Dear Editor,
Most of “UK removes blog post praising late Lebanese cleric” is pretty good on a difficult subject. But there are problems with it (that’s what you want to know from us, don’t you?):
1. “Officials in Jerusalem were furious.” This needlessly sets Israel apart while the whole of the West was shocked at the attempts to extenuate an internationally recognized terrorist.
2. It leaves out the worst stuff, e.g. that he murdered two people with his own hands.
3. The sentence “He mellowed with age, losing much of his 1980s militancy.” That was not true across the board:
– As recent as in 2008 he praised the massacre of eight Jewish students at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem.
– As late as March 2008 he claimed that Israel had “inflated” the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. “But the world accepted this [figure], and it does not allow [sic – those powerful Jews – MM] anyone to discuss this.”
This last bullet can’t be an oversight by AP. This is our fourth critique on your Fadlallah reporting. See: https://apisraelwatch.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/top-lebanese-shiite-cleric-fadlallah-dies-at-75/
It’s OK & an art to depict his moderation on points, but it’s not OK to whitewash the most nasty side of him. You’ve committed yourself to fair, not to fairy-tale reporting.
Shalom,
AP Israel Watch 