Ma'an Arabic Blames Israel for Itamar Attack

Ma'an Arabic uses yet another of the oldest journalism tricks in the book to publish incitement and lies in a newspaper:

Quote somebody whose positions who you agree with.

In this case, it quotes some person on Facebook named Elif Sabbagh. (Ma'an has been obsessed with Facebook lately.) Sabbagh's Facebook page isn't even public, so it is not as if his original posting had gained any serious readership.

Sabbagh, who apparently lives in Acre, wrote about the story in YNet of the Jewish settlers who saved the life of an Arab baby yesterday while the Fogels were mourning the murders of their family nearby. He dismisses the story, claiming that there have been so many Arab babies who died because they were born at checkpoints. (Why the mothers in these probably apocryphal stories were trying to get into the evil Zionist entity to give birth is not really an issue for discussion.)

Sabbagh then goes on to quote Ma'an's thoroughly discredited story suggesting that it was actually Thai workers who slaughtered the Fogels. Ma'an, which knows that story was never true, therefore puts support behind its lie rather than admit that its sources are liars. (There aren't even any Thai workers in Itamar.)

Sabbagh goes further, saying that the settlements are dangerous places, and how irresponsible it is for Jews to live in the West Bank - putting their own children at risk. In fact, Sabbagh says, Netanyahu should be apologizing to the Fogels for allowing them to live in an area where Arabs are likely to come along and want to slaughter them! Sabbagh concludes dramatically - who should apologize to whom?

Ma'an, pretending to merely quote Sabbagh, is obviously showing its own position: that Arabs are inherently violent and cannot be blamed for murdering Jews in their midst, and Jews who want to live in their own historic homeland are to blame when (not if) they get massacred. Arabs, of course, cannot be held responsible for murder. That's natural.

How about this idea: Since Israel is obviously such a militaristic and genocidal state, isn't it irresponsible to want to live next to it? Shouldn't Palestinian Arabs move elsewhere in the Arab world so that their children are not put in danger from the IDF and the wildly rampaging settlers we hear so much about? In fact, when an Arab olive tree is allegedly uprooted by those evil Jews, doesn't that mean that it is time to move?

There is a reason I spend so much time talking about Ma'an: it is the only independent newspaper in the Palestinian Arab territories. It does not officially reflect the position of Fatah or Hamas. It prides itself on its professional journalistic standards. And it possibly reflects the opinions of the many Palestinian Arabs who really don't care for Fatah or Hamas or their more extreme cousins.

Yet here we see how Ma'an in Arabic is happy to publish lies and bigotry, blaming the victims and abandoning all journalistic standards.

And as of 1 PM Israel time, it is the top story on Ma'an's Arabic page.
Elder of Ziyon

Glenn Beck on Itamar Massacre

The person[s] ho did this are monsters. The persons who handed out candies to celebrate the massacre are worse than monsters.
Still waiting to hear that kind of hard-hitting commentary from anyone on the Left. But we won't.

Labels: Fogel family massacre, Glenn Beck, Itamar, Palestinian terrorism

posted by Carl in Jerusalem

US May Have Funded the Itamar Massacre

U.S.-trained forces arrested in brutal slaying WND hat tip Jerry

JERUSALEM – Two members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ official security forces were arrested in conjunction with this past weekend’s bloody massacre in which five family members were brutally stabbed to death inside their home in the Jewish village of Itamar, WND has learned.

The names of the apprehended suspects will be released to the Israeli media within hours but were revealed to WND by security officials working on the murder.

Two cousins are now in Israeli custody and are suspected in the slayings. Ahmed Awad is an officer in Abbas’ Preventative Security Services in the northern West Bank city of Nablis. Iyad Awad is an officer in Abbas’ General Intelligence services in Ramallah.

Both the Preventative and General Intelligence services of Fatah are armed, trained and funded by the U.S.
World Net Daily
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Two PA Security Men Arrested Connected to Itamar

Two members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' official security forces were arrested in conjunction with this past weekend's bloody massacre in which five family members were brutally stabbed to death inside their home in the Jewish village of Itamar, WND has learned.

