Raid Qusti, rqusti@arabnews.com

The assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was everywhere in the Arab media yesterday. Arabs from all over the world are mourning his death and Saudis are no different from their brethren. The murder has become the main topic of conversation. Moreover, the photographs of the Sheikh with his head split in half and parts of his brain spilling out were forwarded to hundreds of thousands of people on the Internet.

Assassinations — or what the Western media due to Zionist pressure now ridiculously refer to as “targeted killings” — are nothing new for the Israelis. They have been going on for years. What is new is that this time the assassinated person was an elderly wheel-chair-bound individual whom the US alleged is a terrorist and “a person who has been personally involved in terrorist attacks.”

What is just as sad is that people in the US will look at the assassination as something that was necessary for Israel’s security. American networks will start producing reports about how the late Sheikh inspired people to commit suicide attacks in Israel under the banner of Hamas. They will portray him as an evil person, personally responsible for the deaths of Israeli men, women and children in suicide attacks, some of which have taken place in Jewish settlements. What Americans will not see on their networks or read in their newspapers is that the Sheikh was a spiritual leader. A person who inspired thousands of Palestinians to continue their resistance to the ongoing occupation of their lands; someone who constantly reminded them to fight to the death and not to surrender their usurped rights. For the state of Israel, his inspiration had to be eliminated. Like other spiritual leaders, such as Marwan Barghouti, he was too much trouble for the state of Israel and had to be removed.

For a person who reads American newspapers and watches American news networks on a daily basis, I often find it shocking how news reports from the Middle East are reported. In most cases, the reports are biased and have only one perspective. In other cases, the reports are truthful but fail to get the attention they deserve – simply because the killings happened on the Palestinian side. An example of that is when a Palestinian suicide bomber blows himself up and kills scores of people in a bus or local area. The report is blown up. In addition, the most heart-rending photographs are used: a weeping mother mourning the death of her loved one, beside the coffin at the funeral. The report itself is surely biased since all the interviews and comments come from Israeli police sources or Israeli officials. Terrorism is the word used. However, when Israeli bulldozers destroy Palestinian homes, pictures of weeping Palestinian mothers at the remains of what used to be home are not printed. And the story of course is not blown up. Not only that but in most cases, the story itself does not get more than a news brief somewhere in the inside pages.

One day I made a comparison of how American media outlets were biased. A report carried on CNN about a suicide bombing lasted a good 10 minutes and included interviews with several people talking about the incident and the terrorist act. Sometime later, when an Israeli bulldozer knocked down several Palestinian houses, CNN gave it no more than 30 seconds, And of course no interviews were done in which people denounced the demolishing and described it as a terrorist act.

So according to American standards, terrorism is only described when something happens to Israelis and not to Palestinian. When a suicide bomber kills several Israelis, it is a cowardly, heinous, terrorist act that is denounced by the Bush himself. However, when Palestinian homes are demolished by Israeli bulldozers, silence prevails. When an Israeli toddler is killed by a Palestinian sniper, it is a terrorist act and the story appears in The New York Times and other newspapers. However, when Iman Hejou, a Palestinian baby dies from a bullet in her chest from an Israeli gun, she is nowhere to be found in the American media. Even the word “occupation” is no longer to be found in the American media reports of incursions of Israeli tanks into Palestinian areas.

One thing is for sure. Yesterday’s comment from the White House only reminds the Arab world that Israel will always be America’s best friend and will go unpunished and even rewarded with comforting words — such as “has the right to defend itself.” And once again, the truth will prevail that America and Israel are two sides of the same coin.