You know what’s news? The reaction of an Israeli town to one of their members being stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist.
You know what’s not news? The killing (by stabbing to death) of an Israeli “settler” by a Palestinian terrorist. No news agency chose to cover that story until the other “settlers” sought vengeance by attacking the village the murderer was from. Oh, now there are plenty of stories. But they focus on the effect, not the cause, of the stabbing. The AP couldn’t be bothered to cover the murder until there were riots after it occurred.
Settlers and Palestinians clash after killing
Israel’s military says soldiers have dispersed settlers and Palestinians who were throwing rocks at each other in the West Bank following the killing of a settler there.
And there’s more in the rest of the media. Take a look at some of these “objective” headlines.
Settler killed, Palestinians fear reprisals
Or these, that link two completely unrelated incidents into one story.
In separate attacks, an airstrike and Israeli civilian killed
West Bank settler, Gaza militant killed in latest Israel-Palestinian violence
Philly.com decided to make the above headline even better, equating West Bank settlers with “extremists”. Because a Salafi Jihadi is just like a West Bank Israeli.
West Bank settler and Gaza extremist slain
Many of the media added the killing of an Israeli to their story about the airstrike on Gaza that killed a Salafi terrorist. It’s the moral equivalence dance that the media have perfected: One Israeli killed, one Palestinian killed. The fact that the Palestinians were murdering and attempting to murder Israelis is downplayed. It’s keeping score without adding context. Sure, they mention the bare facts about Israelis killed, but often, the murder of the Israeli is banished to the lower depths of the story, where it will fall off your local paper’s “World News” radar because it’s mentioned after the third or fifth paragraph. Or they simply angle their stories like this:
Borovsky was a Jewish settler living on land in the West Bank that Palestinians say was stolen from them. He lived in the Itzar settlement, a community known to foster hard-core Jewish believers who have often clashed with their Palestinian neighbors.
Obviously, he asked for it.
Only one non-Israeli source mentioned that the Palestinian was a Fatah terrorist. Of course, since they’re the source with the most anti-Israel headline, they drop that information into the last two paragraphs. The Irish media is extremely anti-Israel.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the militant wing of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, said it carried out the attack in revenge for the recent deaths of two Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
So where do you have to go to get the actual news of what happened? India. China, often. Xinhua is anti-Israel for the most part, but it covers the stories that the AP and Reuters choose to ignore. Not this time, however. Apparently, a fatal stabbing of a West Bank Israeli by a Palestinian isn’t news unless there’s a negative reaction by Israelis to the attack.
Don’t think I condone the reaction of the settlers. I don’t, not at all. But neither do I condone the action of the news media in the way it chooses to ignore terror attacks on Israelis until they can add an “attack” on Palestinians–which are almost always the IDF striking terrorists, not terrorists killing civilians. The anti-Israel media bias is most apparent during times like these.
Actually, revenge may be the only way to get through to the Arabs. It’s something they understand, since it is a major feature of their own culture. “Kill a Jew and you’ll pay heavily in blood” may be the only way to stop the jihadist terrorists.