VICTORIAN Opposition Leader Matthew Guy, who was in the Old City of Jerusalem last Friday when three terrorists killed two Israeli police officers, has slammed major news outlets for “fundamentally untruthful” reporting.
Guy was in the neighbourhood of the attack only four hours after he landed in Israel, when he was put in lock-down.
“There were police and army coming from everywhere,” Guy told The AJN this week.
“It gave a pretty good indication for someone like me from the other side of the world to what Israelis live with every day and what the IDF and the police forces have to manage all the time.”
After the initial shock, Guy started reading how the world’s media was covering the incident and said he was taken-aback by the “utterly false” coverage.
“A number of outlets, like the BBC and CNN, have a totally biased and fundamentally untruthful way of reporting these incidents,” Guy said.
“I saw how some of the news outlets had reported this incident and it was completely and utterly untruthful.
“They reported it as three people killed by Israeli police at Lion Gate, without mentioning the fact that it wasn’t just three people, it was three terrorists who murdered two police officers.”
Guy said that having been in the Old City himself when the incident took place, he was infuriated.
“I can understand why so many people in Israel are bewildered as to how some news outlets, particularly CNN and the BBC, have become ideologic warriors rather than just reporting all of the facts.”
He went on to ask how Australians would feel if an incident in Melbourne or Sydney were reported the same way.
“I just can’t understand – for the life of me, I can’t understand what the rationale is not to report full facts when it comes to terrorist incidents.
“Nothing can ever take away, having been there and seen it and experienced it and seeing the stress and pressure put on security forces in Jerusalem, seeing how it is reported and the reports are clearly, clearly, not the entire fact.”
Guy is in Israel on an Australia/ Israel & Jewish Affairs Council Rambam Study Program mission.