Left I on the News

Most readers have probably seen or heard the news item the title of this post alludes to. But you probably didn't see that headline, because, almost without exception, the media treated this event as a humanitarian act on the part of Israel, rather than one of Palestinian solidarity.

• Reuters: "Israel calls off air raid after Gaza protest"
• New York Times: "Israel Holds Fire as Gazans Rally at House"
• AP got the headline right: "Protests Force Israel to Halt Airstrikes" but lead with the opposite: "Israel called off airstrikes on the homes..."

As an isolated incident of news coverage, this wouldn't prove anything. But consider this, from the Reuters article:

Israel has been under pressure to avoid civilian casualties after an artillery shell killed 19 people, all non-combatants, in Gaza on November 8. Israel apologized for the civilian deaths and said a technical fault caused a targeting error.

Yes, that's what they said. But 19 paragraphs earlier in the same article, we just read this:

Hours after the "human shield" protest, an Israeli aircraft attacked a car carrying Hamas militants on a crowded Gaza City street. Hospital officials said an elderly passerby died of his wounds after being hit in the strike.

Medical workers said the two men in the vehicle and two other passersby were wounded.

So now tell us about the "targeting error" which allowed the Israelis to target a car on a "crowded street" (for about the hundredth time) and kill a passerby. The same article reminds us, also for the hundredth (or thousandth) time, that "Hamas...has rejected Western demands to renounce violence [and] recognize the Jewish state." Strangely enough, nowhere in the article does the author feel the need to remind us that Israel has refused to renounce violence and recognize a Palestinian state. Nor to remind us that Hamas' violence has caused a fraction of the deaths of the Israeli violence.