International media coverage of Tuesday’s morning’s massacre at a Jerusalem synagogue has already received criticism, with media watchdogs pointing out a slew of headlines and stories downplaying or otherwise misrepresenting the attack.
Four people were murdered and eight wounded, four seriously, when two terrorists stormed Kehillat Bnai Torah Yeshiva Synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood during morning prayers on Tuesday.
Harrowing images from the scene show men still wrapped in bloodied prayer shawls, their tefillin (phylacteries) scattered on the floor.
In a BBC news interview following the attack, responding to a Palestinian spokesperson who railed about “Jewish murderers” in Jerusalem, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett sought to set the record straight.
Echoing other Israeli leaders, he blamed Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas for inciting such attacks.
“Abu Mazen [Abbas] himself incites and tells the Arab ‘take arms, fight the Jews’,” Bennett said, in a reference to several statements in recent weeks in which Abbas had called on Palestinians to use violence.
Bennett then produced a picture of one of the victims of Tuesday’s attack, in an attempt to make his point.
“This individual came this morning to pray just like many Muslims and many Jews went to pray this morning. The Muslims went home safe but four Jews will never come home again,” he stated.
The interviewer was less than pleased with the visual aid, despite it being no more graphic than countless other images of injured Palestinians regularly given airtime. “Sorry we don’t want to actually see that picture, could you take that down,” she said.
Taking to Facebook, Bennett said his actions during the interview were a response to the previous interviewee’s provocative remarks.
“Yes, I will show this, Mrs. British interviewer,” read the statement.
“Now in an interview with the BBC I went on after a Palestinian spokesperson, who told of Jewish murderers in Jerusalem (!) In response I showed the interviewer who is murdering whom. She requested I stop showing the picture. I will never stop.”
Source: This article was first published on IsraelNationalNews
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