Your Easter media bias

The wire services never fail to disappoint. It’s been piling up the bias for the last few days. For instance, check out this headline:

Gazans fire 2 rockets into Israel; no injuries

Have you ever seen “Israel bombs Palestinian weapons factories; no injuries”? Of course you haven’t. And you never will. But I have that “no injuries” phrase documented more than once over the years.

Then there are the Easter accounts. On Friday, AFP interrupted their coverage of Good Friday observances to tell you about the fanatic rabbi who tried to sacrifice a goat, possibly even meaning to do it on the Temple Mount. Scary Jews, trying to interrupt all those Easter celebrations with a re-enactment of the Passover sacrifice! The headline, by the way, is “Pilgrims fill Jerusalem for Good Friday, Passover”–so of course you have to cover the Scary Jews! side of that story.

There’s this odd AP version of the Exodus. Did you know the Jews left Egypt because Pharoah was upset that his son died?

Passover celebrates the biblical Exodus story of the Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt.

God killed the first-born boys of Egypt after the pharaoh refused to release the children of Israel from bondage, but “passed over” the houses of the Israelites. Distraught over losing his son, the pharaoh let the slaves free, and the Israelites fled so quickly they did not have time to wait for their bread dough to rise before baking it.

And there’s the minimization of the threat to Israel by terrorism.

The Israeli army closed the West Bank border just before midnight Thursday for the first two days of the Passover holiday, which begins Friday at sundown.

Under the ban, no Palestinians are allowed to cross into Israel except those needing medical care, the military said. The ban will be lifted on Saturday at midnight.

Israel routinely closes the West Bank during Jewish holidays when crowds in synagogues and other public places are most vulnerable to potential attacks by Palestinian militants.

A decade ago, 29 people were killed on Passover eve as they sat down to a traditional festive meal at a hotel in the Israeli resort of Netanya.

Note that they don’t even mention the Netanya Massacre was a suicide bombing, and that over 140 were wounded. they don’t even get the victim count right. Thirty people died, including Holocaust survivors. It’s the attack that launched the all-out Israeli offensive against Yasser Arafat’s terror war. After Netanya, Ariel Sharon sent the IDF into the West Bank and Gaza to take out the terrorists.

And just for kicks and giggles, the AP actually issued an update to the above story, since the jihadis didn’t like the publicity the first one got. Can’t headline an article “Militants vow ‘struggle’ as Israel seals borders” when the “militants” are trying to pretend that they’re the good guys and Israeli is the bad guy. The update?

Gaza militants say they’ll adhere to cease-fire
Sheik Nafez Azzam of Islamic Jihad said Israeli reports that he had called for an ongoing struggle against Israel, despite a cease-fire, were mistaken.

“We in the Islamic Jihad are committed to the cease-fire,” Azzam told The Associated Press.

He said a firebrand speech calling for ongoing resistance was a general political statement.

Right. A misinterpretation. Funny how the AP actually updated the story with the “militant” explanation that he didn’t really mean to call for Israel’s destruction. Of course he’s committed to the cease-fire. That’s why two rockets from Gaza landed in Israel today.

The AP routinely minimizes the actual reasons for the full closure of the West Bank. Every holiday, Israel’s security services go onto full alert, on the watch for terror attacks both within and without Israel. Every holiday, terrorists try to murder Israelis. The recent quiet is due entirely to the vigilance of the Israeli security forces, not at all to the terrorists giving up their attacks. And every holiday, the wire services report the situation as pretty much the evil Israelis once again punishing the pure, innocent Palestinians.

It’s just your everyday media bias, and the anti-Israel narrative.