When I heard the horrific news last night that 5 Israeli settlers were murdered in their home in the settlement of Itamar, I knew it would only be a matter of hours before a shoddy piece of journalism describes the murders as the end of a "lull in the violence" or the end of "relative calm" since 4 Israeli settlers were killed in an attack near Hebron last summer. At that time, the Washington Post ran an editorial saying that the attacks then ended "three years of peace" in the region which we posted about.

So I suppose it should come as no surprise that the Washington Post's own Janine Zacharia leads the way this morning by displaying a complete ignorance of the situation she is supposedly covering or an overt pro-Israel bias (or both). Here's Zacharia's story and the critical excerpt:

The Israeli daily Ha'aretz, citing a preliminary investigation, reported that the children killed were ages 11, 3 and a 3-month-old baby. The newspaper also said that another 12-year-old daughter and two of her younger brothers managed to escape.
The attack shattered a relative calm that had prevailed in the West Bank in recent months as Palestinian security forces assert greater control in the territories where they are allowed by Israel to operate and as Israeli and Palestinians forces coordinate security efforts.
Last August, four Jewish settlers were killed in a drive-by shooting in the West Bank.

Zacharia's chronology is likely representative of the broader mainstream media's coverage of these events, sadly. American readers or consumers of mainstream media (MSM) are delivered a simple, straightforward message: Israelis are killed about 6 months apart and in between everything was calm.

The problem is that for Zacharia and much of the MSM "relative calm" means no Israelis were attacked, injured or killed and ignores the ongoing occupation and violence against Palestinians.

(read the rest on MondoWeiss  . .. )

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