Some of you are going to think I’m being unfair to the media on this one. After all, the AP merely shot raw video without comment. USA Today merely posted it without comment. How is that bias? How are they making a martyr of the guy whose funeral was shown in the video?
I’ll tell you how. First, let’s be clear on what happened. A 20-year-old Palestinian terrorist named Eyad Awawdeh ambushed a member of the Israel Defense Force by dressing up like a journalist to get close to him, then proceeded to stab him. Other IDF forces were on the scene and defended their colleague by killing the Palestinian. The Times of Israel has more:
The attack took place near the Zayit Checkpoint on Route 35 outside the settlement of Telem.
Footage showing the aftermath of the latest terror attack, reportedly filmed by a Hamas-affiliated TV crew, was uploaded to social media outlets shortly after the incident.
“The Palestinian assailant disguised himself as a news photographer and attacked the soldier, wounding him moderately. The soldier was evacuated for emergency medical care. Forces on site responded to the threat, shot the attacker, resulting in his death,” the IDF said in a statement Friday afternoon.
The Foreign Press Association condemned the incident as a “worrying development” and called on all “Palestinian media organizations to immediately verify all media credentials.”
“We utterly deplore this violation of press privilege and call on local Palestinian media organizations to immediately verify all media credentials to ensure there are no violations,” the FPA said in the statement.
First, what’s with the Foreign Press Association directing their outrage, not to the attack on the soldier, but on the “violation of press privilege.” Screw that. A guy got stabbed. That takes precedence over your sacrosanct “press privilege,” you jerks.
Having said that, the AP went ahead and shot raw video of Awawdeh’s funeral, which USA Today promptly posted under the heading, “Raw: Palestinian who Posed as Journalist Buried”. Have a look:
[youtube Fr49HtwzSt4 nolink]
You don’t suppose anything’s missing in that headline, do you? Like oh, say, maybe, “posed as a journalist so he could ambush a soldier and stab him”? Perhaps kind of an important detail, USA Today? To read the headline and watch the video, you’d think he merely posed as a journalist in some sort of attempt at public service, and was tragically killed while doing so. Only in the caption does USA Today reference what he actually did, and they didn’t even get that right, saying that Awawdeh merely tried to stab the soldier. He didn’t just try to stab him. He stabbled him. He put him in the hospital.
Showing this whole insane “funeral procession” by the Palestinians without comment puts the emphasis on Awawdeh’s youth and the emotions of the Palestinians in mourning his death, and completely leaves out the reason he’s dead. That’s why I say they’re making a martyr out of him. Often with the media it’s not so much what they say but what they don’t say that really delivers the propaganda they want you to receive – and that’s clearly the case here.
This is how the western media always sells the idea of the “cycle of violence” between Israel and the Palestinians. They’ll take a clearly egregious situation in which a Palestinian terrorist attempts or actually commits a brutal and completely unprovoked murder, then they’ll minimize that fact and instead put the focus on the Palestinian “mourning” over the guy’s death while completely ignoring the context of his evil act.
Look how upset the Palestinians are at this young man’s death!
Yeah, because the idiot tried to murder an Israeli soldier, and if the media can bring themselves to have a problem with anything he did, it’s not the attempted murder but the abuse of “press privilege.” This is why you should not trust what the media tell you. Because the facts that tell the real story, they don’t tell you.