Israel Matzav

The Financial Times agrees with Hamas: All Israelis are 'Zionist soldiers'

London's Financial Times believes that all of those murdered on the bus pictured at top left - the Jerusalem number 19 bus, which was attacked by a suicide bomber on January 29, 2004 - were 'Zionist soldiers.'

Hamas does not discriminate between Israeli soldiers, civilians, men, women, children or babies when it carries out terror attacks. For Hamas, they are all potential soldiers and legitimate targets. That’s why Israelis and most of the media knew exactly what Hamas meant when it boasted of killing 1365 “Zionist soldiers” over the 24 years of its existence.

But not the Financial Times, which published the following, referring to “Israeli soldiers” of the purely military kind:

We pointed this out on our Backspin blog at the time as it is important to understand that Hamas deliberately targets civilians and soldiers alike. Stating that Hamas has killed only soldiers whitewashes the indiscriminate murderous agenda of the organization and is, of course, an inaccurate report of what Hamas really stated.

Thinking that the Financial Times had committed an innocuous error, we contacted the paper asking for a correction. This was the response:

thank your for your email, which I followed up with Tobias Buck , our Jerusalem bureau chief, and we don’t feel a correction is warranted. The column clearly attributes its claims to Hamas in Gaza. The statement was carried on the official Qassam Brigades website and referred to “1385 Zionist soldiers”. We and all other outlets tend to translate “Zionist” into “Israeli”, since that is what they mean. Hamas was clearly not talking about civilians. Below are links to the Hamas web site and AFP wire from that day, which also refers to “Israeli soldiers”.

Unbelievably moronoic.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: British media bias, Financial Times, Hamas

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:20 PM