"Biblical Past"

As we've noted many times, Reuters has a very short and selective memory of events in the Middle East.  Short, because its correspondents typically cite or allude to 1967 as the year Jews first began to settle in that portion of the Palestine Mandate currently referred to by the Arabs and their acolytes as "the West Bank".  This, despite the recorded history of Jewish cities and civilization on the land going back over 3,500 years.  Reuters memory is selective because whereas the agency tends to ignore that Jewish history, its correspondents have written in detail for example, about the 1,500-year Armenian presence in the same territory.

When Reuters does see fit to mention Jewish ties and claims to the land, it is almost always within the context of the Bible:

About 500,000 Jews have settled on territory where the Palestinians hope to establish their state with East Jerusalem as its capital. To Israel, the West Bank is "Judea and Samaria," where the Jews trace their biblical past.

While this is an improvement over previous stories that, in violation of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism, failed to cite Israel's name for the territory, it relegates the record and evidence of Jewish roots in the land to religious scripture -- a mitigating factor for secularists and anyone who views the Bible as little more than allegory.

There is of course, much other primary source material written by contemporaneous historians -- as well as archaeological evidence -- documenting Jewish origins and history in Judea and Samaria and thus, substantiating the Biblical account.  But in their efforts to devalue that history on behalf of the Arabs, Reuters correspondents appear to have little use for this material.