Reuters: Israel is killing Christmas

In a breathtaking example of why I no longer read, and rarely quote the Reuters news agency, we have this years Israel-as-Grinch story. The inaccuracies abound:

Bethlehem walled off by Israel this Christmas
21 Dec 2005 09:12:01 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Megan Goldin

No, not Bethlehem! Walled off? The deuce you say!

BETHLEHEM, West Bank, Dec 21 (Reuters) – Pilgrims travelling the ancient route from Jerusalem to Bethlehem this Christmas will find themselves hitting a dead end — a towering concrete wall and metal gate under the lock and key of the Israeli army.

A dead end? You mean, the pilgrims can’t follow the same path as Mary and Joseph?

The dusty road to the town of Jesus’s birth has been the gateway to Bethlehem since biblical times and would have been the likely path taken by Mary and Joseph. But today it leads to what the mayor of Bethlehem calls “the world’s largest prison”.

Holy crap, the path ends in a wall? really? (Right, let’s get in the prison quote. It’s new, it’s fresh, it can’t be used to describe Gaza anymore, so let’s recycle it.)

At the entrance is a brand new high-tech military crossing where visitors pass through X-ray machines and have their passports scanned before emerging into Bethlehem from behind eight-metre (26-feet) high graffiti-covered concrete walls.

Wait a minute. There’s a gate? A gate? I thought you said the road ended in a dead end. A wall. Concrete. tall. Graffiti-covered. There’s a gate? You mean, pilgrims can get in? So, like, you’re lying when you call it a “dead end” in the first paragraph?

Uh-huh. Well, hey, isn’t it time for the “It would make Baby Jesus cry” quote?

“If Mary and Joseph were here today, they would go through the checkpoint just like everybody else,” said Sister Erica, a nun, at the crossing

If Mary and Joseph were here today, you wouldn’t be. Duh.

Bethlehem is marking its first Christmas since being fully cut off from adjacent Jerusalem by an internationally-condemned barrier Israel erected with the avowed aim of preventing Palestinian suicide bombers from infiltrating into its cities. Tourism in Bethlehem has improved slightly this year since the economy, which depends on visitors, plunged into deep recession five years ago when a Palestinian uprising began and the town became a virtual war zone.

Okay, let’s break down the stupidities in this paragraph. Tourism is up, and the writer acknowledges that it went down due to the palestinian terror attacks–which the wall was built to prevent, even though it’s been internationally condemned. In other words, buried within this graf is a statement that could easily have read: “Tourism in Bethlehem is up, thanks to the drop in terrorism due to the construction of the security fence.”

But of course, this is Reuters, and so, they will never say that.

We’ll skip over “Blahblahblah, wall! Blahblahblah, bad! Blahblahblah, Israel’s fault!”

The town’s once-thriving entrance — a place where in bygone years Palestinians and Israelis milled about in cafes, local stores and even a dentist’s surgery — is now almost deserted.

[…] “A few years ago, this place was so crowded that I wouldn’t have time to talk,” said Nikola as he fried falafel balls in a vat of boiling oil in his empty restaurant. “These days, I can count the number of customers on my hand.”

Once more, can you say, “Terrorist attacks”? I knew you could. Now try this: “Tourism killed by the PA.” Good! Excellent! One more: “Christians driven out of Bethlehem by Muslims.” There, that didn’t hurt at all, did it?

Okay, time to get your last licks in.

“Bethlehem has been turned into a ghetto. We demand the Israelis give Bethlehem freedom. If they won’t do it then we won’t have peace this Christmas,” Bethlehem’s mayor Victor Batarseh told reporters.

Say, you mean the freedom that brought palestinian [Muslim] terrorists to the roof of your city hall, aiming their weapons at the citizens of your town?

You can thank Arafat for that. Oh, wait. He’s dead. Thank his successor-in-terror, Mahmoud Abbas. You know, the guy who also doesn’t give a crap about Christians in the terrortories[sic].

And that concludes our tour of Reuters, the news agency whose motto could easily be, “We hate Israel and we’re proud of it!”