Inquirer Confuses Terrorists and Victims
by Michael Goldblatt
When readers of the Philadelphia Inquirer opened their morning
newspaper on May 1, they were greeted by a huge front-page photograph of a distraught
elderly woman and her sad-faced grandchild, victims of the most recent
Arab-Israeli turmoil. Were they relatives of the two young Israeli women
stabbed to death by Arab terrorists in Wadi Kelt on April 24? Could they be
the heartbroken grandmother and orphaned young son of one of the Israeli women
blown up by an Arab terrorist at a Tel Aviv cafe on March 21?
Not quite. When the Inquirer's correspondent in Israel, Barbara
Demick,went looking for "victims of terrorism" last week, she could find only the
family of the killer who blew up the Tel Aviv cafe. The families of the real
victims --the three young Israeli women killed by the Tel Aviv bomber-- have
been brushed aside; the bomber's family, and the other residents of their
village, became the object of the Inquirer's misplaced sympathy.
Demick began her report with a long, detailed description of Israel's
demolition of the terrorist's house, in the village of Zurif. Plenty of
references to Zurif being "destitute" and to "children gaping curiously from
behind barred windows" as the bulldozers moved in, and quotes from villagers
denouncing the Israelis--but Demick did not quote a single Israeli explaining
the reasoning for the demolition. Not until the 25th paragraph of the story
all the way back on did Demick even briefly paraphrase the Israeli point of view. And
she made no mention of the fact that Israel's courts have repeatedly upheld the
legality and deterrent effect of such demolitions.
If Demick had done more background research before completing her
report, perhaps she would have come across the definitive Israeli High Court ruling
in the 1986 case of Daghlas v. Commander of Judea and Samaria, in which the
Court pointed out that the barring of demolitions "would leave only the possibility
of punishing a terrorist who lives alone...The [policy] is designed as a
deterrent, and by its very nature, the deterrent effect must also impinge on those
surrounding the terrorist, particulary those members of his family living
with him. He must realize that his abominable acts will not only bring hurt upon
himself, but that they will cause his family great suffering."
Demick should also have mentioned that the demolitions policy is
supported from right to left, all across the Israeli political spectrum. As
then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres said last year: "We have no choice but to
make the father responsible for the son and to tell the father that if someone
from your house goes out to commit a suicide attck, don't think just he will go to
paradise. Your house is in danger. It will be sealed; it will be damaged."
(Jerusalem Post, March 12, 1996)
Demick did not deny the obvious fact that Zurif was home to the
Tel Aviv bomber and other terrorists, but she did try to inject an element of
undeserved doubt as to the terrorists' guilt. Demick called Tel Aviv bomber Jamal
Al-Hur "a suspected terrorist," even though his body was the only corpse at the
scene of the crime aside from the Israeli victims; she said that "the Israeli
government blames Zurif residents" for the recent kidnap-murder of an Israeli
soldier, even though the killers confessed and led the Israeli police to the
victim's body; and she wrote that a total of 11 Israeli deaths and 48
injuries have been blamed on Zurif residents"--as if Zurif is being unfairly "blamed"
without evidence.
Early in her article, Demick quoted a Zurif village councilman as
saying that had resorted to terrorism because of "the way the Israelis behave
toward us." Demick also quoted a villager who declared that "This used to be
just a simple village. People were satisfied cultivating their land and
tending their animals. There were no killings, no roadblocks, no terrorism."
Buried way down in the 27th paragraph of the story, the reader (if he or she gets
that far) finally learns that Zurif residents massacred 25 Israelis in 1948.
Anti-Israel hatred in Zurif is not the result of some recent Israeli policy,
it goes back 50 years and more. But that fact does not fit in well with
Demick's theme of Israel persecuting innocent Arabs and thereby driving them to
terrorism.
Demick likewise claimed that "the latest round of attacks on
Israelis has been inspired by construction on a 6,500-unit Jewish settlement, known as Har
Homa" (in Jerusalem). She did not mention a report on the Israeli radio
station Arutz 7, on April 11, quoting senior Israeli military investigators as saying
that the Tel Aviv bombing "was not planned as a response to the construction
in Har Homa...The terrorist cell members had decided to carry out the attack
more than two weeks before the construction began, but was pushed off for various
reasons and executed coincidentally three days after the beginning of the Har
Homa project."
If the editors of the Inquirer were interested in presenting a least a
minimal amount of balance, they should have instructed Demick to interview at
least one of the relatives of the 25 victims of the 1948 massacre. But it
seems there is no room in the Inquirer for Israeli victims of Zurif terrorists.
Demick's 35-paragraph report featured interviews with 6 different Arab
villagers, taking up 47 lines of type. The only Israeli she quoted, a
Defense Ministry spokesman, was given less than 1 line--in fact, just 5 words, "Zurif
is a special case."
Zurif is indeed a special case--a village with an unusually high
proportion of terrorists and a particularly long and gruesome history of
terrorism, where the Israeli authorities have no choice but to use
demolitions and temporary curfews to deter and capture murderers. Journalists who twist,
bury, or omit facts in order to rouse sympathy for Zurif are doing their
readers a disservice.
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