What happens when you reward terrorists for kidnapping Israelis?

Significant progress has been noted in the talks on kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, Ynet learned on Thursday.

A foreign source involved in the negotiations for Shalit’s release from Palestinian captivity told Ynet that the talks are currently in an advanced stage and in the most encouraging state since Shalit was kidnapped at the end of June.

They keep on kidnapping Israelis.

The defense establishment on Thursday evening declared a high state of alert following 16 concrete warnings on terror organizations’ plans to carry out terror attacks. Security forces will boost their activities ahead of the holiday of Rosh Hashana.

The warnings came from the northern West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and include kidnapping attacks, suicide bombings, shooting from small-arms and from high-trajectory weapons.

In the past few days, the Shin Bet has received many warnings on terror organizations’ plans to carry out kidnapping attacks, both against Israeli citizens and against soldiers.

It’s a no-brainer. I’d like to blame Olmert for this, but a succession of Israel administrations has done the exact same thing. Funny, you’d think they’d figure it out by now.

Imagine, if you will, that Amnesty International comes out with a report that accuses Israel of war crimes. The headlines would be a variety of “Amnesty International charges Israel with War Crimes,” and the lead would be that Israel is accused of war crimes.

Oh, wait. That really happened.

So when Amnesty comes out and charges Hezbullah with war crimes, what’s the AP headline?

Amnesty Condemns Hezbollah for Rockets

And the lead?

LONDON (AP) - Hezbollah militants broke international law by firing thousands of rockets into Israel and killing dozens of civilians during the recent conflict with Israel, Amnesty International charged Thursday.

The human rights group called for a U.N. inquiry into what it called war crimes by Israel and Hezbollah, but its report focused on the actions of the militants during the 34-day conflict.

That’s because they already issued their accusations of Israeli “war crimes.” Go read that link and compare and contrast the AP stories. Look at this defense of Hezbullah:

Although Hezbollah denies targeting Israeli civilians, it fired inaccurate rockets packed with thousands of metal ball bearings to maximize harm to noncombatants, Amnesty said.

A Hezbollah legislator acknowledged Thursday the group had targeted populated areas in Israel, but he rejected the Amnesty report, saying the militants acted in response to Israeli attacks.

“We do not deny that we have bombarded Israeli cities, settlements and infrastructure. But this was always a reaction,” legislator Hassan Fadlallah told Al-Jazeera television. “It was a natural reaction. When a state is invaded, it must defend itself.”

He said Amnesty probably came under U.S. and Israeli pressure to issue a report critical of Hezbollah’s actions during the war after issuing a similar report against Israel last month.

Four paragraphs of terrorists defending their policy of deliberately attacking civilians, opposed to one paragraph by an unnamed “senior government official” defending Israeli attacks on Lebanon. And then, in the above news article, a defense by Israel, buried near the end of the article—where it gets cut from the International sections of most daily newspapers. All they see is the first three to five paragraphs. And the second one accuses Israel of war crimes.

The Amnesty report itself is no bargain. It goes on and on about Hezbullah using Israel’s attacks as an excuse to retaliate on Israel’s civilian population. One would think that focusing on the Hezbullah attacks themselves, without devoting so much space to their excuses, would suffice. But one would underestimate the bias against Israel if one were to do that.

If you can find more than a handful of headlines accusing Hezbullah of war crimes, I’ll pay you a dollar for each of them above, oh, twenty. I found eight. Go ahead and Google “hezbollah war crimes.” Now Google “Israeli war crimes.” You know what will happen.

Once again, the anti-Israel bias of the world media is evident.

Update: Jules Crittendon writes to remind me that he is a member of the world media, and is not anti-Israel.