Ever since a French newsman caught the killing of 12-year-old Palestinian Mohammed al-Durrah on tape, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has found a new venue—the global media. The picture of the terrified boy crouching against his father amidst a spray of bullets made the covers of newspapers around the world. The world seemed ready to entertain the notion that the oppression of the Palestinians had reached an intolerable level. But meanwhile, the American press took steps that ensured that the truth about Palestine would remain hidden from the American people.

For those who rely on such generally first-class publications as The New York Times for their news, it would appear that Israel is under siege by the Palestinians—even though Israel occupies Palestinian land. In the language of the Times and most other American daily papers, Israeli soldiers seldom “kill” or “shoot” Palestinian protesters; instead, Palestinians—rarely described in terms of their humanity—“die” mysteriously in “clashes” and in “cross-fires.” On the other hand, Israelis are “murdered,” and the personal background of victims always detailed. Even some newspapers in Israel paint a more even-handed view of the conflict than their American counterparts.

On April 1, the Times published a feature story on “suicide martyrdom” in Islam. The article began with references to recent Palestinian suicide bombings, implying that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a religious war between Muslims and Jews. But the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, is not a conflict about religion, nor is it being orchestrated by religious leaders. It is about one group refusing to live under apartheid conditions and another group fighting to keep them there.

Yet from reading the American daily papers, one would never know that the policies of successive Israeli governments have imposed apartheid on the West Bank and Gaza. Israelis live in relative luxury in their settlements while many Palestinians live in squalor. Israelis have complete freedom of movement, which is protected by armed soldiers, while most Palestinians are imprisoned in their neighborhoods, and those who wish to travel further must risk humiliation and harassment at checkpoints. And this was the norm during peacetime; since protests and fighting erupted six months ago, the Palestinian condition has deteriorated further. But this is not what CNN sees as the heart of the story.

The American media tells us that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a war between equals. To be sure, it is a conflict in which both sides have suffered and both sides can be faulted. Yet the conflict is anything but a fair fight: One side has a vast advantage of technology and power. (To their credit, many news organizations, when listing total casualties, have stated that casualties are mostly Palestinian.)

And while most Israelis continue to live uninterrupted lives, every Palestinian's life has been altered in an irrevocable way. Almost every Palestinian knows someone who has been injured, maimed or killed in the violence. All Palestinians suffer from Israel’s policy of economic strangulation; unemployment has climbed to 48 percent since the most recent escalation of closure policies.

The height of American media recklessness came with the reporting on newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. For the most part, the American press lionized this “elder statesman” and behaved as though the Palestinians had nothing to be upset about.

Admittedly, the U.S. press sometimes referred to Sharon as a “hard-liner,” but most reporters mentioned only in passing that this is the same man who, in his tenure as Israeli Defense Minister in 1982, authorized the massacres of 2,000 unarmed men, women, and children in the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps of Lebanon. Nor does the American press often tell us that an Israeli commission found Sharon indirectly responsible for the massacres, forcing his resignation. The terms “hard-liner” and “hawk” are rather soft in this case. For people like Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein or Ariel Sharon, the term “war criminal” is more apropos.