NewsBusters contributor Jack Engelhard incorrectly thought he received an email from CNN anchor Jim Clancy. This did not occur. NewsBusters retracts this story and apologizes to CNN and to Jim Clancy for this false assertion.

You’d hardly know that all of Israel is under siege. The networks would rather you stay tuned to their pictures from Lebanon. According to ABC-TV, CNN and other “Friends of Hezbollah”, never mind who started this, and forget the million and a half Israelis who’ve been made homeless.

As usual, NPR Radio is serving as propaganda minister for terror and, also as usual, Israel is at war with the press.

Or rather, the press is at war with Israel.

Any mention of the 200 bombs falling on Israel from day to night? Hardly. What about the thousands of Israelis wounded in flesh and in spirit – meaning shell-shocked today and perhaps for the rest of their lives? No, there’s no time for this. Forget Haifa’s Rambam Hospital. The pictures from Lebanon are better, much better than pictures from Meron, Israel, where seven-year-old Omer Pesachov was murdered along with his grandmother as the result of Hezbollah missiles.

John Updike has joined the ranks of novelists to take on the subject of terrorism and, in fact, that’s the title of his new book, “Terrorist”. It should be on the shelves even as we speak. I haven’t read it as yet, but I have checked out some pre-publication interviews and reviews and I assume that what we have here is a balancing act between good and evil.

I don’t know what good is, exactly, but I do know evil, precisely. That’s when a group of misfits hijack airplanes and crash them into our buildings.

One thing we should never do is judge a book by its reviews, which is exactly what I seem to be doing right now, so apologies to Updike in case I’ve got him all wrong. I should wait, yet I can’t help but be impatient since I’ve got my own novel on terrorism running as a monthly serial on Amazon.com (“The Bathsheba Deadline”) and am curious to know where we converge, where we depart.

Maybe fiction is dead after all. Several hundred literary worthies were gathered up by the New York Times and asked to name the best work of fiction over the past 25 years, and the winner was – Toni Morrison, that is, her book “Beloved.” Books by John Updike, Philip Roth and Don DeLillo got most of the votes after that for literature’s version of MVP.

I’m only half kidding about Morrison being the death of fiction because I only read half her book. This happened over at the local library when I found myself browsing “Beloved” and found it quite okay, but not sensational. So I read about half. I couldn’t finish because I can’t seem to go for sentences that refuse to stop. It’s called style, I guess, or maybe it’s called Faulkner.

Thank goodness Zacarias Moussaoui came along to capture the headlines. The lollipop coverage by the mainstream media given to illegal aliens got to be a bit too sugary, especially on the day of that big march. Wall to wall, from airwaves to newsprint, the message was this: Oh come let us adore them.

Talking heads made it clear that if you believe in preserving our sovereignty, you are a bigot.

So what about the millions (including Mexicans!) waiting properly in line to get here by following the rules? Suckers, like me.

Though I haven't tried, because it's useless, no "respectable" newspaper would publish this side of the story, my side, which respresents millions.

Thou Shalt Not Stereotype ranks among the top ten rules that govern respectable newspapers.

Unless, of course, you happen to dislike a particular individual, or his politics.

As the Philadelphia Inquirer sounded the trumpets for yesterday’s nationwide march with the headline IMMIGRANTS SEND A RESOUNDING CALL, with photos glorifying the event, the paper still found room to profile Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) who opposes amnesty for illegal aliens. This is not popular, this point of view.

The Inquirer interviewed dozens of these marchers and while we were given their names we were not treated to their physical characteristics.

Were they short, fat, ugly, tall, slim, handsome -- none of that because that is none of our business.

Watch me. I am sitting here all by myself turning this out. It may be good. It may be lousy. But it is all mine. Look around. Do you see a room-full of  (high-salaried) gag writers that I can lean on if I go empty? I snap my fingers and someone says, “Try this.” No, it’s all up to me to find the right words, to earn the praise, deserve the blame, and that’s how it is for most writers who are for real.

No knock on Stephen Colbert, necessarily, or on Jon Stewart, whom we’ll get to in a moment -- and this is not about their politics. Never mind that. It’s about the business of being funny, and I do mean business. So I checked in on this evening’s “60 Minutes” (Sunday, April 30) on CBS and caught the segment on Stephen Colbert who spoofs the news on Comedy Central, as of course does Stewart, who uses scoffing as his art.

