Journalist Shot Dead by Terrorists

While doing research, I came across this newspaper report from the Revisionist-affiliated HaMashkif daily, published in Mandate Palestine on May 22, 1939:

which quotes Vera Weizmann, Chaim's wife, writing to the British Minister for Colonies about a house guest of hers in Rehovot, a Manchester Guardian journalist, who was killed on the same day the White Paper was published by Arabs.

I looked for an English-language report and found this:

This is the Reuter's report as it appeared in the Straits Times:

and in the Sydney Morning-Herald:

His mother wrote "Life is such a rush" in 1931 and The Keys of Heaven in 1920 and a children's volume.  A comedy she wrote, Britannia Of Billingsgate, was aired on BBC Television on November 19, 1953.

I do not know if he was the first journalist to be murdered covering the Arab-Israel conflict and that will need more research.

But at least the Arabs were labeled as "terrorists".

Quite different from today's press.

UPDATE

He was buried in Ramleh:

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"Palestinians" as Terrorists - Not Militants

As reported:-

Egypt's interior minister charged Sunday that a Palestinian extremist group with links to Al Qaeda was behind the Dec. 31 bombing outside a church in Alexandria that killed 21 people and set off days of sectarian rioting around the nation.

In a nationally televised speech, the minister, Habib el-Adly, said the authorities had “conclusive evidence” linking the attack on Egyptian Christians to the Army of Islam, a militant group based in the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Adly said that investigators had arrested several Egyptian men connected to the attack and that they had provided details about how they were recruited by the Gaza group.

“These despicable terrorist acts will not get the better of the will of the nation and the nobility of Egypt, where the principles of moderation and the values of tolerance and acceptance of others and renouncing violence and terrorism has taken root in the consciousness of its people through the centuries,” Mr. Adly said in a speech that marked Police Day, which will be observed Tuesday.

Could that be "Palestinian terrorists" as in "terrorists"?

Not "militants"?

Of course, those Egyptians could just be deflecting.
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Haaretz Finally Uses The Term "Terrorists"

Haaretz, which normatively uses the terms "activists" or "militants" when referring to members of Arab armed organizations engaged in acts of violence, finally uses the word "terror".

Here.

Oh, before you click, the "terrorists" of Haaretz are Jews. The Jews in Hebron. Jews who use paint brushes, throw stones.

I didn't want you to be disappointed or to think that the august paper was referring perhaps to those Arabs, Israelis and international solidarists doing much worse than the Jews in Hebron in their demos at the security buffer.

Finally, "Terrorism" in the London Times

But not what you think.

Here

The Saudi Royal Family condemned Somali pirates as terrorists today after losing $100 million worth of oil in an audacious heist that saw bandits seize a supertanker in the Arabian Sea.

The Sirius Star, which was carrying two million barrels of oil, a quarter of the Kingdom's daily output, was captured with its multi-national crew, including two Britons, 450 miles off the coast of Kenya on Sunday.

The hijack was the biggest ever act of piracy in the perilous shipping lanes off the east coast of Africa. Vela International, the ship’s owners, said today that the crew were safe and that their response team was awaiting further contact with the gang.

The furious Saudi foreign minister said the banditry was akin to terrorism and demanded an international crackdown on the pirates.

Prince Saud Al-Faisal said: “Piracy, like terrorism, is a disease which is against everybody, and everybody must address it together...

And ask yourselves, if these countries can't handle a dozen pirates, what can we expect against Iran going nuclear?

Baader-Meinhoff: The Rehabilitation?

Claudia Fromme, a journalist for Süddeutsche Zeitung, published this on a new film:

There are flowers everywhere - bunches of red roses, white lilies, carnations...The grey tomb slab on the Dornhaldenfriedhof in Stuttgart says, in purple letters: “Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Carl Raspe”. This is the last resting place of the terrorists of the Red Army Faction (RAF), who committed suicide on October 18, 1977, in Stammheim prison.

...Three decades after their bloody heyday, when they terrorised Germany with assassinations, bombings and kidnappings, the left-wing terrorists of the RAF - popularly known as the Baader-Meinhof gang - still haunt the nation. The secret worship, and overt scorn, evident at the cemetery are echoes of the trauma that accompanied the darkest chapter in West German history.

