London Evening Standard blood libels Israel - but gives Syrian regime murderers benefit of doubt

Blood libel - and classic Pali photo stunt

One of my previous posts about Western media reporting on Israel is typically pertinent in the way the media have handled the latest rocket barrage (nearly 200 since Friday) against Israel from Gaza  (Elder of Ziyon has been doing a great job both reporting the truth and also the media lies). But the worst example is surely in tonight's London Evening Standard - a free mass circulation paper. Despite the catastrophic impact on Israeli daily life, every one of the 21 Palestinians killed in Israel's response have been Islamic Jihad and PRC terrorists (confirmed by the terrorist organisations themselves). Yet the Standard is leading with a story - which turns out to be false - that Israel has killed a 16-year-old boy in 'school uniform'.  As Elder reports even the notoriously anti-Israel biased AFP asserts that:

acording to an AFP correspondent at the scene, there were no signs of any impact on the ground which could have been caused by a missile, with the most likely cause of his death being some kind of explosive device he was carrying

What is also fascinating is that this is by far the most extensively reported foreign news story, despite it being on a day when: an American soldier killed 16 civilians in Afghanistan, there were multiple suicide bombings by Islamists killings dozens of Christians in Nigeria, a massive suicide bombing by Islamists killing 19 mourners at a funeral in Pakistan, not to mention other suicide bombings by Islamists in Pakistan and Iraq. Moreover, today in Homs Syria 45 bodies - all women and children brutually massacred have been discovered and very graphically shown elsewhere. Note that the Standard does partly 'cover' this story in a very small article underneath the large Israel blood libel article. But note two things: 1) the Standard reports 12 deaths even though the Syrian resistence claimed 45, i.e. unlike the claims of the Palestinan terrorists, it does not automatically accept whatever they say as being true; 2) the word 'murdered' is in inverted commas in the title, in stark contrast to Israel kills schoolboy in the other headline.

Is it any wonder that my daughter - who goes to a Jewish School asks me why Twitter is trending with "Israel is a terrorist nation"? (update: this is also partly due to a fraudulant UN worker tweet).

Update 14 March: This morning several major media outlets were reporting that an 8-year old Palestinian boy had died from injuries sustained in an Israeli air strike (incredibly the Jerusalem Post had this as its top story this morning). It turns out - as reported by even the notoriously anti-Israel AP - that contrary to the previous Palestinian claim lapped up without question by all news agencies: 

The boy’s relatives and witnesses later said the boy was marching in a funeral procession for a Gaza militant when he was struck in the head by an errant bullet. At the time, gunmen were firing in the air, they said.

18 May 2012: UPDATE ON THIS STORY HERE