Surprise! Peace Now Head Yariv Oppenheimer Condemns Terror Victim’s Self-Defense

...CAMERA has previously noted Peace Now’s bias and credibility problems....Future reports would do well to note that the organization’s head has now put himself on record as accusing an Israeli who acted in self-defense, protecting himself and others as being guilty of murdering the terrorist who had tried to murder him.

Sean Durns..
CAMERA Snapshots..
11 March '16..

The head of Peace Now, an Israel-based organization that repeatedly has opposed the policies of the Israeli government, has condemned a victim of a Palestinian terror attack for defending himself.

Yariv Oppenheimer, the head of the organization, accused terror victim Yonatan Azarihab of “executing” his attacker without trial.

Azarihab was one of 11 wounded in a March 8, 2016 Palestinian terror attacks in Jaffa and Petach Tikva. The Jaffa attacks took the life of tourist and U.S. Army veteran Taylor Force, 29, a graduate student at Vanderbilt University.

Yet, after being stabbed in the neck, Azarihab fought back. The Israeli removed the knife from his own body and then used it to kill the terrorist who reportedly had set about to find other victims.

According to Israel National News, Oppenheimer blamed Azarihab for this act of self-defense that possibly saved lives. The Peace Now head took to the social media platform, Twitter, claiming:

“This is how it goes [,] from neutralizing terrorist to execution without trial.”

Ignoring numerous instances of poor and biased anti-Israel media coverage (for a list of some examples, see “Wave of Palestinian Violence Accompanied by Spate of Bad Writing, ”CAMERA, Oct. 14, 2015), Oppenheimer claimed “in the present atmosphere, no one in the media dares to report and deal with the issue.” Perhaps this is because the “issue” of Israeli extrajudicial killings is virtually non-existent. However, Palestinian Arabs wantonly trying to murder Israelis is very much an issue.


CAMERA has previously noted (“Israeli Court: Peace Now Lied, Must Pay Now,” Dec. 23, 2008) Peace Now’s bias and credibility problems. Among other instances, the advocacy group falsely claimed that “a large proportion of the settlements built on the West Bank are built on privately owned Palestinian land,” including 86.4 percent of the Jewish community of Ma’ale Adumim and 35.5 percent of Ariel. After repeatedly refusing to address concerns with these numbers raised by CAMERA and others, the group was forced to admit that only 0.54 percent of Ma’ale Adumim’s land was privately owned by Palestinian Arabs—an error of nearly 16,000 percent.

In 2008, a similar failure by the group to admit another false claim regarding Israeli settlements and owned Palestinian property led to a successful libel suit, in which Peace Now and some staffers were ordered to compensate aggrieved parties and to issue public apologies.

Despite this court decision, some media outlets still treat Peace Now as a credible source, failing to provide details of the group’s history to their readers (see, for example, “Post-Watch: Washington Post Discredits Itself on Israel,” CAMERA, Dec. 9, 2011). Future reports would do well to note that the organization’s head has now put himself on record as accusing an Israeli who acted in self-defense, protecting himself and others as being guilty of murdering the terrorist who had tried to murder him.

Link: http://blog.camera.org/archives/2016/03/peace_now_head_condemns_terror.html

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