Here we go again — another “serious escalation” has begun in the Middle East, or so BBC World was telling audiences throughout Sunday. So what prompted the BBC’s judgment that the crisis was escalating once more? You can be sure it had nothing to do with the more than 130 Lebanese dead after five days of savage aerial bombardment from at least 2,000 sorties by Israeli war planes that are making the country’s south a disaster zone and turning Beirut into a crumbling ghost town. Those dead, most civilians and many of them women and children, hardly get a mention, their lives apparently empty of meaning or significance in this confrontation. Read more about Israelis are dying: it must be an escalation 

In an editorial this Saturday, The New York Times clearly crossed the line from its already biased reporting in support of Israel, to cheerleading for Israel, and even advocating that Israel conduct illegal, extrajudicial executions of Arab political leaders. Positions taken by the Times matter because it is the US’ most influential newspaper. The Times both reflects and helps to shape US policy and public opinion. The previous two days, the editorial and news departments at the Times had stated clear support for Israel’s assaults on Gaza and Lebanon. Read more about NY Times: Arab leaders to blame, fair game for assassination 

One element fueling the current crisis in Gaza is the ongoing failure of US corporate media coverage of Israel/Palestine. US policy, public opinion and mainstream media coverage of Israel/Palestine are all dangerously biased towards Israel. Media coverage both reflects and influences policy and public opinion. Media coverage of events in Gaza again illustrates how the US mainstream media privileges the Israeli narrative, and frequently ignores both Palestinian experiences and international law, providing the US public and policymakers with only part of the story. Read more about Crisis in US Media Coverage of Gaza 

It would be too simple to sum up Israel’s recent military incursions in Gaza as a humanitarian disaster. But beneath the immediate surface, we find those who task themselves with generating meaning where actions are inexplicable. Among them are the mainstream U.S. media, who squeeze water from stones, invoking the pretense of Qassam rockets - the latest fetish symbol of Arab confusion and savagery since suicide bombs - and now the youthful face of kidnapped Corporal Gilad Shalit, whose picture has become an exploitative reminder on nearly every Internet news story related to Gaza, whether it mentions him or not. Read more about Looking for Shalit 

The killing by Palestinian militants of two Israeli soldiers and the capture of a third from an army post close to the Gaza Strip set the scene for Israeli “reprisals” and “retaliation”, according to the reports of BBC correspondents in Israel and Gaza at the weekend. We can ignore the weeks of shelling by the Israeli army of Gaza, the firing of hundreds of missiles into the crowded Strip that have destroyed Palestinian lives and property, while spreading terror among the civilian population. Read more about 'Escalation', 'retaliation' and BBC double standards in Gaza 

Reading Lee Kaplan’s various articles, in a variety of publications over the last several months, on the supposed links between organizations that work for Palestinian freedom, my primary reaction is how severely and routinely they are riddled with basic factual errors. He clearly knows next to nothing about what he is writing about. Where there is not error, there is speculation that bases its trajectory on error… One obvious reason that has given rise to all of this is that Kaplan has never once picked up the phone to ask myself or anyone else at EI the usual questions that journalists are supposed to ask before they put pen to paper. Read more about Lee Kaplan's distortions 

The Israeli military’s shelling of a Gaza beach on June 9 and killing of eight Palestinian civilians focused world attention on Israel’s intensive artillery campaign against Gaza. Since then, 14 more Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli missiles. The US corporate media has highlighted dubious Israeli denials of responsibility for the Gaza beach killings, while providing much less space to Palestinian and third party assertions of Israeli responsibility. Read more about US Corporate Media Misses Target in Israel’s Aerial Assault on Gaza 

On Tuesday, state mouthpiece Israel News Agency delivered the verdict the world was waiting for: Israel was not guilty of the shelling on Beit Lahiya’s beach that wiped out a family of eight last Friday. The trend is distinctly Orwellian yet familiar. The harder reality bites, the bigger Israel lies. But the story the media missed rests less in the allegations and disputed facts, and more in the space where the world waited to exhale. That is, while the media interrogated all the possibilities — or in the above examples, only one — it forgot to interrogate itself. Read more about Waiting to Exhale