In Ramot, a neighborhood of Jerusalem, Israeli parents with children were standing at a bus stop on February 10, waiting to go home for the Shabbat meal. A Palestinian driver, having swerved his car across two lanes on the highway, slammed into them, killing a six-year-old boy and a 20-year-old Yeshiva student, and leaving five others seriously wounded. One of the wounded was eight years old, the older brother of the six-year-old boy; he died the next day. Their father is in critical condition, and has not yet been told about his boys.
Both The New York Times and The Washington Post covered the story in predictable but deplorable fashion, omitting important facts and contexts, twisting meanings, and attempting to create sympathy not for the victims of murder, but for the murderer himself. More on their journalistic travesties can be found here: “New York Times & Washington Post Obscure Reality in Reports on Jerusalem Car-Ramming Attack,” by Chaim Lax, Algemeiner, February 13, 2023:
On Friday, February 10, just before the start of the Jewish sabbath, a Palestinian terrorist from eastern Jerusalem drove his car into a crowd of Israelis waiting at a bus stop near the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot.
In the aftermath of the attack, Yaakov Yisrael Paley (6-years-old) was declared dead at the scene, while Alter Shlomo Lederman (a 20-year-old newlywed) died from his wounds after being rushed to a nearby hospital.
Paley’s 8-year-old brother, Asher Menachem, passed away the next day from his injuries.
This car-ramming is the latest attack in an upsurge in Palestinian violence and terrorism….
Ramot is a Jewish neighborhood in northeastern Jerusalem that falls within the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem municipality.
Issawiya is an Arab neighborhood in northeastern Jerusalem that falls within the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem municipality….
Both The New York Times and The Washington Post, however, referred to Ramot as a “settlement,” while describing Issawiya, where the terrorist was from, as an Arab or Palestinian “neighborhood.” So many people have been brainwashed by Palestinian propaganda into reacting negatively to any mention of Israeli “settlements,” quite unjustifiably (but to explain why Israel is entitled to build villages and cities throughout the West Bank would require a separate essay), and both the Times and the Post report, incorrectly, that Ramot is a “settlement.” It isn’t. It’s a neighborhood in northeast Jerusalem; all of Jerusalem has been part of Israel since 1980. There are no “settlements” in Jerusalem.
Both reports repeatedly referred to the perpetrator as simply a “man,” the “driver,” or the “assailant,” only once using the term “Palestinian” to describe the terrorist.
Why was that, do you think? Was it done so as to deemphasize for their readers that the murderer was a “Palestinian,” a word used only once in each report, after all other plausible possibilities — “man,” “driver,” “the assailant” — had already been used to describe him? Of course that was it.
The Washington Post removed all agency from the terrorist, stating that a “car rammed into a crowd” and a “blue Mazda sedan rammed into people,” thus placing the onus for responsibility on the car itself rather than the terrorist who was actively driving it.
A self-driving homicidal car, forsooth! That blue Mazda decided to move over two lanes from left to right — you can see it speeding down the highway on YouTube — until It drove itself, rammed itself, slammed itself, into …“people.” Not Israelis. “People.” The “sedan rammed into people.” Shouldn’t such comical coverage be used in beginning courses in journalism, as monitory examples of What Not To Do?
This was further compounded by the Post’s repeated reference to the terrorist as an “alleged assailant,” calling into question his entire culpability….
He wasn’t an “alleged” assailant. He was most certainly the “assailant,” or more exactly, the deliberate murderer. He was caught on camera speeding down the highway, and then veering into the group of Israelis, including several small children, waiting at the bus stop. He is no more “alleged” than Jack Ruby was the “alleged” killer of Lee Harvey Oswald, or Sirhan Sirhan was the “alleged” killer of Robert Kennedy. He was the murderer. No doubt whatsoever. People saw him. The camera captured him in flagrante delicto. But the Post insisted on calling him the “alleged” assailant.
The most egregious contextual errors include:
- The New York Times reported that the attack came “amid the deadliest period in years for Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank,” but failed to mention that this period has also been one of the deadliest for Israelis.
Why did the Times not provide the same information for the recent upsurge in Israeli casualties as it did for the Palestinians? If you are going to mention this increase for one side, you should feel obliged to mention it for the other. It’s not hard: “This has been the deadliest period in years for both Israelis and Palestinians.” Or better still, why not leave this information out altogether, and concentrate the available space on the attack itself (including the Palestinian driving his car across two lanes to hit his target, a clear demonstration that this was no accident); on the family and ideological background of the killer; on his plan to be a “martyr” and make his mother proud of him; on his chosen weapon, and the increasing use of cars by Palestinians to murder Israelis; and on providing readers with more information about his victims, who deserve more than being identified only by name and age.
- Both The New York Times and The Washington Post placed this attack within the context of the return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, but failed to mention that this surge in Palestinian violence began last year under the more centrist Bennett-Lapid government (The New York Times mentions this as an aside in an infobox but not in the main article).
The upsurge in Palestinian violence began last March. The Netanyahu government was not formed until November, and therefore could not have been the “cause” of that sudden increase in Palestinian attacks. Both the Post and the Times ignore this chronology, as they attempt to blame that “far-right” Israeli government for what they want us to believe is merely a justified response by Palestinian terrorists to that government’s “harsh” policies.
- Both newspapers create a false moral equivalence, with The New York Times blaming the escalation in violence on “the formation of new and increasingly active Palestinian armed groups and the election of a new Israeli government,” and The Washington Post ascribing Palestinian shooting attacks to “the proliferation of guns throughout the occupied West Bank among Palestinians and Israelis.”
It needs to be repeated: it was not the “new Israeli government” that explains the upsurge in Palestinian terror attacks; that upsurge began nine months before the current government was formed.
