Well-intentioned American media outlets may strive for "even-handedness" in their coverage of the Middle East conflict, but such attempts at balance produce the worst sort of bias.

   A recent article in the Washington Post ("Media Bias is in the Eye of the Beholder") stands as an unwitting case in point. "There was only one thing on which pro-Israeli and pro-Arab audiences agreed," writes Shankar Vendantam. "Both were certain that media coverage in the United States was hopelessly biased in favor of the other side...The results say a lot about partisan behavior in general - why Republicans and Democrats love to hate each other, for example, or why Coke and Pepsi fans clash."

   Most obviously, it's profoundly offensive to compare a life-and-death struggle in Lebananon and Gaza with disagreements over favorite soft drinks. This outrageous comment trivializes the conflict and makes Israel's determination to defend herself look incomprehensible: who, after all, would want to die -or to kill- on behalf of a soda preference? Even the analogy with Republicans and Democrats who "love to hate each other" misleads the reader. That partisan hatred looks silly and unnecessary precisely because most citizens understand that Elephants and Donkeys both feel loyal to the same country, and want basically the same positive outcomes for the USA. Between Hamas and Hizbollah on one side, however, and the State of Israel on the other there are no common desires. The Islamist terror organizations want Israel wiped off the map, and the Jews driven from the Middle East; the Israelis want to mind their own business and live their own lives within internationally recognized borders, free from fears of ongoing rocket attacks.

    This essential asymmetry makes even-handedness an altogether unworthy goal. Hamas and Hizbollah want their enemy utterly destroyed -- obliterated from maps everywhere in the world just as Israel is already excluded from school room maps in all Arab nations. Official documents and declarations by terror chieftains never talk of a "two state solution" or living in peace with "the Zionist entity;" at best, Israel's enemies talk of a temporary true ("Hudna" in Arabic) or ceasefire, not a permanent settlement of the argument.

   Israel, on the other hand, seeks to wipe out no state, nor to erase any entity from maps. For more than 13 years, the Israeli government has officially endorsed the emergence of an independent Palestinian State-- as has the government of the United States (repeatedly). To facilitate that goal, Israel forcibly evicted civilians from Gaza-- not Palestians, but Jews! It's easy to criticize various actions or policies of the Israeli government, but the essential imbalance in the nature of the struggle makes "balanced" coverage impossible and inherently unfair. Would it have made sense to provide balanced coverage in September, 1939, between the invading Nazis and the gallant Poles who wanted only to defend their homeland? Would even-handedness apply in 1991 to Saddam Hussein's attacking troops and the Kuwaiti defenders who never threatened or harmed Iraq in any way? On United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, would the ruthless and suicidal hi-jackers hold equal claim to our sympathy with the brave passengers who fought back against them?

   In each of these cases, context matters-- as it does in the Israeli conflict with Hizbollah and Hamas. On the one side, officials honor teenagers who have blown themselves up in order to murder women, infants and other innocents: several Palestinian Authority elementary schools are named after "martyrs" who exploded bombs to slaughter Jews. A mural in one of Beirut's appalling Shiite slums shows a mother and child together with the message: "Motherhood is sweet. Martyrdom is Sweeter." On the other hand, Israelis who practice excessive cruelty -- even in the heat of battle -- are condemned by nearly all their countryman and prosecuted by military authorities.

   At times, a picture-- or even an unsigned cartoon-- really IS worth ten thousand words. I recently received an anonymous image that powerfully clarifies the underlying issues in the current struggle. It shows one soldier under an Israeli flag, facing off against a geurilla fighter under the Palestinian flag. The Israeli wore an army helmet, the Palestinian wore a black ski mask. The image showed them both kneeling, and firing directly at one another. But the Israeli is kneeling in front of a baby carriage, and the terrorist is firing from behind a baby carriage. The point is obvious but profound. The Israelis fight to protect women and children; the Palestinian terrorists use women and children to protect themselves. The Israelis fight in order to make their civilians safer; the Palestinians (and their Hizbollah allies) make their civilians less safe in order to fight.

   With these core contrasts, media even-handedness makes no sense -- and in fact amounts to a disgrace. You can use a balanced approach to cover the dispute between Coke and Pepsi, but not to report the eternal battle of good and evil.