Palestinian Authority (PA) President and Fatah movement head Mahmoud Abbas finally admitted in an interview with Israel’s Channel 10 on Nov. 17, 2015 that he had rejected an Israeli offer of Palestinian statehood and peace in 2008.

As the Times of Israel notes, the 2008 Israeli proposal had been previously reported but had not yet been acknowledged by Abbas (“Abbas admits he rejected 2008 peace offer from Olmert,” Nov. 19 2015).

The PA president admitted that then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert presented him with a map that illustrated prospective borders of a future Palestinian state, with Israel giving up 93 percent of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and portions of eastern Jerusalem, in addition to all of the Gaza Strip. In the video-taped interview Abbas was asked by Channel 10 reporter Raviv Drucker about the Israeli proposal which included a swap for most of the nearly seven percent of the West Bank Israel planned to return.

“In the map that Olmert presented you,” Drucker asked, “Israel would annex 6.3 percent [of the West Bank] and compensate the Palestinians with 5.8 percent [taken from pre-1967 Israel]. What did you propose in return?”

Failing to answer the journalist’s question as to whether the PA made a counteroffer, Abbas stated that he rejected the Israeli offer “out of hand.” Perhaps Abbas did not answer directly because no evidence of his having made a counteroffer exists.

The 2008 Israeli proposal also included an offer of free passage between the Gaza Strip, ruled by Hamas, a U.S.-listed terror group, and the West Bank without any security checks. In the event that Fatah retook the Gaza Strip from Hamas, the offer would have recognized all of the Strip as belonging to the PA as well. In addition, the offer would have included Israel relinquishing control of Jerusalem’s Old City.

In the interview, Drucker again pressed Abbas on why he rejected a proposal for a Palestinian state. Abbas seemingly implied that it was due to Olmert only showing him the map reflecting possible borders for a state, but not letting him keep it.

However, as Olmert details, Abbas was offered to keep the map provided that he affixed his initials to it. According to former U.S. deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, who participated in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations during the time in question, Olmert likely did not want to give Abbas a copy of a map that wasn’t agreed upon—fearing the Palestinian side would use it to extract further concessions, without agreeing to Israeli demands to recognize the Jewish state and desist from supporting terrorist attacks against it (Elliott Abrams, Tested by Zion, Cambridge University Press, 2013).

The day after meeting with Olmert, Abbas called off talks, saying that he had to attend a meeting in Jordan. Subsequently, he never responded to Israel’s offer. In a Nov. 28, 2009 interview with The Australian, Olmert noted that Abbas “promised to return with his advisers the next day,” and after going to Jordan said, “let’s make it next week.” But “I never saw him [Abbas] again.”

As CAMERA has noted, Olmert later wrote an Op-Ed in The Washington Post where he said, “I cannot understand why the Palestinian leadership did not accept the far-reaching and unprecedented proposal I offered them” (“When Peace Almost Broke Out: A Washington Post Mirage,” Aug. 9, 2013).

This was not the first instance in which Palestinian leaders rejected an offer for statehood and peace with Israel while failing to make a counteroffer. Other relatively recent examples include an U.S. and Israeli offers in 2000 at Camp David, 2001 at Taba and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s proposed framework to restart negotiations in 2014.

The Channel 10 interview (in Hebrew) can be found here.

On Sunday, November 15, 2015 college students from the Boston area gathered in Cambridge to protest the slanted and biased coverage of the BBC. After a brief rally, just over 100 protesters marched to the British Consulate in Cambridge to protest the BBC’s deceptive reporting.

The text of Van Zile’s talk is available below.
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An Op-Ed published in the official Palestinian Authority (PA) daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 15, 2015, blames the Israeli intelligence service Mossad for the terrorist attacks in Paris that killed at least 129 people and injured hundreds more as well as the bombings in Beirut that preceded them by a day. As translated by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), the Op-Ed claims:

The wise and correct thing is to look for who benefits. In short: They need to search the last place reached by the octopus arms of the Mossad… It is clear that its ‘Mossad’ will burn Beirut and Paris in order to achieve [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s goals. He, who challenged the master of the White House, hides in his soul enough evil to burn the world.

