Far from being a hegemonic power, able to domineer and subdue its regional rivals with impunity, Iran has a regional position that remains untenable, all while its regional rivals procure weapons systems that make themselves increasingly invulnerable.

Indeed, sober assessment shows that — both quantitatively and qualitatively — Iran’s regional rivals are well positioned not just to counter a “rising” Iran but to compete with it as well.

Wow, that sounds very informative. But wait, there’s more!

Quantitatively, Iran’s military expenditures have sunk far below those of its Gulf rivals. In 2014, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), more than 25 percent of Saudi government spending was devoted to beefing up its military assets — expenditures that totaled more than $80 billion. Along with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which spent nearly $23 billion, the two Gulf Arab countries comprise well over half the $173 billion in military expenditures spent by all Middle Eastern countries that year.

Comparatively, Iran’s military expenditures failed to measure up. During 2014, Iran’s military spending was about $15 billion, which comprised about 9 percent of total military spending in the Middle East. That’s a mere fraction of Saudi military spending and about two-thirds of the UAE’s. The Gulf Cooperation Council states — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — outspend Iran on arms by a factor of 13.

I didn’t know that the Saudis are outspending the Iranians! Look at all I’ve learned. The Iranian army is nowhere near as dangerous as I thought it was!

But wait! You know what the magazine doesn’t tell you? That Trita Parsi, one of the authors, is a paid shill for NIAC, an organization that purports to be the voice of American Iranians and yet seems to have issues when American Iranians disagree with them (cf: fraudulence in intimidation lawsuit). Tyler Cullis, his co-author, is one of his employees at NIAC. The article is bought and paid for by the Iran lobby.

Funny that Parsi being president of NIAC doesn’t seem to be relevant to FP when he writes about the Iranian military in a respected foreign policy magazine. You wouldn’t get that kind of lack of transparency if the head of AIPAC wrote an opinion piece. But here, FP doesn’t think it’s worth mentioning that the author is the head of an Iranian lobby firm (which of course denies it’s an Iranian lobby firm).

By contrast, of course they included Michael Oren’s bio in his recent article about Obama and Israel.

Michael Oren, formerly Israel’s ambassador to the United States and now a member of Knesset, is the author of Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide (Random House).

But they don’t tell you that Trita Parsi is the head of NIAC. Go figure. And he says we don’t need to worry about Iran’s hegemonic tendencies.

Never mind that Iran is now in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. Their militray is a paper tiger. The president of the National Iranian American Council says so. Oh, wait. I’m sorry, it’s just Trita Parsi, anonymous writer for Foreign Policy magazine.

A lot of people disagree with the Iranian shill, including the Saudis. But don’t worry. Be happy. Iran is going to get $150 billion released, and Obama is pretty darned sure they’re not going to use it for terrorism or the army or things like that. Because Iran is at heart a peaceful, rational country. Those chants of “Death to America“? Burning U.S. flags, stomping on Obama’s face? Well, they don’t really mean it.

Just like they don’t mean it when they say they’re going to destroy Israel. Chanting “Death to Israel?” MILLIONS of them? Putting out a video game that allows you to send missiles into Israel? Don’t worry, they don’t mean it–wait, they do.

The Trita Parsis of this world are liars. They are covering for a hegemonic regime that hates Israel and the West. Nothing good will come of the Obama nuclear negotiations. Nothing. Don’t believe their spin. The Iranian army is a threat to more than just Iran’s immediate neighbors.

Don’t believe what you read in so-called respectable magazines until you do some research about who’s writing the articles. And don’t forget, FP hired the odious Stephen Walt, co-author of the execrable “Israel Lobby” book. That tells you all you need to know about FP.

Because a news piece softly creeping left its bias while I was sleeping

Israeli Police Officers Kill Two Palestinian Men

Wait, what? Why on earth did Israeli police officers kill two innocent Palestinian men?

JENIN, West Bank — Two Palestinian men were fatally shot by the Israeli police after attacking officers with knives, one at a contested shrine in the West Bank and the other at a checkpoint near East Jerusalem, a police spokeswoman said Saturday.

Ohhhhhhh…. they attacked the officers and tried to kill them. So they were shot. And died. I guess that totally justified a biased headline like that. Say, what does the rest of the story say? Well, first the AP has to put in a paragraph that isn’t about the attack, so that vital details beyond the second or third paragraph will drop off your “World News” section. Then they have to make it look like the Israelis shouldn’t have shot the knife-wielding attacker.

