Israel has decided to reverse their previous decision and to allow Palestinian candidates to campaign in East Jerusalem. This is obviously a huge concession by Israel, which annexed East Jerusalem decades ago and considers it the undivided capital of the Jewish State. Not only is the concession considerable, but Israel is also under no obligation to grant it, since Palestinian political activity in Jerusalem is explicitly prohibited by the Oslo Accords – a treaty that the Palestinian Authority is bound to and that the US ostensibly guarantees (the US, incidentally, has been “playing a major role” in pressuring Israel to accede to the Palestinians’ demands regarding East Jerusalem). Anyway, Israel has decided to make this huge concession, allow Palestinian candidates to campaign for the Palestinian elections in Israel’s capital, etc – they’ve only left the requirement that the politicians who are campaigning can’t be calling for Israel’s destruction at the same time (something that Hamas has notably insisted it will continue to do).
So of course Reuters headline for this story is… “Israel limits Palestinian campaign in E. Jerusalem”. That’s the perfect description for this situation! This headline is still not our favorite – the recent ABC News headline about Israeli efforts to limit the massive missile barrage from Gaza at the end of last year (“Israel’s Sonic Booms Terrifies Gaza Children”) gets that honor. But this one’s close. These people have no shame.
UPDATE: The old headline is being rewritten to the damn-with-faint-praise “Israel lets some Palestinians campaign in E. Jerusalem” on various Reuters feeds (including the one we linked to above). We had to do a little searching to find a site that still had the original, outrageous headline. As of 1:29am PST, there are still a few sites that haven’t gotten around to erasing this evidence of outrageous bias. The UK Reuters feed, for example, appears to be a little slow and still has the old headline up. We expect that to change reasonably soon, so here’s a screenshot for posterity:
ANOTHER UPDATE: Because we are not very bright, we didn’t realize that we had another tab with the original page open (this alone should give you a good idea of our organization acumen). Regardless, here is a screenshot of the original Reuters Alertnet feed that was linked to above, including the URL. You can go there now and see for yourself that the headline has been modified. How pathetic.
