{"id":373541,"date":"2018-08-15T22:55:12","date_gmt":"2018-08-15T21:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/linguistic-contortions-in-gaza\/"},"modified":"2018-08-15T22:55:12","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T21:55:12","slug":"linguistic-contortions-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/linguistic-contortions-in-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Linguistic Contortions in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>News outlets have performed torturous linguistic contortions to avoid stating the simple fact that Israel is shooting hundreds of demonstrators with live ammunition, killing 30 and injuring close to 2,000. An <b>Associated Press<\/b> headline (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AP\/status\/982210518969536513\">4\/6\/18<\/a>) said, \u201cPalestinian Protesters Burn Tires, Sending Smoke Billowing at Gaza\/Israel Border; Israeli Troops Fire Back Sporadically.\u201d That\u2019s a logical impossibility: Israeli forces cannot \u201cfire back\u201d at people who aren\u2019t firing at them. The sentence rests on the absurd assumption that burning tires is the same as shooting people.<\/p>\n<p>Another <b>AP<\/b> headline (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/world\/2018\/04\/07\/gaza-buries-journalist-who-died-after-covering-mass-protests.html\">4\/7\/18<\/a>) said, \u201cGaza Buries Journalist Who Died After Covering Mass Protests,\u201d a reference to Palestinian journalist Yasser Murtaja, whom Israel shot while he filmed Friday\u2019s march in Gaza. Readers could conclude from the headline that Murtaja covered the protests and then went home and died of natural causes. In reality, he died because an Israeli sniper shot him.<\/p>\n<p>The <b>New York Times<\/b> (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nytimesworld\/status\/982276001714454530\">4\/6\/18<\/a>) tweeted this cryptic news brief: \u00a0\u201cSporadic rifle fire from the Israeli side of the Gaza border made clear that the Palestinian protests could elicit the sort of response that killed 20 people a week ago.\u201d Not only does the headline seriously muddy what happened, it also primes readers to blame Palestinians for being massacred, by saying their protests \u201celicited\u201d the massacre, which was merely a \u201cresponse\u201d to Palestinian actions.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"et_bloom_bottom_trigger\"><\/span><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nThis piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission from <a href=\"https:\/\/fair.org\/home\/linguistic-contortions-in-gaza\/\">FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>News outlets have performed torturous linguistic contortions to avoid stating the simple fact that Israel is shooting hundreds of demonstrators with live ammunition, killing 30 and injuring close to 2,000. An Associated Press headline (4\/6\/18) said, \u201cPalestinian Protesters Burn Tires, Sending Smoke Billowing at Gaza\/Israel Border; Israeli Troops Fire Back Sporadically.\u201d That\u2019s a logical impossibility: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2521,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-373541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}