Brutal Murder of Israelis Spun Out by Swedish Press



Ruth, Udi, Yoav, Elad,& Hadas Fogel



Saturday night’s grisly acts of terror in a family home in the settlement of Itamar left Ruth and Udi Fogel and three of their children dead, including their 3-month old baby. Yet Aftonbladet emphasized Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to allow hundreds (400-500) of new homes to be built in existing settlement blocs. In fact, that was the opener in the article titled “Yes to more settler homes after murder”. This kind of placement shows that the main shock for Aftonbladet is that Israelis would dare to build in existing settlements.   Dagens Nyheter, which ran a piece titled “Israel approves more settlements” went out of its way to point out recent events involving settler protests, as if this explained the murders.

The massacre itself was described in the Dagens article in two short sentences, and only after describing the estimated crowd of 25,000 mourners at the funeral as “thousands of angry and upset mourners”. 

Articles, for example this, which were available on both Reuters and AFP (usual international sources for the Swedish media) covered the massacre as a stand-alone item, but were not picked up.

What needs to be said here is that no actions could possibly justify the violent stabbing deaths of any of the Fogels, and most certainly not the killing of young children and a small baby. Both Dagens and Aftonbladet , unlike MEMRI (which translates Arab-language media), missed reporting the reactions of Hamas which called the massacre “heroic” and PA officials who condemned the murder while blaming the settlers for the massacre. If you read Aftonbladet frequently, the PA line may sound familiar…

One PA official had the nerve to tell this really big lie:

-"No Palestinian has ever committed such a murder against [parents] and a baby before... This raises questions regarding the rapidity with which the Israeli side rushed to blame the Palestinians for the act." 

Residents of Itamar have not forgotten the murders of the Shabo family in 2002, in which the mother , Rachel and three of her children were shot to death and 2 others were injured. The youngest killed was 5-year-old Avishai.  Israelis remember a number of Palestinian terror murders in which Israeli children were shot at point blank range as their mothers desperately tried to save them, but were also killed.  It’s also important to repeat that the PA incites terror by glorifying murderers on a regular basis, including the murderers of the Shabo family; the murderers were celebrated on PA TV just last month.

How anyone can be capable of these atrocities is beyond my understanding and I hope yours.  How the Swedish press can rationalize the murders is equally unfathomable.

For more real journalism on this topic see here and here.

By Chanah Shapira