Amira Hass, an Israeli reporter, put Gaza arms-smuggling in perspective, writing in the Haaretz newspaper on October 18: "What exists in Israelis' consciousness is not the millions of cluster bombs ... or the tens of millions of bombs and shells and lethal bullets stored in our arms warehouses and our gun barrels and the bellies of our helicopters and planes. Although the amount of such explosives is measured in the millions of tons, it is the 20 tons of explosives and the few thousand rifles that permeate the Israeli consciousness."

Despite the fact that they have vastly inferior weapons, are killed in much greater numbers, live under Israeli occupation and are having their land taken from them by Israelis, Palestinians are generally portrayed in the US as the aggressors.

Ironically, under the much vilified Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, Palestinians have killed by far the fewest Israelis in any period during this six-year intifada, 19 Israelis over seven months.

Hamas has largely maintained a ceasefire since early 2005, even as Israel and Western governments demand that Hamas renounce violence and recognise Israel, and the Western media repeats simplistically that Hamas is "committed to the destruction of Israel".

In the meantime, Israel is actually destroying the Palestinian people and any hopes for a Palestinian state through heightened violence and land seizure. But the world has been silent about Israeli actions.

The dominance of the Israeli narrative and of Israeli voices in the US media is one factor that allows Americans to maintain this hypocrisy. Rather than providing comparable information about both sides, Palestinian attacks and weaponry are over-emphasised, and the Israeli government line repeated.

Comparative figures and analysis of the overwhelming numbers of Israeli missiles and bombs fired at Gaza and Lebanon, of Israel's vast weaponry, and of the numbers of Palestinians killed, are typically harder to find.

For example, The New York Times, LA Times and Washington Post, three of the largest and most respected US newspapers, all describe the current crisis as beginning with the capture of an Israeli soldier, erasing history prior to June 25, 2006.

Israel's heightened assault on Gaza began with heavy shelling in late March, resulting in the killing of large numbers of Palestinians in Gaza before June 25, including gruesome attacks such as the June 9 shelling of a Gaza beach which killed seven members of the family of 12-year-old Huda Al Ghalia.

Over the past three months, those same three newspapers have failed to comment on the recent dramatic disparity between Palestinian and Israeli deaths.
During that period, The New York Times is the only one of those papers to have provided figures comparing death tolls.

The Times did so three times over three months, in just one to two sentences each time, with no accompanying analysis. Over the past three months, the LA Times and the Washington Post reported only the figures for Palestinian deaths, six times and two times respectively, again with no analysis. All three papers begin their counts from June 25, 2006.

It is difficult to imagine that a similarly dramatic increase in the ratio of Israeli to Palestinian deaths could occur without major discussion by the media and the world, or that such lop-sided deaths in another conflict would pass without comment.

Despite a Hamas ceasefire, and publicly available data showing that Israel is now carrying out a one-sided assault, Hamas violence remains the focus. Propaganda continues to trump reality, with the collaboration of the US media.

Palestinians are portrayed as terrorists, and Israelis as victims of Palestinian terrorism. There is scarcely a mention of international law, or the status of the Palestinians as a people living under 39-years of Israeli military occupation and subjugation.

Palestinians, however, realise that they are being slaughtered despite the fact that they are not killing Israelis, just as they know that they were encouraged to hold democratic elections and then punished for doing so.

Frustrated by the world's hypocrisy and lack of support, and subject to daily Israeli assaults, it is unlikely that Palestinians will maintain their unilateral ceasefire forever. If Palestinians do eventually strike back, it remains to be seen if the world will even register what they are responding to.

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