THE CURRENT NEWSWEEK has a long, cover-story retrospective on the siege of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. The piece is invaluable for its detail–but exasperating for the filter of “objectivity” through which correspondent Joshua Hammer apparently feels obliged to view his otherwise excellent work. The standoff in Manger Square, Hammer writes, “seemed to capture the essence of the Mideast struggle” generally: “a prolonged, seemingly insoluble dispute between two stubborn and distrustful enemies.” You know–sort of an on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand kind of thing.