The Independent and “Israeli Occupation Forces”

UPDATE

Following the publication of this post, The Independent, aside from correcting the spelling error in its headline, now refers to “Israeli forces” rather than “Israeli occupation forces.”

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While Israelis continue to be attacked by knife-wielding Palestinian terrorists, The Independent clearly has other priorities.

The main feature of the paper’s latest story focuses on an embedded video courtesy of Russia Today, the Kremlin’s propaganda channel, under a headline (complete with a very careless spelling error) that begs the question as to why this would even be considered newsworthy:

There follows nearly half a minute of mind-numbing footage of a Palestinian hitting a wall as if this were vaguely interesting or important.

It’s only in the penultimate paragraph of the story of Palestinian students clashing with Israeli soldiers, that Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis are mentioned. But it’s the final paragraph that makes you wonder if The Independent is taking its cue from the Palestinian Authority:

Just who are the “Israeli occupation forces?” Does this include Israeli policemen who have shot dead terrorists within Israeli cities such as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Beersheba? If so, then The Independent has adopted Mahmoud Abbas’s narrative that considers the whole of the State of Israel to be “occupied.”

In addition, there is no mention that most of the Palestinians killed since the beginning of October were either carrying out terror attacks against Israelis or engaged in violent confrontations against the Israeli military. And by failing to even consider the number of Israelis killed or injured by Palestinian terrorists (albeit mercifully lower numbers), The Independent clearly demonstrates just how one-sided its reporting on Israel is.