The Israeli Military is grateful to the NYTimes

March 25, 2016 by abirkopty 1 Comment

It is really hard to ignore New York Times’ headline for the story on the disturbing video of the execution of the young Palestinian Abed al-Fatah al-Sharif, (21). Al-Sharif was executed along with Ramzi Kasrawi, (21), in Hebron on Thursday, March 24th.

I know it’s NYT after all, and pointing it out, like we did in hundreds of other cases, might not change anything, but still one can not and should not skip such outrageous journalistic practices.

The NYT chose this headline “Israel Soldier Detained in Shooting of Palestinian” to cover a crime that was filmed (otherwise would go unnoticed), showing two disturbing scenes, both are equally severe (and painful): An Israeli soldier executes a motionless and injured young Palestinian man in Hebron, by a bullet in the head from point zero, the other soldiers carry on as if nothing happened, and second, Israeli medics and soldiers, ignore the injured Palestinian (before he was shot the second time), and leave him lying on the ground like he was a piece of trash. 

 

The problem though is not only with the headline, the 900 words and 18 Paragraphs article, gave the major weight for the military propaganda.

This is logical no? Because usually in journalism, if a criminal committed a crime, for example a murder or rape, the article would give the the major weight to the murderer of course, rather than the victim.

The victim in our case, is the last important thing is this article. We should be thankful they mentioned his name and age.

Out of the 18 paragraphs, 12 paragraphs (570 words) were allocated to the Military and Israeli official statements (the first 6 and the last 5 are among them). Only one paragraph for a Palestinian spokesperson (56 words), and another 3 for an Israeli speaker for B’tselem (113 words).

After each claim that arises from the video (and mentioned modestly by the NYT), there is a bunch of Israeli official statements commenting on it.

Also, in other cases, the NYT predominantly displays the video that is the subject of the article on the page of the article. Here, the editor decided, it is enough to hyperlink it!

It makes it seem like the NYT’s office in Jerusalem is part of the military spokesperson office, who edits and approves all the reports which come out.

I wonder how many of us need to die, how many more Israeli crimes it will take for the US media to realize that it is not an “isolated incident”, and I wonder when will we see an in-depth article on the NYT that follows up on the “isolated” cases in which the military claimed they detained a soldier, and tell us what happened with these cases?

I wonder when will the NYT dare to realize that it’s an Israeli military occupation, and Israeli soldiers are not victims.