As we noted in a post yesterday, the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood evidently believes – contrary to all evidence – that Palestinian terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) are rare.
However, the only thing truly rare is substantive coverage by the Guardian of ubiquitous terror attacks(and attempted attacks) on Israelis inside and outside the green line. A case in point is their “coverage” of the murder of Eden Atias, the 19-year-old from Nazareth Illit who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian teen on a bus at Afula’s central bus station.
Their sole piece on the lethal terror attack consisted of a generic video they posted on Nov. 13 (with NO accompanying text) which has since been removed. When you open the link to Harriet Sherwood’s “report”, all you see is the headline and a message below inserted by editors which notes that the content has been removed.
The Guardian’s tendency to downplay Palestinian attacks on Israelis was again on display following the death on Sunday of 31-year-old Master Sgt. Shlomi Cohen, from Afula, who was killed (while driving an army vehicle) by cross-border gunfire from Lebanon. The following morning, the Guardian published a story on the incident by Conal Urquhart titled ‘Lebanon-Israel border shooting sparks tensions‘.
(It was in the strap line where we first learned that an Israeli soldier was killed.)
Though the precise details of the shooting are still being investigated, reports confirm that the gunman was a member of the Lebanese Armed Forces and that he fired several bullets from Lebanese territory at Cohen, who was on the Israeli side of the fence.
The Guardian chose to illustrate the story with the following photo of the Israel-Lebanon border.
Several hours after the shooting, the IDF reportedly fired shots in the direction of Lebanese soldiers in the same area where Cohen was killed, after spotting “suspicious movement” – though there are conflicting reports as to whether any Lebanese soldiers were actually wounded in the incident.
Roughly 12 hours later (and 14 hours after Urquhart’s original story), Harriet Sherwood published her report on the day’s events in a story titled ‘Israeli troops shoot two Lebanese soldiers in border skirmish‘.
(Again, the fact that the shooting took place only after an Israeli soldier was killed is relegated to the strap line.)
The photo Guardian editors used to illustrate the incident was an unrelated photo of Israeli soldiers which dates back at least five years.
Whilst the report itself is relatively fair, it’s nonetheless troubling that in two stories devoted to an incident which clearly began when an Israeli soldiered was killed by a Lebanese soldier, neither the titles nor accompanying photos convey any information about the Israeli victim. Additionally, in looking back at prior Guardian reports on lethal Palestinian terror attacks over the past two years, we weren’t able to find even one which included a photo of the Israeli victim.
The Guardian’s failure to humanize Israeli victims of terror stands in stark contrast to their often fawningcoverage of Palestinian terrorists and their families.
Photo of Shabbir Hazam used to illustrate Guardian story: He was a member of Fatah who was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering a work colleague – Holocaust survivor Isaac Rotenberg – with an axe.
Here’s one of the photos of Shlomi Cohen used by other media outlets, which the Guardian passed on.
Here’s his final Facebook update:
Cohen leaves behind a wife and seven-month-old baby girl.
No comments:
Post a Comment