It must be noted that the PA press is not a free media operation, printing a wide variety of opinion and viewpoints. It is an official arm of the Palestinian regime, disseminating the narrative of Palestinian leadership. Indeed, PA Security Forces spokesman Adnan Al-Damiri posted a similar claim on his Facebook page:

From Beirut to Paris, terror and explosions, two beautiful and advanced cities, two cities that arouse admiration with their positions regarding Palestine… What is this hatred which attacks beauty and principles, and declares terror against them? … Does the terror in Beirut and Paris wear masks like those who were in the Al-Ahli hospital in Hebron yesterday [Nov. 12, 2015]?

When Al-Damiri aks if the Beirut and Paris terrorists “wear masks like those who were in the Al-Ahli hospital in Hebron”, he is referring to a raid where Israeli agents in disguise arrested a terror suspect. The allegation is clear: the Beirut and Paris terrorists were also Israelis in disguise.

The Islamic State terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks and French and other European and international investigations corroborate this. Naturally, this has not stopped the Palestinian conspiracy theory machine which perpetually operates in overdrive. Prior to blaming Israel for the Beirut and Paris terror attacks, another Op-Ed in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 11, 2015, blamed Israel and the West for downing the Russian airliner over Sinai:

The explosion of the Russian plane 23 minutes after its takeoff from Sharm el-Sheikh airport in the end of October, was not an ISIS operation but a terror operation orchestrated by international and regional security services…. If the rational estimations point to [the presence of] fingerprints of Western and Israeli security services, that leaves much room for questions…

PMW has long documented the conspiracy theories promoted by Palestinian leadership. However, the media refuse to acknowledge the shameful shifting of blame from the actual perpetrators of terrorism to their favored targets, Israelis and Jews. Here is a blatant and eminently newsworthy item completely ignored by the popular press. Not only should the world be made aware that the PA blames Israel for these deviant attacks, the world should be outraged. And yet… Where’s the coverage?

The Wall Street Journal‘s “Timeline: Terror Attacks Linked to Islamists Since 9/11” lists Islamist terror across the Middle East and around the world, from Tunisia and Egypt, to Pakistan, Indonesia, Kenya, Paris, Mumbai, London, Russia, Brussels, Madrid, Indonesia, and New York.

It is not an exhaustive and comprehensive list, but it is a full, diverse list which very conspicuously omits a country which perhaps more than any other (certainly in relation to its population) has been targeted by Islamist terrorism since the 9/11 attacks. Israel has suffered hundreds of casualties in the last 16 years from Islamist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria. It also faces a growing threat from Islamic State’s Egypt affiliate, Sinai province, among others.

But The Wall Street Journal does not deem even one instance of Islamist terror directed against Israelis since 9/11 worthy of inclusion in its timeline.

It does not mention the March 2002 attack on Jews celebrating the Passover seder in Netanya’s Park Hotel, in which Hamas murdered 30, including elderly people.

Nor does it include Islamic Jihad’s June 2002 attack on an Egged bus traveling from Tel Aviv to Tiberias in which 17 Israelis were murdered.

Nor does The Journal include the July 2012 bombing attack, reportedly carried out by Hezbollah, targeting a bus of Israeli tourists in Burgas. Seven were killed, including five Israelis.

Nor does it have one word to say about any of the dozens of lethal attacks carried out by Islamists against Israelis in recent years.

The Wall Street Journal‘s most recent entry in the terror timeline is the Nov. 12, 2015 suicide bombings in Beirut. About this attack, The Journalwrites:

A double suicide bombing in a Beirut suburb kills around 43 people, in an attack that bore the hallmarks of Sunni militants linked to al Qaeda and other extremist groups.

The blurb does not mention that the targeted neighborhood was a stronghold of Hezbollah, itself an Islamist organization. The Journal‘s inclusion of the Beirut attack against Hezbollah is all the more striking in light of the fact that editors completely ignored all attacks carried out by Hezbollah and other Islamist groups targeting Israel.

Nov. 16 Correction: This post was amended to remove reference to the August 2001 bombing of the Sbarro pizza shop, in which Hamas killed 15, as it took place before the 9/11 attacks. The amended posts adds the March 2002 Park Hotel bombing, in which Hamas was responsible for the murder of 30 during a Passover seder.

