Habibi: A Starting Point in my Internet Inqiry

I have recently finished reading Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye, and it got me thinking about a lot more than plot lines and character development. I realized after I turned the last page that I had not heard much information in a long time about events in the Israel/Palestine conflicts of the Middle East. I know that I avoid the news to a certain extent because it is usually depressing, but I keep myself updated on the world's major events, or at least I try to, by scanning headlines and doing online searches. I decided to look up what has been going on, what I have missed.

What surprised me most was that when I plugged in the words "Israel Palestine conflict" into the google search engine, what first came up was not recent news. There were a lot of websites about the history of events and past leaders for both sides, but I had to run about four different searches and finally include the words "current news" to find any semblance of a current event from that part of the world. My searches with only the words "Israel" or "Palestine" did not return any relevant information. Even once I found some, the first websites to show up were from other countries, such as the BBC network, or they were solely online news websites. I scrolled nearly to the end of the first page before I found a site that was affiliated with a well known newspaper. Once I did find a website (again, not in the first five links that showed up), I found that there was news of a ceasefire following three weeks of active fighting. There was a call for help to try and get innocent civilians out of the areas caught in the middle of the fighting. These events happened less than two days ago, and I had to run four internet seaches looking specifically for this information to find anything.

I know that this is not the only area of the world that is in the middle of active conflict, fighting, and injured/killed innocent bystanders, but why is it that when I went to find any sort of current, relevant information it was hard to come by? Are American newspapers along with television stations and websites bored with these stories? Are they not interesting enough anymore? Are we all so focused on our own troubles in Iraq (which, don't get me wrong I am absolutely interested in, especially with regards to the welfare of everyone involved) that we can't look outside our own box sometimes and look at what other people are going through? Yes, the United States is involved in a conflict of its own, but it is not the only conflict in the world. Nor should conflict be the only focus of the news.

With these thoughts in mind I ran another search. I looked for "today's headlines" and right there in the first three links on the New York Times website was a headline about the ongoing election in Israel, sandwiched between two articles with details on a potential federal bailout and investors making bad decisions. And a little farther down there was another link with informaiton about Palestinians accusing some Israeli soldiers of 'violating the rules of war'. These articles both represent an area of disagreement in that area. Nowhere in this paper's website's headlines could I find any information about the ceasefire or the recent active fighting. Now I have even more questions for the news agencies. Why is the information available so varied? Why don't the newspapers print make some of the more hopeful news, like the ceasefire, more prominent? Why does the news always have to focus on the bleak and dreary aspects of the human race? I am an optimist by nature, and I think that hope can have a much bigger effect than despair.

I am not sure if this post has a real direction, and I'm not sure how I ended up where I did, but these are some questions that I would love to have answered. If anyone feels like they can help me with any, please let me know.