NY Times Scrubs Word ‘Terror’ From Coverage of Killing of Islamic Jihad Leader

Why did The New York Times scrub the word “terrorist” from its coverage of the targeted killing of a senior leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad by Israel?

It’s a question asked by the organization CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis).

The U.S. designated Palestinian Islamic Jihad as a foreign terror group in 2001. Other countries – including Canada, Japan and the entire European Union – have done the same.

As CAMERA noted, in the Time’s coverage of the recent targeted killing of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi by the U.S., the newspaper referred to ISIS’ leader as a “terrorist” who led a “terrorist group” which committed “acts of terror.”

All accurate terms.

Yet, as CAMERA pointed out,

“… two weeks later, after Israel’s military killed senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Baha Abu al-Ata, the T-word is nowhere to be found in the New York Times report about the incident. More puzzling is that the first versions of the article, published in the early morning hours of November 12 after the terrorist was killed, did accurately note Islamic Jihad’s terror designation — but that information was later scrubbed from the story. Why?”

Why, indeed?

As CAMERA continues:

“Like al-Baghdadi, Abu al-Ata is a senior leader of an organization responsible for countless attacks targeting civilians, including mass casualty bombings of Israeli restaurants, markets, buses, and shopping malls. In one of many such attacks, an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber walked into a crowded falafel stand in April 2006 and detonated his explosives, killing 11 people including an American teenager who succumbed to his wounds on Mother’s Day.”

We’ll take an (educated) guess at the reason The New York Times made this editorial decision. This is the same newspaper that:

1. Published a cartoon worthy of Nazi Propaganda
2. Shilled for the Qatari Islamist regime’s mouthpiece Al Jazeera
3. Came to the defense of the Muslim Brotherhood when the U.S. was thinking about designating the violent group as a foreign terrorist organization
4. Whitewashed the U.S. Islamist institution Zaytuna College and
5. Sharply criticized the New York Police Department for including Clarion’s acclaimed documentary film The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America in their counter terrorism training program

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EDITORS NOTE: This Clarion Project column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.

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