The Sunday media bias post, now with extra hypocrisy!

Hamas is still firing rockets into Israel. So of course, the world media are concentrating on how Israel is “pounding” Gaza.

And the Arab League, using the newly-issued R2P (responsibility to protect) hobbyhorse, wants the UN to authorize a no-fly zone over Gaza. Because responding to rockets being fired into your country is just like a dictator forcibly putting down citizen protests calling for his removal. The hypocrisy is just super-duper today, because that very same dictator is a member of the Arab League. He was unavailable for voting, due to the fact that he is currently trying to murder the citizens who want him to step down from his dictatorship. Doubtless, however, Muammar Ghaddafy would vote for the no-fly zone over Gaza.

Oh, and Turkey is condemning the use of excessive force. That’s a good one. Heard any good Kurd jokes lately?

Of course, the media are all blaming Israel for the “violence.” Here’s the new AP boilerplate, which takes the Hamas line that this is all Israel’s fault:

The violence escalated a week ago when an Israeli airstrike killed three Hamas militants who Israel said were planning a cross-border kidnapping. On Thursday, Hamas militants fired a guided anti-tank missile at an Israeli school bus, wounding the two people on board, including a teenage boy who was critically hurt.

Since Thursday, Palestinians fired more than 120 rockets and mortars into southern Israel, prompting a series of Israeli reprisals that have killed 19 Palestinians, including six civilians, and wounded 65 others. It has been the most intense fighting between Israel and Gaza militants since a major Israeli offensive in the Palestinian territory ended in January 2009.

Missing from the story is the fact that Hamas has been firing rockets steadily into Israel since the end of Operation Cast Lead, and that less than three weeks before this latest “violence,” Hamas fired fifty mortars in one day. But absolutely, it’s Israel’s fault—for trying to stop terrorists before they get anothr Gilad Shalit to hold in a hole somewhere for years.

Amazingly, Reuters has the right cause-and-effect in its lead.

Israel and the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers signaled on Sunday they were looking to end a flare-up in violence that began four days ago with a missile attack on an Israeli school bus and has claimed the lives of 19 Palestinians.

Color me shocked.

The BBC counts the Palestinian casualties as just plain “people.” And they cast doubt on the reasons behind Israel’s response:

At least 18 people have died in Israeli air strikes, which it says have been in response to militant rocket fire.

[…] Several civilians were among those killed in the following Israeli air strikes. Dozens of people have been wounded.

This is the only number I can find in the BBC story.

Although three mortar shells were fired by Palestinian militants overnight this was a sharp drop from previous days

There have been over 120 rockets and mortars fired into Israel since Thursday, including many Grad rockets towards Israel’s cities that are being stopped by the Iron Dome defense system.

The shooting has not stopped, in spite of Hamas now saying that they’re really ready for a truce. Ehud Barak says that 750,000 citizens in bomb shelters is unacceptable. So this current round may not be over. And if the IDF does go into Gaza, those evil Israelis are going in with new maps that show them sensitive areas like schools and UN buildings that should not be attacked.

The list included hospitals, United Nations facilities, schools, power grids, flour mills, food storage centers and various homes and office buildings.

Senior IDF officers have told The Jerusalem Post that new maps being drafted by the Gaza Division in the Southern Command ahead of a possible future operation in Gaza now include more than 3,000 sites that are off-limits to attacks.

The most moral army in the world? You bet your ass they are. The difference between Hamas and Israel can be counted in those two paragraphs. Hamas deliberately targets school buses. Israel marks civilian sites as off-limits. Which one got the brunt of the Goldstone Report? Why, of course the one that tries to prevent civilian casualties. That’s Israeli Double Standard Time, defined.