WaPo Provides Context-Free Coverage of the Israel-Gaza Conflict

Failing to Grace the WaPo Front Page

The Washington Post has certainly taken a timeworn media tack in it's coverage of the latest instance of Israel stubbornly insisting on continuing to exist.  That being: keep nearly all mentions of the prolonged and incessant attacks of Israel by the Palestinians off the front page and to an absolute minimum, then deliver maximum coverage of the Israelis' response. 

A response that Israel on Christmas Day openly announced was to come were the rocket bombardments from the Gaza Strip not halted.  This called shot gave the Post two (additional) days to provide a description of the nearly daily asaults Israel has faced from Gaza since they ceded the territory to the Palestinians in September 2005 (and that have been stepped up even further in the last month plus).  To provide some sort of context for why the Israelis were planning what they have now begun.

But rarely if ever does the Post find these Palestinian attacks worthy of any coverage at all, let alone the stuff of front page placement.  It didn't this time either.  No mention -- of Israel's warning or why they had issued it -- made the Post's front page at all on either day.

Israel's promised retaliation, however, did make the Post's front page for two straight days (thus far).  In fact, on both days there were full-color four-column above-the-fold below-the-masthead photographs of the damage done, accompanying the Post's de riguer woe-are-the-Palestinians stories.

For the dedicated Middle East and Washington Post observer, this is merely another example of the anti-Israel slant that the paper has long held.  For the casual WaPo reader -- a far more numerous lot -- the damage done to their perception of the circumstances in the Holy Land by this feat of journalistic malpractice is pronounced and lasting.

To see and read nothing -- NOTHING -- on the front pages of the Post of the years-long Palestinian attacks from Gaza in the days immediately preceding their gigantic coverage of Israel's response makes the latter seem capricious and unjustified.  Which it is anything but, but is just how the Post apparently wishes it to appear to be.