Our Friends at Haaretz

Our friends at Haaretz have done it again. They manage to twist the news to make it sound completely different from what actually happened while still strictly telling the truth.

Yesterday, a Jewish family moved into a house in the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

Here is how Arutz 7 described the event:

“The family moved into their new home in the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood, after the High Court ruled that land is owned by Jews. However, an Arab family remains in a part of the multi-unit building.”

The article goes on with:

“Police escorted the new family into their home on Tuesday even though one Arab family refuses to move out, despite the court approval for the Jewish family to take over the property. Police are at the scene to prevent a confrontation by protesting Arabs and pro-Arab groups and are trying to convince the Arab family to leave peacefully.”

Now lets look at how Haaretz presented the story.

First, lets see the headline:

Settlers force Palestinians out of East Jerusalem home

Check that out – it was the settlers who forced out the Arabs.  All of the sudden, the law doesn’t matter. It’s those settlers who did something wrong here. (Note: the article has since been changed on the web site but the main points still apply to the new article as well.)

Now let’s see how they describe in the article what happened:

“Rioting settlers forced a Palestinian family from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah out of their home on Tuesday, after the district court denied the residents' appeal to remain on the premises.”

First, it was rioting settlers. Not settlers who just wanted to finally move into their house.

Second, of course the article has to use the Arab name for the neighborhood Sheikh Jarrah – to further delegitimize the rights of any Jews to be there.

Next, the sentence sounds like the Jews had minimal right to the house as opposed to the years and years of court battles that they rightful owners had to go through to finally have the right to evict the illegal Arab squatters.

I don’t know why I get upset every time Haaretz does this, but here it is again.