From time to time, the Palestine Center distributes articles it believes
will enhance understanding of the Palestinian political reality. The
following article by David Palumbo-Liu was published by Salon.com on 22 October 2015.
“The New York Times blows it again: Why its Israel-Palestine coverage gets it so wrong”
The causes and intensity of the violence in Israel-Palestine cannot be explained in a headline. But that is exactly what the New York Times tried to do in its front-page story last week entitled, “Leaderless Palestinian Youth, Inspired by Social Media, Drive Rise in Violence in Israel.” Apart from giving the weird impression that Facebook and Twitter has somehow prompted knife attacks (something akin to the claim rap music causes drive-by shootings), the headline obfuscates the fact that the violence is not in Israel, but rather on either disputed land or in the Occupied Territories. That’s the key wrong turn after which the story just gets worse and worse. It’s an unabashedly one-sided story where the victims of violence are only Jewish and the perpetrators of violence are only Palestinians, when in fact most the victims of the current violence have been Palestinians, including at least two dozen unarmed protesters shot dead by Israeli soldiers, and a pregnant woman and her young daughter killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.
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The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.
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