Tuesday’s front-page story from Jerusalem again shifts the blame for the failure of the “peace process” onto the Israeli government, rather than the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, responsible for a recent bus bombing that killed 16 Israeli civilians.

The Times’ slant is evident from the headline and subhead to the story by Greg Myre and Ian Fisher: “Sharon Vows to ‘Hound’ Hamas, Which Rejects a Cease-Fire Bid -- Palestinians Say Israeli’s Talk Hurts Peace Plan.”

They write: “In a speech to Israel's Parliament, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned today that Middle East diplomacy would stall if ‘terror runs rampant,’ and he pledged to ‘hound the terrorists’ until Palestinian security forces cracked down on them.”

Condemning terrorism is seen as unhelpful to Myre and Fisher, who write: “Mr. Sharon's tough talk was condemned by a Palestinian official, who said it would damage efforts to restart an international peace plan, called the road map, which has been jeopardized by violence last week that left almost 60 people dead. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, arrived in Gaza City today and planned new discussions with Hamas, but his appeals for a truce have been rebuffed previously.”

In the next paragraph, Myer and Fisher attempt to position Israel and Hamas at two extremes, and poses Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization as a voice of moderation: “Palestinian officials said they were in a difficult position, caught between the widely divergent demands of Israel and Hamas. ‘We have to get an agreement with Israel in order to get an agreement with Hamas,’ said Michael Tarazi, an adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization. ‘And we have to get an agreement with Hamas in order to get an agreement with Israel.’”

Is the PLO really a moderate force today? Just two weeks ago Arafat was shown on tape in Ramallah, marking International Children's Day in his own inimitable way. According to Independent Media Review & Analysis director Aaron Lerner, “Arafat devoted his remarks to encouraging the children to be ‘shahid’ (die for the cause), noting that one shahid who dies for the sake of Jerusalem has the power equal to 40 of the enemy dying.”

And, the Washington Institute’s Shoshanah Haberman notes what the Times doesn’t -- Hamas’ perfect record of noncompliance in ceasefires: “In all, ten ceasefires have been declared or offered by Hamas since 1993. In some cases, they followed periods of PA-Hamas confrontation; at other times, they came on the heels of intense pressure placed on the PA after particularly egregious acts of terrorism committed by Hamas or other groups...Throughout each of these ceasefire episodes, Hamas leaders continued to support the goals of the original Hamas charter, that is, the creation, through religiously sanctioned violence, of an Islamic state in all of Palestine.”

For the rest of the story by Greg Myre and Ian Fisher, click here.

Bears On Ice

Andrew Revkin discovers another victim of the fall of Communism: Polar bears. His Tuesday story on bears being poached from ice floes on the Bering Sea includes this line: “The Soviet Union outlawed polar bear hunting in 1956, but since the fall of Communism, illegal shooting has steadily risen, experts say.”

For the rest of Revkin’s story on polar bears, click here.

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org