Vijay Raghavan

FIGURE 5

Introduction: Recently, my family and I were in Israel-Palestine. We spent Christmas in Palestine and then drove north to Nablus. There we witnessed the aftermath of the Israeli targeted killing of three Palestinians. We met the affected families and I wrote down my impressions of the Israeli operation in the form of a report (supplemented with photographs). Later I found out that the American government is questioning the Israeli government on the operation, and therefore I have made the report available to Congress and the State Department. However, I really think that the impressions of an ordinary American citizen should be seen by other Americans.

Much planning had gone into our family vacation in Israel-Palestine. We could spare only the last two weeks of 2009, and so had developed an uncompromising itinerary for each day, allowing a mere half-day to recover from jet lag from our trip from California. After devoting most of the first week to visiting holy places in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron and Jericho, we were, in the words of our 17-year-old, quite “churched out.” We are a typical American family in at least one regard: we have two other children (ages five and two), and we are all blessed with limited attention span. Absorbing detailed references to the Old and New Testaments in the places we visited was beyond our capabilities. Our hired tour guide and driver, Issa Habash , had long ago taken notice of our monumental ignorance and had given up on reciting chapter and verse from the Bible.

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By: Peter Chamberlin

Up until now, the United States has been able to exert control over most of the earth just by controlling the narrative that reflects popular opinion about the war on terror. Whatever government spokesmen or reporters have said happened on a particular day, was what really happened; it was validated by popular consent. The ability to shape people¡¯s thoughts and opinions is a power that every tyrant has dreamed about. Global trust in the good intentions of the people of the United States moves individuals and entire nations to give American leaders the benefit of the doubt, even when common sense cautions against it.

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