Over the centuries, Jews have been targeted with inciteful falsehoods that nurtured outbreaks of virulent anti-Semitism and pogroms.  Jews often have been pictured as bloody killers of innocent Gentiles.  Such libels have become all too familiar, including most recently in the pages of the Washington Post.

The latest example can be found in the July 2 edition, in an article by Jerusalem correspondent Ruth Eglash about the funerals of three Israeli teens kidnapped and murdered by two suspected Hamas fanatics (“Israelis gather to lay 3 slain teens to rest,” page A9).

In a foul attempt to inject equivalence of guilt between Israelis and Palestinians, Eglash writes in her third paragraph that “Israeli forces have arrested nearly 400 alleged terror operatives and killed at least five Palestinians during a more than two-week search” for the teens.

The clear impression is that on the lethal scorecard of spilled blood, it’s 3 Israelis and at least 5 Palestinians.

There isn’t a word to distinguish the grisly circumstances of three Jewish innocents from the brutal Palestinians who died during stone-throwing attacks and other violent tactics against Israelis.

All Eglash tells readers is that Israeli forces “killed at least five Palestinians.”  Were Israeli forces provoked or not?  Were they involved in life-threatening situations?  Or were they just trigger-happy for no good reason?  Eglash won’t tell us.  But she certainly opens the way for readers to think the worst of Israeli forces.  Especially since Eglash put them on a par with the Palestinian killers of the three Israeli teens.

The New York Times, also not sparing in its all too frequent use of anti-Israel poison pills, at least in this instance provides a modicum of context and circumstances that led to the killing of several Palestinians.

In its July 2 edition, Times correspondents Jodi Rudoren and Said Ghazali report that Israeli soldiers “killed six Palestinians who confronted them, the latest a wanted man who threw a grenade as they approached” (“A trail of Clues Leading to Victims and Heartbreak,” page A4).

The Times still may be downplaying the lethal ferocity of Palestinians tangling with Israeli security forces – as it euphemistically waters down the extent of Palestinian violence to merely “confronted them.”  But at least readers are informed that Israelis aren’t just shooting down Palestinians with no reason or provocation whatever, as Eglash does in the Post.  There is no mention by Eglash, for example, that one of the dead Palestinians was on a wanted terrorist list and resorted to throwing a grenade at Israeli troops.

All in all, another example of the Post’s ultra-critical coverage of Israelis and its much softer and apologetic coverage of Palestinians.

Leo Rennert is a former White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief of McClatchy Newspapers.