The crime did not end with a brutal mass murder of Jews in central Israel but continued with the warped news coverage. The media must stop deliberately using misleading headlines when it comes to Israel.
By David E. Kaplan
It began as a day to celebrate; it ended as a day to mourn.
At the end of Israel’s 44th Independence Day following a wave of terror attacks across the country and repeated threats by Palestinian terror groups over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, two axe-wielding terrorists went on a rampage at a central park in the largely ultra-Orthodox city of Elad in central Israel.
Adding a knife to their ‘cutting-edge’ arsenal, the two ideologically-charged terrorists, hacked three fathers to death leaving sixteen orphans as well as injuring a further seven, three seriously. A man calling the United Hatzalah emergency service could be heard screaming into his phone:
“There is so much blood… these are wounds from an ax.”
The local Israeli police had no difficulty confirming the incident as “a terror attack”.
No such ease came to the international media who did everything to initially blur the Palestinian identity of the assailants as well as to try implicate Israel for the mass murder of its own citizens.
Quick off the proverbial grid was FRANCE 24 with a neutral news flash at the bottom of my TV screen:
“ISRAEL – ISRAELI MEDICS SAY 3 KILLED, AT LEAST 6 WOUNDED IN MASS STABBING NEAR TEL AVIV; MOTIVE UNCLEAR.”
No suggestion as to the clear identities of the perpetrators or the victims, leaving it open for viewers to surmise that it could be a ‘criminal act’!
After all, the headline report concluded:
“MOTIVE UNCLEAR”
Motive unclear?
No less infuriated was my wife, who reflexibly exclaimed in an outburst:
“It’s like saying 6 million were killed in the holocaust. They weren’t killed; they were MURDERED.”
The motive for the Elad rampage was clear to every Israeli, Jew and Arab, but for the French journalists covering the Palestinian terror attack, the perpetrators and motive appeared a mystery.
More likely – they did not want to spoil the network’s preferred narrative!
Not wanting to be outdone, Al Jazeera went fiendishly further. Content not to identify the perpetrators in its reportage, nor even to suggest that it was either terror or mass murder, the Qatar-based broadcaster, while reporting that 3 Israelis were “hacked to death”, prefaced its headline with the chilling:
“PAY THE PRICE”.
What a cold, callous and calculating account by a news network; as if these families whose lives were ripped away by mass murderers had it coming to them; well-deserved. Al Jazeera describes these killers not as ‘murderers’ or ‘terrorists’ but “attackers” whose actions should be understood or forgiven as the real villain is ISRAEL who in the remainder of the headline is depicted as a predatory “hunter” for trying to apprehend the “attackers”.
The next channel I switched to was the BBC that neutrally characterised the murderious rampage with axes on civilians as an “attack”. Enlisting no adjectives to describe the horror of the attack, the headline report failed to draw any attention to the identitiy of the killers, other than describing them as “attackers”.
FROM ELAD TO JENIN
Change of cities; change of positions!
Compare Al Jazeera’s coverage of the deliberate attack on Jews in Elad with the tragic death of its Middle East correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh who was caught in a crossfire conflict situation. Fatally shot by a bullet, the source of which remains undetermined.
Given the non-stop media coverage of this unfortunate death of a single journalist, one could be excused for asking where has been the coverage of some 20 journalists killed and 13 injured since Feb. 24, the beginning of Russia’s war on Ukraine. During this unwarranted invasion, three journalists went missing, and eight journalists, including four women, have been kidnapped. Can any of the protestors for Shireen Abu Akleh demanding Israel be brought before the ICC even name any of the journalists killed or kidnapped in Ukraine? It is less about the Al jazeera journalist and more about defaming Israel.
Now compare the actual wording in a few of Al Jazeera’s headline reports of the death of its journalist in Jenin:
“SHIREEN ABU AKLEH…SHE WAS WEARING A PRESS HELMET AND JACKET,AND DESPITE OF THIS OR BECAUSE OF IT SHE WAS SHOT AND KILLED.”
– Al Jazeera assumes with no proof that Israel shot the journalist and because she was identified as ‘Press’, Israel deliberately killed her – in other words, murdered her!
– A follow-up Al-Jazeera report read:
“DIRECT VICTIM OF ISRAELI TERRORISM”
No explanation that Israeli forces were in Jenin during a dangerous operation to restore calm during a period when Israeli civilians have been losing their lives to terror attacks across Israel, many of them planned and orchestrated in Jenin, Al-Jazeera saw fit to characterise the Israeli military as “ISRAELI TERRORISM”
If there was any doubt as to the transparent bias of Al-Jazeera, note its following headline report where it unabashedly lays out the narrative it wants presented to its global viewership:
“SHIREEN WAS MURDERED BY A GOVERNMENT THAT RECEIVES UNCONDITIONAL FUNDING FROM THE USA.”
Al-Jazeera was now acting as judge and jury. While following the initial autopsy of Shireen’s body by Palestinian coroners, Dr. Ryan al-Ali of the Pathological Institute at the a-Najah University in Nablus, was quoted by al-Jarmak TV channel as saying that “it cannot be determined whether [Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli fire or by a Palestinian bullet,] Al Jazeera blamed Israel for her death, saying that she was “deliberately” targeted by troops.
“We condemn this heinous crime, intended to prevent the media from carrying out its message, and we hold the Israeli government and the occupation forces responsible for her death,” the channel wrote on Twitter, adding:
“We call on the international community to condemn and hold the Israeli occupation forces accountable for the deliberate killing of our colleague Shireen Abu Akleh.”
Judge, jury and now executioner – that is Al-Jazeera.
Neglected in the media coverage is the highly disturbing Palestinian Authority (PA) position that is refusing to allow the bullet that hit the journalist to be examined by Israel in order to conduct a ballistics analysis. It has emphatically rejected a request to do a joint probe.
Why?
Because it is not about discovering the truth but rather in besmirching Israel internationally. This was revealed today by PA head Mahmoud Abbas at Abu Akleh’s funeral, where he said:
“We will take Israel to ICC, we don’t trust them.”
The killers who butchered three Israelis to death in Elad were referred to by Al-Jazeera as “attackers”, while Israel is automatically, without any proof, not only blamed for the journalist’s death, but stands accused of “murdering” her. Complicit in this ‘murder’ according to Al-Jazeera, is the USA because of its “UNCONDITIONAL FUNDING” of the Jewish state.
All this boils down to is the explicit antisemitism in the media with Al-Jazeera leading the venomous pack.
While some news networks thought the motives of the killers of Jews in Elad was “UNCLEAR”, it is becoming increasingly CLEAR that one of the most important aspects of the media-saturated conflict between Jews and Arabs is also the least covered:
The Press itself
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