October24, 2004

The editor IHT

Sir,

It is sad when a great newspaper like the IHT fails to meet journalistic standards. The Society of Professional Journalists requires that good journalism requires not only a clear distinction between news and views, but also that headlines, do not misrepresent or oversimplify out of context.

Unfortunately your headline "Palestinians respond to killing with mortar fire" (IHT Oct. 23-24) fails to meet these standards. That the mortar fire was a Palestinian response to Israel's slaying of a top "Hamas militant" is not a statement of fact. It is merely your headline writer's opinion and therefore out of place as a news headline. Others may justifiably conclude the opposite; that in reality, Israel's targeting of terrorist master mind Al-Ghoul was in response to his responsibility for the deaths of dozens of Israeli citizens, in major suicide bombings as mentioned in the body of your report.

Independent observers may also conclude that Israel's current actions in Gaza are an inevitable reaction to the firing of thousands of Qassam rockets as well as mortars into Israel.

My use of the "T" word, rather than "militant", in describing Al-Ghoul is fully justified by the statement in your report that the group, to which Al-Ghoul belonged has killed hundreds of Israelis in its opposition to the very existence of the Jewish state.

The entire concept of attack and response in the so-called cycle of violence misses the crux of the situation. The cycle does not begin with attack and counter attack. It starts with the obscene incitement to hate and kill all infidels, preached daily in the fundamentalist mosques, schools and media not only in Palestine, but in Asia, Europe and the USA.

Maurice Ostroff