[Rigelian]

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Isreali tanks rolled into Gaza again today, reportedly killing 12 Palestinians and destroying a number of homes in response to yesterday's bombing attack.
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They never say that the bombing attack targetted and killed a bus load of children, or that the bomb killed a group of people who were doing nothing more than a little Sunday shopping

The only objective thing to do is to report both of course. I don't know about CBC but I'd say that overall the BBC does a decent job of that. But they still get criticised of course. It is a firmly held conviction in the Arab world that an Arab life is considered to be worth less than an Israeli one (by the West). Maybe they should watch CBC...

The interesting thing here (for me) is the subtext that Israel is held to higher standards than the Palestinians. I agree that this is indeed the case. For example, the Palestinian Authority are mainly incompetent crooks who have embezzled or wasted millions in aid; but you are much more likely to hear about some slightly dodgy farm deal that Sharon was involved in. This may seem unfair but it is inevitable for two reasons;

a) Israel is overwhelmingly more powerful. If you don't see the buildup/provocation, there seems no excuse for a soldier with a rifle to fire at someone throwing rocks at him. Or to drive his tank through a building. The gut instinct is always to side with the underdog.

b) The Western media will hold 'Western' cultures to higher standards than others, every time. In the case of Israel the assumption, usually unspoken, is that Israelis are more 'like us' than the Arabs and are held to those higher standards. After all, Israel is a democracy, has diverse multi-party politics, free speech, a market economy, high technology, Nobel prizewinnners...its a Western country. This can be argued pretty strongly to be a form of racism in itself of course. But it's not anti Israeli at all, but the opposite, however unfair and frustrating it might seem.