We'll be commenting all morning that international journalists seem almost giddy about Beit Hanun: "look at all of the rage that the Israeli atrocity caused!" Finally, decades of having to make up Israeli atrocities against Palestinian civilians have ended. The most extreme Palestinians and their international media sympathizers can get to threaten to blow up Israeli schoolhouses because of an Israeli action, and for the first time in a long time that that Israeli action actually happened. The last time, Hamas has that Israel was responsible for an explosion actually caused by weapons being paraded through town by macho Hamas terrorists. And even though everyone pointed out that they were lying (including Palestinian President Abbas), they went on shamelessly using that excuse as a justification for violence.

Now at the time, we imagined that journalists might have been feeling a little guilt about passing on Hamas's lies. Oh, it's not that the journalists openly agreed with those lies of course - that would be bias, after all. No, all they did is use phrases like "Palestinian officials accused" and "but Israeli officials denied'. But still, there must may have been a little guilt. Because implicitly justifying future Palestinian atrocities based on demonstrable lies is guilt-inducing. Maybe.

Problem solved.

Now they can pass on the most lurid details of Palestinian viciousness, because obviously Israel makes them that way. And so, with the burden of guilt lifted from their shoulders, they are reveling in the opportunity. Both major wires. Many major newspapers. All the same headline and first paragraph: the Palestinians are just devastated over this senseless lose of human life, and they are going to blow up a ton of Israelis to get over their sadness:

Reuters lede:

AP lede:

Guardian headline:

New York Times lede:

Now here's the interesting thing. That's the NYT lede - "anger and mourning". But the headline is just "Palestinians Mourn Civilians Killed By Israel". And that gets at exactly why this gleeful coverage of Palestinians anger (glee only thinly disguised as moral outrage) is so outrageous -

When did it become OK for vicious mobs to declare that they're going to take out their sadness on Israeli children? Like, let's assume that this was entirely Israel's fault - that the Palestinian terrorists who choose to use these people as de-facto human shields bear zero moral culpability for their deaths. Obviously, it's untrue, but since everyone else seems to be assuming it let's bracket it for the sake of argument -

In what moral universe does that make it totally natural for the Palestinian government - not some mob, not some random guy, but the government - to threaten to eradicate the Jewish state? Because the Israeli government never threatened to eradicate the Palestinians in response to any of the hundreds of mass murders that the Palestinians have committed - and we're very sure that if they had, they wouldn't be getting this kind of "well, of course they're angry" coverage.

WHERE IS OUR CYCLE OF VIOLENCE COVERAGE?

Why aren't we reading ledes in British and French newspapers about how "the cycle of violence in the region threatened to spiral out of control as the Palestinians threaten retaliation"? Because that was the lede of just about every single post-suicide bombing story when Sharon was in power - even when Sharon clearly had zero intention of retaliating. The press preemptively wrung their hands about it anyway. Why isn't that happening now.

Is it because they just don't expect any better from the Palestinians?

Is it because they actually think that this accident is so outrageous that it justifies threatening genocide as retaliation?

Is it because they just don't care about the cycle of violence when Israel is on the immediately next rung?

Because those are the only three explanations for why the Palestinians are getting this "justifiable anger" coverage. Either journalists don't think threats of genocide are newsworthy, or they think they're justified, or they support them. Maybe there's a third option, but we're not sure what it could possibly be.

Previously: Reuters Gives Advice: Want To Dampen Muslim Extremism? Support People Who Want To Commit Genocide., We Continue To Be Frustrated and Baffled By The World's Reaction To Iran, If Anti-Zionism Isn't Supposed to Be Anti-Semitism, Someone Should Probably Tell the Anti-Zionists