The Current Israel-Gaza Conflict

As uneducated as I am about the subject, I turn to wiki for a quick review of events leading up to the current dispute in the Middle East.  From a much broader perspective, the war for the Holy Lands is still very much alive and well.  It's just strange that the media is portraying Israel as the power hungry nation driving this entire attack.  Every headline, to some effect, reads "Israel attacks...", "Israel takes offensive...".

So listening to Rush on the way to work yesterday... (Don't worry, I'm not an extreme right wing conservative.  I'm more of a moderate or independent conservative.  I try to listen to the entire spectrum of views: conservative = talk radio and liberal = all other media.)  Anyways, Rush makes light of the fact that Israel's offensive stance is basically a defensive response.

This begs the question, why is the media (and in saying media, I mean "liberal media") portraying Israel as the bad guy.  To my understanding, the relationship between the United States and Israel is generally a strong one, no?  Is this basically an accompaniment to liberal media's disdain for the war in Iraq and President Bush in general?  And if the media is trying to gain support for Palestinians, then by effect the media needs to portray Israel as the bad guy, which is currently being done (back to square one, see first sentence of this paragraph).  And isn't there prominent Jewish influence on media or is that only in Hollywood?  I'm sure there are close ties between media and Hollywood, as the majority of the Hollywood elite enjoy sharing their political views with the public which, by coincidence, swing a little farther than moderate left.

So what gives?  I personally have no strong opinions on the current Israel-Gaza dispute but I just find the media reaction in the US a little perplexing.