Recent Washington Post coverage about Muslim American objections to FBI anti-extremism programs failed to highlight the background of some groups involved. Two of the organizations mentioned, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, have histories that raise questions about bias and suitability to discerning Post readers.

On Nov. 5, 2015 the following letter was sent to Post reporter Michelle Boorstein to inform her of the background of these sources:

“Dear Ms. Boorstein,

Your interesting article “Muslims decry FBI’s anti-extremism site for youths, saying it will spur bias” (November 4) featured quotes from two sources whose background you might be unaware of.

MPAC was founded by and is currently led by Salam al-Marayti. According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, an extremist monitoring organization, al-Marayati’s “record on defending terrorist groups and extremists is substantial.” Among other instances, this record has included calling terrorist attacks committed by Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terror group, “legitimate resistance” (“Profile: Salam al-Marayati,” The Investigative Project on Terrorism). Al-Marayati has attended fundraising dinners for Sami Al-Arian, a leader of the U.S.-listed terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Al-Marayati also has engaged in 9/11 conspiracy theories while playing to antisemitic stereotypes. He told a Los Angeles radio station on the day of the attack that “we should look to the groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list.” The organization al-Marayati leads has exhibited similar, troubling tendencies.

Only two years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, MPAC advocated the removal of Hezbollah and Hamas from the federal governments listing of terror groups.

CAMERA has previously reported (“CAIR Scholarship Recipient Reports on CAIR in LA Times,” May 8, 2011) that Edina Lekovic, MPAC’s director of policy and programming, was previously a managing editor of Al-Talib: The Muslim Newsmagazine at UCLA. While Lekovic was at Al-Talib, the paper published a column saying “When we hear someone refer to the great Mujahid [holy warrior]…Osama bin Laden, as a ‘terrorist,’ we should defend our brother and refer to him as a freedom fighter.”

Another source quoted in your article, Faiza Patel of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University has made similarly troubling statements. CAMERA has reported (“The New York Times Doesn’t CAIR to Report,” Feb. 6, 2012) that Patel “denounced the NYPD’s operation that resulted in the arrest of accused lone-wolf jihadist Jose Pimental.” Patel publically lamented surveillance tactics which led to the arrest of Pimental, who pled guilty in February 2014 to criminal possession of a weapon in the first degree as an act of terrorism.

Patel’s employer, the Brennan Center, received an award in 2009 from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)—an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2009 Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development retrial. As CAMERA’s Special Report, “The Council on American Islamic Relations: Civil Rights or Extremism?” notes, this has been the largest U.S. terrorism-funding case to date. Evidence presented at that trial and in our report illustrates close ties between CAIR and other pro-Islamist groups, such as MPAC. Our special report can be found here.

We trust you will find this information useful in future coverage of related topics.

Sincerely,

Sean Durns
Media Assistant
CAMERA-Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America”

In September, an NPR member station in Chicago invited Max Blumenthal to pontificate about Israel. And as has come to be expected from the anti-Israel extremist, he bombarded the credulous audience with a torrent of falsehoods.

NPR listeners, of course, deserve and expect no less than accuracy. So it was left to producers at WBEZ, the station, and Worldview, the program, to clear the record.

Blumenthal claimed “almost every building” in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun had been “destroyed.” Listeners deserve to know that this is false — according to multiple UN studies, an overwhelming majority even of affected buildings — that is, ignoring undamaged structures — were not destroyed.

Blumenthal severely misquoted the Israeli military, the Associated Press, and the advocacy group Btselem about casualty statistics. Regarding the military, Blumenthal told the audience it said the exact opposite of what it actually said. Listeners deserve to know the truth.

Blumenthal also upended the truth about Palestinian rockets, claiming that the further they fly, the smaller their warhead. Listeners should be told that, in fact, the opposite is true.

He put words in a Hamas leader’s mouth to make the silly case that the terrorist group doesn’t target civilians. When excitedly describing the prowess of Hamas fighters, he roughly quadrupled the number of Israeli soldiers killed during a particular operation. And on, and on.

By the end of the segment, listeners were substantially less informed than they were 20 minutes earlier.

But WBEZ officials say they will not let their audience know about the false facts they were fed, suggesting that inaccurate statements by guests do not require corrections. In fact, there is a long NPR precedent of correcting guest errors.

