Here’s a headline and lede from the Times of Israel describing an event that happened on Saturday night:
Gunman opens fire on Israeli bus in West Bank
No injuries reported in suspected terror attack near settlement of Tekoa; armored vehicle sustains damage; security forces launch manhunt
We have “Israeli bus” and then “armored vehicle”. Lets put “armored vehicle” into Google images:
If we search The Times of Israel for the same term we get these stories:
That’s pretty much what I’d think of were someone to ask me what an “armored vehicle” looked like. They all look military to me.
The “armored vehicle” which was shot at by a Palestinian terrorist was a civilian bus that does have some additional protection (mostly against rocks). Clearly, this time, it was enough to stop a bullet. More than this, it was carrying 16 year old school children back to their school after a weekend in an Israeli village.
Children. Actually they’re the classmates of Reb Mottle’s son (and he recorded a show about this yesterday). I’ve ridden on buses like this: I even photographed the extra thick windows.
Who, what, where, when why: aren’t those the basic questions of journalism? Did The Times of Israel not do any journalism here? Either way they’ve failed their readers completely by not finding out who was on the bus and giving a misleading description.
What this lethal journalism does is play up the location of the shooting; “a settlement”, and play down the intent of the terrorists. It’s not a serious incident, according to The Times of Israel, nobody got hurt, the bus soaked up the bullet(s). The takeaway, outside of Israel, is a combination of “sounds like they were shooting at a military vehicle”, “settlers had it coming, business as usual”.
However inside Israel we know what this is. And if you want to know why Israel is so much more realistically pragmatic about the prospects of a negotiated peace with Arabs it’s in how this is presented. Israelis know there is no reasoning with a PA that continuously praises and encourages this kind of terror. Israelis absolutely know that if this had resulted in one or more dead Jewish children there would have been celebrations in Ramallah. Israelis absolutely know how disgusting it is that Jewish kids need armoured school buses. But Israelis know they do.
Within Israel we have a much more realistic understanding of what each attack means. They’re all part of the #RelentlessJihad against Jews and Israel. It doesn’t matter whether each attack fails or succeeds to kill Jews: the intent to kill Jews is unceasing. The uninformed, misinformed majority both of Jews and largely disinterested outside observers don’t hear about the many attacks we foil. (Though they hear about EVERY incident of wrongdoing by a Jew.)
And even those interested enough to follow Israeli news sources like The Times of Israel, are misinformed egregiously by a deceptive term such as “armored vehicle” used so prominently.
