Ignoring the Observable Evidence, Refusing to Delve Deeply

"Israeli Man, 86, Is Killed in a Knife Attack"
A11, Friday, 10/24/08
By Myra Noveck and Graham Bowley

This article details a knife attack perpetrated by a West Bank Palestinian in the southwestern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo in which an 86-year-old Israeli man is murdered and an Israeli police officer is seriously wounded. The authors do a successful job in further detailing this trend of Arab attacks in Jerusalem, highlighting the four other Arab attacks that have been carried out since March 2008.

Nevertheless, this piece has multiple problematic elements that are common to NYT coverage on Israel.

First of all, when the facts surrounding the knife attack seem quite clear, the authors essentially reduce it to uncorroborated Israeli assertions. Examine the wording: "A Palestinian man stabbed and killed an 86-year-old Israeli man and seriously wounded a police officer on Thursday in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem, the Israeli police said." In adding "the Israeli police said," the authors essentially question the seemingly factual account. This sort of device is rarely used in relation to Palestinian sources even though there is a mountain of evidence that demonstrations there commonplace manipulation of the media. Israel, as a liberal democracy that is committed to the rule of law and scientific method, is committed to truthful and objective observation. It is unmerited that the validity of the statements of Israeli governmental bodies are so commonly mistrusted. This is not done out of a commit to journalistic integrity.

Secondly, after providing the details of the attack, the authors deem it necessary in the next paragraph to state: "Palestinians and other countries consider Gilo [where the attack occurred] a settlement." This appears to be a convenient way of saying, 'Yes, the attack was bad... BUT, it took place in a location that is considered a settlement, so it is therefore more understandable to stab a defenseless 86-year-old elder.' It is hard to explain to those uneducated in Israeli history to explain why Gilo, which has long been part of the municipality of Jerusalem, should not be considered a "settlement" since as the NYT explains, it is "within territory that was conquered and occupied during the 1967 war." By this logic, the holy Old City of Jerusalem, part of the Jordanian-occupied West Bank between 1948 to 1967, should also wholly belong to a future Palestinian state. No part of the Old City, even the Jewish Quarter then, would be under Israeli sovereignty. That would be nonsensical and does not respect the language of UN Security Council Resolution 242, which at no point claims the whole of the West Bank to be Arab territory.

Third, the article mistakenly labels these incidents as "individual attacks." Yes, the attacks were carried out by individuals but they were not individual attacks in the sense that the person singlehandedly and spontaneously decided that the 'socioeconomic discrimination and the oppresion of the Occupation' was too much to bear and had to kill Israeli Jews. That would be the so-called 'Lone-Wolf' scenario. What more likely happened, which no NYT article delves into, is that these 'individuals' were dealing with difficult situations (I.e. In the BMW attack last month, the attacker had recently asked the hand of his cousin in marriage, who rejected him) and that certain extremist groups exploited their troubles to kill Israeli Jews (as a means to saveface and regain their honor).

Lastly, the NYT continues to use language that questions whether last month's attack was intentional when it clearly was: " a car owned by a Palestinian rammed [my emphasis] into Israeli soldiers and civilians..." The agency in the action is transferred to the car - the car did the ramming - rather the Palestinian employing the car as a tool of destruction. As further evidence of this grammatical sophistry, this is the language the NYT uses for the previous two vehicle attacks: "In July, a Palestinian driving a construction vehicle in central Jerusalem crushed..." AND "Later that month, a Palestinian plowed a large construction vehicle..." In these statements, the agency is focused on the Palestinian, making it clear that the Palestinian perpetrated the attack. For whatever reason, in the latest vehicle attack, the NYT refuses to admit that the East Jerusalemite Arab purposely committed the violent action, despite the fact the overwhelming body of evidence indicates that it is so.