They were the latest in a recent spate of attacks by Palestinians who appear to be acting alone and without the backing or instruction of any organization. They have carried out several deadly attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank using vehicles, knives and guns in recent months.

The first shooting took place at the Zayyim checkpoint on the outskirts of East Jerusalem late Friday. A police spokeswoman, Luba Samri, said a man identified as Ali Abu Ghannam, 17, ran toward officers with a knife at another checkpoint, then ran to the Zayyim checkpoint and threatened officers there. They shot him when he tried to stab them, she said, but Palestinian medics who arrived later said it was not clear what had taken place.

The police later released a photograph of a cleaver and what appeared to be a kitchen knife tipped with blood that they said Mr. Abu Ghannam had wielded.

The second shooting occurred on Saturday near the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron, a site revered by Jews, Muslims and Christians as the ancient burial place of Abraham and his wife, Sarah. Ms. Samri said a 20-year-old Palestinian man was shot by one officer after he stabbed another officer, 19, in the head and chest. The wounded officer was treated at a hospital. Ms. Samri did not identify either the injured policeman or his assailant, and Dr. Hijazi Abu Mazyar, an official with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, said his group had not yet ascertained the dead man’s identity.

They couldn’t spin the second attack, so they went on to talk about the one and only Jewish terrorist attack on Muslim worshipers. Because an attack in 1994 is totally relevant in 2015.

Reuters managed to get the headline right. But they tell a very different story than the AP.

Israeli forces kill two knife-wielding Palestinians – police
Israeli security forces killed two knife-wielding Palestinian attackers in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem on Saturday, police said.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, a Palestinian was shot dead by a paramilitary Israeli border police patrol after stabbing one of its men in the head and chest, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said. The injured policeman was taken to hospital.

Samri described the dead Palestinian as being around 20 years old. No further details on his identity were immediately available.

Earlier, 17-year-old Palestinian Ali Abu Ghannam attacked Israeli border police with a cleaver at a checkpoint in East Jerusalem and then fled, with troops giving chase and firing warning shots in the air, Samri said.

Look at that. Warning shots and everything. Amazing how the AP didn’t think that was a necessary detail. But then, the AP has an agenda, and it’s anti-Israel.

So does the New York Times, but hey… they’re “the paper of record”. All the news, and all that.

Shyeah.

Context. BIG context. The New York Times elides a threat by Hezbollah to invade Israel in the next conflict.

Nasrallah said in the interview that Hezbollah was ready to fight a new war against Israel in Lebanon and renewed a threat to invade the Galilee region of northern Israel. Hezbollah fighters “must be prepared”, he said.

“When the resistance (Hezbollah) leadership… asks you (fighters)… to enter into Galilee, that means the resistance must be ready to enter into Galilee and to go even beyond the Galilee.”

Here’s how the Times spins that.

The attack, targeting two vehicles traveling in the Syrian portion of the Golan Heights, came days after Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said Israeli strikes in Syria constituted serious aggression and that Syria and its allies had a right to respond.

The interview where Nasrallah threatened to invade the Galilee was broadcast days before the missile attack. The missile attack killed Hezbollah commanders–and also an Iranian general. Gee. Whatever could an Iranian general be doing on the Syrian border with Israel, we wonder?

Watch for the Iranian retaliation. They work fast, too. Last week, an Argentinian prosecutor said that Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez covered up the Iranian role in the bombing of the Jewish Center in Buenos Aires in 1994. He was found murdered in his apartment on the day he was to testify about the coverup.

But don’t worry, the Times will definitely blame any Iranian and Hezbollah attacks on Israel. For killing “fighters” on her border with Syria.

Vowing to destroy Israel, Hamas paraded some 2,000 of its armed fighters and truck-mounted rockets through Gaza on Sunday, marking its 27th anniversary with its biggest show of force since the end of the Gaza war this summer.

Reuters managed to make that the lede. And they found room to put this information pretty high up:

At the parade, a senior Hamas leader reaffirmed the Islamist movement’s founding charter’s pledge to destroy Israel.

“This illusion called Israel will be removed. It will be removed at the hands of the Qassam Brigades,” said Khalil al-Hayya, a top Hamas leader, referring to the movement’s armed wing.

The AP didn’t so much as mention the calls for Israel’s destruction. Its lede was quite different from Reuters.