...The Baader Meinhof Complex, a feature film [is] based on the group's founders. It...has provoked fierce criticism from the victims' families, historians and the daughter of the terrorist Ulrike Meinhof, Bettina Röhl, who long ago decried her mother's violence. “It glorifies brutal killers as good-looking idealists. It trivialises their terror,” she says.

The film's director, Uli Edel, disagrees vehemently: “It does not take sides at all; it is just historically accurate.” The widow of Jürgen Ponto, a banker who was murdered by the RAF, was so enraged about the film - which was co-financed with state funding - that she has returned her Order of the Federal Republic of Germany.

And she finishes up, writing:

The film-makers said that they wanted to debunk the myth of the RAF and be historically accurate in doing so. Fact-wise they are - right up to the number of bullets that hit each victim. However, in casting such popular and attractive actors as Moritz Bleibtreu (as Andreas Baader) and Martina Gedeck (as Ulrike Meinhof), they simultaneously revive the nostalgia of “radical chic” with which the RAF has long been surrounded, and that led years ago to German boutiques offering shirts by “Prada Meinhof” and bags featuring the RAF logo with the machinegun.

As the credits rolled and the lights went up at a screening I attended in Munich, one member of the audience raised his fist in a gesture of sympathy.

He was barely 20 years old, munching popcorn and wearing a hooded jumper. The assiduously factual debunking of the “Baader-Meinhof myth” obviously did not work for everyone in the audience.

Condi Flubs; Joins the Side of the Terrorists

Condoleeza Rice has turned out to be either insolent, cruel or plain not quite that smart regarding the conflict between Arabs and Jews in the area the League of Nations set aside for the reconstitution of the historic Jewish national home, an area illegally removed by the British Mandatory power and which they Arabs in several wars and riots tried to take away totally.

Yesterday, she met the press and, among other things, had this to say:-

Let me just close by saying that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one that should be resolved and should be ended because it will be so important to Palestinians to live in their own state and for Israel to live alongside a democratic neighbor who can help to secure the peace.

The United States is fully committed to that goal, and I remain committed to that goal until the day that we leave office. But I want to say that I am very grateful that in the last almost eight years now we have been able to move a situation which, at the time when President Bush came to office, was the second intifada, with hundreds of Israelis under siege, with Palestinians dying in large numbers, a situation in which the thought of peace between Israelis and Palestinians was one that was quite distant with the undeniably important, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to reach peace at Camp David.

Oh, only Pals. were dying? No Jews?
And weren't a good few of those Pals. dying by their own hand in suicide bombing attacks?

And aren't Jews still dying, stabbed by Pals., shot at by Pals., being rocketed by Pals.? Here, yesterday, before you spoke:

Palestinian Authority terrorists in Gaza fired a Kassam rocket at the western Negev city of Sderot Thursday morning in a continuation of a spate of attacks on southern Israel.

and this morning:

Southerners woke up to another day of rocket attacks Friday, as Palestinian terrorists fired five Kassams at western Negev neighborhoods. The rockets landed in the Sderot, Eshkol and Sha'ar Hanegev regions. No one was wounded and no damage was reported. One of the Kassams landed near a kibbutz reservoir, while a second hit the fence surrounding another western Negev kibbutz. The other rockets hit open areas.

And she continued to "explain" that flub:

I do want to emphasize again that in 2001, when President Bush came into office, we had a raging intifada, we had Israel under siege.

Siege? Just a siege? A bit euphemistic, no? The background to this ignoring of dead, wounded, maimed Israelis is gone, missing from her remarks? No, it isn't. Not at all.

Here's her world-view, in plain sight:

There were still people who talked about, well, there are freedom fighters and then there are terrorists. The President laid that aside for all time.

Ah, but Condi, they are and there still are terrorists. Not freedom fighters at all. You can't just lay that aside. That is the core of the conflict.

And, in ignoring the Jewish dead, Condi, you may have joined the side of the terrorists.

