Media Equivalence in Mumbai Reporting

Betsy Newmark reports on Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman's piece at the New York Post, "Mumbai: Deadly Media Euphemisms."

Betsy notes:

... Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman write in the New York Post note how several media outlets have been downplaying the attack on Jews in the Chabad House in Mumbai to minimize the fact that these terrorists specifically targeted that small group of Jews for torture and death.

The New York Times theorized that Chabad House may have been an "accidental hostage scene." The BBC initially chose to hide the Jewish character of the target by describing it as just "an office building." Al Jazeera refused to show Chabad House as the site of the carnage. Some Western media outlets unsympathetically labeled victims there as "ultra-Orthodox" or "missionaries."

We expect nothing better from Al Jazeera, but why would writers from the NYT and the BBC seek to downplay the murder of Jews in India? We can't begin to fight back in this terror war if we refuse to acknowledge the motives of our enemies.

This story actually makes me sick to my stomach.

Some of the most chilling pieces of news from the terror are the first-person accounts of the attacks. Witnesses described how the terrorists knew the precise location of the Chabad house. The killers proceeded deliberately to the site of the Jewish mission with a diabolical determination to kill, not just the Holtzbergs and their friends and colleagues, but anyone who happened to be on the scene.

I thank the Wall Street Journal for its integrity in reporting, for example, in its report yesterday on the scene at Chabad:

With its small, faded sign, the five-story Chabad House - which served as a guesthouse and source of kosher food for the many Israeli backpackers who travel through India - is so hard to find that most visitors ask for directions at the gas station. But the militants knew their way, a station attendant says: Without stopping, they threw a hand grenade into the gas station, and walked into the alley.

Alarmed by the explosion, Chabad House's rabbi, Gavriel Holtzberg, called the Israeli consulate. The two gunmen burst into his building, taking a number of Israelis, a young Mexican Jewish woman, and the rabbi and his family hostage. It appears that they quickly shot dead one of the guests, an Israeli kosher ritual inspector, whose body would be found badly decomposed at the end of the siege.

The explosion and gunfire attracted the attention of neighbors. Some young men started throwing stones toward the building. Manush Goheil, a 25-year-old tailor, stepped outside the family's shop to get a better view. His brother Harish watched from the shop as a gunman shot him dead with a well-aimed bullet fired from the Chabad House's top floor.

Pamela Gellar has photographs of Chabad in the aftermath of the killing. The walls of the house are splattered in blood.

The media need to report honestly on what is happening in our world.