The Islamic militant group Hamas displayed rockets and other heavy weapons Sunday during a rally marking the 27th anniversary of its founding.

This is the most they could muster, eight paragraphs down:

With Sunday’s weapons display, Hamas appeared to be sending a message to both Israel and the residents of Gaza that another round of fighting is an option.

And then, in the very last paragraph, the AP decided it might mention something about the calls to destroy Israel. Maybe.

The man in the recording identified as Deif said, “We will return to them (Israelis) with fighters that they cannot fight and will drive them out … God willing.”

The AP continues to deny that it whitewashes the news for the Palestinians. I think we can judge for ourselves whether or not that is true.

The clashes of the past three weeks – which have included four deadly attacks and an attempted assassination – have been exacerbated by tension over Israeli-controlled access to Jerusalem’s holiest place, revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and site of the al-Aqsa mosque, and by Jews as the mount where ancient Jewish temples once stood.

But that’s not surprising. As you scroll down, you’ll see a chart that purports to have a timeline of major incidences that caused the recent outbreak of terrorist attacks. What’s missing from the chart? The murder of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas terrorists that started everything.

Now let’s look at the AP article on current events. Remember that there was no reporting by the AP about Ayatollah Khamenei’s tweets about the destruction of Israel. But here’s what they do have the ability to report:

The Palestinian president on Tuesday accused Israel of provoking a “religious war” as new violence between the sides broke out in the West Bank, leaving a Palestinian man dead, amid mounting concerns that the long-running conflict is entering a new and dangerous phase.

Really, AP? Really? “violence between the sides”? And what, pray tell, is that “violence”? Oh, you mean Palestinians attacking and murdering Israelis with knife attacks in the West Bank and Tel Aviv? Of course, the AP barely mentions that. No, more important is the shooting of a Palestinian “protestor”. Here’s what that protestor was doing.

The violence from the Israeli side? I believe it’s called “riot control”.

Tuesday’s clashes erupted near the city of Hebron where about 150 Palestinian demonstrators were throwing rocks and firebombs at Israeli soldiers, the army said.

The AP also reverses the order of importance of the holy sites. The Muslim claim to the Temple Mount is always put first. And somehow, the AP managed to make the phrase “the most sacred place in Judaism” pale in contrast to the descriptions of the Muslim mosques on the Temple Mount. Perhaps it’s the weasel-word “considered”. Note that the mosques are declared holy sites, but the Temple Mount is only “considered” to be sacred–as if there’s some aspect of doubt.

It is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the gold-topped Dome of the Rock, the third-holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. It is also revered as the location where the ancient Hebrew temples once stood and today is considered the most sacred place in Judaism.

There is also the acceptance by the AP that there is something wrong with Jews praying at their holiest site.

While Jews are permitted to visit the hilltop compound, they are not supposed to pray. Palestinian fears have been heightened by an increased number of visits by Jewish hard-liners and calls by members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition for an expanded Jewish presence there. They also object to Israeli restrictions on Muslims entering the compound. Israel says the restrictions are security measures.

OMG, Jews praying is frightening to Palestinians! Because… because… yeah, I got nothin’. But the AP is happy to toe the Palestinian line on that.

Matti Friedman’s accusation of overwhelming anti-Israel bias at the AP continues to ring true. But then, anyone who’s been reading this blog since at least 2002 already knew that.

Kerry spoke early Tuesday with Netanyahu, but the State Department officials refused to discuss why the Israeli prime minister believed a deal was imminent. The officials said Kerry also condemned comments posted this weekend on the managed Twitter account of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that called for Israel’s destruction. His feed also tweeted various posts about the negotiations — including one detailing Iran’s “red lines” of things it could not accept — while the Oman talks were ongoing.

Stop and take a moment to realize this: The leader of a UN member nation tweeted a step-by-step plan to eliminate another member nation, and the world basically ignored it. The media downplayed the steps, of course, because Khamenei thoughtfully insisted he wasn’t for the genocide of all Israeli Jews–he just wants to throw them out of the country. What a nice guy. He even says the should go back to the countries they came from. (Scroll down for a table of how many Jews fled those nations.) Like Iran, I guess. And Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Algeria, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia. Because Muslims were always so tolerant towards their Jewish populations. Oh, wait. No they weren’t.

