As with the 2006 Israeli war with Hizbullah, I spent the first two weeks of this conflict on a family vacation in North America. The domestic US media was, once more, reporting from behind borders built of pre-conceived notions, simplistic explanations and an Americentric view of the world. Put simply, Gaza was background noise. Yes, it generally made the front page of the newspapers and the main newscasts, but–particularly on television–the humanity, the scale and the context of the conflict were AWOL. Arabs and Israelis were at it again; now let’s get back to Obama, the economy and New Year’s Eve.