The media’s rule of thumb regarding Israel appears to be: Throw enough mud, some of it is bound to stick. And the truth is, they’re throwing so much mud at Israel that I despair of covering it all, to the point where I just don’t bother.
There are just too many lies. I get angry at a headline, at the lies inside the piece, but there are so many even in a single article, that it’s like bailing out a leaky boat with a thimble.
Impossible.
Take this Associated Press piece in the New York Times, from yesterday. Israel: Assailant Opens Fire on Bus Station, Soldier Killed. The lies and distortion begins with the second word of the headline. If that terrorist had opened fire on anyone but Israelis, he would have been called a “terrorist.” Instead, he is called an “assailant.”
Does it make a difference? Of course it does. The differences comes down to motive. An assailant could have any number of motives for assailing people. But a terrorist has a single aim: to terrorize.
Moving on we come to “Opens Fire” which doesn’t quite describe the chain of events. The “assailant” stabbed a 19 year-old soldier, killing him, then took his gun and sprayed the crowd with bullets. He opened fire on a crowd of Israelis, and not a “bus station” as the headline would have one believe.
Does the distinction matter?
You bet your sweet bippy. In saying the terrorist opened fire on the “bus station” we’re dehumanizing the event. We’re making it less impactive on the reader.
Finally, the order is wrong. “Soldier Killed” comes last. This leaves the reader with the impression that this is the result, rather than the first link in the chain of events.
Well, there IS something right in the headline. It begins with “Israel” which means that at least the Associated Press doesn’t think that Beersheba is in “Palestine.”
We should be grateful for this crumb, I suppose.
But if the AP had written that headline to reflect the facts in an accurate and unbiased manner, the headline would have read: Arab Terrorist Kills Soldier, Opens Fire on Israelis.
I just used 360 words to analyze a headline and correct it for inhumanity, inaccuracy, and anti-Jewish bias, and we’re not even into the body of the text.
How does one even begin to fight back?
Is it worth the bother? The time? I see dozens of such headlines every day. And the articles themselves, are much, much worse.
This particular article is riddled with errors and absolute lies. But the worst part is the effort to dehumanize Israelis and make terrorists appealing, by explaining the “reasons” they, for instance, drive into a crowd and hack an elderly rabbi to death with an axe in the streets of Jerusalem.
This AP article for example states: “The unrest erupted in Jerusalem a month ago over tensions surrounding a Jerusalem holy site sacred to Jews and Muslims.”
This is absolutely untrue. The unrest is due to Abbas’ incitement. The proof is the sharp rise in terror on October 1, following Abbas’ speech at the UN, rather than in response to any particular unrest or event relating to the Temple Mount.
And guess what? “Unrest” and “tensions” do not make stabbing to death people who are nowhere near the holy site in question, excusable.
No. Arabs are not stabbing and shooting Jews because they feel their holy sites are being stolen away from them or threatened. They are stabbing and shooting Jews because their leaders are telling them to do so. Their mothers are telling them to do so. Their Imams are telling them to do so. Their UNRWA teachers are telling to do so. Hamas is telling them to do so. And Abbas is telling them to do so.
Arabs are told that killing a Jewish couple in front of their four small children is a good thing.
That is why they do it.
Arabs are told that all Jews are guilty and that they must be killed.
And so they will drive over and hack to death with an axe a rabbi because he is clearly Jewish, which is the same or worse than being a cockroach, if one is an Arab who is raised to kill Jews from birth—who imbibes Jew hatred with his mother’s milk.
The Temple Mount?
It’s an excuse. Just as it was in 1929, when Arabs killed my husband’s cousin, a young Chicagoan spending a year in study at the Slabodka Yeshiva in Hebron, because the Mufti of Jerusalem gave a fiery speech telling his followers that Jews were trying to take over the Temple Mount and that all of them, all the Jews, must be killed. Yaakov Wexler wasn’t anywhere near the Temple Mount. He had no plans regarding the Temple Mount. He was just a Jew, a kid, studying Torah.
Minding his own business.
The Temple Mount is a convenient excuse, anytime Arabs want to kill a few Jewish cockroaches. They don’t care where they find them or what they are doing. Do they have payos? Tzistzis?
Guilty as charged. No need for a trial. Just kill ’em where you find ’em.
Because Jews.
And by using this false premise, repeating it in its story, the AP is strengthening the hand of terror. Giving it a reason to go out and kill more Jews.
People will read that story by the AP (and others) and will come to the conclusion that Arabs and Jews just can’t play nicely in the sandbox. They can’t settle their differences over their holy sites: can’t share them nicely.
And since Israel is sovereign over Jerusalem, well then, Israel has all the power, therefore it is Israel’s fault. Therefore you can understand how powerless ARAB TERRORISTS feel and why they must therefore drive over and hack to death with an axe, an elderly rabbi, or shoot to death a couple driving on the road with their four young children present to witness the act.
The AP and all the other media organs who write this way, omitting some facts, embroidering details to fit a certain narrative, and outright LYING when it comes to the facts, become responsible for every Jew killed by terror. I will say that again: when the media distorts, lies, and offers excuses for terror, the media is then responsible for the murders that occur as a result of furthering this evil, evil narrative.
I hold the AP and other media organs, responsible for the killing of Jews in Israel by Arab terrorists, as long as they continue this crap.
Terrorists are not “assailants” and no one is shooting a building. This is not a “clash” and it’s not about “tensions.”
You, the media, are complicit in killing my people.
And I will never forgive you.
Never.
