Ritzau perpetuates myth about flotilla

Netanyahu sends his condolences to Turkey after quake

Published 24-11-2011 – Ritzau

Ritzau once again (again, again?) perpetuates the myth about a so-called ship of activists from Turkey. In this article, other than the details about Israel’s offer of help to Turkey’s quake-victims, they say:

Ritzau continues their biased cover with the following paragraph:

Not a word about the Turkish members of the ship being radical islamists and a part of an extremist organization raising money for Hamas.

Not a word about the Israeli soldiers being hit by iron bars, attacked with knives or faced any kind of deadly violence.

Not a word about the pathetic losers on the boats with slogans like “To Gaza with love” bringing outdated medicine. 

Not a word about the fact that the UN-report vindicated and exonerated Israel of wrongdoing.

Ritzau continues as we know them.

Foreign Minister playing the blame game

Israel names prisoners in exchange

Published 16-10-2011 by Ritzau and Reuters on TV2.

The article mentions known details, and in the end brings a quote from the Foreign Minister Villy Søvndal (SF). It reads:

Seems like he doesn’t dedicate too many thoughts much to those 1000-some victims and 20.000 injured in the Second Intafada. Another possibility is that he simply is not aware of the fact that almost half of the prisoners are terrorists convicted for murder and terrorism – I doubt that possibility though.

Seems like we’re playing the blame game again, Villy.

TV2/Ritzau fails to include vital details in report

Israel wants to build new housing in West Bank

Published on TV2.dk – 27.09.2011

While the report is rather objective overall, it fails completely to elaborate even just shortly on historical facts relevant for the context of the article.

The report states that:

And while it is in-fact true that Israel was in war against ‘a number of Arab countries’, the report presents it as Israel was waging the war – something which is known is not true. The Arabs started the war in 1967 and Israel was forced to take the area for security reasons.

More interestingly is the fact that the report completely fails to mention that Gilo will be included in the State of Israel’s sovereign area according to the peace-negotiations for the last 18 years.

Finally the report reports that half a million Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, and that:

Israel also believes that, Ritzau.
 

Inconsistency in Ritzau report, demonizes settlers

Palestinian killed hours before Abbas-speech. Ritzau reports a Palestinian dead after clashes with Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria (The Westbank) – Published on  23.09.11  – 5:01 PM.

In the lead paragraph, it says that:
 

Immediately following, it says:

From the very first words of the article, the journalist blames the settlers twice for the killing. Though inconsistent in how he died, the article concludes that the fault is the Israeli Army’s fault.

The word used for “fired” [live rounds] is a danish semi-slang word for projecting something with great velocity, carelessness or similarly. A multitude of more neutral words and articulations could have been chosen.

The article goes on explaining that Jewish settlers entered the village (unprovoked) and began breaking windows and throwing rocks. The villagers of Qusra responded with rock-throwing.

In this case, a neutral word for “fired” was used, contrary to the first case.

If a Palestinian man was killed by live fire, why doesn’t the journalist write that the Israeli Army used live fire? If, in fact, live fire was used to separate the parties, or solely against the Palestinian villagers, THAT would have been the story. Using live fire in low-scale clashes like these, hitting an unarmed man in the neck and killing him, would with all probability be an execution. Something is inconsistent in this report, that is for sure – it seems like the journalist wants to give the blame to the Jewish settlers, and suggest they killed the unarmed Palestinian, and at the same time give blame to the Israeli Army, but the journalist does not dare to accuse that the Israeli Army did in fact shoot him with live fire – most likely because they did not.

Ritzau fails to report Eilat-attacks as terror.

Almost an hour after several news outlets reported that the attacks on civilian vehicles in the Southern part of Israel did in fact constitute a terror-attack by armed men, Ritzau Denmark failed to clarify so.

In this article Ritzau, ironically, says that the subjects of the attacks were two Egged busses. A quick Google search would show that Egged carries civilian passengers. At the time of the publication, it was also known that it was bus 392.

Ie. at this time, it was already known that it was nothing but a terror attack against civilians.

Ritzau writes that: “A journalist from Israeli radio describes the incident as a terrorist attack.”

With this articulation, Ritzau is rendering the absolute “truth” as an “Israeli truth” despite the fact that no one disagrees with the Israeli source.

Ritzau and Reuters hides known details about dead

Israeli airstrikes and Palestinian rocket attacks in the aftermath of the Eilat terrorist attack.

The problem in this article, is that Ritzau and Reuters do not elaborate on the dead. They put both Israeli civilians and militants from Gaza in the same category, hence morally equaling Israeli strikes and Palestinian strikes.

“The attack instigated Israeli response, and Israeli airstrikes and Palestinian rockets has since then cost more than 20 people their lives.