CNN, NYT, BBC, Forget to Mention Terrorist when Covering Deadly Jerusalem Attack

CNN, The New York Times and the BBC covered a deadly attack in Jerusalem on Friday by omitting any reference to terrorism or a terrorist.

Thirty-one-year-old eastern Jerusalem resident Hossein Karaka plowed his car into a group of people waiting at a bus stop near Jerusalem’s Ramot neighborhood, killing eight-year-old Asher Menachem Fali, his six-year-old brother Yaakov Yisrael, and newlywed Shlomo Lederman.

Ten others, including the Falis’ older brother and father, were also injured in the attack.

CNN’s headline read, “car rams people at Jerusalem bus stop,” as if cars, and not their drivers, are at fault.

The only instance of the word “terrorist” was when the report quoted an Israeli official.

The New York Times at least bothered acknowledging that the assailant was a human and not an inanimate object, even if it stopped short of labeling him a terrorist. The headline the newspaper of record chose to go with reads: “At least two dead as driver rams bus stop in east Jerusalem.”

The BBC article described it as a “car ramming attack” but did not employ the word “terror.”

All three news outlets took the opportunity to refer to the location of the attack in Ramot, Jerusalem’s largest neighborhood, as a “settlement” in the “occupied Palestinian territories.”

In the hours after the attack, Palestinian children in Gaza were filmed handing out baklava and other sweets to passersby in celebration of the attack. In other places, Palestinians marched clapping and celebrating the deaths of Jews.

Similar scenes occurred in Palestinian towns all over Gaza and the West Bank less than two weeks ago in the aftermath of another deadly terror attack in Jerusalem that killed seven people.

The muezzin from the local mosque in Karaka’s eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya mourned the terrorist as a “martyr.”