The Reuters article “Israel applies lethal response to wave of Palestinian attacks,” puts the onus on Israel for not peacefully subduing violent attackers stabbing, shooting, and running down Israelis in the streets, drawing a comparison to last week’s attack in the London underground in which police stopped a man during a stabbing attack using a Taser gun. Author Luke Baker flippantly reports that suggestions of adopting this approach in Israel “are dismissed out of hand” by Israel’s defenders, then tries to argue the wrongfulness of the Israeli response by laying out “statistics” writing, “the numbers show a high percentage of people who carry out attacks are killed rather than detained.” Baker downplays the fact that, when arrest is possible, the Israeli authorities make every effort to detain the terrorist. His report shares the Swedish Foreign Minister’s perspective that the Israelis’ handling of terror is a form of “extrajudicial execution.”

Baker writes:

The disparity in the number killed on each side — and the fact more than 13,500 Palestinians have been injured, including many in demonstrations, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry — has led to accusations by rights groups and others that Israel is using excessive force to quell the unrest.

Here appears the popular tactic employed by media to purportedly demonstrate Israel’s moral culpability through the fact that more Palestinians have died than Israelis — as a result of the violence perpetrated by the Palestinian attackers themselves. In his argument, Baker cites the questionable figures provided by the Palestinian Health Ministry, and gives no time frame or criteria of what “13,500 Palestinians have been injured, including many in demonstrations” includes. He inaccurately represents the extent of the violence against Jews by not beginning his tally from the true start date of the wave of violence in September and completely ignoring the many injured. Though Baker cites researcher Nehemia Gershuni Aylho, he does not include the researcher’s statistics:

Innocent Israelis killed by Arabs: 21
Innocent Arabs Killed by Civilians: 0

Innocent Israelis wounded by Arabs: 427
Innocent Arabs wounded by Civilians: 13

No doubt Palestinians dispute these numbers, just as Israeli researchers have disputed Palestinian Health Ministry numbers in the past.

Baker makes much of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s warning against vigilantism, linking it to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat’s call for authorized citizens to carry their guns to protect themselves and others, and therefore framing it as a rebuke despite the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have also condemned vigilantism. There is a difference between vigilantism and self-defense, the latter of which Kerry has explicitly supported saying, “Israel has every right in the world to protect its citizens, as it has been, from random acts of violence.” [Emphasis added.] This part of Kerry’s statement was not quoted.

Rather than concluding his report with facts, Baker leaves the reader with the Palestinian perspective that “there is no question that Israel, which has occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967 and limits Palestinians’ movement throughout areas they want for a state, is carrying out extrajudicial killings.” He finishes with a quote from Palestinian legislator and long-time anti-Israel activist, Hanan Ashrawi, “The majority of Palestinians are being shot and killed on the spot, whether they represent a threat or not,” a categorically false statement that Baker leaves unquestioned. The last word goes to Ashrawi, who states that Israelis “are carrying out on-the-spot executions. They are extrajudicial and a crime.”

– Rachel Frommer, CAMERA Intern

A Palestinian Authority (PA) intelligence officer attacked and wounded an Israeli civilian and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier on December 3, 2015—although you may not have seen it reported that way in major U.S. print news outlets.

The PA official, later identified as Mazen Hassan, was shot and killed after he got out of his vehicle at the Hizma checkpoint near the West Bank and began shooting at Israeli soldiers and civilians.

The terror attack was reported by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) on December 3, but received scant U.S. media coverage.

An Associated Press story that ran in The Los Angeles Times expended 926 words on the topic of an app developed to help Palestinians navigate their way around what the paper called “burdensome” checkpoints (“Apps help to navigate Israeli checkpoints, December 6”). The article featured extensive quotes from Palestinian sources, who claimed that checkpoints were an unnecessary form of “collective punishment.” Not a single Israeli official appeared as a source.

The report quoted a former PA official who said that while the app “will be helpful…it would be even more helpful if we didn’t have checkpoints.” The recent terror attack at a checkpoint by another PA official, occurring only three days prior, was omitted.

The Boston Globe, covering remarks by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at D.C.-based think tank Brookings Institute, seemed to put the onus for a lack of peace between Israel and Palestinian Arabs on the Jewish state, failing to note that a PA official had attempted to murder Israelis (“Netanyahu rejects warning from US on Israel’s future,” December 7). In 653 words, The Globe sought to frame the recent terror attacks as being random violence by “Palestinian individuals.” Israeli actions against terrorists, were framed as “Israel says”—implying skepticism the paper does not explain.

