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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Time magazine's disgusting Itamar story: "Murder by knife"

Time magazine's Karl Vick writes an article that is supposedly about the Itamar slaughter - but is in fact about how much he hates Israel.

Here's every word Vick wrote about the massacre:
The murder by knife of three children, including an infant of 3 months, and both parents in a West Bank settlement late Friday night rocked Israel terribly.

...The slaughter did not eradicate the family. Three of the Fogel children survived — two brothers who were asleep in another bedroom, and their 12-year-old sister, who discovered the scene when she arrived home at midnight from a meeting of a youth group. The means of entry into the settlement was apparently a hole cut in the perimeter fence, undetected by civilian guards. But the identity of the attackers remains unknown.
See? It wasn't so bad - three children survived! What are those Jews getting all hot and bothered about?

Out of a 922 word story, the actual murders, dealt with only peripherally, take up a mere 97 words. All without a single detail on what actually happened outside the two words "by knife."

By contrast, saying that Israel was consumed with revenge took 87 words.

240 words were about Israel's settlements and how they are the main obstacle to peace.

77 words about the release of gruesome photos of the victims and supposedly tasteless banner ads by victim aid organizations that referred to the attacks.

97 words were written on the "cycle of violence" between Palestinian Arabs who have killed settlers and reprisal attacks by Jews.

And 94 words on the funeral.

I searched Time's site and did not find any other articles that described the murders at all, so it is not as if this story was assuming that the readers knew about the details. These are all the details that Time felt necessary to give. In other words, the settlements and Israeli politicization of the murders are the story; the murders themselves are just a minor detail.

Vick also writes about the smallish, largely ineffective unity protests in the West Bank and Gaza yesterday.

While he didn't fall for the absurd estimate from Ma'an of  between 200,000 and 300,000 protesters in Gaza, more accurately saying 10,000, he downplays the Hamas attacks on the protesters with the passive-voice trick:
Scuffles and injuries were reported.
However, check out this part:
Part of the problem Tuesday was the number of venues. Gaza had to demonstrate separately — it's separated from the West Bank by miles and Israeli barricades.
That's like saying that Canada is separated from Mexico by miles and American checkpoints.

Vick cannot even bring himself to mention that an entire country separates Gaza from the West Bank.

To him, Israel is merely an unjust obstacle stopping Palestinian Arabs from freely traveling to each other.

(h/t BtB)