Media uses coverage of deadly terror attack to call Jerusalem neighborhood a ‘settlement’

BBC, CNN, and the New York Times describe Jerusalem’s largest neighborhood, targeted in Friday’s terror attack, as a ‘settlement’ in ‘occupied’ territory.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

Major media outlets, including the New York Times, BBC, and CNN, used their coverage of a deadly Arab terrorist attack to describe Jerusalem’s largest neighborhood, Ramot, as a “settlement” in “occupied” territory.

All three outlets refused to describe the deadly ramming attack targeting Israeli civilians at a bus stop by a Palestinian assailant as a “terror attack.”

On Friday afternoon, a Palestinian terrorist who had previously praised the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups on his social media accounts intentionally rammed his vehicle into a crowd of Israelis waiting at a bus stop in Ramot, a neighborhood in north-eastern Jerusalem.

A 20-year-old newlywed, and two brothers who were six and eight years old, were killed. 10 people were wounded, with several of them hospitalized over the weekend. The assailant was shot dead at the scene by a police officer.

However, despite the assailant’s clearly intentional targeting of the bus stop where observant Jews were standing and his history of celebrating terror on social media, several mainstream news outlets were careful not to refer to him as a “terrorist” or describe the incident as a “terror attack.”

A BBC article called the incident a “car ramming attack” but stopped short of using the word “terrorism.”

The BBC also described the location of the attack as being in “occupied East Jerusalem.”

Ramot is the most populous neighborhood in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital city, and sits on land which was placed under Israeli sovereignty shortly after the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel unified the city under its control.

Built in north-eastern Jerusalem, Ramot does not have a checkpoint, nor is it behind the security barrier.

A New York Times article, which declined even to call the terrorist rampage an attack, claimed that Ramot is a “settlement,” without acknowledging that it is a neighborhood located within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries.

“A man drove a car into a group of people at a bus stop outside an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem,” the NYT wrote.

A CNN report, which passively wrote that “a car drove into several people at a bus stop in Jerusalem Friday,” acknowledged that Israel applied sovereignty to the area in 1967, but emphasized the opinion of “international observers who consider Ramot a “settlement” built on “occupied land.”

“The incident took place at a bus stop at the Ramot intersection in an area that Israel considers to be a neighborhood in northern Jerusalem,” the report read.

“It is on land that Israel captured from Jordan in 1967 and then annexed, so Palestinians and many international observers consider it to be a settlement on occupied land.”