There was that commercial of some time ago that asked “Is it live or is it Memorex?” (Meaning a copy, a recording.)

I guess that’s what we’ve got here in the case of a 19-year-old Harvard student and “novelist,” Kaavya Viswanathan, now accused of plagiarism. Apparently her book “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,” cloned some 40 passages from another book, actually two books written by Megan McCafferty.

We learn from our big city newspapers that Viswanathan got $500,000 to sign up with Little, Brown, publishers, and that she did all that signing while she was only 17. One part of me feels sorry for this young lady. She got trapped in Jay McInerney’s “Bright Lights, Big City” and at 19, there is still so much living and writing to do.

Besides President Bush and the Senate, who says we can’t deport individuals who are here undocumented and illegal? Read page 7 of today’s NY Post (my favorite newspaper) and you’ll see that we’ve done just that to “Danish diva” May Andersen. Andersen, a Sports Illustrated supermodel, has been deported back to Amsterdam, or maybe Copenhagen, or anywhere except here in the U.S.

Meanwhile, 12 million illegals crossing over from Mexico are welcome. Come on down!

Don’t know about you, but I feel much safer now that Andersen is going, going, gone.

We sure don’t want beautiful women clogging up our streets and making trouble.

Well, one thing’s for sure. She won’t be humming “I Love New York” when she gets back to LA.

With all those reviews damning her debut Broadway performance in Richard Greenberg’s “Three Days of Rain,” the only question is this – life behind bars or the death penalty. Whoops. My mistake. I’m thinking of Zacarias Moussaoui, the man who’s accused of trying to hijack a fifth airplane, on 9/11, with the White House in mind as a target.

Still, even this guy, a terrorist, never got Julia’s reviews. Lackluster, stiff, long-nosed, and one reviewer even said that he “hated” her.

There’s been nothing that harsh for Moussaoui, or even for shoe bomber Richard Reid. Yasser Arafat is still dead but still gets better press than Julia, as does all of Hamas. The president of China did not get a terrific reception from President Bush, but nobody called Hu Jin-tao long-nosed.

As of this moment all we know for sure is that a state grand jury has issued sealed indictments against two Duke University lacrosse players in a case of ALLEGED rape. Are these two really guilty? That remains to be seen. But Jesse Jackson, appearing with Paula Zahn on CNN, has already set the racial fires burning with hot-button talk of “plantation” and “slavery” and “fantasies” of white men having their way with black women.

Jesse obviously waits by the phone for the next CAUSE to divide America. This time, the call came from Duke University and here he is, front page again.

It’s too bad that Paula failed to remind Jesse that “fantasies” work both ways. Plenty of prime time African American athletes somehow walk off with the sharpest blonde on campus. Is that a problem? No, as long as we remember that we’re all in this together and that race is a problem only when we (or some people) make it a problem.

In this ABC made-for-TV production of “The Ten Commandments” we have a new Moses, ethnically and religiously cleansed.

As played by Dougray Scott (Charlton Heston, not), Moses has been homogenized, pasteurized, sanitized and dry-cleaned so as not to offend any race, religion or creed. This Moses (as opposed to the Moses of the Bible and even the Moses of Cecil B. DeMille) is not Hebrew, and in fact he’s not anything but multi-cultural.

Along both parts of this series (new and improved over DeMille!!!) that ran Monday and Tuesday, April 10 and 11, the word “Hebrew” never came up, neither attached to him or to his people, yes, the Hebrews. The best this fat-free, low-calorie script could do was refer to Moses as a “slave” and later, as the “leader” of a “people.”

Smart people know what's going on. I don't. Those experts on those TV shouting matches know exactly what's happening in regards to illegal immigration and aid to Hamas. I read the same reports that come out of Washington and instead of being enlightened I grow woozy from confusion.

Call me clueless. Be my guest.

As I've got it figured - well, wait a minute! Even the New York Times is confounded. One day the headline exults that Congress has paved the way for full citizenship for those 11 million illegals. Next day, it's just the opposite. Congress is bogged down. Here's the exact headline - IMMIGRATION DEAL FAILS IN SENATE VOTE.

If the paper of record can't figure it out, what do you want from me? Likewise, the people who run our country can't seem to figure anything out, either. Aren't they supposed to be of the people, for the people? The people, according to the stats, want a tight border, and don't want illegals hanging round. Legal, yes. Illegal, no.