“An Israeli man died after a shooting near Homesh, some 20 kilometers from the Palestinian city of Nablus, in an attack that was hailed as a ‘heroic operation’ by terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.”
That’s how CNN should have reported the fatal shooting on Thursday, December 17. Instead, a report on its site totally omitted the identity of the attacker, referring to an “Israeli man killed in West Bank after shooting attack on car.”
Is it really so hard to say "Palestinian shooting attack," or a least "suspected Palestinian shooting attack" @CNN?
Time after time, headlines excise the Palestinians' role in terror attacks. pic.twitter.com/f0n0417U88
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 17, 2021
The fact that the assault was lauded by Palestinian terrorist groups was buried deep in the story, nine paragraphs down. Initially, readers of the story are told only that an “unknown assailant, or assailants, opened fire on a car.”
While it is true that the suspects had not been apprehended or identified at the time, CNN failed to report that the attack came on the backdrop of a string of such shootings by Palestinian terrorists over the years, and not long after a lethal shooting attack in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Although it is standard media practice to attribute responsibility for attacks together with words such as “suspected,” CNN’s headline failed altogether to indicate the attack’s Palestinian links. With multiple Palestinian terror groups immediately greeting the news of the shooting with praise, this omission is all the more unacceptable.
As a result, casual readers skimming headlines were left uninformed as to the real story.
CNN’s Misplaced Priorities
Only much further down, in the 12th paragraph, are readers told that the attack was:
the latest in a series of violent incidents to unfold across the West Bank and in Jerusalem in recent months, prompting memories of 2015/16, a period dubbed the ‘knife intifada’ that saw hundreds of violent events take place in a roughly six-month period.”
But for some reason known only to CNN, a passage about the legal status of the location of the shooting was inserted in the seventh paragraph, well before the article mentions the likely identity of the attackers and context surrounding this latest attack.
Rewriting History
Toward the end, a section reviewing events in the region refers to developments in the spring, during which the “possible eviction of Palestinian families from their homes triggered weeks of unrest.”
This is false.
Contrary to the trite media narrative that the legal dispute in the Jerusalem neighborhood known as Sheikh Jarrah to its Arab residents, and Shimon HaTzadik to its Jewish residents, was the trigger for the violence that ensued in the following weeks, the situation in Jerusalem did not simply lead to a war in Gaza.
For the first time ever, Hamas reacted to events in Jerusalem by shooting rockets at the city. This was a clear attempt by Hamas to insert itself into events in Jerusalem, and thereby create an environment in which the Gaza-based group gained legitimacy in the eyes of Palestinians as their true representatives, ahead of the West Bank-based Fatah.
Hamas’ move came after scheduled Palestinian elections, the first in over 15 years, were canceled. At the time, analysts observed that the elections were likely scrapped because of Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas’ fear of Hamas’ growing strength.
It was on this backdrop that Hamas fired rockets at Jerusalem. Yet that part of the story is routinely excised from the simplistic media narrative. For CNN, as with so many other international news organizations, there seems to be a compulsion to create the false impression that Palestinians only act in response to Israeli wrongdoing. The reality is more complex: sometimes, the Palestinians’ own internal rifts spill over into attacks on Israel.
Time after time, headlines and false media narratives excise the Palestinians’ agency and role in the escalation of violence.
The public deserves much, much better.
