Anti-Israel professor cares about pro-Israel grammar in news stories, but facts aren't important at all

Here is a great example of how anti-Israel academics can get their propaganda spread by pretending to write about something altogether different.

Annabelle Lukin is an Associate Professor in Linguistics at Macquarie University. She has decided to spread her hate under the pretext of critiquing the verb usage on stories from Gaza as not being adequately pro-Israel.

The recent killing of unarmed Palestinians by Israeli forces has sparked not only a reasonable outcry, but commentary on the language journalists use to report these events.

[O]ne of the most important but contested roles of modern journalism [is]the act of putting political violence into words.

The bad news for journalists is there is no neutral mode. If your words sound neutral, it’s likely you’ve simply avoided laying responsibility for the killings, or have imputed responsibility only indirectly.

She illustrates the story this way:

The entire article uses Gaza, and only Gaza, to make her point. Her Twitter account is littered with anti-Israel posts.

But it is ostensibly not an anti-Israel story but a critique of how journalists cover violence.

Maybe I'm just a rube, but while I agree that the wording of stories is important, accuracy should be far more important than "imputing responsibility."

Lukin's desired headline implies that those who were killed were merely protesters, the kind you might see in London or New York.

It is obvious that killing peaceful protesters is abhorrent.

But the Gazans were rioters, not protesters. Throwing firebombs, setting fields on fire with Molotov kites, gunfire and active attempts to invade another country are all military actions, not peaceful protest. Her suggested headline is deceptive, and knowingly deceptive.

Some 85% of those killed were linked to terror groups. That information is now known, and Lukin cannot claim ignorance since she clearly researched all the Gaza stories she could find. To portray them as mere "protesters"  - which most media did and continues to do is irresponsible journalism.

The offensive part of the Gaza stories isn't the grammar - it is the lies of omission in not describing the actual context of the riots as being a military operation, planned and executed by a terror group, using civilians as chaff to draw fire while the terrorists attempt to mount an invasion that would include murder and kidnapping. All of this is admitted to by Hamas itself.

To Lukin, the use of passive voice is a bigger problem than the media not doing their actual job of reporting.

Lukin is not concerned with facts - if they go against her hated of Israel.

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