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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

AFP bias as PalArabs seethe over Lieberman visit to Hebron

From AFP:

The Palestinian Authority on Monday slammed a pre-election visit by hardline Israeli nationalist leader Avigdor Lieberman to a West Bank mosque as a "provocation" and "completely unacceptable."

"This visit is a provocation to Palestinian feeling," government spokeswoman Nour Odeh told AFP. "Especially by Lieberman, who has declared his aggression against the Palestinian people and who supports settlement."
Lieberman visited a mosque? Really?

Only in next to last paragraph do we learn:
During his visit to the city Lieberman called at the flashpoint religious site known as the Cave of the Patriarchs to Jews and the Ibrahimi Mosque to Muslims.
Oh, so he visited the second holiest Jewish shrine that predates Islam by 2000 years - and AFP calls it a "mosque."

Now, Jews are allowed to visit the Cave of the Patriarchs by agreement with the PLO in the Wye River Accords. There is nothing remotely untoward about Lieberman visiting there.

But Palestinian Arabs have learned that if they seethe publicly about anything, the world media will take them seriously. AFP is too lazy to note that the PLO is cynically attempting to equate this visit with Sharon's equally legal visit to the Temple Mount in 2001 that was used as a transparent excuse to start a terror war.

The inciters in the PLO routinely manufacture outrage in the hope that it will translate into pressure on Israel. The media, way too often, enables them, without a modicum of fact checking.