Both the Young Fogey and Fr. Jim Tucker at Dappled Things have linked to reporting from If Americans Knew.

The site reports statistics on Israeli deaths and destruction in Israel as opposed to Palestinian deaths and destruction in the Palestinian territories.

Whenever I run across sites that comment on the Middle East I look to see who is behind them. Where do the numbers come from? How true/accurate are the numbers? Is there a political agenda? This is not an area of the world known for being the bastion of truthfulness.

I looked at If Americans Knew. At first the disparities shocked me. I was in my accountant mode, analyzing numbers, comparing columns, checking out the graphs. I was fascinated. Then the Holy Spirit gave me a kick and I said, ‘These are people.’ I was comparing who is more evil based on tallies of death and destruction. I saw the numbers, not the people.

I decided to look deeper. If Americans Knew seemed a little one-sided.

A quick Google search revealed a lot of opinions on the woman behind If Americans Knew, Alison Weir (NOT the British novelist). Most of the opinions were from campuses where she appeared and spoke. She was labeled everything from a raging anti-Semite to the bearer of all truth. No help there.

I looked at the wiki on If Americans Knew but it didn’t really analyze the credibility of the site.

I checked out The Middle East Now, The Middle East from a Secular View. Their site analysis, linked from Wikipedia, seemed pretty well balanced (albeit not perfectly so), pointing out both the truths in If Americans Knew and the wholesale and subtle distortions in their reporting.

There are subtle truths in every story. We have to move beyond the distance of a story to the truth of the matter. Evil people are deciding to kill other people on both sides. Both are being indiscriminant. They hope we won’t notice, they hope we won’t say no, never again.