UPDATE:
After we published the article below and contacted the journalist, the online story was changed. Rather than referring to the IDF as the “Israel Occupation Forces,” the article now states that this term was used by the supporters of Abu Rahma, the Palestinian denied a UK visa. Other references to “murder” in the journalist’s voice were also changed.
However, it would be better still if the article had presented more context on Abu Rahma and the investigations into the deaths of his cousins (in which the IDF was cleared.)
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Sometimes anti-Israel media bias is subtle, only apparent when analyzing long-term coverage by a particular news outfit.
Other times, the contempt that journalists have for Israel is obvious. Such is the case with an article in the Herald Scotland by reporter Martin Williams.
The article, about Palestinian photographer Hamde Abu Rahama, denied a visa by the UK, demonizes the IDF:
Campaigners raising money to allow the trip said the journalist vowed to used his camera as his weapon after two cousins were murdered by Israeli Occupation Forces.
His two cousins died after being linked to separate violent clashes protesting Israel’s security barrier. Bassem Abu Rahma was killed during a 2009 clash in Bilin; the IDF closed an investigation into his death citing a lack of evidence.
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The other cousin, Jawaher Abu Rahma, died from Palestinian medical malpractice, having nothing to do with a 2011 clash, also in Bilin. Palestinians blamed her death on what they said was the IDF’s excessive use of tear gas.
Medical documents obtained by the IDF show that Abu Rahma received unusually high doses of atropine, a medicine that is commonly used as an antidote to agents such as nerve gas. Israeli gas mask kits used to be distributed to the public with atropine shots inside.
According to the IDF’s findings, Abu Rahma died of complications from medical treatment that had not been connected to tear gas.
The IDF also uncovered documentation indicating that Abu Rahma may have been suffering from cancer and had been hospitalized several weeks before her death.
(An article in the The Guardian blaming Israel for Jawaher Abu Rahma’s death was also one of the reasons we awarded that paper the 2011 Dishonest Reporting Award.)
Selectively omitting all this countervailing information, the Herald Scotland labels both deaths as “murders.”
Even more egregious is the use of the term “Israeli Occupation Forces” in the reporter’s voice to describe the IDF. That term is one used exclusively by the harshest opponents of Israel. For a theoretically objective news company to use the term is nothing short of journalistic malpractice.
How did that inflammatory name get past the paper’s copy editors?
Learn more about Misleading Terminology, one of the eight categories of media bias.
You can contact the Herald to let them know that the anti-Israel bias in this story is unacceptable at [email protected].
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