09-Nov-15: Death of a knife attacker and the lethally selective way it's reported

The photo above, unrelated to the events at the Eliyahu security checkpoint, 
is what the editors at AFP chose to illustrate the report of today's 
knife attack by an unsuccessful Arab stabber [Source]

Here's the opening line of a major news report appearing at this moment on an English-language Palestinian Arab news site:

A Palestinian woman was shot-dead by Israeli soldiers this morning under the pretext that she tried to stab a border guard, at the Eliyahu military checkpoint in Qalqilya, northern West Bank. ["22-year-old woman shot-dead by soldiers at Eliyahu checkpoint, Qalqilya", Palestine News Network, November 8, 2015]. 

Under the pretext, they say. Pretext.

The French news agency AFP reports the same event today a little differently - and please take note of the photo above which accompanies their article:

A Palestinian woman attempted to attack Israeli security guards with a knife at a checkpoint in the north of the occupied West Bank on Monday before being shot dead, officials said. Two letters found in her bag indicated plans for a suicide attack, according to the ministry. Palestinian police identified her as Rasha Uweisseh, 23 and from Qalqilya... ["Palestinian woman attempts stabbing, shot dead: officials", AFP, November 8, 2015]

The rasha's suicide note [Source:
Jerusalem Post today]

That matter of letters in her bag indicating what AFP calls a "suicide attack" seems significant to us. The Jerusalem Post says the woman called Rasha set out to kill people in order "to defend the homeland and the youth". (Non-Hebrew speakers might be interested to know that the stabber's first name, "Rasha", is the Hebrew word for "evil person".)

Her letters are all over the Arabic-language social media today (Twitter tweets here, for example).

Knowing about the letters, more accurate terms to describe the events at the crossing this morning might be lethal attack, murderous attack, knifing attack, stabbing attack, or even just attack. Because one thing is perfectly clear in this case as in so many others: Miss Uweisseh of Qalqilya came to the checkpoint in order to kill someone. That she was indifferent to what might happen to her is probably true but not the point. This attack was about killing Jews, Israelis. The connection to suicide is incidental, secondary and misleading.

So on what basis does PNN claim the killing of the young woman was done on a "pretext"? Probably on the same basis that brings certain other parts of the media to frame the attempted murder of Israelis via a focus on the attacker's failure and death.

• "Israeli occupation forces on Monday shot dead a Palestinian woman at a checkpoint in the north of the occupied West Bank." [Opening line of news report by Lebanon's Al-Manar]
• "Palestinian woman allegedly attempts stabbing, shot dead" [Al Arabiya's headline]
• "Shot at a checkpoint in the West Bank" [Headline of a report on the attack in the Icelandic news channel Morgunbladid]
• "Palestinian girl shot by Israelis" [Headline of a Persian-language report on the PressTV, Iran, website]
• "Palestinian woman killed after alleged attack at Qalqiliya checkpoint http://bit.ly/1SbsgJj  #palestine" [Tweeted by the Pal Arab Ma'an News Agency, here]
• And entirely predictably, the propagandists of Hamas via their Twitter account say: "#IOF forces execute Palestinian lady Rasha Al Ewasi, 23, at a military checkpoint east of #Qalqilya city. #WestBank"
• BBC Arabic's report [here] of the attacker's death is mysteriously silent about the letters she left behind. No mention of them at all. 

To the surprise of no informed observer, the dead woman has already been proclaimed a "martyr" by the Palestinian Arab media machine [here] whose accounts of how she was "shot dead in cold blood" will ensure a steady flow of more such attacks and deaths. Mission accomplished.

The selective reporting of the manner of her death and what brought her to carry out the attack are critical components of the incitement and brain-washing that make this possible. It's part of a process that deserves to be called what it is: lethal journalism.