• Headline in official PA daily:
  “Lapid and Barlev: Every police officer is allowed to shoot to kill” 

• Actual statement by Lapid:
  “Every police officer is allowed to respond with fire to kill when he is in a situation of life-threatening danger” 

• Headline in official PA daily:
  “An Israeli photojournalist shoots a young Palestinian in occupied Jerusalem!” 
• Omission:
  “Young Palestinian” was a 44-year-old terrorist stabbing an Israeli civilian 
• Headline in official PA daily:
  “The occupation bombs two sites in the Gaza Strip and shoots at farmers and shepherds east of Khan Yunis” 
• Omission from entire report in PA daily:
  – Israel’s attack was in response to terrorists firing 4 rockets at Israeli civilian areas
  – Israel’s retaliation was against an underground Hamas rocket factory, not civilians 

The PA deliberately omits details from its reporting on Palestinian terror attacks and other offences to present Palestinians as innocent and Israelis as randomly murdering them. The following are three examples of this selective reporting, which serves the PA to incite hatred against Israelis and inspire to more terror.

Two days ago, a Palestinian terrorist was shot while he was attacking an Israeli civilian with a screwdriver. The shooter was an Israeli photojournalist who happened to pass by the scene.

But the official PA daily’s headline said nothing about a Palestinian terrorist stabber. Rather it portrayed him as an innocent victim:

“An Israeli photojournalist shoots a young Palestinian in occupied Jerusalem!” 

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 20, 2022]

Aside from the fact that the terrorist was not “young” given he was 44 years old, the entire report in the official PA daily questioned whether there was even an attack to begin with, alleging that the Ynet journalist “shot a young Palestinian in occupied Jerusalem, on the claim that he attempted to carry out a stabbing operation.” 

Referring to praise from Israeli PM Yair Lapid and Israel Police for the photojournalist’s “extraordinary civilian heroism,” the official PA paper further concluded that all Israeli journalists are “intelligence agents or ‘sleeper’ soldiers”:

“The Israeli journalist is nothing but an intelligence agent or ‘sleeper’ soldier who is quickly activated when something appears before him that goes against the will of every member of the occupation’s security [services] or army.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 20, 2022]

In another incident, a Palestinian car thief killed an Israeli police officer, Master Sergeant Barak Meshulam – a 29-year-old father of two – when he rammed into him at a police roadblock while trying to escape.

Following the murder and criticism of Israel’s rules of engagement by the slain officer’s relatives, Lapid and Israeli Public Security Minister Omer Barlev stated that “every police officer is allowed to respond with fire to kill when he is in a situation of life-threatening danger.” [Ynet, July 18, 2022]

But the official PA daily conveniently left out the second half of the statement from its front page headline:

“Lapid and Barlev: Every police officer is allowed to shoot to kill”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 19, 2022]

This is how the PA incites and strengthens the libel that Israeli leaders support and even instruct police officers and soldiers to randomly shoot innocent Palestinians. Whenever a Palestinian terrorist is killed while trying to shoot, stab, or otherwise murder an Israeli, the PA routinely describes the killing of the terrorist as a “summary execution.”

Only on page 11 at the end of the paper did the PA add the rest of the quote in its report on PM Lapid and Minister Barlev’s remarks, mentioning the fact that the “shoot to kill” rules of engagement they advocated apply when officers are in a life-threatening situation:

“The two [Lapid and Barlev] emphasized in a short joint statement that every police officer ‘is allowed to respond with fire in order to kill when he feels his life is in danger.’”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 19, 2022]

The official PA daily similarly distorted events after terrorists fired four rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip on the night of July 15. This fact was not reported by the official PA daily. Instead, the paper only stated: “The occupation bombs two sites in the Gaza Strip and shoots at farmers and shepherds east of Khan Yunis.” The paper also conveniently omitted the fact that Israel’s retaliation attack was against an underground Hamas rocket factory. Nowhere in the two articles on the incident did the paper mention that Gaza terrorists had first fired rockets at Israel:

Headline: “The occupation bombs two sites in the Gaza Strip and shoots at farmers and shepherds east of Khan Yunis”

“In the early morning hours yesterday [July 16, 2022] the Israeli occupation’s planes bombed a post next to a resort in the Sheikh Ijlin area southwest of Gaza City with 10 missiles (refers to Israeli airstrike on underground Hamas rocket factory in response to rockets fired by terrorists at Israel -Ed.). As a result of this it was completely destroyed and went up in flames. Damage was caused to the property of civilians nearby. The occupation’s planes also bombed an additional post with two missiles in the west of Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip. It was destroyed and damage was caused to the homes of civilians close to it.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 17, 2022]

The following are longer excerpts of the reports cited above: 

Headline: “Lapid and Barlev: Every police officer is allowed to shoot to kill” (they said this for cases of life-threatening danger; see note below -Ed.)

“Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid and [Israeli] Minister of Public Security Omer Barlev again expressed their support for police officers who shoot ‘to kill,’ in a claim that this is part of ‘the fight against crime and terror,’ as they put it.

At the end of a meeting that they held yesterday [July 18, 2022], Lapid and Barlev explained: ‘There is no change in the open-fire orders of the police officers.’ They said this a day after an incident in which an Israeli police officer was run over and killed next to the city of Ra’anana during a pursuit by police vehicles of a car that was suspected as having been stolen in Holon (refers to Palestinian car thief from Ramallah who stole a car and ran over and killed a police officer while attempting to escape -Ed.).

The Israeli Police arrested a 17-year-old Palestinian to whom it attributed involvement in running over and causing the death of the police officer, even though the youth was arrested outside of the vehicle (he was arrested after abandoning the vehicle and attempting to escape on foot -Ed.)…

(PMW note: The last sentence of the report was detached from the rest of the report and placed on page 11 of the paper:) The two [Lapid and Barlev] emphasized in a short joint statement that every police officer ‘is allowed to respond with fire in order to kill when he feels his life is in danger.’”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 19, 2022]

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Israeli Minister of Public Security Omer Barlev’s full quote from July 18, 2022 was as follows: “There is no change in the open-fire orders of the police officers, every police officer is allowed to respond with fire to kill when he is in a situation of life-threatening danger.” 

Headline: “An Israeli photojournalist shoots a young Palestinian in occupied Jerusalem!”

“The [Israeli] paper Yediot Aharonot praised its photographer Moshe Ben Ami – not because he shot a rare picture that no other photographer saw, but rather because he shot a young Palestinian (sic., 44-year-old terrorist Ismail Sha’ban Hussein Nimr, stabbed and wounded 1) in occupied Jerusalem, on the claim that he attempted to carry out a stabbing operation.

The paper published a picture of the photographer at the site of the operation, as it were, and added a recording of Ben Ami telling his colleague Yediot Aharonot photographer Moshe Mizrahi about his actions, and how he stopped his car, pursued the Palestinian, and shot him with a bullet. The paper even attempted to turn its photographer into a superhero when it said that the photographer sought engagement with the youth and shot him while others distanced themselves from the site after they realized it was a stabbing operation. 

This is not the first time that this photographer has shot a Palestinian. In the past he shot a Palestinian next to a light rail station in Jerusalem, on the claim that he carried out an operation (which the paper did not explain additional details about it) [parentheses in source] (refers to terrorist who attempted to stab Ben Ami six years ago -Ed.).

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid published words of praise on his Twitter account for the Yedioth Aharonot photographer and said: ‘I congratulate the Ynet photographer who chanced upon the scene [of the attack], acted with determination to neutralize the terrorist, and prevented the harming of additional people.’

The Israeli Police described the photographer as an ‘extraordinary hero’ (evidently refers to a police source quoted as saying Ben Ami’s actions were “extraordinary civilian heroism” -Ed.).

In light of these official Israeli responses, we recall dozens of cases in which Israel attacked Palestinian journalists and accused them of a lack of neutrality, just because of one word that expressed their Palestinian affiliation and identity. But today we discover that the Israeli journalist is nothing but an intelligence agent or ‘sleeper’ soldier who is quickly activated when something appears before him that goes against the will of every member of the occupation’s security [services] or army.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 20, 2022]

Ismail Sha’ban Hussein Nimr – 44-year-old Palestinian terrorist who stabbed and wounded an Israeli civilian with a screwdriver on a bus in Ramot, a neighborhood in northern Jerusalem, on July 19, 2022. Passing by the scene, another Israeli civilian, Ynet photojournalist Meshi Ben Ami, shot and wounded Nimr outside the bus, ending the attack. Nimr is awaiting trial as of July 21, 2022. 

Reprinted with author’s permission from Palestinian Media Watch