The New York Times is breathing a sigh of relief. For while Israel has fired a few rockets at Lebanon in response to Hezbollah’s massacre of 12 Druze kids in the Golan Heights on Saturday, it has stopped short of launching all-out war on its unfriendly neighbour. For now, says the NYT, we’ve not seen a ‘major escalation’ in Israel-Lebanon hostilities. Yes we have. The slaughter of the Druze youths was a ‘major escalation’. Hezbollah’s firing of a missile that butchered 12 children was surely the very ‘surge in fighting’ that the NYT fears. Or is it only ‘escalation’ when Israel retaliates to the apocalyptic violence of the Islamist armies that surround it?

The media chatter in the wake of Saturday’s bloodbath has been incredibly – and depressingly – revealing.