We’ve now informed WBEZ of this precedent. Will it correct? Or will it be the case that Chicago-area NPR listeners are stuck with a lower caliber of ethical, accurate journalism?

A partial list of NPR corrections to guest errors:

All Things Considered
Correction
Oct. 5, 2015
Our guest incorrectly says Catholics who are separated and divorced do not have access to the sacraments. In fact, it is only separated and divorced Catholics who have civilly remarried who are excluded from some sacraments, like Communion.

Fresh Air
Correction
July 6, 2015
In the audio of this story, as in a previous Web version, our guest incorrectly says that the Navajo Generating Station consumes about 22,000 tons of coal each year. In fact, it consumes about 22,000 tons of coal each day.

All Things Considered
Correction
Aug. 30, 2015
In the audio of this story, as in a previous Web version, our guest incorrectly says that participants in the studies had “less than a millisecond to respond.” In fact, they had less than a second.

Weekend Edition Saturday
Correction
May 8, 2015
In this conversation, our guest says that pitcher Yordano Ventura of the Kansas City Royals hit the White Sox’s Adam Eaton with a pitch. In fact, Eaton was not hit with the pitch. But he and Ventura exchanged words and a brawl ensued. We also say that Ventura had been throwing at opposing players’ heads. While he has hit some players and has angered others with inside pitches, it was not correct to say that Ventura was targeting their heads.

Fresh Air
Correction
March 2, 2015
In this story, our guest incorrectly refers to the film Maps To the Stars as Maps Of the Stars. A previous headline also contained the same error.

All Things Considered
Correction
Jan. 2, 2015
We mistakenly refer to Vice President Biden as President Biden, and then our guest makes the same mistake. Additionally, the original transcript incorrectly inserted the title vice where it had not been used.

Pop Culture Happy Hour
Master And Commander
Dec. 30, 2014
One of our panel members said during the franchise discussion that the Master And Commander film came from the Horatio Hornblower books. As has been pointed out to us, it actually came from the Aubrey/Maturin stories of Patrick O’Brian.

Tell Me More
Correction
Sept. 25, 2013
In the audio of this story, our guest refers to Medicare plans offered by private companies as Medicare Exchange. She meant to say Medicare Advantage.

Talk of the Nation
Correction
June 25, 2013
In the audio of this story, a guest included the Black Panthers among groups that often bombed U.S. targets in the ’60s and ’70s. While a handful of people with links to the Black Panther Party were accused of bombings, it was not an activity generally associated with the group.

Talk of the Nation
Correction
June 17, 2013
Our guest incorrectly stated that actress and dancer Vera-Ellen sang “We Will Meet Again.” Actually, singer-songwriter Vera Lynn recorded the song. He also said the film The Big Parade was released in 1926. The correct year is 1925.

The following letter to the editor was sent to The Philadelphia inquirer, but went unpublished:

“Dear Editor:
Recent Inquirer headlines “U.S. Educator Dies in Israel” (October 28) and “Israelis Kill 3 Palestinians” (October 27) have the potential to mislead readers by not accurately reflecting the news articles beneath.

The article itself makes clear that American-born Israeli educator Richard Lakin did not just “die” in Israel; he was murdered by Palestinian terrorists. Lakin’s son told The New York Times his 73-year old father was the victim of Palestinian “incitement and hate.” Yet, the headline could lead readers to mistakenly infer that Lakin just happen to pass away.

Similarly, Israelis did not just happen to “kill 3 Palestinians” without justification as readers might infer from the headline. Again, as the article beneath the headline notes, three Palestinian Arab terrorists were killed by Israeli security forces after attacking Israelis, both civilian and soldiers, with knives. The headline fails to convey essential facts regarding both the chronology and causation leading to the death of the terrorists.

Space restrictions can make headline writing challenging. However, precise terminology and chronology must be used to prevent readers from drawing false inferences. We trust that in the future Inquirer headlines on contentious issues such as these will accurately represent the stories they summarize.

Sincerely,

Sean Durns

CAMERA–Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America”

Riyad Mansour is a Palestinian Authority (PA) diplomat who has served as the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations since 2005. A regular news media source, he has appeared, both in print and in studio, so frequently that he has his own page on IMDB, a noted online film and television database. He is also the latest in a long-line of antisemites, to push the most recent incarnation of the blood libel, accusing the Israeli government of harvesting organs of terrorists slain while attempting to murder Jews.

