As Israel mourns in the wake of a wave of deadly Palestinian terrorist attacks, the foreign media is working overtime to obfuscate, presenting headlines that dance around the truth, refusing to use the word ‘terrorism’ and focusing on the death of the terrorist as the significant tragic element.
Perhaps the most egregious headline was offered up by the ultra-left-wing Washington Post, which posted “Israeli forces kill Palestinian attacker after manhunt,” adding the update, “Third victim dies.”
The formally venerated Reuters was no better with the headline, “Israeli forces shoot dead Palestinian after Tel Aviv Bar Attack.” Tamar Sternthal from the Committee for Accuracy in the Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) tweeted, “No, @Reuters. Don’t do that again. The Palestinian was *a terrorist* who shot dead two civilians and wounded 12 in the #telavivattack bar. He was the perpetrator. Not the victim. How about: “Palestinian kills 2 in Tel Aviv bar, shot dead.”
Reuters later amended the headline to read, but Sternthal was unsatisfied, tweeting:
“UPDATE: @Reuters improves headline, now acknowledging slain Palestinian was the gunman. But inadequate headline still fails to note that he *murdered two innocent civilians.* Why is his death headline-worthy while his victims’ are not?”
Sternthal posted an article in CAMERA critical of Reuters’ reporting “recasting perpetrators as victims.”
“Headlines which depict Palestinian assailants as victims and which cover up their heinous crimes conform with the demands of journalists against journalism mandating that reporting of all Palestinian-Israeli affairs be filtered through the false prism of ‘Israel’s military occupation and its system of apartheid,’ a predetermined mold in which Palestinians have zero culpability for their actions,” Sternthal wrote.
“A June 2021 report by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism revealed that out of 46 surveyed countries, the United States ranks dead last (29 percent) in terms of public trust in news media,” she concluded. “Editors at Reuters should take note of the alarming nadir in the relationship between the media and its readers. With headlines like Reuters’ on the Tel Aviv terror attack, is it wonder that the American public trust in the media has bottomed out?”
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Reuters was not the only offender. No foreign media described the incident in Tel Aviv that killed three Israelis as a “terrorist attack.” The left-wing Israeli Haaretz followed suit, describing it as a “shooting attack” and the terrorist as an “assailant.”
The UK Board of Deputies of British Jews announced they are preparing a formal complaint after The Guardian published a misleading headline, “Israeli forces kill Palestinian after Tel Aviv shooting leaves two dead.”
“A Palestinian terrorist murdered two people and injured many others. He was subsequently apprehended and shot in an exchange of gunfire with Israeli police. How can any self-respecting publication invert the story to imply that Israel is at fault here? Disgraceful from The Guardian,” the Board of Deputies said on Twitter.
The Board of Deputies added that they are making a formal complaint to The Guardian about its attack coverage. They also called on others to do the same.
“We will be submitting a formal complaint to yet another self-regulated media outlet with a long and problematic record regarding coverage on Israel and urges others to do the same,” they wrote.
The Board of Deputies noted that due to all the complaints leveled at the news outlet, they changed the headline to “Israel: two dead after gunman opens fire in Tel Aviv bar.”
עובר על החדשות פה בארה”ב כדי לקרוא מה כותבים על הפיגוע בתל אביב, ולפי הדיווחים שלהם אפשר להבין כאילו סתם איזה משוגע לקח נשק, ירה והרג 2 אנשים כמו שקורה אצלם…
לא מדברים פה על כך שמדובר בפיגוע טרור, על מסע טבח אכזרי, על מחבל טרוריסט פלסטיני.
סיקור מעוות שמסתיר את האמת! pic.twitter.com/WP9YxjaguK— יוסף חדאד – Yoseph Haddad (@YosephHaddad) April 8, 2022
The UK division of CAMERA called out the Guardian on Twitter, writing, “Guardian slightly improved the headline, but how hard would it have been to write: ‘Two Israelis dead after PALESTINIAN gunman opens fire in Tel Aviv bar’?”
It is interesting to note that the Tel Aviv terrorist attack carried out by a Palestinian “gunman” from Jenin who murdered three and wounded eleven will go down in history (as recorded by Wikipedia) as a “mass shooting.” The article does not use the words terror, terrorism, or terrorist except in a quote from the EU Ambassador to Israel Dimiter Tzantchev, who stated that he was “deeply worried about reports about another terror attack against Israeli civilians.”
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This article was written by Eliyahu Berkowitz, the lead Geulah writer for Israel365 News, who has written over 4,000 articles about prophecy and Israel. His recent book has been published with Root Source and can be pre-ordered here. He has also authored the novel ‘The Hope Merchant’ and a collection of short stories titled ‘Dolphins on the Moon’