Palestinian terror was given short shrift by The Globe; omitted were the actions of PA officials, be it an intelligence officer carrying out terror attacks or PA President Mahmoud Abbas August 1 speech calling to spill blood in Jerusalem (CAMERA, September 16, “Incitement over Temple Mount Leads to Palestinian Violence, Again”).

According to a Lexis-Nexis search, the only two papers to have noted that a PA security official committed a terror attack were The Washington Post (December 4, “Israeli holds suspects in July arson deaths”) and The New York Times (December 4, “Israel Arrests Young Jews Deemed Extremists”). However, both only did so in one or two sentences in articles on topics casting Israel in an unfavorable light.

The PA is committed to security cooperation with Israel as part of the 1990s Oslo diplomatic process that created it and allowed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), previously designated a terror group by the United States and others, to relocate from Tunisia and establish limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Despite this requirement, PA security officials have a history of participating in or encouraging the very terror attacks they are supposed to help prevent.

One of the first terror attacks during the second intifada (uprising), that lasted from 2000 until 2005, occurred when a Palestinian security services official shot two Israeli soldiers during a joint PA-IDF patrol, killing one and injuring the other. PA security and intelligence units, including then-PA head Yasser Arafat’s bodyguard unit, Force 17, also participated in terrorist activities during the second intifada.

As described in Kings College historian Efraim Karsh’s book Arafat’s War (Grove Press, 2003), Force 17 operatives shot and wounded Jews in several terrorist attacks outside Ramallah, following a visit by then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in February 2001. Prior to the attacks, Force 17 had been guarding Powell during his visit.

According to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), an organization that monitors Arab media in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem, former Palestinian security forces head Jibril Rajoub said that he was “proud of” every Palestinian Arab who has carried out recent terror attacks. Rajoub’s comments were made on official PA television on Oct. 17, 2015.

In Tested by Zion (Cambridge University Press, 2013), former U.S. deputy national security adviser Elliot Abrams noted that the United States and other countries provided training to Palestinian security services in the hopes they would help Israel deter terrorist attacks. IPT reports that Israeli and Palestinian sources say together they have “foiled more than 100 stabbing plots targeting Israelis.”

Yet, it seems that sometimes Palestinian security officials conduct terror attacks instead of preventing them.

Where was the coverage?

Debbie Laznik, the mother of brand new lone soldier Jake, who was injured in a Palestinian ramming attack on November 27, slams The New York Times’ grossly distorted headline about the incident. CAMERA posted about the outrageously skewed headline (pictured below) for the Nov. 27 news brief and communicated directly editors, prompting significant improvement.

A Haaretz feature today by Allison Kaplan Summer about Jake, whose legs, chest and hand were injured, reports(“‘If I leave the country, the terrorists win,’ says American victim of Palestinian attack“):

[Jake’s mother] said she is still coming to terms with the fact that a Ramallah resident in his 30’s would aim his car at her child with deadly intent. The terrorist was the brother of the man who attempted to run over a group of Israelis at the same Kfar Adumim bus stop just five days earlier. The incident, she said, has been a challenge to her politics, which have always leaned left. “I’m very sensitive to the legitimate desires and grievances of Palestinians and I think they deserve their own country.”

She also said she’s always been a defender of the New York Times against those bashing it and accusing it of being anti-Israel, but had an angry personal moment when saw the headline about the incident and another attack that day was “Palestinians Killed After Hit and Run Attacks.” It was later changed following complaints, to “Palestinians Killed After Attacks on Troops.”

“I saw that first headline and I was shaking with anger. I felt violated.” (Emphases added.)

At the time, CAMERA wrote about the headline:

Readers who glance only at headlines and don’t bother with the accompanying item would reasonably conclude that Palestinians were the victims of the hit and-run attacks, as opposed to the perpetrators.

The original AP headline for an earlier version of the brief was much more accurate than The Times’ headline. It at least referred to an attack on Israelis: “Palestinian killed after West Bank attack on Israeli troops.” A later version of the AP story explicitly identified the Palestinians as the attackers: “2 Palestinians killed after attacking troops.” (Source: Lexis-Nexis.)

In other words, Times editors discarded AP’s relatively sound, if not 100 percent perfect, headlines, and actively replaced them with a headline which obfuscated Palestinian responsibility for violence.

