With Media Like This...

... Who needs propaganda?

From FAIR

New York Times: Hamas Provokes a Fight (6/29/06)

An editorial on Israel's assault on Gaza declaring that "the responsibility for this latest escalation rests squarely with Hamas," exceeds even the normally selective memory of mainstream commentary. In this case the Times' editorial memory extends exactly to when Hamas' "military wing tunneled into Israel on Sunday, killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped another," but stops short of the Israeli shell that killed a picnicking family in Gaza just 16 days earlier—or the deaths of "nearly 50 Palestinians" in June and "more than 40" in May at the hands of Israeli forces. The possibility that these could be reasons for "Hamas' [declaration] that the group's 16-month intermittent cease-fire would no longer be observed" does not occur to the editorialists, who say "an Israeli military response was inevitable."

The Times even faults the new Palestinian government for militants crossing the "pre-1967 borders" that Israel has consistently and flagrantly ignored in constructing massive "settlements" in the face of overwhelming international condemnation. The editorial's attitude is best distilled in the adjectives chosen to describe "endless rounds of reckless Hamas provocations and inexorable Israeli responses." Palestinian actions are cast as "reckless" and willfully "provocative," while Israel's actions are "responses" and are "inexorable," almost like an act of nature.