American Veteran Killed by Palestinian Terrorist, Washington Post Drops Print Coverage

The Washington Post has failed to provide print readers with information it posted online about a former U.S. serviceman killed in a Palestinian terrorist attack in Israel.

On March 8, 2016, 28-year-old American tourist Taylor Force was stabbed to death by a Palestinian Arab in part of municipal Tel Aviv. Ten others were also wounded, including Force’s wife, before the attacker was shot by police. Three other terrorist attacks occurred in Israel on the same day, wounding a total of 14 victims. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was in Israel the day of the attacks and was staying less than a mile from where Force was murdered.

Taylor Force was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and an Army officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was in Israel for a school trip with Vanderbilt University Owen School of Management’s masters in business administration (MBA) program, in which he was a enrolled. Force was visiting Israel to learn about start-up companies and global entrepreneurship.

The Washington Post reported Force’s death and, importantly, the details of his life in an online article about the terror attacks (“A rash of bloody attacks greets Biden in Israel,” March 8). Online, The Post noted that Force was a “combat veteran” who was on an “Owen school trip to Tel Aviv” when he was murdered.

However, in print, The Post omitted this information about Force’s life. The day after The Post article online, the paper’s print edition condensed the U.S. veteran’s life of service into two words at the end of a sentence in a story about Vice President Biden’s trip:

”…less than a mile away a Palestinian went on a rampage in the Arab-Jewish quarter of Jaffa that left an American tourist dead (“Biden travels to Israel to discuss billions in military aid,” March 9).” The Post failed—in an article that spanned more than 1,200 words—to mention the dead American’s name or the fact that his wife, also an American, was critically injured.

Greater detail was provided in a Post online blog about education, called Grade Point. On March 9, the blog, written by Post reporter Susan Svrluga, offered details about Forces’ life, including quotes from fellow soldiers who served with him (“Vanderbilt student fatally stabbed in Israel was West Point grad, war veteran”). One of those soldiers, David Campos-Contreras, called Force “the kind of person who would keep you alive. And did. He did keep us alive.” A West Point classmate, David Simpkins said of the deceased veteran: “I couldn’t think of someone was more of a model of ‘America’s finest’ than him…He was as honest and heartfelt as they come, but now he’d dead.”

Yet, none of this information could be found in the paper’s print editions in the subsequent two weeks. A Lexis-Nexis search turned up no Post articles that were devoted to the murder of Force and near-murder of his wife.

An American veteran who fought terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist while on a school trip to Israel—less than a mile away from a visiting U.S. vice president; how could this not be worth ink and space in print?