The names of the apprehended suspects will be released to the Israeli media within hours but were revealed to WND by security officials working on the murder.

Two cousins are now in Israeli custody and are suspected in the slayings. Ahmed Awad is an officer in Abbas' Preventative Security Services in the northern West Bank city of Nablis. Iyad Awad is an officer in Abbas' General Intelligence services in Ramallah.

Both the Preventative and General Intelligence services of Fatah are armed, trained and funded by the U.S.

Aaron Klein, World Net News

Stephen Walt Blames Settlers for Itamar Murders

To say that I am appalled by the brutal murder of an Israeli family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar (near Nablus) is an understatement.

OK, he is appalled. Why?

Israel's occupation of the West Bank is universally recognized as a violation of international law and depends on force, intimidation, and violence, but there is no justification for anyone to take the lives of an entire family in this way. No good can possibly come from such a senseless act -- not for Palestinians, not for Israelis, and not for anyone else -- and it should be universally condemned.

To Walt, the self-styled realist, the massacre of the Fogels is simply a counterproductive method of protest. He cannot bring himself to say that the murders are immoral, or sickening, or reflective of constant Palestinian Arab incitement to hate and murder. He cannot be bothered to mention the names of the victims. He cannot even make a passing mention of a baby girl whose throat was slashed in her crib.

And Walt cannot stop himself from implying that the settlers deserved it for somehow being "illegal" before he even pretends to condemn their murder, which, he implied, might have been justified if they were killed in a less brutal manner. Like maybe a suicide bombing that was a little less personal.

Now that Walt got his perfunctory "condemnation" out of the way, he can get to what he really wants to condemn, and what he cynically uses the Itamar massacre to hang his own sick hate on:

But while we are at it, we should not spare the other parties who have helped create and perpetuate the circumstances where such crimes are likely to occur.

Let us therefore condemn every Israeli government since 1967, for actively promoting the illegal effort to colonize these lands.

Let us condemn those Palestinian leaders who have glorified violence in the past or who continue to do so today.

Let us condemn the settlers themselves, some of whom routinely use violence to intimidate the Palestinians who live in the lands they covet.

Let us condemn Israel's policy of targeted assassinations and the war crimes it has committed in Gaza and Lebanon.

Let us condemn the hypocrisy of governments throughout the Arab world, who mouth solidarity with the Palestinians yet do little to improve their lives or advance the goal of an independent Palestinian state.

Let us condemn the craven passivity of U.S. politicians, whose deference to the Israel lobby has enabled the occupation for more than four decades, squandered the opportunity afforded by the Oslo Accords, and undermined efforts to create a viable Palestinian state.

Let us condemn the misguided fervor of Christian Zionists, who turn a blind eye to injustice against the Palestinians in the belief that it will hasten the "end times" tomorrow.

Let us condemn the cynicism of the Netanyahu government, which used this latest tragedy to announce the construction of 500 more housing units in the Occupied Territories.

Walt is pretending to be even-handed in his condemnations, but in the end you can see that his real priority is to condemn the victims themselves for "perpetuate the circumstances where such crimes are likely to occur."

And the real sickness of Walt can be seen in the original title of his disgusting piece. While it is now called "On the murders at Itamar," from the title bar we can see that he originally titled it "Who is to blame for the killings at Itamar?"

And here is the root of Walt's reprehensible worldview. Because he truly believes that the Israelis and the Jews who voluntarily choose to live in their own historic homeland are to blame for their own deaths, and that Arab terrorism is a natural reaction to Israeli actions. Which is exactly what Islamic Jihad says.

Because not once does he condemn the actual terror groups themselves for their own actions. Not once.

Walt's piece proves beyond any doubt that the left does not have any empathy for the Fogels, and not the least desire to consider them human beings. Their murders are, to Walt and his "blame Israel" compatriots, nothing more than a prop to hang another excuse to bash Israel.
Elder of Ziyon