Perspective on Israel, from a friend

My friend, journalism school classmate, and New York Times-published journalist Sonja has a worthwhile and even funny entry on her blog about the reporting on the conflict between Israel and Hamas.  I know too well what she means by self-satisfied anti-Israel “liberals” who do not acknowledge the severe limits of their knowledge about this conflict while at the same time know that my personal knowledge of the Palestinian difficulties, like almost everyone else, is nonexistent.  I’ll excerpt this fact in particular, because I think it is very important to keep in mind:

There are, on average, 1,000 foreign correspondents reporting from Israel and the occupied territories–a nation with about the same geographic size and population as New Jersey–at any given time. In times of war, like right now, the number swells to upwards of 3,000.

Consider, then, that on the entire continent of Africa–the world’s second most populace continent after Asia– with its myriad wars, legions of corrupt governments, genocides, AIDS and MDRTB, pirates, inflation, starvation and hotbeds of militant fundamentalism, there are an average of 900.