Jeffrey Heller regresses with use of racist epithet

When we began posting back in August of 2009, we found that in an effort to delegitimize Jewish claims to Jerusalem, Reuters correspondents had been regularly resorting to use of the racist epithet, "Arab East Jerusalem" to describe the Old City and its surrounds.

The term "Arab East Jerusalem" originated with the invasion, conquest, and illegal occupation of the city of Jerusalem by Jordanian forces in the 1947-48 Arab-Israeli war and associated sacking and ethnic cleansing of the entire Jewish community from the area.  A Jewish community that had existed for over three-thousand years and represented, in the modern era, the majority religio-ethnic group in Jerusalem.

Following our many posts critical of Reuters' shameless use of the racist epithet, "Arab East Jerusalem", Reuters informally suspended use of the phrase in its Middle East reporting.

That has now changed.

In a story on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing a Jewish conference and encouraging Western nations to employ the threat of force to dissuade Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Editor-in-Charge of Reuters Jerusalem Bureau, Jeffrey Heller, regresses to his racist colors:

In an announcement a day after Netanyahu met Biden, Israel's Interior Ministry said it was pushing ahead with plans to build 1,300 new apartments for Jewish families in Arab East Jerusalem.

Again, this represents an overt and racist effort by a senior journalist with the largest news agency in the world to delegitimize Jewish claims to the city in favor of Arab claims to the same.

As such, it is also a clear violation of the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

UPDATE 4:16 PM: Fellow Reuters racists Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Mohammed Assadi, Andrew Quinn, Ori Lewis, Ralph Boulton and Vicki Allen follow suit in another story.