The Washington Post, though, went with this headline today: "Housing Plan for Jerusalem Neighborhood Spurs Criticism."

The article by Howard Schneider refers to a "disputed neighborhood of Jerusalem," the "Jewish neighborhood of Gilo," a place "annexed to the city in a step not recognized by the international community."

There is also a reference to White House policy, noting that the Obama administration "has vacillated in its stance on Israeli construction in areas claimed by the Palestinians."  This is downright bizarre; the entire discussion about "Israeli construction" concerns illegal Israeli settlements--or, perhaps more accurately, colonies--in the West Bank. Why, then, refuse to label Gilo accurately? It's an old story, actually; as Extra! pointed out in 2002, Gilo was a cause for pro-Israeli media activists, who pressured outlets like CNN to stop referring to Gilo as a settlement and use terms more innocuous like "neighborhood." It's still working, it would seem.

These settlers from the large settlement of Efrat are contrasted somewhat with the more militant settlers who live in the small outposts--the "legal" versus "illegal" settlements, according to the Israeli government. The two are "profoundly unlike each other," writes Burleigh, "but Palestinians revile them equally."

In fact, that's just about all Palestinians do in this article: "revile," "hate," "despise" and generally just be "unwelcoming." A single Palestinian is quoted (and one Israeli human rights group that opposes the settlements). The "Two Views of the Land" the print headline promises--online the headline is "Israeli Settlers vs. the Palestinians"--may be given equal billing, but it's far from an even match.

The piece wraps up by talking about Obama's and Netanyahu's strategies and options: "Challenging...law-abiding citizens like Sharon Katz" will be politically difficult, Burleigh observes--note that law-abiding has no qualifier here as it did in the beginning. The closing paragraph reinforces the normalcy of the Katz family: "Sitting around their kitchen table, with grandchildren's plastic toys scattered on a deck beyond sliding-glass doors, the Katz family doesn't look or sound militant. Indeed, to American ears, their version of the national narrative sounds rather familiar. " Sharon Katz is given the last word: "Israel shouldn't leave any hilltop! How did communities start out in the American West? With one log cabin. When we bought this land, it was a rocky hillside. Look what it looks like today."

Political realities and options are shaped to no small degree by public perception of situations, which is in turn shaped by media coverage. Perhaps if Native Americans had been portrayed in media accounts as sympathetic individuals instead of a generally undifferentiated mass (a mass often portrayed as unwelcoming and hateful), the political realities of the American West would have turned out differently. U.S. media accounts of the Israeli settler issue that portray the settlers as highly sympathetic and "law-abiding" individuals against a backdrop of largely invisible but clearly hateful Palestinians obscure the illegality of the settlements and contribute to the intractable political situation the Time piece wrings its hands over.

To be sure, Mumbai’s Muslims are a vulnerable minority in a predominantly Hindu country. Nevertheless, their in-your-face defiance of the Islamist terrorists stands out. It stands out against a dismal landscape of predominantly Sunni Muslim suicide murderers who have attacked civilians in mosques and markets--from Iraq to Pakistan to Afghanistan--but who have been treated by mainstream Arab media, like Al Jazeera, or by extremist Islamist spiritual leaders and websites, as "martyrs" whose actions deserve praise.

Actually, Al Jazeera refers to such attacks as "suicide attacks"--as a quick search of the Al Jazeera website, where one can view programs online, can attest.

But if Friedman were really concerned about media praise of terrorism, he might start by raising alarms about a certain New York Times columnist by the name of Thomas Friedman.

In a January 14 column defending Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip,  Friedman praised the 2006 Israeli attacks on Lebanon, which killed about 1,000 Lebanese civilians, as the "education" of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah:

Israel's counterstrategy was to use its air force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians--the families and employers of the militants--to restrain Hezbollah in the future.

See FAIR's Action Alert: "Terrorism on the NY Times Op-Ed Page (1/14/09).

Update: To be fair to Friedman, he was presumably talking about Al Jazeera's Arab-language service, not Al Jazeera English, when he wrote that "mainstream Arab media, like Al Jazeera," refer to suicide bombers in Afghanistan and Pakistan as "martyrs." So what do bloggers fluent in Arabic have to say about the columnist's assertion?  One blogger who teaches Arabic and is the former editor of the journal Arab Media and Society wrote  (Semi-Expert, 2/18/09): "Arab mainstream media, and certainly not Al Jazeera, the most mainstream of them all, in fact, don't refer to suicide bombers as martyrs." Friedman’s claim was also challenged  more harshly at the Angry Arab blog (2/18/09): "Can somebody tell this liar who does not understand Arabic, and who relies on MEMRI for his misconceptions about the Arab media that Al Jazeera does NOT refer to terrorists in Iraq as "martyrs" and does not offer them praise?”

An article by Ashraf Helmi and Megan Hirons provides the chilling details: ..."Inside one cage lie three dead monkeys and another two in the cage beside them. Two more escaped and have yet to return. [The zookeeper] points to a clay pot. 'They tried to hide,' he says of a mother and baby half-tucked inside."...

The gruesome attack must have posed a true dilemma when our mainstream media got wind of it: A tragic tale of dead animals vs. exposing the brutality of Israeli troops. Wolf, Anderson, Campbell, Suzanne, Chris, Norah, Contessa, Rachel, Joe, David, Sean, Bill, Megan and Shephard are probably working on a way to spin this to suit AIPAC. Perhaps, something like convincing us that a Gaza Zoo animal might be used as a shield by Hamas "terrorists."

Beattie's response to her own query about the reason for U.S. media silence: "The answer, of course, is that we're supposed to believe that Israeli troops are the good guys. Palestinians are 'militants.' Israeli soldiers are, well, soldiers." Listen to the FAIR radio program CounterSpin: "Phyllis Bennis on Gaza & the Law" (1/16/09)