When the media did pick up on the Ayatollah’s tweet, they downplayed the threats, playing right along with the Iranian propaganda.

The post did not call for “the massacre of the Jewish people in the region,” but for a referendum on the future of the territory to by “[a]ll the original people of Palestine including Muslims, Christians and Jews.”

They left out the rest of that one, which excludes nearly all Israelis from being able to vote.

All the original people of Palestine including Muslims, Christians and Jews wherever they are, whether inside Palestine, in refugee camps in other countries or just anywhere else, take part in a public and organized referendum. Naturally the Jewish immigrants who have been persuaded into emigration to Palestine do not have the right to take part in this referendum.

I suppose I should be astonished that the world media didn’t publish far and wide this call for the destruction of Israel. But I’m not. I’m just tired of the unbelievable double standards. That’s part of the reason why I stopped posting. How many times can you shout at the wall before you simply lose your voice?

Imagine the world reaction if Benjamin Netanyahu said that it was time for the Iranian regime to be eliminated. Just imagine the difference, and realize that nobody is saying much of anything after Khamenei openly called for the end of Israel and the expulsion of Jews from their homeland. Nonstop 24-hour stories, no doubt. I searched the AP and found nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

The world does not like the Jews.

That’s their take on a terror attack that resulted in the death of a three-month-old child.

A three-month-old girl, identified by her grandfather as Chaya Zissel, was killed and several US citizens and Israelis were wounded Wednesday evening when a convicted Palestinian terrorist from the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan rammed his vehicle into a crowd of people in the capital.

The attack, which was captured by a security camera, took place at the Ammunition Hill light-rail stop a few hundred meters from Israel’s national police headquarters, situated across a densely traveled thoroughfare, shortly after 6 p.m., a senior police official said.

The terrorist was shot by police and late Wednesday evening he died in hospital.

Take that in for a moment. It was rush hour. The terrorist deliberately plowed his car into a crowd of civilians exiting or waiting for a crowded train. So what are the AP headlines?

Baby killed in Jerusalem car attack
A Palestinian with a history of anti-Israel violence slammed his car into a crowded railway station in Jerusalem, killing a three-month-old baby girl and wounding eight people in what police called a terror attack.

The headline makes it sound like the car attacked the people. Just imagine if an Israeli Jew–say, a “settler”–had lost control of his car and slammed into a crowd of Palestinians, accidentally killing one. Imagine the 24-hour coverage, the world media headlines, and the opprobrium heaped on Israel. Here, you have to work to find out the facts by getting past crap like this:

The violence came after months of tensions between Jews and Palestinians in east Jerusalem – the section of the city the Palestinians demand as their future capital. The area has experienced unrest and near-daily attacks on the city’s light rail by Palestinian youths since a wave of violence over the summer, capped by a 50-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.

You know what else the violence came after? A constant stream of violence by Palestinians against Jews in Jerusalem that the news media is ignoring.

There has been a constant stream of attacks against Jews in Jerusalem since the Gaza war. There is now talk of a third “intifada”, but let’s face it–it’s not uprising, it’s war by another name. They’re not protesting being “occupied”. They’re protesting the presence of Jews. Mahmoud Abbas is using the language of Hamas, saying that Jews are “desecrating” Muslim holy sites. And the world utterly ignores him.

Abbas said it was not enough for Palestinians to say that “settlers” have come to the Temple Mount.

“We should all remain present at the Noble Sanctuary [Temple Mount],” he added.

“We must prevent them from entering the Noble Sanctuary in any way. This is our Al-Aksa and our church. They have no right to enter and desecrate them. We must confront them and defend our holy sites.”

This is why the Palestinians are rioting on a daily basis. Because there are no moderate Palestinians. There is no wish for peace, no wish to share the land. They lie about the 3,000-year history of Judaism in the land of Israel in order to make it seem like Muslims have some right to the historic homeland of the Jews.

And the results? Terror attacks that murder three-month-old babies. While the AP covers for the terrorists and tries to blame Israel.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suggested on Friday that Jews should be banned from a Jerusalem holy site revered by both Jews and Muslims.

“Suggested”? Really?

In a speech quoted by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, Abbas said Jewish “settlers” should be prevented from entering the site “by any means.”

“This is our Noble Sanctuary … they have no right to enter and desecrate it,” Abbas added.

