Reuters quick to report, blame Jews for vandalism. No word on daily Arab vandalism

When anti-Arab or anti-Christian graffiti is spray-painted in Israel, Reuters correspondents leap to their keyboards to report it, alleging vandalism by Jewish settlers.  While no one has been arrested for the graffiti and there is evidence that in a previous incident reported by Reuters, it was actually an Arab villager that did the defacing (to incriminate settlers), the propagandists at Reuters continue to highlight these property crimes so as to demonize Jews in the eyes of the public.

After all, everyone knows that the words "price tag" can only be inscribed by Jews.

By contrast, Reuters fails miserably to report on the daily Arab vandalism and desecration of Jewish property, including that taking place at the oldest and most revered of Jewish cemeteries, the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Demonstrating, that for Reuters, there is no news value in stories of dogs biting men.

The exception that proves the rule

In a "man bites dog" story, Reuters correspondents Jihan Abdalla and Allyn Fisher-Ilan tell the tale of an Israeli soldier, inadvertently separated from his battalion in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") where they had been confronting Palestinians throwing rocks.  The soldier was apparently escorted out of the territory by a local villager:

In the stormy weather, a soldier charged with guarding a street ended up isolated from his peers and was unaware when they withdrew from the area, reports and witnesses said.
A Palestinian man identified as Mohammed said he went to tell a soldier he noticed standing alone on a village road that the others had withdrawn.
The soldier "seemed confused and his face turned red," Mohammed said, adding he then escorted the soldier toward his own home where other soldiers later picked him up.
Israeli media said the soldier, armed with a personal weapon, had been isolated from his unit for half an hour. A military spokeswoman called it "a matter of minutes" before he was reunited with other troops.
Ayyed Morrar, a local activist in Boudros, told an Israeli television station of the assistance given the soldier:
"We oppose the occupation and are willing to pay the price for freedom, but not in a way that leads to killing."

Abdalla and Fisher-Ilan don't disclose why such a mundane occurrence is worthy of a column by the largest multimedia news company in the world.

So we will.

It's because this story belies all of the "dog bites man" stories Reuters correspondents have witnessed over the years and deliberately hidden from public view:

Reuters Jerusalem Bureau Chief to step down

Alastair Macdonald, whose work we have followed closely since our website commenced last August, is "ending his assignment" as Reuters Bureau Chief for Israel and the Palestinian territories.  Although we don't know the details behind Macdonald's exit nor do we know yet who will be replacing him, we will be frank and say that for any observer wishing for accurate and unbiased reporting of the Middle East conflict, Macdonald's departure will not be viewed with a great deal of sympathy.

In the ten months that we have been analyzing Reuters coverage of the conflict, Macdonald has demonstrated, 1) a refusal to take responsibility for factual errors, 2) a tendency to cherry-pick survey data to support his own political views, 3) repeated efforts to downplay and whitewash Palestinian violence, 4) systematic bias in favor of the Arabs, 5) reference to racist epithets to support his pro-Arab bias, 6) reliance on libelous information sources, 7) the use of spurious "man bites dog" stories in an effort to demonize Jews, 8) willful omission of highly newsworthy stories that undermine Palestinian image-making, 9) the parroting of Palestinian propaganda, 10) selective amnesia on the historical facts along with a host of false assertions, and 11) the scandalous publication on his watch, of doctored photos in violation of the Reuters Handbook and all standards of professional and ethical journalism.

Let's see; did we forget anything?

Man bites dog; Reuters suggests it's an epidemic

This is one for the journalism textbooks. In a story on the arrest of Ya'acov Teitel for alleged murder and hate crime attacks, Reuters' Ori Lewis and Alastair Macdonald craft a piece of propaganda worthy of the finest work of Joseph Goebbels.

The first item of note is their use of the word "terrorist" in the headline, bullet points, and lead paragraph. This, from a media organization which eschews at almost any cost, the use of the same term when describing Palestinian Arabs who have murdered Jewish civilians.

Let's compare for example, the Teitel story with this Reuters' story from July of 2008 on the Palestinian construction worker who used a bulldozer to kill 3 Israelis and injure 40 in Jerusalem. In that act of Arab violence, more people were murdered and wounded in a single day than the number of victims attributed to Teitel over 12 years. Yet, the word "terrorist" does not appear once in the earlier Reuters' story -- with or without quotation marks.

Next to be noted in the Lewis and Macdonald story is the glaring omission of Teitel's hate crimes directed at Jewish homosexuals and Messianic Jews (Jews for Jesus). The writers refer only to attacks on "Israeli leftists". Why the omission? Well, as non-political violence aimed at Jews, the former attacks underscore Teitel's criminal pathology as centered around a wide range of complex religious and moral issues as well as political issues. This clearly distracts from the facile message Lewis and Macdonald are desperate to convey, i.e., "how far settlers may go to stop Israel trading land for peace with Palestinians".

Lewis and Macdonald attempt to generalize Teitel's criminality to the entire community of Jewish settlers by citing the two most sensational incidents amongst the few cases of Jewish extremist violence over the last 40 years: the assassination of Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir and the killing of 29 Arabs by Baruch Goldstein in 1995. No mention of course, of the thousands of Arab terrorist attacks on Jews over the same period.

And in crafting their op-ed masquerading as news, Lewis and Macdonald fastidiously employ the voices of others to make their points for them:

So concluded many Israelis...

Analysts were quick to compare...

Newspapers...

Former Israeli secret service agents warned...

Note the use of sweeping and anonymous sources, a violation of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism.

In the spirit of a Tom Clancy novel, Lewis and Macdonald cite one of those sweeping, anonymous sources to offer readers the intrigue of an imagined violent revolt by Jewish settlers against government moves to relocate them:

Former Israeli secret service agents warned of a "Jewish Underground", dormant and ready, out in the wilder edges of the West Bank hilltops, that has the weaponry to make good on hardliners' threats to resist with violence any move by Israel's government to end its 41 years of military occupation, or even to evict settlers from some of their fringe "outposts".

No mention of the tortured and brutal government evacuation of 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005 which was met with only non-violent resistance.

Having tarred with the same brush the entire community of Jewish settlers, Lewis and Macdonald grant an opportunity (in the second to last paragraph) for "SETTLERS' DEFENCE":

Danny Dayan said: "Any person of conscience ... must rise up in indignation against such acts -- and against any despicable attempt to use them to gain political capital by blaming an entire community."

A revealing contrast to the response of a Hamas spokesman following the Palestinian bulldozer attack cited by Reuters in the 2008 article above:

There is a continued aggression against our people in the West Bank and Jerusalem and so it is natural that our people there will respond to such aggression.

And following the same incident, this quote from Palestinian Islamic Jihad:

The Jerusalem Brigades bless the heroic operation in Jerusalem as the natural reaction to the crimes of the occupation.

One would think a comparison of the two mindsets -- Arab and Jewish -- following heinous acts of violence would be of value to an understanding of the conflict. But apparently, not Reuters.

Finally, Lewis and Macdonald deliberately obfuscate Israeli public opinion on Jewish settlements:

Netanyahu, however, highlights the strength of opinion among settlers as a limit on what concessions he can offer -- even when many among the majority of Israelis who do not live on occupied land express little sympathy for hardline colonists.

In fact, a large majority of Israelis support settlement construction and two-thirds either oppose any evacuation of Jewish settlements in a final peace deal or say only a small number of communities should be dismantled.

Nice try, Reuters.