Last week a suicide bomber outside of a nightclub in Tel Aviv killed five people and injured many others. There was no shortage of reporting devoted to this event. In fact in many of the news stories printed in the mainstream papers in the United States we can read about the victims, their families, their lives. The victims are shown in a very human light just as innocents who are killed should be portrayed.

We also here about how this “shocking” event “shattered” a cease fire and broke months of “relative calm” since the last suicide bomb in November. This is the politics meeting print. You see, I was not shocked by this event; I had already considered the cease-fire shattered, and I found no calm at all. What you do not read about, what is not presented by the mainstream media is that during this period, which one newspaper called a “lull,” 170 Palestinians were killed. Of these Palestinians there were men, women and children. It is sickening that the death of 170 Palestinians constitutes relative calm but the death of 4 Israelis is shocking. How on Earth is this relative and where is the calm?

Perhaps the media looked at the death of Alaa Samara, 14, who was shot last November for throwing stones, and saw calm as the Israeli bullet which hit him in the head left his brains oozing out onto the ground.

Perhaps the media looked at the death of little Burham al-Himouni, 3 years old, and saw calm when a missile fired from and Israeli apache helicopter ended the child’s life. Too helpless to scream the child must have died silently, but how can this be calm? For every child that dies, for every unheard scream, we must scream louder and speak out about the atrocities that are not being covered and are consciously being ignored as “relative calm.” These theories of relativity are sickening.

Maybe they saw calm in the killing of Salah-id-din Abu Iqab, 13, who was shot in the back while playing in the street. As the blood poured out of his back there could have been a calm look in his eyes, a sign of relief that he had finally escaped the prison of his life. The crime is we will never know because no one wants to write about him, no one cares for the wretched of the earth, they are left to fight alone, they are left to die alone.

I could go on and on with name after name, victim after victim, and I doubt that would even get the point across. The bias in the media is so prevalent that telling the truth becomes and uphill battle.

The deaths are just the beginning. Aside from those who die there are the injured. Many of these civilians will be maimed for life. Could we ever perceive calm being in the heart of a now legless child as he watches his former teammates playing a soccer game in a Gazan street? Does this sound like a lull to anyone? Or is it relatively calm because it has been a while since Israelis have been killed?

The New York Times, The Chicago Sun Times and the Los Angles Times all share the same disease. The all value one peoples’ humanity over the other. When four Israelis die it’s the shocking end to a relative calm. Yet that period which they call calm brought the death of 170 Palestinians all of which were discarded in the same papers as nameless individuals reported on in blurbs somewhere on the 15th page of the section.

This is not a rare occurrence either, in fact it’s a common trend. There was other periods designated by the American press as “relative clam” or “lulls” which in fact where just the opposite. In the fall of 2003 another one of these periods where declared in the papers to be periods of “relative calm”. During this times 120 Palestinians where killed.

Omar Muhammad al-Kernawi, 11 years old, may have been calm. On his way to the hospital, suffering from an Israeli bullet, he may have thought the end is near, he may have stopped crying. I wonder sometimes if Palestinians shot by Israeli bullets knew that there screams would not be heard would they scream at all? The pain does not cease and a bullet never fails to shatter calm. Yet if a Palestinian screams, and there are no western ears to hear it, does it really make a sound?

Yousef Munayyer is a Collegian columnist.