Wednesday, August 24, 2005
It's at Fox News, which we usually expect better from, but it's actually an AP report. Take a look at this brain-dead headline:
Four Palestinians, Jew Killed in Violence
Yes, these are the kinds of deaths you see chalked up on those score boards that compare the number of Israeli and Palestinian deaths -- you know, the ones that show more Palestinians killed than Israelis and thus purport to show the moral culpability of Israel as being the more aggressive killer.
As always with these things, you have to read beyond what the AP wants you to think, the impression they want you to take away, and into the facts embedded in the text.
It turns out the four Palestinians were Islamic Jihad terrorists killed in a shoot-out with Israeli forces, while the Jew was an innocent civilian knifed to death on the streets of Jerusalem. Imagine your innocent loved one's death was put up as an equivalency this way. How would you feel?
The bodies of the four dead were brought to the Tulkarem hospital an hour after the incident. Residents said they were members of Islamic Jihad (search). Two other Palestinians were wounded, they said.
Israeli military officials identified the Palestinians involved in the confrontation as top local leaders of the Islamic Jihad, responsible for the last two bombings in Israel — in Tel Aviv (search) in February and Netanya in July.
Earlier in Jerusalem, a Palestinian stabbed two young ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Old City, police said, calling it a terror attack. One of the victims later died of his wounds. The assailant escaped.
Israeli media reported that the dead man was a young seminary student from Britain. His name was not released...
Here is more information on the Jerusalem attack.
You may say that the AP, with their headline (and this is habitual), is merely trying to maintain neutrality. I say that maintaining a neutral stance between these two circumstances is not neutral. It is an advantage for the terrorists.