- The Washington Post writes that “Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 40 Palestinians in the occupied territory this year,” without mentioning that the vast majority of those killed are members of Palestinian terror groups who were engaged in violence against Israelis when they were killed. Similarly, it also writes that “The violence followed a spate of deaths in late January, when Israeli forces killed 10 people in the Jenin refugee camp … in what it said was a raid on a militant cell,” without informing the reader that the vast majority of those killed were known members of Palestinian terror groups who engaged Israeli forces in a gunfight.
Why didn’t the Post tell its readers that almost all of those 40 Palestinians killed so far in 2023 were members of terror groups, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), PFLP, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, and the newest terror group, consisting of young men, the Lion’s Den? Why didn’t the Post mention that the recent raid by the IDF in Jenin to arrest terrorists known to be planning an attack was not simply, as the Post described it, a quick “killing” by the IDF? The IDF was met by gunfire at the terrorists’ hideout. A three-hour gun battle followed, at the end of which ten Palestinians lay dead. Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed that four of the dead were their members; Hamas claimed another two; one was claimed by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade. Another two were fighters without apparent affiliations to a particular terrorist group. Only one of those killed in that Jenin raid – a 61-year-old woman — was an innocent passerby.
- The Washington Post writes that “Over the past year Israel has conducted near-daily and often-deadly raids in West Bank cities and villages,” but makes no mention of the fact that these operations began as a response to a spate of deadly Palestinian terror attacks in early-to-mid 2022.
Why should the Post be so reluctant to explain why Israeli raids have become more frequent, though far from being, as the Post claims, “near-daily”? Between Jan. 1 and mid-Nov. 2022 (the latest date for which figures have been made available), 2,200 attacks by Palestinians were recorded inside Israel and the West Bank. Wouldn’t that number be likely to astonish the readers of the Post, and put the IDF raids in their proper perspective?
- The Washington Post mentioned the ongoing domestic Israeli debate over judicial reform three separate times (including two paragraphs at the end of the piece) even though this is of no relevance to the car-ramming attack in Ramot.
The judicial reforms being proposed by the Netanyahu government have been a source of great controversy, and provoked dire warnings of the “end of Israel as we know it.” This is of great moment, of course, but that rancorous domestic debate over the powers of Israel’s Supreme Court has nothing to do with Palestinian terrorism and Israeli attempts to prevent or punish it. That debate is mentioned three times in the Post article in order to impress on readers the “right-wing extremist” nature of the current Israeli government, in an obvious attempt to blacken Israel’s image and divert attention from the latest Palestinian murders of Israeli civilians.
- While appearing to provide context for the Ramot car-ramming, both The New York Times and The Washington Post failed to inform their readers of continuing incitement against Israelis and Jews in Palestinian society, including pay-for-slay or the Gazan celebrations that broke out in response to the attack.
The larger context that neither the Times nor the Post provides, either in this report, or in their other reports on Palestinian terror attacks, is the all-encompassing culture of terrorism and murderous Jew-hatred that is deliberately cultivated in Palestinian society. It would be instructive for readers to learn about the “Pay-For-Slay” program, which provides generous subsidies to imprisoned terrorists and to the families of terrorists who died while carrying out their attacks. The P.A. spends more than $300 million a year on this program, that both rewards past, and incentivizes future, terrorism. Mahmoud Abbas has vowed to keep the program going, no matter what outside pressure is brought to bear in an attempt to end it. Another way the P.A. encourages terrorism is by lionizing dead terrorists, naming schools, streets, plazas, and sports competitions after them. They are treated as heroes, their smiling faces plastered on walls; Palestinian children are encouraged to emulate them. Even children’s shows on Palestinian television are used to promote terrorism among the very young, as they show tiny tots holding tiny knives as they make stabbing motions, while lisping their desire “to kill Jews.” And after many successful terror attacks, the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, as part of their malignant mafficking, hand out pastries and candies, honk car horns, set off firecrackers, and engage in allahu-akbaring, all because hated “Jews” were killed.
All that – the encouragement and celebration of terrorist murders — is the kind of information that ought to be included in stories about Palestinian terror attacks, so that readers will understand just how deep and wide the ghastly culture of terrorism has become in Palestinian society. But for that to happen, the meretricious reporting on Israel and the Palestinians by so many will require a change of personnel. At The Washington Post and The New York Times, that change can’t come soon enough.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I liked the old WordPress login: under this renewed free-comment system, sometimes our posts don’t show up immediately w/o a refredh. Did we run afoul of WordPress for being islamophobic?
wpm says
The N.Y. slimes what do you expect ,the CNN of the newspaper world in my opinion .The paper that praised Stalin in the late 1920s and 1930s as he killed millions of his own people by engineer starvation ,and said Hitler was not really a bad guy in the early 1930s.A full century of getting major events and political movements wrong. Twenty two years this year coming up on 911 jihadist attack ,and they are still carrying water for Jihadist groups all over the world. As attacks in Europe ,the Middle East, Asia , the Americas North ,South ,Central , and Africa keep coming .Attacks on the streets at a bus stop with a family just going home after a holiday meal are the normal acceptable behavior of jihadist, excused as exception or an accident or mental ill when jihadists do “their thing”! jihadist behavior will not be curb by making excuses for it or making believe it is a fiction made up by “far right racist groups” it will only increase and spread like it has at a great speed over the last 40 years. .
kq6kq6kq6 says
The NY Times and the Washington Post have no credibility. Finding out what they say is a complete waste of time. You should only quote them as examples of Far-Left non-journalistic pieces of garbage.
OLD GUY says
Makes one wonder who or how much ownership the Islamic countries or promoters of world Jihad own.