Less than an hour ago, the AP reported,
President Bush and other world leaders struggled Sunday to prevent Mideast violence from exploding into a wider war. They urged Israel to show “utmost restraint” and blamed Islamic militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas for igniting the escalating five-day-old crisis.
In fact, the G-8 leaders saw what they wanted in the statement they crafted.
But The Washington Post reported a timeline that has Israel starting the armed conflict on June 13. And it appears that the AP was so intent on making sure those who put the sole blame on Arabs in this latest conflict got their point of view in this story that it forgot to mention one of the most important aspects of this statement, which was in the lede of the Post’s story on its web site this afternoon.
President Bush and seven other world leaders put aside differences and joined together Sunday to call for “an immediate end to the current violence” in the Middle East, demanding that Islamic radicals stop firing rockets at Jewish cities and release captured Israeli soldiers while insisting that Israel halt military operations and free arrested Palestinian officials.
Where and when did this conflict start? Maybe it was just after WW II.
UPDATE: Monday morning I noticed that the same link in this post went to an updated version of the story with a different lede. But bottom line is that the G-8 announcement calls for Israel to return Palestinian officals it arrested earlier this year.