Friday, February 10, 2006

The Jericho Non-Event

The release of 46 Palestinian terrorists (56, according to Debka) from a Jericho jail -- as ordered by the "moderate" PA boss Mohammed Abbas -- was all but ignored by the media today. Not one word in the Washington Post and one paragraph at the end of a New York Times article. The wire services seem to have completely well ignored this atrocity, so there was little pickup in newspapers generally.

This "jailing" was always a charade, as was the supposed involvement of American and British officials in "confining" these murderers. Among them, though not released, was the murderer of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi. Still, it's really hard to find a more compelling example of the media's indifference to "official" Palestinian involvement in terrorism. But as usual, the media ignore such things even when it is shoved in their faces.

A good example is the deadpan treatment that the Times gave today, in the same article mentioned above, to the obvious complicity of Palestinian in an attack on the Karni crossing.


About half of the workers had gone through Erez by 4 a.m. when the flood of laborers suddenly stopped, Israeli officials said. Israel security officers called their Palestinian counterparts, but did not receive a coherent explanation, they said. Then at 4:30 a.m., the two Palestinians attacked an Israeli military position with grenades and gunfire, the military said.

And? And? That's all, folks.

The bias -- in this case, sloppy, incomplete reporting -- is so egregious it's almost comical. Or at least it would be if wasn't systematic.

UPDATE: Good roundup on the Jericho prisoner nonsense, a disgusting sham dating back a few years, in the ever-readable IRIS blog, here.

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