and life goes on...or does it?

After a period of crisis and sustained and focused coverage on the events in Lebanon, one can perceive a certain 'crisis weariness' enroaching. Headlines return to more mundane matters and local issues here in Britain. The steadily rising civilian death toll becomes just another news headline, like the deaths in Iraq or Palestine. Unfortunate, but not worthy of outrage anymore. The people become numbers and the news background noise as we again turn to which celebrity is sleeping with who and how much our favourite football team scored over the weekend.

The massacre at Qana, as ugly as it seemed, appears to mark the 'normalising' of this conflict in the public consciousness of people around the world. Too terrible, too direct to face head on, such ugliness is only faced by peoples backs as they turn away from the fetid reality.

Tucked away within the pages of the London based free daily rag The Metro this morning, is a headline proclaiming that Israel is 'winning' in Lebanon. Strange, reports are coming in of the heaviest fighting seen yet since the conflict began 22 days ago from Al Jazeera and elsewhere. Who is Israel winning against? My delusion is that Israel is fighting the civilians of Lebanon, the terrorist infrastructure it is referring to is nothing other than the country itself. While it cannot face battle hardened Hezbullah troops in a head on conflict, Israel continues to delude itself by killing unarmed men, women and children. That is not a victory, neither is it bravery or purity of arms. Israel may be winning it's battle against the poor and helpless people, but it fights only to escape the feeling of its own weakness, it is losing the war.