In response to CAMERA’s direct communication with The New York Times, editors commendably improved the headline, which now reads:

About the amended headline, CAMERA had noted:

The improved headline is not perfect. It does not state that the Palestinians who were killed were the perpetrators of the attacks on the troops, though readers may (or may not) infer that information. Also, it does not identify the targeted troops as Israeli. (As mentioned above, AP’s original headline, in contrast, was “Palestinian killed after West Bank attack on Israeli troops.”) Again, from the new Times headline, readers may understand that the troops were Israeli, or maybe they won’t. And the headline still leads with the killing of the Palestinian (attackers), as opposed to the fact that Palestinians attacked Israelis. Nevertheless, compared to the original headline in which the killed Palestinians appeared to be the victims of the hit-and-run attacks, the change is welcome.

For additional New York Times corrections prompted by CAMERA (including yesterday’s), please see here.

Israel seized a shipment of 4,000 masked, rock-throwing dolls, like the one above, headed to the Palestinian Authority. The dolls were smuggled in a purported shipment of clothing and rugs from the United Arab Emirates. Customs officials seized this along with other smuggled items. Israeli government officials have suggested these dolls, sporting an image of the Al Aqsa mosque on their scarves, are part of a PA campaign to foment anti-Israel hatred, encourage violence and indoctrinate Palestinian children. An investigation is ongoing. Read more about it here.

On Nov. 11, the European Commissioner formally called on all EU countries to label the”origin of goods from the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967.”

Israel condemned the EU’s guidelines as discriminatory, pointing out that it amounts to a call for boycott, and halted diplomatic contacts with EU representatives about the peace process.

All this was widely reported in the mainstream media. But far less attention was given to the fact that Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó criticized the EU’s labelling call, calling it an “inefficient instrument” that is “irrational” and does not promote a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And aside from the Jewish and Israeli press, few reported that Greece too indicated that it would defy the settlement labelling guidelines. Read more about it here.

Where is the mainstream media’s coverage?

Islamic terror in the United States is at a height not seen since the Sept. 11, 2001 al-Qaeda terror attacks that murdered 2,977, according to a report by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, highlighted by The Washington Times (“56 arrested this year for supporting Islamic State,” Dec. 3, 2015).

According to Times reporter Andrea Noble, the report notes that “fifty-six individuals have been arrested on suspicion of plotting or helping support the Islamic State [ISIS] in the U.S. this year, the largest number arrested in support of Islamist terrorism in any year since Sept.11 [2001].”

Those caught are a young and diverse group, “with many being converts to Islam.”

The report offers details about the 71 suspects arrested since March 2014: 86 percent of whom were men, 40 percent were converts to Islam and the average age was 26—although one-third were under 21.

Among those terror suspects were “a recently married couple from Missouri who secretly planned to travel to Syria on their honeymoon in order to join the Islamic State, a Cincinnati man who converted to Islam after falling in with a group of radicals online and was later arrested when he divulged plans to bomb the U.S. Capitol, and a 15-year-old boy arrested near Philadelphia for a purported ‘ISIS-inspired’ plot to attack Pope Francis during his visit to the U.S.”

USA Today has noted that FBI Director James Comey said his agency has 900 active investigations in the U.S. involving suspected Islamic State sympathizers and other potential terrorists residing in the country (“San Bernardino inquiry stretches across globe,” December 7).

The Washington Times reports that researchers identified 300 Americans or U.S.-based ISIS sympathizers who disseminate propaganda from the terror group. It concluded that online communications and social media play a “crucial” role in “radicalizing individuals.”

Noble says the Program on Extremism offered possible policy solutions to combating the rising influence of those sympathetic to or supportive of Islamic terrorism, including increasing its own publicity campaign highlight the stories of disillusioned terrorists.

The report says that 55 percent of suspects arrested were caught in operations that involved undercover law-enforcement work.

As CAMERA has previously noted (“The New York Times Doesn’t CAIR to Report,” Feb. 6, 2012), organizations like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and others have criticized the use of undercover operations to conduct surveillance of mosques and other Islamic infiltrations for intelligence gathering.

CAIR was an unindicated co-conspirator in the 2009 Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development retrial, which is the largest U.S. terrorism-funding trial to date. It led to the FBI and other federal agencies breaking formal contact with CAIR. The group was founded as a Muslim Brotherhood spin-off.