That is outright religious hatred. He’s not talking about the mosque. He’s talking about the entire Temple Mount. You know, the holiest site in Judiasm. And “suggested”? really? You know what a suggestion is? “Hey, I think you should try putting a purple streak in your hair and see how it looks.” That’s a suggestion.

This? This is outright saying Jews have no right to their own holy place. No right to the site where both Temples stood, where the Ark of the Covenant resided, where Jewish priests blew the shofar on Rosh Hashanah–the site, in fact, where Judaism was practiced for centuries before Islam existed. This is part of the Palestinian strategy to pretend that the area was wholly Muslim and Jews have nothing to do with it. It is, straight out, a lie. And the AP calls it a suggestion.

But this wouldn’t be an AP whitewash if they couldn’t also blame the Israelis for the Palestinians’ despicable behavior.

Abbas made the comments following recent clashes between Palestinian worshippers and Israeli forces over what Palestinians see as Jewish encroachment on the site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.

Palestinians have bveen attacking Israelis nonstop on the Temple Mount. Palestinians are paid to attack Israelis on the Temple Mount. It’s a regular terror strategy of Hamas.

Meantime, you know what the AP completely ignored? Palestinians defaced the Temple Mount with anti-Semitic graffiti. They spray-pained a swastika on the holiest Jewish site in existence.

Nice work, AP. Screw your biased reporters and your biased editors. And screw the Palestinians, too. They’re never going to kick us off the Temple Mount again.

He explains what we’ve been telling you for years: There is a narrative that the news media follows on Israel. Anti-Israel stories are pushed. Most articles that show the Palestinians in a bad light are suppressed.

A reporter working in the international press corps here understands quickly that what is important in the Israel-Palestinian story is Israel. If you follow mainstream coverage, you will find nearly no real analysis of Palestinian society or ideologies, profiles of armed Palestinian groups, or investigation of Palestinian government. Palestinians are not taken seriously as agents of their own fate. The West has decided that Palestinians should want a state alongside Israel, so that opinion is attributed to them as fact, though anyone who has spent time with actual Palestinians understands that things are (understandably, in my opinion) more complicated. Who they are and what they want is not important: The story mandates that they exist as passive victims of the party that matters.

Corruption, for example, is a pressing concern for many Palestinians under the rule of the Palestinian Authority, but when I and another reporter once suggested an article on the subject, we were informed by the bureau chief that Palestinian corruption was “not the story.” (Israeli corruption was, and we covered it at length.)

Israeli actions are analyzed and criticized, and every flaw in Israeli society is aggressively reported.

Terrorist organizations are deliberately whitewashed by the AP. This, too, was a common theme of my posts.

The Hamas charter, for example, calls not just for Israel’s destruction but for the murder of Jews and blames Jews for engineering the French and Russian revolutions and both world wars; the charter was never mentioned in print when I was at the AP, though Hamas won a Palestinian national election and had become one of the region’s most important players. To draw the link with this summer’s events: An observer might think Hamas’ decision in recent years to construct a military infrastructure beneath Gaza’s civilian infrastructure would be deemed newsworthy, if only because of what it meant about the way the next conflict would be fought and the cost to innocent people. But that is not the case. The Hamas emplacements were not important in themselves, and were therefore ignored. What was important was the Israeli decision to attack them.

Yes, Hamas intimidates journalists. All the time.

There has been much discussion recently of Hamas attempts to intimidate reporters. Any veteran of the press corps here knows the intimidation is real, and I saw it in action myself as an editor on the AP news desk. During the 2008-2009 Gaza fighting I personally erased a key detail—that Hamas fighters were dressed as civilians and being counted as civilians in the death toll—because of a threat to our reporter in Gaza. (The policy was then, and remains, not to inform readers that the story is censored unless the censorship is Israeli. Earlier this month, the AP’s Jerusalem news editor reported and submitted a story on Hamas intimidation; the story was shunted into deep freeze by his superiors and has not been published.)

But, Matti says, the intimidation can easily be avoided, if the reporter wants to. But that isn’t the story that the world media wants to tell.

But if critics imagine that journalists are clamoring to cover Hamas and are stymied by thugs and threats, it is generally not so. There are many low-risk ways to report Hamas actions, if the will is there: under bylines from Israel, under no byline, by citing Israeli sources. Reporters are resourceful when they want to be.

The fact is that Hamas intimidation is largely beside the point because the actions of Palestinians are beside the point: Most reporters in Gaza believe their job is to document violence directed by Israel at Palestinian civilians.

