Voices from the Middle East

The escalating conflict in the Middle East is being played out in the blogosphere today as well. Among the commentaries rising to the top are Mideast traveler Michael J. Totten's personal observations from that part of the world, today's No. 9 most-cited blog post. He writes: "Israel has a right - nay, a moral obligation - to defend itself and rescue the kidnapped. But what kind of down-the-rabbit-hole war is this, where the guilty parties - the Baath regime in Syria and the Jihad regime in Iran - sleep warm in their beds while Beirut, a libertine city they hate, takes the punishment for them? The dictators in the region have always been happy to fight the Israelis to the last Palestinian. Now it looks like they're happy to fight the Israelis to the last Lebanese, too."

Other voices
Other bloggers writing from the Middle East or about it, also captured in today's most-cited blog posts, include Glenn Greenwald ("Israel's war is also 'our' war?", No. 10), the Lebanese Political Journal ("becoming a refugee," No. 13), Whiskey Bar ("punching above its weight," No. 21), Vox's Den ("go to hell Nasrallah", No. 26), Michelle Malkin ("I stand with Israel," No. 30), Juan Cole at Informed Comment ("global protests at indiscriminate Israeli bombings of Lebanon," No. 32), and Captain's Quarters ("Syrian power structure bypassing Assad?", No. 40).

Geo-buzz
Discussion also appears among today's most-cited phrases in the blogosphere, including "Middle East conflict" (No. 2), "southern Lebanon," (No. 5) "Tel Aviv" (No. 6) and "Israeli soldiers" (No. 9). A BlogPulse trend graph comparing buzz about countries in the Middle East shows that the current conflict is reaching levels of discussion about Iraq: