Different voices on the Israel-versus-Islamists war

There's lots of coverage about the current conflict between Israel and those intent upon its destruction. You hardly need me to steer you toward the usual, popular sources of information. But, for what it's worth, here are a few interesting takes from websites you might not visit on a regular basis:

Eric Lee: The Left should be supporting Israel in this war (hat tip: American Future, which has a lot of posts on various aspects and background related to the present conflict.) Mr. Lee is writing from a Socialist viewpoint, and he looks ahead to what the effects would likely be, depending on who wins the current conflict.

Melanie Phillips has been following events (and sometimes putting media feet to the fire). See, for instance here and here.

Reuters AlertNet prints Human Rights Watch's explanation of the legal rules Israel and its attackers are (by HRW's lights) expected to operate under, with a look at what had happened by the time the post was written. Since this is meant as a briefing for news editors and humanitarian aid providers, I have to wonder if it helps explain the tone in some more recent news reports. It makes quite plain right up front that Hezbollah launched attacks inside Israeli territory, and has been raining hundreds of rockets inside Israel. Furthermore (emphasis mine):

While Human Rights Watch has not yet conducted a field examination to determine whether any of these attacks aimed to target a military object, preliminary information suggests that rockets fired by Hezbollah may be so inaccurate as to be incapable of being targeted, but are rather used to target a generalized area. As Human Rights Watch said in a 1997 report on Lebanon and Israel, "Katyushas are inaccurate weapons with an indiscriminate effect when fired into areas where civilians are concentrated. The use of such weapons in this manner is a blatant violation of international humanitarian law." That is, their use in civilian areas violates the prohibition on indiscriminate attacks and would be a war crime. Customary international law prohibits such bombardment near or in any area containing a concentration of civilians, even if there are believed to be military objectives in the area.

I don't mean to imply that this is a pro-Israeli piece. It isn't. But it's nice that it's not knee-jerk "Israel-bad, Islamists-good" like some people would have you think is the stock-in-trade of nearly everyone not from the Center-Right (not to mention Reuters).

This next bit is veering toward the usual sources, I guess, (USA Today being a big player) but Laer at Cheat Seeking Missiles has noticed that USA Today ran an editorial that noted that this is not just another flare-up of the usual troubles and therefore the old ways of addressing Middle East conflict aren't good fallbacks, especially in the short term. The editorial also says that the stakes are rising rapidly, what with actual and nearing nuclear capacity amongst opposing forces.