When is an unprovoked, cross-border attack and the inevitable retaliation considered tit-for-tat violence? When Israel is attacked and forced to respond.
That's the only way to explain the AFP's coverage of the Katyusha attack on the Galilee that hurt three people.
The lead paragraph makes the moral equivalence clear:
on Saturday after a rocket slammed into its territory in a tit-for-tat
exchange of fire across their tense border, sources on both sides said.
Following the attack, Israel fired artillery shells back at the site of the rocket launch. No one was hurt in the return fire. But AFP reporter Jihad Siqwali focuses on the Lebanese perspective:
Panicked residents could be seen fleeing as Israel retaliated.
"My six-year-old girl was terrified," said Hassan Faqih, 49, as he
headed to the nearby coastal town of Tyre with his wife and two
children. "We will stay in Tyre if the situation escalates."
Any escalation, of course, will depend on what the Lebanese decide to do about the rocket fire. And to a lesser extend, how the media chooses to portray the violence.
