“… An Israeli minister today warned of increasingly bitter conflict in the Gaza Strip, saying the Palestinians could bring on themselves what he called a “holocaust”.

“The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves,” Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defence minister, told army radio. …”

[The comments were widely reported, but this particular source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/29/israelandthepalestinians1 ]

And why the apparent sense of outrage about the news director stacking the newsroom with friends?

“Mouafac Harb, Alhurra’s first news director. Harb helped set up Radio Sawa before coming to Alhurra. He was largely responsible for hiring the network staff and getting it on air within four months. But he has been criticized in government reports for signing lucrative deals with friends in his native Lebanon.

…In addition, a never-released report by the State Department’s Inspector General shared with ProPublica found “irregularities in contracting,” a hiring process that “may have been marred by favoritism toward Lebanese candidates or candidates of Lebanese ancestry,” …

… He then filled the newsroom largely with inexperienced Christian Lebanese reporters hired in his native Beirut and signed lucrative sole-source contracts with friends who ran advertising agencies, production companies and warehouses across the Middle East. Some low-level staff members were highly paid, including a hairdresser from Lebanon who coiffed the anchors for $100,000 a year. …

[source: http://www.propublica.org/site/author/dafna_linzer/ ]

Isn’t that the American way? Hasn’t the Bush administration been stacked with incompetent and inept friends of Bush and friends-of-friends of Bush such as Michael D. Brown who headed up FEMA to disastrous effect at the time Hurricane Katrina? And what about all Bush’s oil industry cronies and Republican party funders who get roles in the administration?

Surely someone going to the U.S. from another country would think it was their patriotic duty to stick their nose in the trough as well? Why would they see anything wrong with recruiting friends on favourable terms when that’s the way things are done over there?