Roll the Videotape

That suicide bomber footage from last week is causing the excpected furor — but in a perhaps unexpected place: Israel. From The Washington Post:

The decision to put the graphic five minute and 38-second video on the Israeli Foreign Ministry Web site just hours after Thursday’s explosion, which killed 11 people and the bomber, has unleashed an emotional public debate in a nation weary of a conflict that has turned Israeli buses, cafes and public streets into targets and frustrated by political leadership on both sides that has not ended the violence.

Foreign ministry official Meir said the agency’s Web site had received 600,000 hits on the video as of Sunday night. On Thursday, the day of the bombing, the site temporarily collapsed under the volume of attempts to view the footage, which carried the understated warning