UK: The disturbing double standards over Israel

Via Spiked (Naomi Firsht):

IDF picture of the Salomon home. Picture by: IDF

(...) But while Israeli newspapers like Haaretz and Times of Israel, and UK newspaper the Jewish Chronicle, published photos of the Salomon home after the attack, as well as in-depth reports, there was not much to be found in the mainstream UK press. Times of Israel’s headline said: ‘Terror at Halamish: When a family’s Shabbat celebration turned into a bloody massacre.’ The BBC went with, ‘Three Israelis stabbed to death in West Bank attack’. The details in the BBC report are perfunctory and there are no photos of the Salomons’ home. 

Other news sites have simply lumped in the Salomon family attack with the deaths of those involved in the violent riots. The Guardian headline reads, ‘Six dead as Israeli-Palestinian tensions boil over’. Again there are no pictures, and the family murder is given a couple of paragraphs in a long report on the al-Aqsa Mosque protests. The Daily Mail, the Telegraph and ITV’s website have similar accounts, again with no photos of the Salomon home. I couldn’t find any coverage at all of the incident in The Times or on the Channel 4 News website. 

There is something wrong, isn’t there, when a family is slaughtered at their dinner table and the press doesn’t deem it worthy even of a full story? 

This is not the first time the British press has been accused of double standards when it comes to Israel. The BBC, in particular, frequently gets called out for it. Just last month the BBC was forced to backtrack after publishing an article with the headline, ‘Three Palestinians killed after deadly stabbing in Jerusalem’. It turned out the Palestinians were killed because they had already murdered an Israeli policewoman and were attempting further attacks when they were shot. The rewritten headline read, ‘Israeli policewoman stabbed to death in Jerusalem’. 

No doubt the British press will defend their lacking reports, but ask yourself this: if the tables had been turned, and a Palestinian family was murdered in their home by an Israeli attacker, how do you think the press over here would have covered it? I think we know the answer.

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