The media is twisting the knife into Israel over the 'lone wolf intifada
Nearly five months have passed since the “Lone Wolves Intifada” began in Israel, characterised by near-daily stabbings, stonings and car-rammings. Palestinian terrorists have succeeded in killing nearly thirty Israelis and injuring countless others. As Israelis have confronted this violent upsurge, however, parts of the international media have been rubbing salt into the knife wounds. On too many occasions, headlines have appeared to totally ignore the acts of terrorism themselves, leading instead with the deaths of the terrorists neutralised in the course of committing these crimes – while presenting them, acontextually, as innocents rather than attempted murderers.

The false impression given to the reader is that Israel’s security forces are arbitrarily and summarily executing Palestinians – instead of taking necessary action in self-defence to stop terrorist atrocities in real time. This is pernicious and defamatory. It is also poor journalism. In the name of professionalism and basic decency, it must stop.

On the night of 3 October 2015, in Jerusalem’s Old City, a Palestinian terrorist stabbed four Israelis (including a two-year old infant), killing two. He then opened fire at police officers, and was shot dead in response. The BBC then ran the galling headline “Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attack kills two”, neglecting to indicate that the same Palestinian, and not the disembodied "Jerusalem attack”, had in fact killed two. After subsequent complaints, the headline was finally changed to the more accurate “Jerusalem: Palestinian kills two Israelis in Old City”.

The incident sparked a persistent trend both in knives as a weapon of choice and in extremely poorly judged newspaper headlines – though neither is new.

Sometimes, the neutralisation of the attackers – presented as civilians – is presented as the story, rather than the attack itself. When Palestinian terrorists stabbed two Israeli women in a mini-market, and were shot before they could stab more, The Guardian ran: “Two Palestinians shot dead after knife attack in West Bank shop”. Aggressor and victim are often inverted: when four Palestinians attempted to stab Israelis in separate incidents, and were stopped with lethal force, USA Today ran “Israelis kill 4 Palestinians as violence surges”. And sometimes, headlines draw false moral equivalence between terrorist and victim: the Irish Times ran the scandalous “3 Palestinians, 1 Israeli Die in West Bank Incidents”, when the “three Palestinians” had stabbed Israelis, and were killed committing terrorist attacks, and the “one Israeli” woman had had been killed in a terrorist attack.