At a convention in Jerusalem, a number of international journalists blamed Israel for their biased coverage of the Hizballah war: Journalists blame Israel for war coverage. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

And if you’ve ever wondered why the reports of Steven Erlanger for the New York Times are so outrageously biased against Israel (I certainly have), here’s a glimpse into the way he thinks:

The New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Steven Erlanger, expressed surprise that Israel’s view of the war was different to that of its critics, and said that Israelis didn’t “quite grasp how the war was perceived outside of Israel.”

He lamented the lack of “proportionality” in the war, adding: “This is a charge that came against Israel from the United Nations... the French, the Italians.”

The New York Times bureau chief also said that Israelis “were not interested in whether 1,000 Lebanese civilians needed to die,” adding that the question of “whether Israel fought a proportional war is not much of interest here (in Israel).”

Erlanger added that during the war, he “took General Yadlin (who briefed the press on IDF operations) too seriously.”

Erlanger told the panel he turned down an offer by the IDF Spokesperson Unit to gain access to IDF efforts aimed at enabling humanitarian aid to reach Lebanon, saying he was not interested in the story.

While other panelists said Hizbullah placed dictatorial control over colleagues reporting from Lebanon, Erlanger maintained that the only threat faced by his own colleague in Lebanon was posed by “Israeli missiles.”

And what about the doctored and staged photojournalism from Hizballah-controlled areas?

The Associated Press’ Chief Jerusalem Correspondent, Ravi Nessman ... downplayed the Reuters doctored photo scandal, saying: “It was probably one guy... everyone’s working very hard. Everybody is tired. Everybody is overworked. It’s very unlikely that the photo editors sat there and said, these are doctored photos, get them on the wires... I’m sure it slipped through. They’re trying to do as credible a job as possible.”

Nessman also claimed that “there was one real photo scandal in this war, and there were dozens of non-scandals that cropped up.”