Over at the Telegraph, exceptionally inept headline writing about Israel
During a moment of procrastination, I checked out the Telegraph, which is the British newspaper least unfriendly to Israel — which isn’t saying much. Given its lack of the usual British venom, I was therefore a little taken-aback by the ambiguity displayed in its headline about the cruel murder Hamas gleefully committed against four Israelis, two men and two women, one of whom was pregnant (see the right hand column in the screen capture, below):
“Jewish settlers attack.” Doesn’t that make it sound as if the attack was by, rather than upon, the Israelis? (I won’t even get into the “settler” language, which makes the Jews sound like strangers in their own land.)
The Jerusalem Post, written in Israel, which is not home to the English language, showed a much better understanding of the nuances of that same language, and wrote something that has no troubling ambiguity:
“4 Israelis shot dead by terrorists in West Bank.” Pretty darn clear (and heartbreaking, too).
I distrust the media enough that it’s hard for me to give writers the benefit of the doubt when something appears that could be merely foolish or that could serve a darker agenda. The Telegraph is a decent paper, considering that it comes out of a dying socialist nation, but I’m suspicious….