Dose, a free daily newspaper published by CanWest, printed this line in a report today from Ramallah:
"Prisoners serving time for resisting Israeli occupation carry great moral weight in Palestinian society."
The problem? As we pointed out recently, "resisting Israeli occupation" is a vague term that Palestinians use to describe everything from throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers to blowing up restaurants. For example, the prisoners who authored the much-discussed "Prisoners’ Plan" were convicted of financing, planning and engaging in terror activities that left a trail of dead:
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Marwan Barghouti, Fatah-Tanzim leader, is serving five life sentences for attacks that killed a Greek monk and several restaurant diners;
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Sheikh Abdel Khaliq al-Natsche, senior Hamas leader, ran a network of charities that directly funded Hamas’ "military wing";
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Sheikh Bassam al-Saadi led Palestinian Islamic Jihad?s Jenin branch;
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Abdel Rahim Malouh, formerly No. 2 in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, helped plan the murder of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi;
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and Mustafa Badarne recruited dozens of Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine members to attack against Israeli soldiers and civilians.
And as the Globe and Mail recently reported, of the 109 Palestinian women and 313 Palestinian children in Israeli jails,
"’Sixty-four of the women and 91 of the youth have blood on their hands,’ prison authority spokeswoman Orit Stelster said."
In fairness, the report in Dose was was reprinted directly from a Reuters newswire report by Tom Perry. But newspaper editors must take responsibility for the content they publish — regardless of the source.
