intrude rudely on their every day lives. When a dramatic event occurs, a few will rush off to find sources of information that will explain, in "capsule summaries," what has happened. Media and Web sites provide many glib and conflicting opinions, designed to boost circulation and present a viewpoint, not to inform. The opinion makers are polarized according their …

…reason, the hacks cannot write "Arafat" without writing "terrorist" and they cannot write "Ariel Sharon" in less than four words: "War Criminal Ariel Sharon." The words are meant to program violence in human computers. Computer programs do not make good reading. They are bad literature. It is worse reality. The words programmed all these impossible things we see before us, good and bad. Can we use the words to "program" Israel and Palestine for peace?