In yet another example of blatant anti-Israel media bias, the Associated Press and the New York Times both ran misleading headlines over Wednesday’s Jerusalem stabbing incident, casting two Palestinian terrorists as victims of Israeli aggression.
Three Israelis were seriously injured in yesterday’s stabbing terror attack outside of the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City, and two men, both husbands and fathers, died of their wounds. The perpetrators, two knife-wielding Palestinian terrorists, were shot and neutralized by Border Police officers on the scene. One was killed immediately; the other died later.
However, the original Associated Press (AP) headline that ran with an article about the incident completely failed to mention the Israeli victims and, indeed, conveyed a completely different message entirely. The headline, which read, “2 Palestinians killed following stabbing attack in Jerusalem”, led readers to believe that the Palestinians had actually been the victims of the stabbing attack when, in reality, they were the perpetrators.
The article itself also emphasized the killing of the Palestinian attackers, rather than the deaths of those attackers’ victims.
The New York Times ran the AP article with the same misleading headline.
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, or CAMERA, an American non-profit which monitors the media’s often skewed reporting on Israel, contacted AP and the New York Times about the headlines. Shortly afterwards, AP changed their headline to read, “2 Palestinian attackers killed, 2 Israelis die in Jerusalem”.
Considering word choice – terrorists are “killed”, while victims “die” – the revised headline can only be considered a very slight improvement.
The New York Times later updated its headline to read, “Palestinian Stabbers Kill Israeli, Assailants Shot Dead”.
While two Israeli victims died as a result of the attack, one death was due to a complication involving a stray Israeli police bullet. The New York Times was careful to leave him out of their count.
TIME ran the AP story under the headline, “2 Palestinian Attackers Killed After Stabbing Israeli Pedestrians” – neglecting altogether to mention any Israeli deaths.
