To criticize that reporting as being one-sided is de facto admission that we only want to hear one side of the story told--the Israeli/US side of the story!

That's rubbish, at least for me. The newspaper I am reading had the 'reporters without borders' report GUEST has posted about on page 1 yesterday as the main part of an article about difficulties of reporting corecty from over there.

If you feel it is necessary to post information from one side only as an antidote to the usual reporting in your country, GUEST, it is alright with me, but I still call it one-sided.

If one reads the article McGrath has linked to with care one sees that it does not contradict the information I had given about armed refugees. Taking the information from all the sources it is obvious that a minority of the palestinians in at least one of the churches have arms with them.

You know the evasive use of language by priests, don't you? Clearly asked whether there were weapons in the nativity church a priest (maybe the wrong word in that case) said in TV 'waepons are not allowed in church'. The question was repeated. He said "Most of them are old men, children and women." The question was repeated once more. "No weapon is used". I hate this type of talk in politicians and in priests.

Father Siryani's words are full of this type of talk. Read his words under the assumption that also in his church a minority of refugees have weapons and you will see that he has not lied at any point. He only has used words that could make you think that there are no weapons, but he never has stated it explicitely beyond any doubt. "weapons are useless" doesn't mean anything for this question. "they left their weapons" doesn't mean anything again if you don't know who 'they' is, all of them or part of them.

Wolfgang