CHOOSING SIDES: There's no act of charity without a press release, of course:

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Steven Spielberg's Righteous Person Foundation will donate $1,000,000 for relief efforts in Israel with an initial donation of $250,000 to the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles Israel Crisis Fund. Additional gifts will be made to the New Israel Fund and other relief organizations in Israel in the weeks and months ahead. The Federation donation will support emergency efforts for children who have been evacuated from the North, adults and families who cannot leave the North, and an effort to put shatter proof glass into Haifa's three hospitals as well as emergency assistance to the hospital in Naharia. The New Israel Fund donation will help provide emergency assistance to underserved communities in the North through support of crisis hotlines, emergency economic assistance, and improved food distribution for those in need.

Yes, that is "Steven Spielberg's Righteous Person Foundation" - we're not sure how Steven judges the righteousness of a person, but we'd be fascniated to see the working.

And while nobody can begrudge assistance coming to the people who have found themselves caught in a conflict between their government and some chimeras, it's a pity that Spielberg couldn't also find some righteous people on the other side of wherever the Lebanon border is at the moment. After all, with somewhere over five billion dollars in direct aid and loan guarantees from the US to the Israeli government last year alone, you'd have hoped they might have had some cash left over to fix their own windows. Indeed, you might wonder why they didn't upgrade the windows before they precipitated the latest spiral of violence.