The Media Accountability Project  

I was glad to see that your article provides more context than many others by mentioning the Palestinian man who was killed hours earlier in an Israeli raid on a refugee camp. This helps provide critical information that many reports chose to omit.

By omitting the fact that Al-Aqsa Mosque is located in East Jerusalem, which is occupied Palestinian territory, you exclude important context regarding the dynamic between Palestinians and Israeli forces, especially the oppression of Palestinians and discriminatory Israeli policies that interfere with the right to religious practices. Moreover, the omission of “occupied” in relation to East Jerusalem is inconsistent with your description of the West Bank as “Israeli-occupied,” implying that the former is not occupied.

"The brief summary omits any mention of the Nakba ("catastrophe" in Arabic), when approximately 750,000 to 1 million Palestinians were expelled from their homes by Zionist militias and internally displaced to the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Thus, UNRWA was created in 1949 to help facilitate and provide services to this displaced population. Moreover, the reason that the agency continues to exist today is because Israel refuses to allow those refugees the right to return, in violation of international law."

"The legal status of East Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory is firmly established under international law and has been repeatedly confirmed by United Nations Security Council Resolutions. By omitting this fact, you have excluded important context that explains why the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque is contested, and why events there can lead to an escalation of violence, as evident by the rocket strikes and Israeli violence over the last 48 hours."

"Your article presents several issues that contribute to unfair and unbalanced coverage of the Israeli violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. First, your headline, 'Two dead as violence in Jerusalem, West Bank simmers' should include the word Palestinian in it. Seeing as two Palestinians were killed it must be made clear in the headline."

"Israel’s preferred use of the politicized term “Arab” (or “Israeli Arab”) – which your article parrots – is intended to downplay the “Palestinian” identity of the vast majority of the members of this group. It also intentionally downplays the Palestinians’ connection with their land, suggesting that they are indistinguishable from Arabs elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa."