Photo 5 in the magazine's 2011 Pictures of the Year bears this caption:
A Martyr in the Holy Land
Ariel Schalit / APApril 6
Haifa, IsraelJuliano Mer-Khamis lived life caught between two worlds: the son of a Jew and a Christian Arab, he was reviled by Israeli and Palestinian extremists alike. He sought reconciliation through his work as an actor, filmmaker, and director—until he was gunned down by a Palestinian assassin.
He was gunned down by a Palestinian--but let's still get in our digs at the Jews.
Yeah, the AP article posits a false moral equivalence between the Israelis who did not kill poor Mr. Mer-Khamis and the Palestinians who did. It's irritating, I know . . . but it's also as far as the mainstream media are willing to go in impugning the actions of the designated Other. Thus, in Egypt or sub-Saharan Africa, when Moslem mobs attack Christian neighborhoods or church congregations that are just going about their business, the event is generally framed in terms of "inter-religious conflict," with a nice "pox on both your houses" tone; or, closer to home, when "identifiable minorities," e.g., flash mobs, attack law-abiding honkies going about their lawful business, this is usually framed as "interracial conflict," in the same sneering tone. That is just the "paradigm" to which the Left is wedded . . . it's the way in which the writers show they are members of the Respectable Leftists' Club. Until the social cost of passing this sort of thing off as journalism exceeds the social benefit of doing it, we'll keep on getting more of the same.
ReplyDelete