The same day the The Washington Times reported on record terror levels in the U.S., The Washington Post uncritically quoted CAIR leaders on the Dec. 3, 2015 terror attack in San Bernardino, California (“After Paris and California attacks, U.S. Muslims feel intense backlash,”)—while failing to inform readers about CAIR’s history.

CAIR, which frequently works to advance the narrative that many American Muslims are persecuted as a result of “Islamophobia”, spoke with news media shortly after it was revealed that the San Bernardino terrorists were Muslim. But since the Sept. 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks, annual FBI hate crimes statists have not shown large, sustained numbers of anti-Muslim assaults.

Yet, many mainstream news outlets, including The Post, as in the article mentioned above, have failed to report CAIR’s dubious ties and its apologetics. This, despite the fact the CAMERA has provided its Special Report on CAIR, “The Council on American Islamic Relations: Civil Rights or Extremism?” to various outlets, including, most recently—on Nov. 5, 2015—The Post.

On December 2, The Wall Street Journal published an Op-Ed by law school professors Eugene Kontorovich and Steven Davidoff Solomon, “Those Israel Boycotts Are Illegal.” In it, the professors take on the increasingly frequent boycott resolutions under consideration at –and approved by many– academic associations such as the American Anthropological Association and the American Studies Association. They note:

The moral myopia and academic perversity of these boycotts have been widely discussed. Less well understood is that in many cases they also are illegal. Under corporate law, an organization, including a nonprofit, can do only what is permitted under the purposes specified in its charter.

Boycott resolutions that are beyond the powers of an organization are void, and individual members can sue to have a court declare them invalid. The individuals serving on the boards of these organizations may be liable for damages.

[…]

Saying that organizations cannot act beyond the purposes specified in their charters is no mere legal nitpicking. The charter is an explicit contract with members, declaring that their money will be dedicated to agreed-upon goals and that their group will not turn into a motorcycle club or a political party.

On its face, an academic boycott undermines academic freedom, a broad-based education and the exchange of ideas. That’s stupid. Holding only Israel to some imaginary standard and holding Israeli academics responsible for Israeli policy, whatever one thinks of it, is clearly immoral. Academic associations don’t seem to care about this. A couple of well-prosecuted lawsuits might, however, make them take notice.

Throughout the wave of Palestinian terrorism that began two months ago, the mainstream media has frequently turned truth on its head by reversing the roles of perpetrator and victim, of assailant and defender. Reuters joins the crowd with a recent headline about a Palestinian from Ramallah who attempted to kill IDF soldiers at a bus stop before being halted by a fatal bullet.

The headline: “Palestinian Dies in Ramming Attack” provides no clue that the Palestinian was the perpetrator of the “ramming” attack, and instead turns him into the victim. Other more objective sources reported that the perpetrator, Fadi Hasib — whose brother had, just days ago, used the same ram and stab tactic – – had plowed into a group of Israeli soldiers waiting for a bus, hurling one over the guard rail and wounding two. The perpetrator then exited his car presumably to stab the soldiers, much like his brother had tried to do. But as he ran toward his victims, he was shot and killed by a volunteer officer.

And that is how the wire service Reuters joins those in the mainstream media who skew the news.

UPDATE: Following written complaints about the skewed headline, it was changed to the following: “Palestinian rams car into Israeli soldiers, is shot dead”.

A Palestinian Authority (PA) official has claimed that Palestinian Arab women cry with “joy” upon receiving news of their children’s deaths as terrorists.

Haifa Al-Agha, who serves as the PA’s Minister of Women’s Affairs, praised Palestinian women for being happy when their sons die while attempting to murder Jews.

According to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a non-profit organization that monitors Arab communications and educational media in the Gaza Strip, West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and eastern Jerusalem, Al-Agha made remarks to this effect as repeated by Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, a Palestinian Authority daily, on Nov. 7, 2015. In a video of the statement, the PA minister, “noted the Palestinian woman’s uniqueness, which differentiates her from the women of the world, as [only] she receives the news of her son’s martyrdom with cries of joy.”

Al-Hayat Al-Jadida reports Al-Agha added that “Palestinian girls and women have proven their ability to contribute to their homeland, and that they have a significant presence in the field and battle arenas.”

