Take a look at this report in the AP article on yesterday’s terrorist attack that killed three young Israelis at a hitchhiking stand:
The first attack Sunday took place at a main intersection in a bloc of settlements south of Jerusalem. Militants racing by in a car opened fire at people waiting at a bus stop and at others in nearby cars.
Israeli rescue services said one Israeli died at the scene and two others died in the hospital. Two were young women, cousins aged 23 and 21, from a nearby settlement and the other was a 15-year-old boy, Israeli media reported.
The second militant attack took place near the settlement of Eli in the northern West Bank, relatively far from the first shooting.
Israeli officials immediately condemned the attacks.
“Israel removed roadblocks and made a number of humanitarian gestures to ease up on the Palestinians,” said David Baker, an official in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office. “It’s unfortunate that the Palestinians have exploited these measures to carry out these murderous attacks.”
Now take a look at this report, and see if you can tell the difference between the two:
Palestinian officials identified the militant killed Sunday as 27-year-old Nihad Abu Ghanim, a local Islamic Jihad leader in Burkin, a village outside the northern West Bank town of Jenin.
The Israeli army said Abu Ghanim was killed when troops on patrol in the area spotted an armed Palestinian. The man shot at them and they returned fire, killing him, the army said.
A witness, however, said two Israeli jeeps drove up to Abu Ghanim as he was driving down the road and shot him inside his car. A bystander was seriously wounded.
Catch the differences? Let’s do a compare-and-contrast.
Dead palestinian terrorist: Name, age, occupation, name of village. Witnesses saying the IDF shot him for no reason and with no warning.
Israeli civilian victims: Age. Vague reference to where they lived. No witness responses at all, only a statement from an Israeli official.
Can you see it? Increment by increment, step by step, in almost every story that you read, the narrative is there for all to see: The Israeli victims don’t count. The palestinian victims always have names, ages, places of residence, and often a quote by a family member insisting their relative wasn’t a terrorist. The Israeli victims? No names.
The BBC doesn’t name them. Reuters doesn’t name them.
Can’t get the details? Bullshit. The Jerusalem Post has them as I write this. So do Ynet and Ha’aretz.
Finish the fence, Arik. Finish it, lock the subhumans out, and let them destroy each other instead of taking more Jewish lives.
Addendum at 1 p.m.: All these hours later, this story still does not name the Israeli victims, and it still has the name of the palestinian terrorist.
Actually, some recent posts imply that the fence does not contain enough territory. A number of “settlements” such as Efrat or the Etzion bloc may wind up getting squeezed out, especially since the roads connecting them with the rest of Israel will be open targets from the terrorists. It appears that the government is concentrating on keeping out infiltrators, but ignoring the problem of snipers on “Arab” hilltops.
Also, the Israelis “died”, while the Palestinian was “killed”. This is apparently either because the Palestinians are so noble they are incapable of killing anybody, or Jewish life is so worthless that ending it is not murder.
Dead biased Palestinian stringer writing for AP in the guise of a reporter: Bottle of chilled wine, opened, raise a toast to the man who shot him and the factory that made the bullet.
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Hi Meryl,
I completely agree with your take on the media. The BBC article you linked to got me going enough to write them a letter of complaint. I pointed out that they depersonalised the victims by not even mentioning that these were young people, but simply ‘Israelis’. Now, on reading your post, I can see that the more serious omission was the lack of names and other details – though in fairness the killings were still very recent.
Strangely enough, shortly after I submitted the letter, I saw that the BBC had updated the story with an article desribing the victims as ‘young Israelis’. That article has been removed from the site and been replaced by this one, titled ‘Israel cracks down after killings’:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4348726.stm
The article starts off in typical BBC fashion by describing the victims as ‘settlers’ but the second half of it goes into reasonable detail, including naming the victims.
It’s as if two BBC reporters contributed to the same article – one a rabid anti-Semite, and the other fair-minded.
The BBC appears to take complaints seriously and undertakes to respond within ten days. We’ll see.
“Finish the fence, Arik. Finish it, lock the subhumans out, and let them destroy each other instead of taking more Jewish lives.”
22 words that says it all. What on Earth is taking it so long. It shoud be worked on 24/7/365. I am sick of reading excuse for its snail like pace.
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