Everyone has heard the saying: "It's like shooting fish in a barrel."
These days, it seems the expression was perhaps expressly designed to describe events in the Gaza Strip, where on 14 May the Israeli army slaughtered no fewer than 60 Palestinians, among them paramedics, disabled persons, and a baby. The occasion: Palestinian protests against 70 years of vast injustice and a continuing panorama of brutal Israeli oppression and blockade, topped off by the recent inauguration of Donald Trump's US embassy in Jerusalem.
Israel has, of course, assigned blame to the Palestinians themselves - as no good assault on Gaza is complete without an attendant assault on logic. According to the official Twitter account of the Israeli military spokesperson, the episode unfolded as follows: "Throughout the day, the Hamas terror organisation led massive and violent attacks, which IDF troops operated to thwart."
Never mind that there's no detectable violence in the photograph accompanying the tweet, which instead appears to depict young and old Palestinians standing and walking in the charming prison-esque landscape to which Israel has reduced the Gaza Strip.
Journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous, reporting from the Gaza protests for Democracy Now, surveyed the terrible weaponry at the disposal of the Palestinians, including rocks, kites, balloons, and some Molotov cocktails - none of which, he specified, could reach the Israeli soldiers, "who are sitting behind these ramparts and picking people off with sniper rifles".
In addition to "high-velocity sniper bullet", Abdel Kouddous noted that doctors in Gaza had reported Israel's use of fragmentation bullets, as well, and had "seen injuries with fist-sized holes in the exit wounds". New and exciting tear gas-dispersing drones were also on the scene in the besieged Palestinian coastal enclave, which has previously played host to Israeli white phosphorus munitions, missiles and numerous other projectiles.
Facts on the ground notwithstanding, Western mainstream media has long had a knack for converting the fish-in-a-barrel scenario into a drastically different one. Think headlines along the lines of: "Fish in barrel clash with shooter", or "Fish die in barrel as shooter retaliates against aggression".
Or "Fish drawn to surface of water, and into centre of earthly turmoil" - a possible equivalent of the New York Times' take on Israel's deadly air strike on four boys playing football in 2014: "Boys drawn to Gaza beach, and into centre of Mideast strife". READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.