Back in Melbourne after 10 wonderful days in Bali, where I read your newspaper every day, I was impressed with your editorials on the situation in the Middle East if not so much some of the opinion pieces.

The editorial of Jan. 22 really got to the heart of the matter but I disagree that the answer is UN peacekeepers or delegations from Europe, the United States, Indonesia or Timbuktu for

that matter.

All that’s needed is for Hamas to stop firing rockets into Israel and Israel will stop retaliating.

Has anybody else noticed that the further away from the conflict, the more violent the support for the Palestinians?

I include various factions in Australia, who wouldn’t know a Palestinian if they fell over one. On the other hand, Egypt and Jordan, which actually share borders with both Israel and Palestine, are far slower to condemn Israel.

After this editorial was a piece of absolute nonsense about how it was “OK for journalists to take sides”.

The “writer” blended the terms “journalist” and “reporter” into one and I believe that a reporter has a greater burden of truth than the other two.

I can imagine the reporting of a motor accident, where one driver is clearly drunk and on the wrong side of the road, but the report blames the other driver because he is not a friend of

the reporter!

Jon Sackville

Melbourne

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