This article, published a couple days ago on the Jerusalem Post website, was originally entitled “Palestinian group calls for more ‘Nakba Day’ style protests”.
Within moments of the original posting an editor for Jpost dove in and made a simple amendment to the title replacing “protests” with “riots”.
Interestingly, within the body of the article, reporting on the call for a repeat of the non-violent protests carried out on this year’s Nakba Day on June 5, the anniversary of the beginning of the Six Day War, the word protest remains.
The use of the term riot is frequently used by the office of the IDF Spokesperson to characterize non-violent protest throughout the West Bank each Friday and Saturday in their English language releases in an attempt to justify the use of violence against the attendees of such protests, whether Palestinian, Israeli or international.
This semantic correlation between the armed branch of the State of Israel and its media is, in this reporter’s opinion, yet another example of the intertwined nature of the State and Israeli media, which is an incredible shame considering that the Israel has far greater laws protecting the freedom of the press than many countries in the world.
I wonder if a young reporter at the Jpost is being given a stern lecture on his or her choice of language as I type this.
Circarre Parrhesia is an editor and writer for the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, based in the West Bank town of Beit Sahour.
