First, we were told that the serial killer who murdered so many people in Flint, Michigan was undoubtedly a white men motivated out of racism since so many of his victims were black. Then, it was reported that the man is an Israeli citizen named, Elias Abuelazam. Conveniently omitted from most original news reports: Not all Israelis are Jews. There are many Arabs who live as Israeli citizens and as it turns out, Abuelazam is one of them. The BBC, notorious for its biased anti-Israeli coverage, used the headline: “Israeli man held in airport over US serial stabbings.” The accompanying narrative described the suspect as an “Israeli citizen” failing to mention that he was Arab.
MSNBC’s online report wasn’t much better. It read: “Israeli held in investigation of serial stabbings” Four times, the Israeli heritage was mentioned in the article, never with the qualification that he was an Arab-Israeli.
NPR also reported the man as an Israeli, leaving out the Arab distinction.
At least ABC News identified the suspect as an Israeli-Arab early in their report..
In most circumstances, I do not consider nationality or race to be important where violence is concerned. If the man is a killer, he is a killer. That makes him evil whether he is Jew, Arab, or any other race. Still, these days, there are two important reasons for offering as much detail as possible:
1) The world doesn’t need much excuse to advance Anti-Semitism, so when somebody is merely described as an Israeli, the fact that he isn’t a Jewish-Israeli is important to anyone who fears a fresh round of pogroms. If the same newspapers, quick to question racism (due to the amount of slain African-Americans) now want to do an about face, claiming the Arab identity is unimportant, they will have some inconsistent actions to explain. One would think that people concerned about bigotry would want to avoid any fuel for Jew hatred fire.
This fear is vindicated in a report from Camera Snapshots:
“Although one could reasonably argue that the alleged perpetrator’s ethnicity is not relevant to the story, when media sources with a record of biased coverage of Israel omitted mention of the suspect’s Arab background and headlined his Israeli citizenship, the result was misinformed and bigoted commentary by readers. The assumption for many news consumers was, on the basis of such reporting, that the killer is Jewish. The reality and prevalence of this misperception was quickly apparent in a deluge of virulent anti-Israel and anti-Jewish talk-backs on blogs and news sites.
2) Since (despite the insistence of the Obama administration) we are in the midst of a war with Militant Islam, the Arab identity may have (hypothetically) been the beginning of a terrorist connection discovery on the part of the media if they were interested in doing their homework instead of being Politically Correct. As it happens, Elias Abuelazam is a Christian Arab and not a Muslim Arab. Possibly this distinction was the only thing eventually freeing up our media to admit any Arab ethnicity at all.
Meanwhile, we still seem to know little about this fellow and new facts keep morphing the story with every waking hour. Should it turn out that this Christian Arab ever converted to Islam, watch for much of the media to kill the news completely or bury it on the back page. I don’t mean to be cynical, but they have already muffed up this story several times, so I am maintaining a “wait and see” attitude.
Share this on
