More offensive anti-Israel moral equivalence in Wednesday's New York Times. Four Jewish worshipers in Jerusalem, dual citizens of Israel and the United States, were massacred by two Palestinians while at prayer in synagogue. Yet Palestinians evaded blame in the headline of the lead story by Jodi Rudoren and Isabel Kershner: "Israel Shaken by 5 Deaths in Synagogue Assault." (A responding police officer later died of his injuries.)
The pro-Israel media watchdog CAMERA accused the paper:
Hewing to a long-established history of downplaying Palestinian incitement, The New York Times article on today's brutal massacre of worshippers in a Jerusalem synagogue casts incitement to violence by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as nothing more than a complaint lodged by Israeli right-wing political figures.
From the paper's lead article:
The Orthodox Jewish men were facing east, to honor the Old City site where the ancient temples once stood, when two Palestinians armed with a gun, knives and axes burst into their synagogue Tuesday morning, shouting “God is great!” in Arabic. Within moments, three rabbis and a fourth pious man lay dead, blood pooling on their prayer shawls and holy books.
The assailants, cousins from East Jerusalem, were killed at the scene in a gun battle with the police that wounded two officers; one died of his injuries Tuesday night. Politicians and others around the world condemned the attack and the rising religious dimension of the spate of violence, which has been attributed mainly to a struggle over the very site the victims were praying toward.
....
The 7 a.m. invasion of a synagogue complex that is the heart of community life in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Har Nof, in West Jerusalem, was the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians in more than three years and the worst in the city since 2008, when eight students were slain at a yeshiva. It brought to 11 the number of Israelis -- including a
But much worse was Rudoren "news analysis," "A City's 'War of Neighbors' in Which the Differences Are Not Negotiable."
In the immediate aftermath of the slaughter, Rudoren offensively portrayed "extremists on both sides," comparing the terrorists to Israel's attempts to defend itself against terrorism. Rudoren also smeared Israel as the aggressor regarding the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, a site holy to all three of the world's major religions. In fact, Israel is trying to maintain the status quo there -- Jews are banned by their own government from praying there -- while some Muslims oppose Jews even being allowed to visit the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.
[An offensive Palestinian cartoon] was captioned, “For you, oh Aqsa,” a reference to the contested Old City holy site at the heart of a recent violent escalation that increasingly seems to be beyond the control of Israeli or Palestinian leaders. That blood splattered the victims’ prayer shawls and holy books underscored growing indications that extremists on both sides are turning the stalemated battle over territory and identity into a full-throated religious war.
And once again, Israel announced a crackdown, promising to demolish attackers’ homes, blocking roads to some Palestinian neighborhoods, stepping up arrests of stone-throwing youths and bolstering police patrols.
Even more offensive moral equivalence, as Rudoren sees faults on both sides in the form of "mutual dehumanization," immediately after a Palestinian terrorist attack.
Even Israelis who saw these security measures as necessary worried they could incite a backlash among a population that has been teeming with outrage since summer’s start. Analysts on both sides worried that the cycle of violence and mutual dehumanization would be compounded by the growing focus on the holy site, where the ancient temples once stood and where Muslims have worshiped for centuries and now fear a Jewish takeover.
Also once again, the Times treats Israel's security measures as provocative, lumping in anti-terrorist crackdowns with terrorism itself, while blithely labeling East Jerusalem "illegally occupied territory." (America disagrees.)
Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 war, later annexed it, and considers the entire city its “undivided and eternal capital.” Palestinians -- and most of the world -- consider East Jerusalem illegally occupied territory, and the capital of their future state.
More double standards: Note that the killer of Jewish students at a yeshiva is not named, yet an "Israeli extremist" murdered Muslim worshipers.
It is, of course, not the first time the conflict has spilled into religious sanctuaries. Tuesday’s attack was reminiscent of the 2008 killing of eight Jewish students at a Jerusalem yeshiva. In a 1994 massacre at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, an Israeli extremist killed 29 Muslim worshipers. Jewish vandalism against mosques is a regular occurrence.
Seth Mandel went on an extended Twitter tear against Rudoren (h/t Seton Motley).
So for Rudoren to accept...the idiocy that Israel is disrupting the status quo shows the kind of aggressive, astounding ignorance you rarely see outside of, say, Vox...Rudoren puts her thumb on the scales: "Jewish vandalism against mosques is a regular occurrence." Citation Jodi, or are you not a reporter?...And is there vandalism against Jewish property? Of course there is. Might have made a good sentence to follow up with. So if you're playing along, CAIR, the Bahraini gov't, & the Turkish gov't all took a tougher line on the terror than Rudoren and the NYT....If Rudoren can't control herself then she should at least wait until the blood is dry before her degraded equivalence....
