This is how so much coverage of Israel seems to work: Take an event and remove all the facts that don’t fit the desired final product. By now, the examples of what I’m talking about should be familiar enough: the Palestinian cripple who could suddenly walk; the confession — from Hamas itself — that nearly all of the “innocent victims” of Israeli “murder” were in fact terrorists; the admissions from the Hamas cannon fodder that their intentions were violent. But none of that mattered. Nor did it catch the media’s attention that there was no rioting in the Fatah-controlled West Bank, but only in Hamas-controlled Gaza. That Hamas has been fomenting this macabre publicity stunt for weeks didn’t seem to matter either.

The articles hadn’t been written but the plot had already been agreed upon.

The far more plausible explanation that this was all a barbarically cynical effort — sponsored by Hamas’s patrons in Iran — to foment outrage against Israel on the backs of Palestinian human sacrifices was too plausible to contemplate. Instead, the same tired story of authentic and spontaneous rage against oppressors by indigenous victims just had to be unfolding in front of our eyes.