Washington Post misses barrier move, Sara Netanyahu’s plea
News reports about Israel by the Associated Press and Reuters on August 16 indirectly highlighted The Washington Post’s chronic failure to cover the Jewish state as something other than the accused party in Palestinian narratives.
An AP dispatch (headlined “Israel lifts barrier to West Bank; Neighborhood more secure from gunfire” in The Washington Times) reported that Israel began removing a 600-yard long concrete wall erected in 2001. The barrier had protected residents of the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo from Arab gunfire from Beit Jala, an adjacent West Bank town, during the second intifada. AP reported that the Israeli military said “the barrier is being taken down … because of a reduced security threat and improved coordination between Israeli and West Bank security forces.”
Though AP erroneously described the Palestinian terror war as “against Israeli occupation” when it in fact followed Palestinian rejection of a two-state solution in exchange for peace offered at Camp David in 2000, the article correctly termed Gilo a “neighborhood in southern Jerusalem,” not a West Bank settlement as some news media have done.
The Washington Post’s August 16 print edition did not mention commencement of the barrier removal.
A Reuter’s dispatch (headlined “Israeli premier’s wife makes plea for children” in The Baltimore Sun) told readers that “a soul-searching debate in Israel over government plans to deport 400 children of migrant workers took an emotional turn Sunday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife pleaded they be allowed to stay.”
Sara Netanyahu wrote Interior Minister Eli Yishai that “as a psychologist … and the mother of two children, I beg you to use your authority to allow most of the 400 children to stay in Israel,” Reuters reported. Yishai said he could not alter the Cabinet decision and supporters said “Israel had no choice but to stem the flow of migrants, thousands of whom sneak into Israel through the border with Egypt.”
The Post’s August 16 edition did not cover this Israeli-related story either. The number of world news pages in the paper has declined, but what Arab-Israeli coverage remains still tends to fit the Palestinian-centric mold.
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