Now with 20% less peaceiness!

Well, I was wrong about the draft UN resolution on the Israel/Lebanon Whatever It's Called; one of the sides WAS indeed involved in the negotiations - Israel:

What is more surprising is that, according to Aluf Benn, “Israel was very involved in its formulation. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's chief of staff, Yoram Turbowicz, conducted talks with the Americans and French from Jerusalem; Tal Becker, an advisor to Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, flew to New York to take part in talks conducted at the UN.” These Israelis surely knew that the resolution they helped to draft would be rejected. They knew that this would delay an end to hostilities. That means more days, perhaps weeks or even months, of Hezbollah rockets falling on Israeli Jews. Yet they call this a diplomatic victory.

Condi Rice, meanwhile, feels this draft resolution will prove "who is for peace and who isn't":

In a clear message to Lebanese and Syrian leaders who have spoken out against the draft resolution, she said, "We'll see who is for peace and who isn't."

The resolution does not demand that Israeli troops pull out of Lebanon.

Israel has not expressed opposition.

Gosh, imagine that.

The draft U.N. resolution, written by the United States and France, calls for "the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations."

The resolution includes "a political basis for creating those conditions ... in which Lebanon can flow its authority south," said Rice.

...uh? "Flow its authority south"? She's been spending 'WAY too much time around Bush, evidently.

Meanwhile the bombs and rockets continue to fall and Arab media continues to show its viewers and readers the unfortunately abundant carnage we work so hard to ignore. As Robert Fisk writes in The Independent yesterday:

More gruesome photographs of the dead in the Lebanese papers. We in the pure "West" spare our readers these terrible pictures - we "respect" the dead too much to print them, though we didn't respect them very much when they were alive - and we forget the ferocious anger which Arabs feel when these images are placed in front of them. What are we storing up for ourselves? I wrote about another 9/11 in the paper this morning. And I fear I'm right.

The violence you have done to Lebanon will overwhelm you,
and your destruction of animals will terrify you.
For you have shed man's blood;
you have destroyed lands and cities and everyone in them.
--Habbakuk 2:17