Here’s another case study, caught by David Gerstman:
In an article about a Fatah-based terror group entitled, “Faction listens to Arafat only when he says what it wants to hear” The Sydney Morning Herald reports:
Setting out his group’s history, Abu Haron had to pause at times to choke back sobs and wipe away tears. On Thursday of last week Amar Abu Sitta, the group’s beloved founder, was killed by a targeted Israeli helicopter strike after 11 years on the run.
His original offence in Israeli eyes – proudly acknowledged by the Abu Rish Brigade – was the killing of several Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip in the mid 1990s, despite the ceasefire agreed at the time between Israel and Mr Arafat. Israelis point out that Abu Sitta’s first victim was his then employer, Uri Magidish, whom he killed in the settler’s own greenhouse in the south Gaza settlement of Gan-Or in 1993.
Abu Haron expounded at length on the achievements of the Abu Rish Brigades in attacking Israeli soldiers and settlers in the Gaza Strip and on its relations with Hamas and Fatah military offshoots like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade and the Popular Resistance Committees.
‘His original offence in Israeli eyes’?! Murder of an unarmed civilian needs to be qualified in such a manner? The qualification suggests the reporter accepts, at least to some extent, Palestinian terrorists’ claim that Israeli settlers are to be considered ‘fair game’ for killing.
This twisted morality is what happens when journalists seek cover behind ‘he said/she said’ reportage of the Mideast conflict.
