#859 6/18/17 – This Week: Bibi and Don Jr Blast Headline Typical of What We’ve Averted Our Eyes From All These Years

 

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  What was not unusual this week was that a mainstream Western news source ran a “Palestinians Killed” headline omitting that they’d been attacking Israelis.  What was unusual was that two heavyweights, one of them Christian, protested.  The headline got changed.  The lesson we should draw from this is that ordinary people, working together, can also combat this repeated Western media misleading headlining, which cumulatively damages Western perception of Israelis defending themselves against terror.

This Week:  Bibi and Don, Jr., Blast Headline Typical of What We’ve Averted Our Eyes From All These Years

This Week:  What Was NOT Unusual

The BBC’s headline of terrorists’ murder Friday night of a 23-year old Israeli policewoman at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate was not that unusual:

“Three Palestinians Killed After Deadly Stabbing in Jerusalem”

It reminded me [emphasis added throughout] of one of a half-dozen I’d cited two weeks ago in #857 that my hometown paper, the Philly Inquirer (Inq), had run over the past couple years headlining “Israel Kills Palestinians” without mentioning that these “killed Palestinians” were attacking Israelis.  From our #857:

***  On 10/18/15, the Philly Inquirer headlined as “3 Palestinians Slain After [sic] Knife Attacks” an article from the Washington Post that said in its lede: “… three Palestinian attackers wielding knives were shot dead by Israelis.”

Other instances that I cited in #857 included [1] the Inq headlining (2/1/15) as “Israel: Troops Shoot Two Palestinians” an AP article that said in its lede:  “… who were throwing firebombs at Israeli vehicles”; [2] headlining (10/27/15) as “Israelis Kill 3 Palestinians” a European news article the text of which made clear that all three were involved in knife attacks on Israelis; [3] headlining (11/13/15) as “Palestinian Killed as Israelis Raid Hospital” an article from the L.A. Times that said that an Arab who’d been wounded while stabbing a Jew had “fled the scene and was later smuggled into the hospital for treatment,” and that when the Israelis entered [“raided”] the hospital to arrest him, he had “attacked them during the arrest”; [4] headlining (11/27/15) as “Israeli Forces Kill Three Palestinians” an AP article the text of which stated that one “hurled firebombs and stones,” one was “a` Palestinian attacker wielding a knife, “ and one “was about to throw a firebomb at passing traffic”; and [5] headlining (11/28/15) as “West Bank: 2 Palestinians Shot” an AP article the text of which stated that “they rammed their cars into soldiers in separate West Bank attacks.”

I ended with the Philadelphia Inquirer’s headline of 2/4/16 – Israeli Paramilitary Officer, 3 Palestinians Die in Fight – of an AP article on the murder, like this week, of a young Israeli policewoman at the Damascus Gate.  That AP article led:

     Jerusalem – Three Palestinians armed with automatic weapons, explosive devices, and knives killed an Israeli security officer and seriously wounded another in Jerusalem on Wednesday before police shot and killed the attackers.

     It was one of the most brazen attacks in nearly five months of near-daily Palestinian assaults, mostly stabbings, on Israeli police, soldiers and civilians….

That young Israeli policewoman hadn’t died “in a Fight.”  She’d been murdered by terrorists who’d been lying in wait.  Times of Israel had reported the previous day that Israeli officials had concluded that those three Palestinian Arabs who came to Jerusalem’s Old City armed with automatic weapons, explosive devices and knives had been sitting and waiting for a large group of Israeli civilians to enter or leave the Old City and had planned to attack them.” 

The mother of all such Inq “Israel Kills Palestinians [Who were attacking Israelis]” headlines, which I didn’t include two weeks ago because it was older, did find a place in Lee’s and my Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-to-Z book.  The 4/29/08 Inq carried an AP article that reported:

“The Israeli army shot four Palestinian militants who were trying to plant explosives near the Gaza Strip border fence,” and quoted Hamas calling them its members “on a jihad mission.”

The Inquirer headlined:

“Israeli Army Shoots Four Palestinians”

Of course, this media watch and my book are hardly alone in pleading with us to try to put a stop to this.  Tom Gross this week, in commenting on an important American Christian blasting the BBC for its headline on Friday’s attack, said he was “saying exactly the same thing that this Middle East dispatch list has said for years.”

This Week: What WAS Unusual

What was unusual this week was that two heavy hitters – Israeli PM Netanyahu and the American President’s son, Donald Trump, Jr. – publicly condemned the BBC’s “Three Palestinians Killed After Deadly Stabbing in Jerusalem” headline.

The Jerusalem Post said Saturday that Netanyahu had ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israeli embassy to seek to have the BBC “acknowledge that the headline misrepresented the details of the attack and change it.”  The changed headline reads

Israeli Policewoman Stabbed To Death in Jerusalem

and the BBC issued a statement:  “We accept that our original headline did not appropriately reflect the nature of the events and subsequently changed it.  Whilst there was no intention to mislead our audiences, we regret any offense caused.”

Jerusalem Post:  “Another notable figure who criticized the BBC for its misleading headline was US President Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., who took to Twitter himself to lambast the station for the article they published.  ‘You mean after they stabbed a female Israeli police officer to death, right?  This is as close to being misleading as possible,’ he charged.”

This Week’s Story:  A “Happy Ending”?  No.  A Hopeful Beginning?  Perhaps

What got me going with this media watch, 859 weeks ago now, was not just that the mainstream Western media was at that time relentlessly spreading a horrendous misstatement of history – “millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants from Israel’s creation” – but we averting our eyes from it.  That particular canard is long-gone [it should not have taken years to correct], but who knows what lasting damage it did?

These days’ headlining canard – “Israel Kills Palestinians [Who Were Attacking Israelis]” – likewise goes on and on because we do not adequately confront it.  We saw this week that when two important people did confront such an instance, a headline got changed.  Ordinary people, if there’s enough of them, can effect such a change.

Donald Trump, Jr., for all the deep appreciation we owe him for standing up for us, was not quite correct.  Omitting from headlines that “Palestinians Killed By Israel” were terrorists attacking Israelis isn’t just “as close to being misleading as possible.”  It is being as misleading as possible.