When it comes to encouraging terrorists and terrorism by disguising murder by other names, no one can beat USA Today. In a February 10 report headlined “Palestinian militants are undeterred: Israel’s crackdown feeds anger, ranks of militias,” I counted 16 different ways to distort language by calling terrorism against Israelis by any other name. A newspaper should know the right word is important ? and using the wrong word is dishonest and fraudulent.
The subterfuge starts with the main headline using the word “militant.” Then in the sub-headline, it goes to the word “militias.”
But it is the body of the story that shows just how much USA Today will lie and distort to carry out its anti-Israel agenda. Let me count the ways that USA Today euphemized terrorists and their terrorist missions and organizations in a single story:
1. Underground militia.
2. Armed Palestinians.
3. Underground Palestinian operations.
4. Leading militants.
5. Palestinian fighters.
6. Activists.
7. Operations.
8. Guerrilla fighter.
9. Attacks.
10. Hard-core Palestinian militants.
11. Militant Islamic groups.
12. Underground fighters.
13. Independent armed groups.
14. Leading operatives.
15. Militants.
16. Militia.
Yes, USA Today uses every euphemism in the books (except consumer advocate) and carefully avoids using the right words — terrorist, terrorism, and terrorist organization (such as Hamas, so declared by the U.S. State Department). Never before (to paraphrase Churchill) has one paper used so many synonym-lies and synonym-distortions to make murderers and their missions and organizations look better than they should. When a newspaper goes to this length to
lie about the murder and the murderers of Israelis, you know how deep their animus against Israel must run.
Of course, USA Today freely uses the word “terrorism” when people are being murdered who happen not to be Israelis or Jews. In fact in the same edition of the paper that this journalistic monstrosity on the Middle East appeared, there was a whole column-length piece called “War on Terrorism? which contained such items as “Hong Kong raises terror risk level on island.” It also reported on terrorists and terrorism in Jordan, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and the U.S.
It’s only when Israelis and Jews are murdered that USA Today cannot bring itself to use the word terrorism. Jews are not killed by terrorists; according to USA Today they are killed by activists, operatives, militia, militants, leaders, etc. What clearer proof of the double standard that is the essence of anti-Semitism?
Of course that’s just a small portion of the anti-Israel bias evidenced in this February 10 report. Consider a few of the others:
* USA Today says Israel’s crackdown feeds anger and ranks of militia. USA Today doesn’t say, as it should, that the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic propaganda produced by the Palestinian media, the Palestinian mosques, and the Palestinian government produced this “anger” and the insane campaign to murder the innocent and destroy Israel.
* USA Today gets the history of the region wrong, so all that follows is also wrong. USA Today says, “The many months of occupation have fueled intense frustration.” There is no ‘occupation’ of any land that once belonged to Palestinians. The land in question was controlled by Egypt and Jordan, and was taken over by the Israelis when a war of aggression was launched against them. It was never controlled by the Palestinians and there was never a state of Palestine,
which belonged to the Arabs.
The land in question is more correctly referred to as disputed territory, whose disposition depends on a yet-to-be-negotiated peace treaty. If there is any “occupation” in any sense, it came about because of wars of Arab aggression and because of suicide attacks and rejection of offers of peace and a Palestinian state offered as recently as two and a half years ago.
* USA Today also says, “Adding to the anger is the growing poverty caused by Israeli blockades that have prevented Palestinians from getting to jobs in Israel.” More nonsense. The poverty can best be attributed to Palestinian terrorism. The Palestinian standard of living was actually rising above those of Arabs in neighboring regions until Arafat disrupted the region by turning down a peace settlement and going on a rampage of terrorism.
The poverty can also be explained by the mismanagement and corruption of the Palestinian Authority, and by such factors as Arafat’s embezzlement of $1.3 billion that should have been spent on Palestinians in need (something, incidentally, that USA Today never reported).
This kind of journalism demonstrates that USA Today is not only biased and unfair, but dishonest and unreliable.