More NYTimes Bias

This New York Times' report has really got me mixed up:-

Israeli Offensive in Central Gaza Kills 11 Militants
By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM, July 5 — At least 11 Palestinian militants were killed in airstrikes and armed clashes during an Israeli Army incursion into central Gaza on Thursday, Palestinian medical officials said. It was one of the bloodiest days for Hamas since it took control of the Gaza Strip three weeks ago.

Hamas officials said that seven of the dead were members of its military wing, known as the Qassam Brigades, mostly men in their early 20s. The Islamic Jihad faction said one of its men was among the dead. The affiliation of the other three was not clear.

Israeli military officials described the raid as a routine operation to root out “terrorist infrastructures” and search for weapons and wanted men

Why am I nonplussed?

a) "Militant" is used in the headline, the main attention-grabbing element;

b) "Militant" is also used in the lead-off sentence, the most important one as any journalism student can tell you;

c) But then the story acknowledges that 7 of the "militants" were members of Hamas' "military wing" and another was an Islamic Jihadist;

d) When it comes to Israel's version, the term "terrorist" is in quotation marks which means - don't believe them, that's only what they claim.

Am I really mixed up or do I really know that the semantics of the NYT's reporting is biased?

Go on, guess.

Media Bias Item: If There's a Military, Why Are They "Militants"?

The New York Times insistently terms those who engage in terror as "militants". I've noted numerous examples over these past three years of blogging and for a decade previously including.

Now, read this:-

A spokesman for the military wing of Hamas threatened to renew suicide bombings in Israel, but his comments were not confirmed by more senior leaders...Israeli aircraft continued to take aim at Hamas — its military wing and members of the Hamas-dominated Executive Force, a parallel paramilitary police unit...Using more professional tactics and clearly better motivated, Hamas fighters control northern Gaza and much of Gaza City.

In other words, unless someone can correct me, the NYT as all the other major news agencies, outlets, newspapers and networks know very well that Hamas is "military" and "paramilitary" and that even if for some strange reason cannot bring themselves to describe Hamas members as "terrorists", they have no reason to term them "militants" or "activists".

And a bit on in that report, we read:-

Huda, 60, a widow, lives near the presidential compound in Gaza City, where many clashes have occurred. “We feel imprisoned by the fighting,” she said. “In my apartment, many bullets have come through the windows” and the electricity and water have been cut off.

She did not want to give her surname, but said that she had moved to the apartment of a friend farther from the bullets. “When Palestinians fight each other, it’s very depressing,” she said. “But when the Israelis bomb our feelings are very different, we feel that this is the enemy that we must have the will to challenge.”

Well, so bullets mistakenly do go awry and kill bystanders but only Israel is calumnated for it.

This Should Work With Terrorists As Well

A man, suspected of killing his 71-year-old mother-in-law and a 13-year-old nephew last Friday and a bicycle in northeastern China, survived a fall from the eighth floor of a hospital after firefighters shot him off a window sill with a water cannon.

Local police in Shenyang, in northeast China's Liaoning Province, cornered the man in a ward on the eighth floor of the hospital after a call from the man's wife. After a two-hour standoff in which the man threatened to jump from a window, police lost patience and asked firefighters to hose him off. The man was reportedly unhurt after falling into an airbag waiting for him below.

The only problem is that we don't have that much water to waste on terrorists here in Israel.

So, "Militants" Really is a Synonymon for "Terrorists"

Bangladesh executes six militants

Six Islamic militants convicted of killing two judges during a wave of bomb attacks have been hanged in Bangladesh, officials say. The six included Abdur Rahman, the head of the banned Islamic group Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, and his deputy Siddiqul Islam, known as Bangla Bhai.

Police said the men were executed at different jails across the country.

The November 2005 attack on the judges was part of a series of bombings for which the JMB was blamed.

During their trial, the men said they targeted the judiciary because it was run by secular rather than Sharia law.

The Supreme Court rejected their appeal late last year and President Iajuddin Ahmed turned them down for clemency earlier this month.

Ah, now I understand.

Thank you BBC.

"Militants" - Round (oh, pick any number)

Haaretz's news flashes (sorry, no URL) is now reporting:

Militants shoot Palestinian intelligence officer to death in Gaza

Gee, can we now retroactively ask Haaretz to alter its newspaper headlines from the 1940s when the Irgun and Lechi members were "terrorists"?