Michelle Malkin writes that U.N. ambulances are being used by Palestinian terrorists for safe passage:

Last week, an Israeli television station aired footage of armed Arab terrorists in southern Gaza using an ambulance owned and operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Palestinian gunmen used the UNRWA emergency vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering six Israeli soldiers in Gaza City on May 11. The footage shows two ambulances with flashing lights pull onto a street. Shots and shouts ring out during the nighttime raid. A gang of militants piles into one of the supposedly neutral ambulances, clearly marked “U.N.” with the agency’s blue flag flying from the roof, which then speeds away from the scene.

Malkin notes that AccessMiddleEast.org has posted the video [Windows Media file; 2.3MB] shot by a Reuters cameraman, but that “not a single U.S. television news station has expressed interest in showing the footage to American viewers.”

Perhaps the media is silent because the incident points to yet another full-blown U.N. scandal:

The UNRWA has long been suspected of providing aid and comfort to terrorists. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., chairman of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, recently documented how “buildings and warehouses under UNRWA supervision are allegedly being used as storage areas for Palestinian ammunition and counterfeit currency factories.” Cantor’s 2002 report also noted that UNRWA hosts summer camps in martyrdom for young terrorists-in-training. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., has also lobbied for increased scrutiny of UNRWA funding, which has been used to publish anti-Semitic textbooks and posters in schools that “glorify homicide bombers and the slaughter of innocents.”

So, why is the media carrying water for the U.N.? Well, if the U.N. looks like a corrupt organization that sides with Palestinian terrorists, then the argument that the U.N. must pre-approve America’s foreign policy looks a hell of a lot less convincing. But the media has a lot vested in that argument: for over a year, it’s been one of the main weapons used to bash President Bush. And it is now a key plank in John Kerry’s foreign policy platform.

In the calculus of the election, bad for U.N. equals good for Bush. So, the media downplays the U.N.’s various scandals and instead focuses on controversies that will have the political impact that the media desires.