The drumbeat of war in the Middle East has started once again.

Not in defence of Palestinians after Israel fired 70,000 tonnes of explosives on Gaza, killing 34,000 people — but after 300 drone and missile attacks by Iran that killed… no one. 

Almost all the 300+ Iranian ballistic missiles launched towards “specific targets” in Israel in the retaliatory attack by Iran last Saturday were intercepted by Israel’s multi-layered air defence system. 

How many bombs dropped on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip over the last six months were intercepted? 

The region’s most recent developments point yet again to the asymmetrical nature of this conflict. On the one hand, we have Israel, with a highly sophisticated defence financed and supported by Western powers including Canada; on the other, there is Gaza, with no state, no army, and a civilian population living under occupation and siege. 

It’s far from a war of two equals. But Israel and its Western allies are doing their best to make us believe otherwise. 

And the double standards are glaring.

When Hamas attacks, we see immediate, unequivocal condemnation from Western political leaders who condemn their actions as “pure, unadulterated evil” and reaffirm Israel’s right to defend itself. And we see Israelis crowd Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, pleading for charter flights to help them escape.

When Iran attacks, we see the British Defence Secretary Grant Shapps within minutes deploy additional Royal Air Force fighter jets and refuel tankers to help intercept further attacks, as they did last weekend. 

When Iran attacks, we saw G7 leaders immediately organize a call to “discuss the escalating situation between Iran and Israel,” and Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani saying he hoped that the Israeli government would “show restraint” in the meantime. 

But when Israel occupies, fires on, and maims civilians, including 10,000 children, we see weak and reluctant condemnations (at best) by these same powers.

When Israel bombs a foreign embassy across its border, killing 16 people, as it did last week on the Iranian embassy in Damascus, these same world leaders say nothing. Even when Canada’s embassy next door to the Iranian consulate was damaged during the hit, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly responded in a way that has become typical with the Liberal Party’s taciturn tone on the Israeli war on Gaza, without even a hint of condemnation. 

“What I can tell you is indeed we have an embassy in Syria that was not occupied because we’ve closed this embassy, and indeed it is an embassy that has been damaged,” she told reporters, adding she couldn’t go into further details for security reasons.

And when Israel bombs a foreign embassy across its border, the United Nations tries to issue a resolution condemning the attack — saying it violates diplomatic and consular premises and personnel must be respected — only to be blocked by the colonial superpowers, the US, UK, and France. 

How much longer will hypocrisy be the guiding rule of Western foreign policy in the Middle East? Why do Ottawa and its allies consistently fail to see Palestinian victims in the same way they see Israeli victims? Why do they continue to provide cover for a government that the International Court of Justice has found plausible as committing acts that violate the Genocide Convention?

As a journalist, it’s deeply disturbing to see how warped foreign policies get spun, creeping into news coverage by editors who have become so blinded by their own implicit biases (and/or political and historical ignorance) that even the worst, most obviously bad ideas masquerade as neutral fact.

Editorial choices say everything about what a newspaper considers to be worthy of public attention – and what isn’t. 

The day after Israel fired an airstrike into Iran’s consulate in Syria, killing two Iranian generals and five officers, the attack was covered on Page A11 of the Toronto Star, through four paragraphs. 

And it was immediately rationalized, indeed contextualized, for the reader, before one could plausibly consider this to be an unlawful strike (having violated the 1961 Vienna Convention, which makes it a war crime to attack a diplomatic mission) and for Israel to be perceived as an aggressor: “The strike appeared to signify an escalation of Israel’s targeting of military officials from Iran, which supports militant groups fighting Israel in Gaza, and along its border with Lebanon,” the first paragraph of the Associated Press story read. 

But when Iran fired into Israel, it received front page coverage (again, note there were no casualties as a result) — a spectacular shot of cruise missiles in the sky, a glaring headline and a sub-heading that characterized the attack as “pushing the Middle East closer to a regional war.”  

Consider: Would Israel’s reported attack on Iran last night have received that same type of editorial treatment?

This kind of uneven treatment is not surprising if you consider how many scientists Israel has assassinated over the last decade without consequence. And with scant to no news coverage.

Politicians and mainstream news editors alike have been conditioned to put players in the Middle East into fixed boxes. Israel’s actions will never cross a red line; Iran will forever be the boogeyman.

Hamas said on Sunday that Iran’s missile attack against Israel was a “natural and deserved” response to Israel’s aggression against Iran’s embassy in Damascus. 

Here’s a perspective that you’ll never see reflected in mainstream news: 

They are not wrong.