Reporting the October 15, 2003 bombing in the Gaza Strip with little or no reference to this history falsely implies that the bombing represents something new in Palestinian attitudes. Terrorism against Americans is the inevitable result of years of anti-American incitement in the Palestinian media and mosques.
Michael Getler ["The Language of Terrorism," ombudsman, Sept. 21] says that readers who complain that the Washington Post's coverage "is biased against Israel" frequently cite the paper's "description of people or organizations that carry out or sponsor suicide bombings as "˜militants' rather than "˜terrorists.' "
The Associated Press (AP) has coined a new term for attacks by Palestinian terrorists: "revenge bombings." Israeli counter-terror strikes are said to "lead to" or "trigger" "revenge bombings" or "revenge attacks." But characterizing as "revenge" the deliberate terrorist act of targeting Israeli civilians, on buses, in homes and public spaces, inverts the truth.
In his Sept. 11 op-ed, Daniel Benjamin writes: "[T]he last two years have witnessed an unprecedented wave of terrorism outside the United States, including attacks in Bali, Moscow, Mombasa and Riyadh, to name only a few of the most lethal strikes." The country which is the most frequent target of lethal terrorist strikes is conspicuously absent from this list.
On August 19, 2003, the New York Times published a front-page, above-the-fold, story with an accompanying photograph on an inside page about the possibility several Israeli Jews are involved in "terror attacks" against Palestinian civilians.The article raises real questions about the Times' news judgement. Why such prominence for a story about unproven allegations?
Yet another newspaper has published a column that wrestles with the question of when it is appropriate to label a murderer a terrorist. On September 5, 2003, Boston Globe ombudsman Christine Chinlund wrote a column entitled "Who should wear the "˜terrorist' label?" in which she explained that the newspaper's editors consider it acceptable to label attacks against civilians "acts of terror," but do not consider it appropriate to name the perpetrators "terrorists," unless they are from Al Qaeda.
The British network has run afoul of the UK government as well as Israel's for its unabashed bias.