In the last few days, there has been gushing sympathy from the English press for Israel with the return of the bodies of two of its soldiers in an exchange with Hizbollah. Israel has been portrayed as the victim and there have been tearful pictures of grieving families receiving the two plain boxes containing the bodies of their relatives.
But if you are able to examine some of the other press reports, for example that of El Pais in Spain, you get a rather different picture. In fact, it wasn't just two coffins returned - it actually took ten hours for Israel to return 199 Palestinian dead.
When in 2006, Hizbollah attacked the Israeli border with the intention of capturing some soldiers, they wanted to force an exchange of thousands of prisoners held without trial in Israeli jails. The response of Israel was to launch an air attack which escallated into a war leaving over 1000 Lebanese dead, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis of which around 40 were civilians.
Whilst no-one wants to see the violence continuing in the middle east, the blatant bias in reporting seen in the English media continues to understate the Palestinian case. Israel remains the only nuclear power in the middle east, one which has attacked all of its neighbours at one time or another over the last fifty years. It is in constant violation of UN Security Council resolutions, and has carried out a policy of ethnic cleansing. It has carried out a programme of assassinations, so-called extra-judicial killings, and the wholesale slaughter of people deemed to be living in areas harbouring terrorists - in violation of international agreements against collective punishments. Israel has consistently ignored international resolutions condemning its aggression against its neighbours. It continues to get massive military subsidies from the US. All of that is simply a matter of historical record - it's not opinion, it's not biased. It's simply fact.
The courageous book by Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, is a scholarly investigation into the establishment of the Israeli state which gives blow-by-blow details of the policy of stripping the Palestinian population of their land and property. This is the sort of detail that is missing from the reporting of events in the English press. By reporting only the two Israeli coffins, the other 199 are left out of the picture.
Statistics of Israeli/Palestinian deaths
But just look at the death toll in Gaza. Look at the number of old people, women and children who are routinely killed by Israeli incursions. Between September 29th, 2000 and the end of 2005, there have been 4862 Palestinian deaths and 1057 Israelis. Of those 123 were Israeli children, and there were 1050 Palestinian children killed.
These figures only go up to 2006 and there has been a series of campaigns against Palestinians in Gaza since then but these figures show very clearly that the balance of aggression is with the Israelis.
The ratio of Palestinian to Israeli dead in 2007 was 40:1, up from 30:1 in 2006 and 4:1 in the period between 2000 and 2005.
Middle East Times report on death statistics.
There is no doubt that rockets are fired at Israel - but there is absolutely no doubt that Israel is an extremely violent neighbour. Rather than wringing hands at the return of two Israeli coffins, responsible news reporters ought to be counting up the endless series of burials in Gaza and demanding to know why it is that Israel continues to get the sympathy of states who turn their eyes away from Israel's continuing policy of ethnic cleansing.
