The Guardian’s perverse empathy for Palestinian terrorists

As Israelinurse noted, in her CW piece on Dec. 22, “The Guardian continues to ignore the escalation in southern Israel”, the Guardian has all but ignored the deteriorating situation along Israel‘s border with Gaza.

The situation includes:

  • Islamic Jihad, previously non-operational, has linked up with Hamas.
  • There have been more attacks upon IDF patrols along the international border.
  • An increased number of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are being laid along the fence which marks the border.
  • A rising number of mortar attacks have been carried out both on the IDF and civilians living in the communities surrounding the border.

While largely failing to report on these significant developments, the Guardian did see fit to publish an AP story, on Dec. 26, about Israeli FM Avigdor Lieberman stating that violence in Gaza is a serious impediment to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. (As if such political observation is in any way controversial.).

The story did note, that:

The latest diplomatic spat [between Israel and the Palestinians] came as violence along the Israel-Gaza border simmered. After days of accelerated Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel and Israeli airstrikes in response, Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians early today.

All in all, this is not a horrible passage by Guardian or AP standards.

But, the photo they chose to accompany the story speaks volumes about Guardian’s coverage of the Middle East.

True to form, the Guardian simply couldn’t resist using an AP photo of wailing, inconsolable friends and relatives of the dead terrorist. As the article itself mentions the increase in rocket fire emanating from Gaza as a cause of the tensions, one would think that a photo illustrating that dynamic (or photos of damage done by previous barrages of missiles onto Israel’s southern communities) would be considered.

The narrative by which the jihadists and Islamists (sorry, “militants”) are perpetual victims is simply irresistible to the photo editors who, clearly, know their customers quite well.

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