The dehumanization of Israelis in the media

What’s missing from this story?

JERUSALEM Nov 15, 2006 (AP)— Israel promised a punishing response to a deadly Palestinian rocket attack Wednesday near the home of the country’s defense minister.

The rocket one of at least eight that struck Israel during the day killed a 57-year-old woman walking to the grocery store in the Israeli town of Sderot near the Gaza border and raised the specter of a large-scale offensive against militant rocket squads.

There are still no names of the victims. The Jerusalem Post has them.

At 7:18 a.m. on Wednesday morning, six Kassam rockets slammed into Sderot, killing Fatima Slutsker, 57, and seriously wounding Maor Peretz, 24, a security guard for Defense Minister Amir Peretz.

But the names of Israeli victims are almost never published by the AP or Reuters. Israeli victims are not named. They are rarely given ages, and when Israelis do die, the AP minimizes their deaths—like this:

Although the homemade projectiles are primitive and rarely cause casualties, they have killed eight other people since 2001. Last March a father and son were killed by a rocket blast at Nahal Oz, a village just outside Gaza.

The father and son have no names, of course. Because they’re not palestinian victims of Israel.

Except this time, the Muslims got another of their own:

Slutsker was a Muslim woman who came from the Caucasus Mountains in the Former Soviet Union just three years ago with her Jewish husband.

I doubt you’ll hear Hamas calling her a “martyr,” though. She committed a capital crime: She married a Jew.

Here’s something else you won’t read in the AP or Reuters reports, or any of the big newspapers or mainstream media:

Avichai Yosef and Benny Libranti from Zaka, the rescue organization that rushes to the scene after terrorist attacks, described the bloody scene as looking like a suicide bombing on a bus.

They said it took hours to gather body parts, which were scattered in a 50-meter, and bones and legs were found on the top of the trees and on car windshields.

But you’ll see plenty of pictures of palestinians standing in front of puddles of blood in Beit Hanoun.

Israeli victims don’t bleed. They don’t have names. And their wounds and deaths are minimized.

Because they’re not palestinian victims of Israel. They don’t fit the profile.

When Israelis die, you see, they brought it on themselves. For not giving the palestinians a state. For the settlements. For existing.

The world does not like the Jews.