Reuters calls Kuntar a 'martyr' (without the scare quotes)
Reporting on the liquidation of terrorist Samir al-Kuntar, Reuters has called the murderer of the two little girls pictured above a 'martyr' (without the scare quotes) (Hat Tip: Elder of Ziyon).
A later version of the story puts the word 'martyred' in scare quotes:
But the revised story includes this line:
Qantar was jailed in Israel for his part in a
1979 raid that killed four people, including a girl he was convicted of
bludgeoning.
As
police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the
beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in
front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever
see. Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his
rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.
Einat was four-years old at the time. She is the bigger girl in the picture above. Here's what happened to two-year old Yael.
By
the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too,
was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.
Shame on Reuters. Shame on them for covering up for terrorists even 36 years after the fact.
Iranian female ninjas are suing Reuters for saying that they could be assassins. Here's what Iran's Press TV has to say about it.
Last month, Reuters showed a number of Iranian girls training martial arts in a city near Tehran, claiming Iran was training more than 3,000 female ninjas to kill any possible foreign invaders. The distorted Reuters report was picked up by other British media outlets. Following the strong reaction of Iranian media to the report, Reuters made changes to parts of the report but refused to apologize for slander.
Slander? But they seem proud of it and they're saying, wouldn't anyone else in the same position do the same thing!
The picture above was posted to al-Reuters' Daylife picture blog with the caption
Extreme right wing Jewish settlers, one of them injured from a rock hurled by pro-Palestinian activists during a weekly protest, stand in front of their house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem December 30, 2011. Some 100 activists protested against the Jewish settlement in the predominantly Arab neighborhood and threw rocks towards a house occupied by the settlers leading them to confront the protesters, to minor clashes.
Yael writes that it's time to substitute names for 'Extreme right wing Jewish settlers' and similar attempts to dehumanize Jews. Read it all here (Hat Tip: Jack).
We Israelis get upset because the mainstream media abroad insist on referring to the 'Palestinians' who are constantly trying to murder us as 'militants' rather than terrorists. There are constantly discussions here about how the media won't use "the T word."
Reader Will sent me this link from Turkey's Today's Zaman to show me that the Turks are even worse. If you click through, you will see that the headline reads "Israel and Islamic Jihad trade fire, 10 dead."
But if you look at the byline, you'll see that this didn't come from Zaman's writers. This coarse piece of moral equivalence - replete with mistakes of fact (how many can you find?) - came from al-Reuters, one of the world's largest news agencies.
Those Israelis and their crazy terms! I mean, referring to a fatal bombing of civilians as a "terrorist attack"? Who are they kidding? Everyone knows that a fatal bombing of Israeli civilians should be referred to as a "teachable moment." Or as a "venting of certain frustrations." Or as "an understandable reaction to Jewish perfidy." Or perhaps as "a very special episode of 'Cheers.'" Anything but "a terrorist attack." I suppose Reuters will mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11 by referring to the attacks as "an exercise in urban renewal."
The mind reels.
I don't think it's a whole lot different than some of the newspeak that the Obama administration has introduced (like not using the words "Islamic" and "terrorism" within 25 words of each other).
What's the difference between al-Reuters and al-Jazeera? One is an anti-Semitic news media outlet and the other is an Arab television network that is anti-Semitic (Hat Tip: Backspin).
The global news agency Reuters has denied it used terminology associated with anti-Israel activists after it referred to the Israeli army as “the Israeli occupation forces” in a report on Saturday.
Reporting on the terrorist attack in Itamar on Friday night, in which a couple and their three children were killed by a lone terrorist, Reuters stated: “Troops from the Israeli occupation forces set up roadblocks and were searching the area around the settlement of Itamar, near the Palestinian city of Nablus, for the suspect.”
The phrase was subsequently taken out of later editions of the story.
“Israel Occupation Forces” or the acronym “IOF” are often used by vehemently anti-Israel activists as part of the demonization campaign against Israel.
The editor of the story was Alastair Macdonald, specialist desk editor on the world desk at Reuters in London and former bureau chief of Reuters in Jerusalem. He edited it from reports from Gaza, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Damascus and Washington.
He told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that he did not use the phrase capitalized or the acronym.
Macdonald said the phrase is one Reuters tries to avoid, “particularly when capitalized or used with the acronym ‘IOF,’ [which has] become a term associated with the language used by those on one side of this conflict.”
“We do, of course, routinely refer to the ‘Israeli occupation’ of the West Bank, ‘Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank’ and many other permutations of those terms in order to explain to readers the political status of the territory and the mission of the Israeli forces there,” he said.
If what they really wanted is just to explain to readers the political status of the territory, they would call it "administered" or "disputed." But of course, al-Reuters has a political message to send, and it's a biased one.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
