An American Christian tourist was attacked and stabbed to death while visiting Israel. The details are pretty grisly, and it was a big deal when it happened.
But the AP didn’t even put the words “killed” or “death” in its headline for the story about the conviction of Kristine Luken’s murderer. This is the headline they used:
Palestinian man convicted of stabbing US tourist
“Stabbing.” Not “murdering” or “killing”—just “stabbing”. Once again, the AP editors whitewash Palestinian crimes. Here’s what happened, from the other stabbing victim’s testimony:
Wilson told the court the defendants separated her from Luken. “They made us get down on our knees… I realized he was going to behead me. I heard Kristine screaming. They attacked us. I saw Kristine murdered before my eyes. She was yelling. I didn’t want it to hurt me. I tried to keep silent. It was tough, because the beatings were hard, but I tried to play dead.”
The killers left the murder scene, but quickly returned after a few minutes. “I heard Kristine grunting. I wasn’t sure I was alive. They came back to confirm we were dead. He stabbed my chest. A few minutes later I woke up in a different location but not far from where I was stabbed. I wanted to get back to the pathway so they could find my body. So they’ll know it was murder. I managed to pick myself up and walked barefoot and bleeding with broken ribs, for nearly 15 minutes, until I found help.”
And here’s the AP summary:
Kristine Luken, 44, was stabbed to death while hiking with a friend. Prosecutors say her attackers believed Luken, a Christian missionary, was Jewish.
The prosecutors didn’t say so. The murderers did. Kristine was a devout Christian who loved Israel. She loved it so much she wore a Star of David necklace, which convinced the Palestinians she was Jewish. So it was a hate crime, but of course, the AP never bothers to cover things like that after the first cursory explanation.
Always, the whitewash. Always, the minimization of Palestinian criminal actions and the maximalizing of any violence by Israelis. And always, the reduction of the charges in the headline and text of news articles.
Welcome to Israeli Double Standard time. But not to worry, it only occurs on days that end with a “y.”
I have to say that, while the crime itself no longer shocks me as I’ve become desensitized to hideous slaughtering of innocent women and children by Palestinians, I am rather shocked by the world’s media’s coverage of such a horrifying act, or should I say lack of coverage.
Keep in mind these were A) innocent tourists who were targeted because they were mistaken for Jews, B) the crime was an intentional and thought-out act of terror as confirmed by the murderers themselves (it was also not their first time killing a woman), and not an unfortunate casualty of a large-scale war, C) the attacks and murder were sickeningly barbarian and D) the victims were Americans, not Israeli, which you’d think might cause some American news services to pay a bit of attention to it.
Yet, when the testimony by the survivor and subsequent conviction were in, I did a sweep and found almost nothing about the incident online. I can only assume it didn’t feature in any news channels as well. Yet when dumbass, flag-burning idiot Rachel Corrie gets pancaked because she was too dim to get out of the way of a moving bulldozer, she immediately gets declared a saint and Israel is (again) branded with a blood-libel.
I wonder if Alan Rickman will write a tedious play immortalizing Luken as well. Somehow I doubt it. It wasn’t as though she was killed by Jews or anything.