Still more AP anti-Israel bias

This is the introductory post to my new category: AP Media Bias. (I’ve edited a few posts into this category.) Today’s example: Yet another article that blames Israel for terrorist attacks on her people.

Israel Kills Three Palestinian Militants
By ALI DARAGHMEH
NABLUS, West Bank (AP) – Israeli troops shot and killed three Palestinian militants, including the local leader of a small radical faction, during an arrest raid Thursday in the West Bank city of Nablus, witnesses and the military said.

Hours later, militants in the Gaza Strip launched a homemade rocket into an Israeli military base, slightly wounding five soldiers, the army said.

Israel responded with an artillery barrage into Gaza that Palestinian officials said killed one Palestinian. Israeli officials also threatened further unprecedented retaliation but would not elaborate.

Soldiers entered Nablus early Thursday in pursuit of wanted men and opened fire on a four-story building where militants were holed up, the military said. One wanted man and two associates were shot as they tried to escape, it said.

Let us count the bias: Number one, the headline. “Israel Kills.” Once again, Israel or the IDF have the active voice verb assigned, while Israelis “die” in suicide attacks (or even while standing in line at a mall). Palestinians don’t kill them. Also, this article says the soldiers “opened fire.” This Ynet article says otherwise.

A special Border Guard force encircled a structure in Nablus Thursday morning following an intelligence tip indicating wanted suspects were hiding there. During the operation, three suspects attempted to flee the scene and fired at troops, who shot back, killing the three Palestinians.

Note also the arrangement of the facts in the article. The rockets (which are always called “homemade,” as if they were chocolate-chip cookies instead of lethal devices meant to explode on contact and kill as many people as possible) were fired “hours later.” The attack, by the way, was “launched.” Look at the language in the next graf: “Israel responded”. Notice too how “Israeli officials threatened further unprecedented retaliation.”

First, Israel is a faceless, dehumanized state. It’s never “The IDF responded.” You rarely get an IDF spokesperson quoted. Not so for the palestinian side:

Witnesses identified one of the dead men as Bashar Hanani, the Nablus leader of the small Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Israel said Hanani masterminded a suicide bombing in an open-air market in Tel Aviv in November 2004 that killed three Israelis and planned other attacks that were thwarted.

As if “small” is an adjective that means anything about a terrorist group. They are still murderers of innocents.

Here are all of the elements listed above in one paragraph: The dehumanization of Israel, the humanization of the terrorists, the moral equivalence between terrorist attacks and soldiers trying to prevent terrorism and arrest terrorists. Classic. Textbook.

Israel began a campaign of arrest raids against militants after a Dec. 5 Palestinian suicide bombing in the coastal town of Netanya killed five Israelis. The violence came despite a shaky 10-month truce that greatly reduced the number of attacks between the two sides.

And a perfect example of why the world hates Israel. The small, subtle biases creep into the average person’s mind, until s/he is utterly brainwashed against the only true democracy in the Middle East.

The AP belongs in a Media Hall of Shame