GRAY LADY WHISTLES DIXIE

Lo and behold! A miracle has occurred in our midst. The daunted Gray Lady of Big Time Journalism has swept aside the cobwebs, and is now reporting the unvarished truth about what is happening in Gaza. This is a wonderful day, folks. Mark it on your calendars. Verily, I tell you, The New York Times has stepped up to the plate on this one. I'm not sure I can even believe my own eyes. Is the tide finally changing on these ruthless thugs who fight under the pernicious flag of Mohammed the Horrible?

Now if only those folks at the desk will admit that this has ALWAYS been the case, that with each subtle and not so subtle encroachment, each lob of a Iranian-suppled missile, each cry of forlorn victimhood from these very same so-called "Palestinian" pan-Arab rebels, it has not been Israel who has been the instigator, the culprit, the cold blooded murderer of civilians but the rebels themselves who wear this badge of disgrace.

But after all, that's how Mohammed taught his followers to make war. It's right there, word for word, in their book. And for fourteen hundred years Mohammedans of every stripe have agreed that war is deceit, and that old adage all is fair is love and war, is as Islamic-sounding as it is old school Western (before we went all soft, weak, and multiculturalist). Except, of course, as many commentators have mentioned, the Qur'an does not mention the noble word "love" even once in all its ferocious pages.

This reportage does beg the question of why this leftist newspaper has suddenly shifted its tone. I'm figuring it has less to do with clarity of thought at the editor's desk or in Israel and thus America finally having its fill of stop gap measures. No. It appears that all it took was the election of the Chosen One, Barack Obama, to the office of presidency, for the leftist media to draw different conclusions on the same batch of details. Mustn't let the messiah fail is the order of the day, and since Obama's hands are pretty much tied at this point, the shift of perspective had to come in the reportage of the facts. Pin this one on dirty playing Hamas. Must keep the messiah clean.

That works for me in this case. But it does show to what lengths the leftist media will go to protect its own.

So, to that end, the NYT has reported that the most important strategic decision the Israelis have made so far, according to senior military officers and analysts, is to approach their incursion as a war, not a police operation. Civilians are warned by leaflets, loudspeakers and telephone calls to evacuate battle areas. But troops are instructed to protect themselves first and civilians second.

JERUSALEM—The grinding urban battle unfolding in the densely populated Gaza Strip is a war of new tactics, quick adaptation and lethal tricks.

Hamas, with training from Iran and Hezbollah, has used the last two years to turn Gaza into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs. Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the leadership’s war room is a bunker beneath Gaza’s largest hospital, Israeli intelligence officials say.

Unwilling to take Israel’s bait and come into the open, Hamas militants are fighting in civilian clothes; even the police have been ordered to take off their uniforms. The militants emerge from tunnels to shoot automatic weapons or antitank missiles, then disappear back inside, hoping to lure the Israeli soldiers with their fire.

In one apartment building in Zeitoun, in northern Gaza, Hamas set an inventive, deadly trap. According to an Israeli journalist embedded with Israeli troops, the militants placed a mannequin in a hallway off the building’s main entrance. They hoped to draw fire from Israeli soldiers who might, through the blur of night vision goggles and split-second decisions, mistake the figure for a fighter. The mannequin was rigged to explode and bring down the building.

Read it all.