Here’s proof that the leadership of the AP deliberately suppresses Palestinian rejectionism. Jewish and Israeli bloggers have been saying for years that the Palestinians turned down offers for the two-state solution time and time again. But that’s not the narrative the press wants to push.

In early 2009, for example, two colleagues of mine obtained information that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had made a significant peace offer to the Palestinian Authority several months earlier, and that the Palestinians had deemed it insufficient. This had not been reported yet and it was—or should have been—one of the biggest stories of the year. The reporters obtained confirmation from both sides and one even saw a map, but the top editors at the bureau decided that they would not publish the story.

Some staffers were furious, but it didn’t help. Our narrative was that the Palestinians were moderate and the Israelis recalcitrant and increasingly extreme. Reporting the Olmert offer—like delving too deeply into the subject of Hamas—would make that narrative look like nonsense. And so we were instructed to ignore it, and did, for more than a year and a half.

And Matti’s reasoning behind why this is?

This decision taught me a lesson that should be clear to consumers of the Israel story: Many of the people deciding what you will read and see from here view their role not as explanatory but as political. Coverage is a weapon to be placed at the disposal of the side they like.

We knew that, as well. To see it written by a man who worked as a reporter on the Israeli-Palestinian desk for five years? Well, vindication barely describes my feelings. But do I think things are going to change because Matti revealed the truth? No. And neither does he. Like many other Jews around the world, this year has proven to him that the hatred of our people has been simmering beneath the surface, waiting for a chance to jump out, ever since World War II ended and made anti-Semitism unfashionable. It’s not unfashionable anymore.

When the people responsible for explaining the world to the world, journalists, cover the Jews’ war as more worthy of attention than any other, when they portray the Jews of Israel as the party obviously in the wrong, when they omit all possible justifications for the Jews’ actions and obscure the true face of their enemies, what they are saying to their readers—whether they intend to or not—is that Jews are the worst people on earth. The Jews are a symbol of the evils that civilized people are taught from an early age to abhor. International press coverage has become a morality play starring a familiar villain.

[…] You don’t need to be a history professor, or a psychiatrist, to understand what’s going on. Having rehabilitated themselves against considerable odds in a minute corner of the earth, the descendants of powerless people who were pushed out of Europe and the Islamic Middle East have become what their grandparents were—the pool into which the world spits. The Jews of Israel are the screen onto which it has become socially acceptable to project the things you hate about yourself and your own country. The tool through which this psychological projection is executed is the international press.

Prepare for the shocked rebuttals by all of the usual suspects. They will cry all the louder because Matti Friedman has the truth on his side.

The world does not like the Jews.

The McClatchy article is particularly heinous. Gee, the poor Palestinian terrorists. They go and kidnap three teenagers, and they might have to suffer for it.

The bodies of three Israeli teenagers missing for more than two weeks in the West Bank were found Monday, setting off a massive manhunt for the kidnappers.

The discovery raised immediate fears of retaliation by Jewish settlers and a tough response by the Israeli military. The Israeli security cabinet was called into urgent session to discuss possible reactions.

A tour of the Reuters article shows many weasel words. Reuters is still going with the pretense that there’s no proof it was Hamas, even after Israel released the proof that Hamas members abducted the boys.

Israeli forces found the bodies of three missing teenagers in the occupied West Bank on Monday after a nearly three-week-long search and a sweep against the Islamist Hamas group that Israel says abducted them.

There are also slams at Bibi.

Netanyahu seized on the abduction to demand Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas abrogate a reconciliation deal he reached with Hamas, his long-time rival, in April that led to a unity Palestinian government on June 2.

Because, gee, partnering with Hamas, which has been declared a terrorist group by the U.S. and the EU, should be ignored.

And of course, Reuters must end with its boilerplate “they’re not really that bad” bullshit:

Hamas, which has maintained security control of the Gaza Strip since the unity deal, is shunned by the West over its refusal to renounce violence. The group has called for Israel’s destruction, although various officials have at times indicated a willingness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire.

Right.

Last, but not least, we have ABC backing up Hamas denials.

Hamas, the Palestinian militant group accused by Israel of taking the boys, has denied kidnapping the teens, though senior Israeli and Palestinian officials agree that the abductors were likely tied to — or part of — Hamas but operating without orders from the organization’s leadership.

Your unbiased media in action.