The Reaction of Time Mag and EI to Itamar

Karl Vick wrote this about Itamar
The murder by knife of three children, including an infant of 3 months, and both parents in a West Bank settlement late Friday night rocked Israel terribly.

...The slaughter did not eradicate the family. Three of the Fogel children survived — two brothers who were asleep in another bedroom, and their 12-year-old sister, who discovered the scene when she arrived home at midnight from a meeting of a youth group. The means of entry into the settlement was apparently a hole cut in the perimeter fence, undetected by civilian guards. But the identity of the attackers remains unknown.
A bit like the article on Electronic Intifada, which read, "But while the attack on Israeli innocents -- albeit members of a fanatical settler movement residing illegally on Palestinian land -- has saturated local and international media outlets there is a lot more to the story of Awarta and the suffering and brutality its inhabitants have endured at the hands of the settlers and Israeli soldiers."
Elder of Ziyon reacted to the Time article thusly.

See? It wasn't so bad - three children survived! What are those Jews getting all hot and bothered about?

Out of a 922 word story, the actual murders, dealt with only peripherally, take up a mere 97 words. All without a single detail on what actually happened outside the two words "by knife."

By contrast, saying that Israel was consumed with revenge took 87 words.

240 words were about Israel's settlements and how they are the main obstacle to peace.

77 words about the release of gruesome photos of the victims and supposedly tasteless banner ads by victim aid organizations that referred to the attacks.

97 words were written on the "cycle of violence" between Palestinian Arabs who have killed settlers and reprisal attacks by Jews.

And 94 words on the funeral.

I searched Time's site and did not find any other articles that described the murders at all, so it is not as if this story was assuming that the readers knew about the details. These are all the details that Time felt necessary to give. In other words, the settlements and Israeli politicization of the murders are the story; the murders themselves are just a minor detail.

Comment by Jacob
Hey, innocents died, but they were fanatical Jews living on previously empty land therefore they must be settling illegally and therefore deserved to have their throats cut open and their children murdered!
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