Wednesday, March 26, 2008

DOING IT HIS WAY...

The word is out that Ed O'Loughlin is packing up his desk in preparation for his long awaited departure from Fairfax. This is possibly the reason why there's been such a reduced output from his neck of the woods of late. Last week for example, the Melbourne Age had just one report from Jerusalem and it was a nice sympathetic piece about the visit to Israel of German PM Angela Merkel - Holocaust fills Germans with shame, says Merkel. It was written from Jerusalem by Richard Boudreaux of the New York Times and represented a marked departure from the style of reporting we have become used to from Fairfax when it comes to matters Jewish. Not surprisingly, the Jerusalem Bureau Chief had nothing at all to do with the article.

O'Loughlin might have been on assignment elsewhere, perhaps in Gaza where he has been in the past when important stories have broken in Jerusalem but that doesn't make sense because if that were the case he would have picked out some of the following:-

Hamas militias attacked the Egyptian embassy in Gaza City. The embassy officially moved to Ramallah but it still seemed to maintain a skeletal presence in Gaza and according to Palestine Press Agency, Hamas assualted a guard and ransacked the building, taking down the Egyptian flag.

Humanitarian aid coming into Gaza was plentiful with one hundred truckfuls of food entering Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, including ten trucks from Egypt. Israel also sent some 61,000 animal vaccines to Gaza and is coordinating their distribution and the analysis of blood samples.

Hamas abducted more Fatah officers in Gaza. [Hat Tip for these: Elder of Ziyon].

And where was Ed while all this news was breaking?

Doing things his way, no doubt.

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