The PA minister’s remarks were made amid more than two months of ongoing Palestinian terror attacks using guns, knives, meat cleavers and cars among other weapons, targeting Israelis, civilians, police and soldiers alike. As CAMERA has noted, Middle East analyst Jonathan Halevi of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs has alleged that Palestinian leaders have helped to “orchestrate” these attacks (Dec. 1, 2015, “Analyst: Palestinian Leadership Behind “Spontaneous” Attacks”).

PMW has documented other recent PA celebrations of terrorist operations:

“In keeping with PA policy of honoring terrorists and promoting them as heroes and role models, official PA school the Al-Rashideen High School for Boys, held a tennis tournament named after terrorists Basel and Farouq Sidr who recently attempted to murder Israelis. Several teams in the tournament were also named after terrorists who either murdered or attempted to murder Israelis in the last two months.”

PMW has also noted that Jibril Rajoub, head of the Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs and longshot successor to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, expressed support for the current terror attacks. Rajoub said they are “acts of bravery, I am proud of them [terrorists].”

Abbas himself has refused to condemn any of the murders of Israelis that have taken place since September. The PA president announced on state-run TV on November 16 that the attacks against civilians are in fact, a “peaceful uprising.”

PMW notes that Abbas admitted to calling for terror attacks: “We said to everyone that we want peaceful popular uprising, and that’s what this is. That’s what this is.”

The PA has received considerable international aid, despite documented cases of corruption and embezzlement, in part for promises that it would work towards peace with Israel. It is frequently referred to as “moderate” by many journalists and policymakers.

Celebrating terrorist attacks with tears of joy, sports, songs and poems may make Palestinian political culture “unique” as al-Agaha says. If so, not uniquely peaceable.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas are responsible for supporting and directing current attacks against Israelis, civilian and soldier alike, according to a recent article by Middle East analyst Jonathan Halevi (Nov. 29, 2015, “The ‘Spontaneous Intifada’ Is Orchestrated by the Palestinian Leadership”).

Halevi, a former Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Lt. Colonel and currently a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, argues that Palestinian Arab attacks since September, using knives, vehicles and guns, are not “spontaneous.” The analyst says that despite Palestinian leadership attempts to portray the violence as “a kind of popular, spontaneous struggle,” it is in fact orchestrated, noting: “It is a Palestinian strategy that has been seen before.”

Halevi says both West Bank Palestinian leadership including the PA, the Fatah movement that dominates the authority, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Gaza Strip and Palestinian leadership, under Hamas, are responsible. This sponsorship, he argues, has clear goals.

The PA wants to “use it as a tool to achieve its political objectives, which include compelling Israel to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, and east Jerusalem under international pressure.”

The former IDF Lt. Col. notes that Hamas Political Bureau member Mousa Abu Marzook described the anti-Jewish violence as an “effective instrument for achieving political objectives.”

Marzook argued that the first intifada (uprising) in December 1987 led to the Oslo accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. The second intifada, occurring from 2000 until 2005, preceded Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and Israel’s construction of a security fence, the latter of which to Marzook, “symbolizes the end of the Zionist endeavor.”

The goals of the latest intifada, according to the Hamas leader are forcing Israel to withdrawal from Judea, Samaria, the release of Palestinian Arab prisoners and lifting the Israel blockade of Gaza—currently in place to prevent the smuggling of weapons and terrorist supplies.

Marzook’s remarks were made at the General Arab Conference to Support the intifada, held in Beirut on Nov. 20, 2015. Officials from the PA and Fatah attended along with Hamas leaders like Marzook.

Halevi notes that these officials adopted resolutions at the conference calling for an “all-out war” against Israel until the Jewish state is destroyed.

Resolutions at the conference called for an end to rivalries between Hamas and Fatah and for pursuing a joint strategy based on the intifada—with the shared goal being to “liberate all the occupied land [Israel].” The committee’s resolutions also call for the implementation of the PLO Central Committee’s March 2015 resolution, which advocated ending security cooperation with Israel.

Security cooperation between Israel and the PA is the result of the 1990s Oslo peace process that created the PA and allowed the PLO, previously designated a terror group by the U.S. and others, to relocate from Tunisia and establish limited self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Halevi says that the closing declaration of the Beirut conference makes clear the current outbreak of violence, “seeks to make it less costly for the IDF to withdraw from Jerusalem and the territories than to keep fighting both the intifada itself and international opinion…the Palestinians were already benefiting from the tension between Israel and the United States and Europe, which weaken Israel.”