[mark_l_watson]

Wow, what an unbalanced article! No mention of casualties on the other side. Disgusting one-sided coverage. I am really disappointed in the Washington Post. Bad job. I find that Israeli news sources like Haaretz are more balanced re: the middle east than the US news is - strange. Al Jazeera is another reasonable source for middle east news. Forget about US news coverage of the middle east.

As an American, I find I often feel the need to use something like news.google.com to find articles on any given story from many countries around the world to get a more balanced view. This is a practice that I have introduced to several friends and family members, and once they make the little bit of effort to look at world wide coverage they understand my complaint about the US news industry.

In our modern world, I think that it is at least ill-advised, if not dangerous, to live in a bubble and not read many opposing opinions on important events.

[yazaddaruvala]

So I agree one sided articles are generally very bad in regard to difficult situations like this. But in my opinion that is because they try to illicit sympathy for that particular side. However, in this case.. the post seemed to be about a new cool technology.

Perhaps it was just me but at the end of this article I felt drawn to neither side. The only thoughts I had on the matter were, "Man that is cool. Its too bad people have to be in harms way for such technology to get funding, but thanks for pioneering the simplest versions of the tech we need to stop asteroids".

[rocky1138]

A good test to see what the article is about is to remove the actors and states then re-read. After doing that, your analysis of the article being mostly about a cool new technology (or neat use of existing, either or) is pretty much spot on.

[ibisum]

>However, in this case.. the post seemed to be about a new cool technology.

So the article is little more than a straw man to divert from the real atrocities being committed by the Israelis' in Gaza today. And that is entirely the point of the OP - that this article is little more than a technocratic diversion to feed the fetish of a homogenous target group, rather than real reporting on the issue.

[dllthomas]

That isn't what a straw man is. A straw man is a mischaracterization of an opposing argument that can be "successfully" argued against.

[icebraining]

The front page of the WSJ is covered with stories about the situation is Gaza, including the most prominent that has the number of deaths in the first phrase. Is it really fair to accuse them of diversion based on a single story?

[hn_politics145]

Why is everything an Israeli conspiracy?

[CamperBob2]

Because if this stuff were happening anywhere else, people in the Western world would be genuinely upset about it.

[omonra]

Good point - I want to know how long Washington or London would wait before wiping off whichever opponent was sending missiles at them.

[ibisum]

Depends if Washington or London were facing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions on account of repressive blockades from a neighbor. I'm quite sure Washington or London would be sending missiles towards any country promoting invasion, destruction of hospitals, repression of the general population ..

[mark_l_watson]

a correction: the Washington Post does have does have a front page article that does a better job at covering the issues from both side: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/over-100-kil...

I stand by my comments on the benefits of reading news from multiple sources.

[pbh101]

My general impression before reading the article is the Iron Dome, while technically impressive, wouldn't help ease the systemic problems, because if rockets become ineffective enough, other means of enacting violence/getting the point across will be used.

Meanwhile, aggressive action gets cheaper for Israel from a human casualty perspective if they don't have to worry about further pissing people off who have rockets. Cynically speaking, lowering the cost of something makes it more likely to happen :(

If, however, Iron Dome gets to a point where Israel feels safe enough to delay/attenuate/cancel a ground invasion as a mitigating/retaliatory tactic, one possibility the article mentioned, then it could be a net benefit. Does require self-control, though. And I don't know how safe people will feel if rockets are being fired in their general direction, even if you get very good at shooting them down; I doubt it is something you get complacent about.

[waps]

If you look at what the organisation that is Hamas does to it's own people, I really question any one-sidedness. Plus, let's face facts here : it's a war. Hamas has declared it's intent to hunt down every Jew on the face of the planet (and atheist, incidentally), and they do stuff like this :

E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQtZ9DY3MnU

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using violence against these people. There I've said it. Are the Israeli's innocent ? No. But that doesn't mean they are morally on the same level as the Palestinians.

I agree that you should read many different news sources, but keep in mind who owns Al Jazeera just as much as you'd take who owns the BBC into account.

[omonra]

The article is about defensive technology, hence it doesn't mention the casualties on the other side.

Arabs also have a way to prevent missiles raining on them - by not lobbing missiles at Israel.