A Tale of Two Photos

The New York Times and Wall Street Journal saw fit to put on their respective front pages a photo of the terror attack perpetrated by a Palestinian terrorist near Chevron on Friday.

The photos they chose to use — and the captions that appeared alongside — are telling.

The WSJ used a photo they titled “Chase Scene.” The caption accurately described a photo of a wounded Israeli soldier fleeing a Palestinian who stabbed him. What the caption — or the image which portrayed a soldier as unable to defend himself, hardly a flattering take —  didn’t tell, however, was the whole story:

Ironically, it was The New York Times caption that contained the missing details.

They titled their photo “A ruse and bloodshed in the West Bank,” and spelled out how the Palestinian disguised himself a photojournalist (needless to say neither paper would describe him as a terrorist). This is how  he managed to get close to the soldier without drawing any attention.

The Times got the story right but as usual chose a photo that matched that longstanding agenda of anti-Israel bias. It was a gruesome photo of the dead terrorist, one that presumably fed into the image of Palestinians being the victims in this conflict.

Another day of Palestinian terror and another day of skewed media coverage. Tragically, the news simply repeats itself again and again.

This article appeared in print on page 7 of the October 19th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.