Here we go again. Four years ago, during and after Israel's antiterrorist counteroffensive in Gaza, mainstream media reported that more than 1,000 Palestinians were killed, while Israeli fatalities were only a miniscule fraction of that total. This left readers and viewers with a distinct impression that Israel had used excessive force. Israel, in effect, was depicted as the brutal Goliath against an outgunned David. The reality, however, was quite different. Israel was engaged in an asymmetrical conflict in which Palestinian terrorist groups deliberately targeted civilians, while Israel was bending over backwards to avoid Palestinian civilian casualties. As a result, most Palestinian fatalities were combatants, while most Israeli fatalities were civilians, or noncombatants. This distinction, however, was never made clear to readers and viewers because mainstream media simply lumped together combatants and noncombatant fatalities in a single total figure. To this day, for example, the New York Times, harking back to Operation Cast Lead, reports that the three-week Israeli counteroffensive in Gaza in 2008-09, took 1,400 Palestinian lives. Not only is....
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