Sunday, June 21, 2009
Elder of ZiyonHere's the first:
Three Palestinians from a small hamlet near Yatta, south of Hebron, on Sunday narrowly escaped death after Israeli settlers set fire to a tent while they were inside.I am not saying that there haven't ever been any cases of Jews harassing Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank, but the idea that they would set fire to a tent with people in it for kicks seems a bit far-fetched.
Local residents told Ma’an that Israeli settlers from the nearby Susia settlement, which sits on Palestinian land, set fire to a large tent used as a meeting hall for the small village.
Combined with the fact that the "local residents" aren't identified, they give no details about the "attack," the fact that most fires are accidents and that Palestinian Arabs are known to blame Jews for everything possible, both to get headlines and to get compensation from Israel, make this story more than a little suspect.
Adding a little evidence to this is Ma'an's other "eyewitness" article this morning:
A herd of boars released by settlers in the northern West Bank attacked neighborhoods and farmland in Salfit on Sunday, according to witnesses.Yes, the "settler pigs" continue to be a staple of Ma'an's absurd reporting, and that story is all the proof you need that Ma'an has no regard for journalistic integrity when it comes to stories that blame "settlers" for every evil in the world - including swine flu.
Meanwhile, the head of the Agriculture Trade Union in Salfit, Khalil Omran, expressed fears that the boars may transfer the so-called swine flu among residents there, calling on residents to avoid contact with the animals.
Incidentally, Susia is the site of one of the oldest synagogues ever unearthed, dating from the 4th century CE and remaining a synagogue until the 10th century when Muslims converted it into a mosque. The Arab village by that name was not settled until the 1830s.
