http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/08/026991.php Name that ethnicity
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August 13, 2010 Posted by Paul at 8:54 AM
Elias Abuelazam is accused of a series of stabbings in this country, mostly in Michigan and Virginia. Though he apparently has lived in the U.S. for years, having come here as a child, he is a citzen of Israel.
The accounts I've read about Abuelazam all note his Israeli citizenship. That's fair enough, though the initial report my wife showed me from the MSNBC website repeated this fact several times, which seems excessive.
But the MSM accounts I've seen fail to mention that Abuelazam is also an Arab. Today's front page story in the Washington Post, for example, omits this fact.
Israel has a large Arab population. During much of its history relations between Israel Jews and Arabs weren't bad. In fact, they were pretty good in Haifa, which I used to visit. But in the past 20 years or so, relations have soured and from what I gather, many Israeli Arabs feel a deep hostility towards the Jewish state.
Given the fact that Israeli Arabs are, in some senses, a "population apart," it would seem worth mentioning in any full article about Abuelazam that he is an Arab. But the MSM seems to want its readers in the dark about this fact.
The Post, in addition to pointing out Abuelamam's nationality, also notes that he is a Christian. This, I imagine, is to make sure that no reader infers from Abuelazam's name that he is a Muslim.
I wonder how the MSM iwould dentify the 33 year-old Abuelazam if he were originally from somewhere in the Middle East other than Israel. Perhaps he would be referred to as "a youth."