More rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists into Israeli communities (Guardian still largely reporting on Israeli retaliatory strikes)

Two rockets exploded in Beersheba on Wednesday morning, and ten mortar shells fell in Shaar Hanegev and Eshkol Regional Councils, injuring one Israeli, adding to the more than 50 mortars and rockets fired into Israel over the weekend, and bringing the total number of projectiles launched from Gaza since Friday to 71 – by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Yet, the Guardian continues to largely ignore the Palestinian escalation, and indeed saw fit to publish two stories on Israel’s retaliation and resulting casualties: Yesterday, they posted, “Eight killed on Israeli strikes on Gaza”, and “Israeli air strikes wound 19 in Gaza” was reported on Monday.”

Most telling was this line from Monday’s report:

“Hamas has stepped up rocket fire at Israel after a lengthy hiatus since the war of two years ago…”

Except that there has been no hiatus.

While the quantity was reduced dramatically since Cast Lead, there were still over 100 rockets fired into Israel in 2009 (following the conclusion of the war in January) and more than 100 in 2010.  So far in 2011, 156 projectiles (rockets or mortars) were fired into Israel from Gaza.

What country in the world would consider over 100 rockets fired into their country in three consecutive years to be a “hiatus”?

In nearly 250 news stories on the Guardian’s Israel page so far in 2011,only one led with a headline about Hamas rocket fire (See update below).

As I’ve noted elsewhere, the Guardian’s Palestinians (not the real ones, but merely the abstraction in their political imagination) are always weak, passive and acted upon (the bigotry of low expectations), while their mythical Israelis inversely are malevolent and powerful, and the only political players in their drama who are assigned moral agency (the bigotry of exceedingly high expectations).

Such egregious double standards continue to represent one of the more defining features of the Guardian Left.

(Update after initial posting: The Guardian, for the first time this year, actually did publish a story today which which accurately reported the fact that Israeli communities in the south have been on the receiving end of a barrage of rockets from Gaza, and contained a headline without a qualifier to contort the causality.  The story, “Gaza militants’ rockets strike cities deep into Israel“, did add the erroneous claim that such rocket fire largely ceased since the end of Cast Lead, but did at least accurately report the sequence of events, and should be noted.)