On Nov. 3, 2015, Mansour sent a letter to the current president of the U.N. Security Council, British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft. The PA official wrote:

“After returning the seized bodies of Palestinians killed by the occupying forces through October, and following medical examinations, it has been reported that the bodies were returned with missing corneas and other organs.”

Reuters reported that Mansour also told Rycroft that this was confirmation of “past reports about organ harvesting” (“Israel blasts Palestinians after accusations of organ-harvesting,” Nov. 4, 2015).

Like other recent parallel claims by Palestinian Arab leaders, this is false. In its mendacity it echoes the recent claim by PA President Mahmoud Abbas that Israel “executed” a 13-year old boy, Ahmed Manasra. In fact—while Abbas spoke this lie—Manasra was being treated in an Israeli hospital for injuries sustained from being hit by a car while fleeing after he and his cousin stabbed and nearly murdered a 13-year-old Jewish child.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said the PA letter is a “blood libel by the Palestinian representative that exposes his anti-Semitic motives and his true colors.”

The early blood libel was the false accusation that Jews murdered Gentile children to use their blood for religious purposes. Born in medieval Europe, the libel, taking various forms, has been used repeatedly in Arab media as CAMERA has noted (“The Global Blood Libel against Israel,” March 23, 2012). Historically the dissemination of blood libels often has been followed by murders of Jews, often in large numbers.

Danon called on the United Nations to “repudiate this sinister accusation and to condemn the ongoing incitement by Palestinian leaders.”

Nevertheless, Mansour seems to be a media favorite.

As the PA representative to the United Nations, Mansour frequently has been quoted as a credible source, which has treated his breathless but unfounded serial allegations of Israeli war crimes as credible (see for example “Palestinians move to join world court,” The Boston Globe, Jan. 3, 2015 or “Netanyahu at Risk of Isolating Israel,” The New York Times, March 19, 2015). One Washington Post article expended nearly 700 words repeating nearly verbatim Mansour’s charges (“U.N. Envoy Critical of Gaza Living Conditions,” Feb. 27, 2008).

Mansour even has been quoted uncritically saying that a failure to pursue trumped-up PA charges of Israeli war crimes is “what is impeding the peace process” (“Furor Sends Palestinians Into Shift on U.N. Report,” The New York Times, Oct. 8, 2009).

Mansour often has spoken to reporters about PA desires for greater U.N. involvement, including expressing his gratitude to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for “quickly” forwarding the PA representative’s request for membership in the international organization (“Israeli panel drafts $8b social plan,” The New York Times, Sep. 27, 2011).

This blood-libel pusher has a media presence that extends into prime time, including appearances on Sunday talk shows like NBC’s Meet the Press and the “comedy-news” show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (“Who wants to be a member of the U.N.? Palestine”). On the latter, interviewer John Oliver, treated Mansour’s presence humorously.

There is nothing funny about blood-libels. Historically they have resulted in Jewish blood being spilled. Today, invoked against Israel, they help incite sometimes murderous aggression. When it comes to looking for credible sources on the Arab-Israel conflict, media outlets would be well advised to tune out Riyad Mansour.

Palestinian Media Watch, a non-profit Palestinian media monitoring organization, compiled a report on Palestinian leaders’ use of the blood-libel that can be found here.

“Strengthen the coverage of Palestinians. They are more than just victims,” advised New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan in her critical column about the paper’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict almost exactly one year ago today (“The Conflict and the Coverage,” Nov. 22).

But, The Times’coverage today is yet another indication that Sullivan’s message has yet to penetrate. Today’s article depicts young Palestinians who carried out stabbing attacks last month and yesterday not as perpetrators but as themselves victims of “a looplike dynamic of Israeli-Palestinian violence.”

The headline says it all: “Violent Loop Engulfs Youths in Jerusalem.”

In other words, Palestinian youths who attempt to murder are passive objects of the active agent in the story, the “violent loop.” Casting the Palestinian assailants as passive victims is a journalistic phenomenon detailed last year by Matti Friedman, a former correspondent at the Associated Press: “Palestinians are not taken seriously as agents of their own fate. . . . Who they are and what they want is not important: The story mandates that they exist as passive victims of the party that matters.”

