UPDATE

The AFP has published an update to this story including the following phrase:

In Israel and the Palestinian territories, car-ramming attacks have featured heavily in a wave of violence that has killed at least 215 Palestinians, 34 Israelis, two Americans, an Eritrean and a Sudanese since October last year.

This update is as problematic as the original article: because nowhere does it ever state that Palestinians are using their cars to ram Israelis and other innocent victims.

In fact, the total number of Israelis who have committed car ramming attacks against Palestinians is exactly zero, but a reader would have no way of knowing that. To the contrary, the AFP’s language gives the incorrect appearance that more Palestinians are targeted by car ramming attacks than Israelis.

By referring only to an abstract “wave of violence,” (rather than specifically referring to Palestinian attacks) the AFP creates moral equivalence between Palestinian terror and Israeli defense against terror, in a manner that they do not with respect to any other country mentioned in their article. Why the double standard?

In addition, the original AFP article, which does not mention Israel at all, continues to circulate on many news sites.

****

One of the largest news agencies in the world, Agence France-Presse (AFP), published a story entitled “When vehicles become weapons.”

The first sentence of the article begins: “Transforming a vehicle into a simple but deadly weapon of terror…” (emphasis added) which clearly identifies these as terror attacks: not “militant,” attacks, “activist” attacks, or even “extremist” attacks: but terror, plain and simple.

The AFP went on to list a number of other examples of vehicular terrorism around the world: in Canada, England and Scotland, as well as threats of similar terrorism issued against America and France.

And what did the AFP say about Israel, the country that has experienced no less than 45 vehicular terror attacks since September 2015?

Nothing.

For example, take this vehicular terror attack in Israel, which was caught on video: the terrorist killed 59 year old Rabbi Yeshayahu Krishevsky. (Warning: the video is rather gruesome).

In the past, the AFP has called vehicular terrorists in Israel merely “assailants,” and has called the terrorism itself, merely “attacks.”

Is this because the AFP has a problem using the word “terrorism?”

No.

Because according to the AFP, ideologically motivated vehicular attacks are “terror” everywhere in the world…except Israel.

Why the double standard?

Share your considered comments with the AFP by clicking on THIS LINK to fill out their contact form. Be sure to click on “contact editorial” in the form, and to mention the article’s headline.

Featured image: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

