In the worst example of Reuters bias I have ever seen, Mohammed Assadi makes it through an entire article about the Temple Mount dig without once mentioning the Temple Mount, save for a brief mention of a vague “religious compound.” If you read this story, you are left with the notion that there are nothing but Islamic holy sites under contention.
The Palestinian parliament urged Arab states on Tuesday to cut ties with Israel in protest at excavation work near Islam’s third holiest site which has triggered Muslim protests.
The Palestinian Legislative Council, controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, also called on the United Nations Security Council to pressure Israel to safeguard Islamic and Christian sites in Jerusalem.
The council said Arab states should “sever diplomatic and economic ties (with Israel) and not establish new ones” in response to the excavation near al-Aqsa mosque.
Few Arab countries have formal ties with Israel. Egypt and Jordan signed peace treaties with the Jewish state and have diplomatic relations, while some Gulf Arab states have lower level contacts.
Israel says the work near al-Aqsa aims to salvage artifacts before construction of a pedestrian bridge leading up to a religious compound sacred to both Muslims and Jews.
But the work has angered Arabs and Muslims who fear it could damage foundations of the 1,300-year-old mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.
“A religious compound sacred to both Muslims and Jews:” You could not get any more vague than that when referring to the site of the First and Second Temples, the holiest site in Judaism, the site where we anticipate the Messiah will build the Third Temple.
Notice the repeated mentions of Islamic holy sites, and their level of meaning, and almost no mention whatsoever of the importance of the Temple Mount to Jews. It is yet another way of minimizing the Jewish ties to the site, and delegitimizing the Jewish state in the world’s eyes. And Reuters is as the forefront of this bias.
Time for another letter.
You go, girl. (By the way, I’m impressed at how you earlier got the wire services to describe Temple Mount more accurately.) I suspect the earlier errors describing Temple Mount came from a secular bias, but here the tilt is entirely pro-Palestinian. I’m amazed that “al-Aqsa” appears several times in the article but “Temple Mount” doesn’t appear AT ALL. Doesn’t Reuters have editors?