My own first response to the awful news that a Palestinian teenager had been murdered was to assume this was a revenge attack. However now this seems more uncertain, although clearly shouldn’t be ruled out. The police need to keep an open mind in order to ensure that the killers are brought to justice.
I hadn’t noticed the Independent’s headline – ‘Israel murdered teenagers: Body of abducted Palestinian teen found in Jerusalem in ‘suspected revenge killing’ – until I saw it flagged on the Elder of Ziyon blog. EoZ takes the headline at face value, and (rightly) draws attention to the inflammatory effect of blaming the murder not simply on Israelis, but on ‘Israel’. (This death, unlike those of other Palestinians, and leaving aside the rights and wrongs of recent Israeli actions in the WB and Gaza, has nothing to do with the Israeli state.)
The Independent is not known for its pro-Israel stance. However, unlike EoZ, I’m more inclined to think the headline is a mistake, that the first three words were meant to be a reference to the Israeli teens – should it have read ‘Israel’s murdered teenagers’ perhaps? I have asked for clarification, but so far have received no response.
Update: I’ve just looked again and the Independent has recently changed the headline to ‘Israeli murdered teenagers’. This is still confusing. Is it an awkward reference to the three murdered boys, or an assertion that an Israeli murdered Palestinian teenagers, even though the story only refers to one boy, Mohammed Abu Khdair. More probably the former, although the fact the mistake occurred in the first place, the way it was then disseminated by those linking to the story, is itself telling.
Update Two: Some useful further information from Cifwatch – definitely a cock up not a conspiracy, and the headline has been revised yet again, and is now much clearer.
