Days after exposing the Hitler store Gaza which promotes murder, and the story has largely gone unreported by the mainstream media.
CNN? Yawn
BBC? Yawn
NY Times? Yawn
The list goes on and on. And the Israeli news outlets are, in general, no better.
YNet? Nope.
Times of Israel? Nope.
The Jerusalem Post has just – a little over an hour ago – posted a report based on a Reuters wire, having ignored my tip for days.
Yep, I did just admit Reuters have covered it. Also just within the past few hours.
And there’s a bit of a story behind it.
Today, I noticed Reuters Israel bureau chief Luke Baker tweeting a link to the DouchebloggerTM Richard Silverstein.
https://twitter.com/LukeReuters/status/662168664184102912
After pointing out the “reliability” of his source, I made a suggestion to him.
At the time of my tweet, there was categorically no Reuters coverage of the Hitler store.
Baker responded thus:
https://twitter.com/LukeReuters/status/662203543122812928
To which I asked:
No response.
Hours later, and I noticed Baker tweeting a link to a Reuters story.
https://twitter.com/LukeReuters/status/662292354146164737
Notice the date and time. It was published only hours ago, and way after Baker claimed the story existed.
When I pointed out his dishonesty, this was Baker’s response:
https://twitter.com/LukeReuters/status/662302497915191297
I was not buying it. After all, the video game controversy only came to light today, not two days ago. When I pressed Baker on it, he got condescending.
https://twitter.com/LukeReuters/status/662304195870093313
When I let him know I did appreciate his condescension and nastiness (albeit with a typo), this was his response:
https://twitter.com/LukeReuters/status/662311322844012544
Highly professional.
So what we have here is a Reuters reporter seemingly lying to me, not to mention being condescending and nasty.
But even worse than that, notice the slant of his story on the Hitler store: Drawing a moral equivalence between the store promoting the murder of innocent Israelis, and an Israeli video game in which players neutralize terrorists.
In Gaza, a clothing store called “Hitler 2” has mannequins posed outside holding knives and dressed in T-shirts with “Stab!” written across the chests.
In Israel, a news website closely followed by religious Jews hosted a video game in which children were urged to “neutralize” attackers dressed as Arabs.
After six weeks in which Palestinians have killed 11 Israelis in stabbings, shootings and other violence, and Israeli forces have shot dead 68 Palestinians, including 41 alleged assailants, both sides accuse the other of incitement.
While there are some signs of the violence dying down, with the frequency of attacks slowing, there is little let-up in the anger and hatred that have long stoked the 70-year conflict.
In Gaza, the Islamist group Hamas that controls the territory has openly encouraged violence, publishing videos online that urge Palestinians to join a new “knife intifada”, or uprising, against Israeli occupation.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been more circumspect, but has praised those killed by Israel as martyrs and been vilified by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not seeming to do enough to halt the violence.
Outside “Hitler 2”, whose owner declined to be interviewed, young Palestinians this week said they liked the shop and were eager to carry out attacks.
“The name of the shop is Hitler and I like him because he was the most anti-Jewish person,” said 20-year-old Hijaz Abu Shanab. “It is better for us now to go and die since we are living like the dead. I like the clothes and the name.”
This week, Israel shut down a radio station in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, accusing it of glorifying attacks on Israelis. Palestinians said the station had urged people to join stone-throwing demonstrations but nothing more.
In a conflict with two diametrically opposed narratives in which words and history have long been used as weapons, Netanyahu has also been accused of fuelling tensions.
Before a visit to Germany last month, he asserted that the Palestinian mufti of Jerusalem in the 1940s instigated the Holocaust, saying he gave Adolf Hitler the idea. His comment drew strong criticism from Holocaust experts, who accused him of distorting the historical record.
Palestinians acknowledge that there has been widespread incitement on social media, including Facebook and WhatsApp, encouraging people to attack Israelis.
Israelis have also highlighted cases in which websites and social media have carried unsavory content.
Arutz Sheva, a news site popular among Israel’s religious community and its largely rightist Russian immigrant population, on Thursday took down a video game on its children’s pages in which players used sticks and umbrellas to “neutralize” bearded and robed attackers bearing knives and guns.
“It was a mistake,” an employee told the Jerusalem Post.
After an eight-month-old Palestinian child died near Bethlehem last week, some people wrote comments in Hebrew on Facebook praising his death, which was initially thought to have been caused by tear gas fired by Israeli forces. The exact cause of death remains unclear, but doctors said the baby had a pre-existing health problem involving water on the brain.
Israeli mayors have urged citizens who have gun licenses to carry their weapons, a move that human rights groups say has encouraged vigilantism.
Some Palestinians seen holding knives have been shot on suspicion that they were about to carry out an attack. In at least two instances, this wasn’t the case, Israeli authorities have conceded.
With reporters like this, it is no wonder we face an uphill battle in the court of public opinion.
Update: Baker’s latest response to my noting the video game controversy only happened today.
https://twitter.com/LukeReuters/status/662329524026269696
Update: Baker’s response to this post:
https://twitter.com/LukeReuters/status/662335639732551680
https://twitter.com/LukeReuters/status/662336470838046720