The Times article defines the culpable violent loop as follows:

The attack on Tuesday [in which a 12-year-old and his 14-year-old cousin stabbed a guard on the Jerusalem light rail yesterday] appeared to reflect a looplike dynamic of Israeli-Palestinian violence: stabbings of Israelis followed by swift, often deadly responses by Israeli security forces and graphic video footage inspiring replica Palestinian attacks against Israelis.

Thus, Israeli efforts to protect innocent individuals from life-threatening attacks and Palestinian efforts to maim and murder are equally culpable for the ongoing violence.

Further chipping away at the agency of the young Palestinians who plunged knives’ into other’s flesh, Times journalists Isabel Kershner and Rami Nazzal euphemistically refer to “the attacks involving children,” as opposed to the attacks perpetrated by children.

In addition, The Times writers enable the distorted Palestinian-assailants-as-victims model by not treating false Palestinian conspiracy claims about police planting knives as just that. Thus, the article states:

In several cases with no video corroboration, Palestinians have insisted that no stabbings took place and have accused the Israeli authorities of planting knives at the scene.

Kershner and Nazzal, however, outrageously fail to note here that also in Palestinian attacks documented by video footage, Palestinians have falsely charged that police planted knives.

To their credit, the writers do point out in one instance that the assailants’ relatives doubts about the stabbings are contradicted by video footage:

In the Shuafat refugee camp, where relatives of the Alqam cousins gathered Tuesday evening, many expressed similar doubts about the Israeli reports of the stabbing, although later on Tuesday more video emerged that appeared to show the boys attacking the guard on a train.

It is precisely the unfounded claims of Palestinian perpetrators’ innocence and false charges of “extrajudicial killings” which fuel additional Palestinian attacks. When youths like Ali Alqam, 12, and Muawiya Alqam, 14, yesterday’s stabbers, watched videos of the 13-year-old assailant Ahmad Manasra being interrogated (as The Times reported they did the night before the attack), believing all the while that Manasra is totally innocent, they are plausibly inspired to attack. Now there’s “a violent loop” worthy of Times coverage.

Nov. 15 Update: Shin Bet Report: ‘Internal Dynamic Feeding Itself’

The day after we wrote here about the “loop” in which Palestinian media depict youths who carry out attacks and are subsequently killed or wounded, imprisoned and interrogated as “innocent” victims of Israeli abuse or even “extradjudicial killings,” fueling yet more attacks, Haaretz reported about a Shin Bet report which identified the same cycle. Haaretz reported:

The report observed that the youths “live on the Web, and are nourished by information sent on the Internet, which glorifies the Palestinian claim that the attackers are victims of ‘Israeli aggression,’ and that they were in fact ‘executed.'” It added, “Likewise, there is an internal dynamic feeding itself (of attack, death of the attacker and then avenging his death).”

“Palestinian woman shot dead,” is the page 2 headline in Haaretz‘s English edition today, the latest in a series of news headlines obscuring Palestinian terror attacks.

Who is this Palestinian woman, depicted in the headline as a victim, as opposed to a perpetrator?

Those who bother to read the accompanying article learn:

A Palestinian woman was shot to death yesterday at a checkpoint in the West Bank after she drew a knife and advanced towards soldiers, refusing orders to desist. No one else was injured in the incident.

The Defense Ministry said that at around 7 A.M. a Palestinian woman approached cars at the Eliahu checkpoint, on Route 55 near the Alfei Menashe settlement.

She ignored several demands from the Israeli security forces to stop, and when warning shots were fired into the air, she drew a knife from her bag. At that point, security personnel shot and killed her.

But as noted by Adam Levick, managing editor of UK Media, a member of CAMERA’s British department:

In our social media obsessed world dominated by Twitter, Facebook and internet memes, the headlines and blurbs of mainstream news stories are often all that news consumers notice.

Could it be that Haaretz‘s own headline writer notice anything past the first seven words of the accompanying article (“A Palestinian woman was shot to death”) before selecting the grossly distorted headline?

The online edition of Haaretz, on the other hand, did much better with its headline about the same incident. Its appropriate headline is: “Stabbing Attack Thwarted at Eliyahu Checkpoint, Defense Ministry Says.’