A Daily Analysis
By Marc Schulman

August 24 , 2007 Schools to Open in Sderot Despite Parents Protests

Minister of Education Yuli Tamir visited Sderot today. She announced that schools will open as scheduled a week from Sunday. Tamir had to be physically protected from parents who were incensed that schools were going to open without reinforcing the classrooms against Qassams. The parents could not understand why their children should be endangered while other children in Israel are not. It is an excellent question and with things seemingly heating up along the border with Gaza maybe opening schools as usual should be reexamined.

The second and third segments of CNN's show "Warriors of God" was aired. After watching all three, the first one on Jews seems even more badly done. The second program on Islam spent the majority of the two hours either talking about Iran, especially the place of women in it, Muslims in Europe, and even some Muslims in the United States. The Muslim Brotherhood was taken at its word that they have renounced violence. While particular acts of Muslim violence were mentioned, the major thrust seemed to be how Muslim fundamentalist felt that a nation without god was a nation that had no direction. Only in the last ten minutes was there any discussion of suicide bombers in Israel or anywhere else

The segment on Christianity focused primarily on the fight over state and church, the fight over abortion, and the fight over the Supreme Court. Of course, there was also one segment of Christian Zionism, something that was covered in the first segment. The balance seems completely absurd; the Jewish segment was fully over settlers and their supporters in one way or another. There was no discussion of Haredim, who out number settler by large numbers, actually no discussion of the role of woman, but everything about the politics of settling the West Bank.

This could have been a very interesting series as fundamentalists of each religion share much in common. Instead of looking at what these fundamentalists share, Amanpur decided to examine what in each religion seems to upset or interest her.