With a ceasefire under way between Israel and Hamas, both sides are summing up casualty counts. Israel has issued preliminary figures that point to a fairly even split of Palestinian fatalities – about 1,000 combatants/terrorists and some 1,100 noncombatants for an overall total of some 2,100 dead Palestinians. Israeli officials also note that the Palestinian civilian collateral count, while remarkably low in the history of warfare, would have even been less if Hamas hadn’t embedded its rocket launchers amidst civilian neighborhoods in Gaza. Western media, however, have a quite different twist in their reporting of Palestinian and Israeli fatalities, which is -- surprise, surprise -- more in sync with Palestinian fatality breakdowns. The emphasis here is on civilian casualties, with hardly any indication of how many Palestinian combatants/terrorists were killed.  The New York Times and the Washington Post both use such spin in their...(Read Full Post)