Official PA news agency
only mentions murdered teens
in English version of news report,
but leaves out murders in Arabic report
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Today,
the official PA news agency WAFA reported two official PA statements,
which included condemnations of Israel's "collective punishment" against
Palestinians. They made no reference to the three Israeli teens who
were murdered by Palestinian terrorists and whose bodies were found
yesterday, but merely referred to "the disappearance of the three
settlers" as the reason for Israel's "attack against defenseless
Palestinian civilians":
WAFA reported:
"In
its 5th meeting, the government condemned the Israeli military attacks
on the Gaza Strip and the broad and ongoing Israeli military attack
against defenseless Palestinian civilians in the West Bank since the
disappearance of the three settlers."
[WAFA, the official PA news agency, Arabic website, July 1, 2014]
Earlier
in the day, WAFA published parts of a letter sent today by the
Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to three UN officials, also
condemning Israel's "collective punishment" of Palestinians.
WAFA's Arabic version of the report on the letter made no mention of the three Israeli youths who were kidnapped and murdered.
However,
in the official PA news agency's very similar English language report
on the letter, the murdered Israeli youths were mentioned, albeit as
"three allegedly abducted settlers." The report did not mention that the
teens' murdered bodies had already been found.
In
the English report, the letter sent by the PA's UN representative Riyad
Mansour to the UN leaders reportedly said that Israel's actions
constituted "collective punishment since the beginning of the Israeli
military aggression in search of three allegedly abducted settlers."
However, WAFA did not include any mention of the kidnapped and murdered
teens in its report to Arabic readers.
On
June 12, 2014, three Israeli teens, Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16,
and Naftali Frenkel, 16, were kidnapped while hitchhiking in the West
Bank. Israel responded to the kidnapping by conducting house-to-house
searches in Hebron and arresting hundreds of Hamas members. The boys'
bodies were found by Israeli security forces near Hebron on June 30,
2014. They appeared to have been shot to death soon after the abduction.
The
following is the English language version of the official PA news
agency WAFA's report. The Arabic paragraph that left out the mention of
the murdered Israelis is inserted for comparison after its English
equivalent, in italics and in brackets:
NEW YORK, July 1, 2014 (WAFA) -
"Permanent
Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, Ambassador
Riyad Mansour, sent Tuesday identical letters to the UN
Secretary-General, President of the UN Security Council (Russian
Federation) and President of the General Assembly on the ongoing
escalated Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in West Bank
and Gaza.
Mansour
underscored that many Palestinians were either killed or injured during
the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in the past two weeks, stressing that
the escalation of Israeli aggression threatens to further destabilize
the already fragile situation on the ground, pulling the region into
more violence, which, he said, requires the attention of the
international community, particularly the UN security council's
attention, whose mission is to preserve international peace and
security.
He said [that] as part of a collective punishment since the beginning of the Israeli military aggression in search of three allegedly abducted settlers,
more than 575 Palestinians were arrested across the West Bank, while
others were killed with Israeli live fire. (emphasis added by Palestinian Media Watch)
The
following is the English translation of the above paragraph as WAFA
reported it in Arabic. It does not mention the murdered Israeli teens at
all:
["In
addition, Ambassador Mansour wrote in his letter that Israel is
escalating its military operations throughout the West Bank, in a
deliberate attempt to stoke the tensions and conflicts on all fronts,
which has led to the arrest of more than 575 residents and the deaths of
several residents as Martyrs, as part of a policy of collective
punishment."]
Meanwhile,
Mansour expressed strong condemnation, on behalf of the Palestinian
leadership, over Israel's military aggression and its collective
punishment against the Palestinians, calling upon the international
community and the UN Secretary Council to put an end to Israel's crimes
and to hold it accountable.
He
reiterated the urgency to promptly and completely lift the inhumane,
illegal and immoral Israeli siege imposed on the Gaza Strip, stressing
the need to ensure the protection of the Palestinian people who are
under occupation, as well as to ensure respect for the law, including
the fourth Geneva conventions."
[WAFA, the official PA news agency, English website, July 1, 2014]
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