Israelis Upset by Bombing Aim Anger at Arabs and Journalists

Right-wing Israelis burying a victim of a Jerusalem market bombing took out their anger on Arabs and journalists Tuesday, pelting them with stones and insults.

As the cortege of 72-year-old Shimon Cohen left a funeral parlor in Jerusalem’s working-class Shmuel Hanevi district, enraged Jews stoned passing Arab motorists and jostled and insulted press photographers.

“Die!” a bearded man in the black skullcap of an Orthodox Jew screamed at a television crew. Other demonstrators shouted “Death to the Arabs!”

Cohen was killed Monday by a pipe bomb hidden in the city’s central Jewish market that wounded nine others, all Israelis. Two radical Palestinian groups have claimed responsibility for the blast, which prominent Palestinian leaders condemned. Police are still investigating.

Israeli journalists said the assaults on reporters after the bombing were the most serious in the country’s history. At least two photographers needed treatment for head injuries, and other journalists were punched, kicked and pelted with fruit.

Militant rightists accuse the media of biased coverage of the Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, calling their reports harmful to Israel.

Conny Mus, who chairs the Foreign Press Assn., accused Israeli officials of helping to create the climate for such attacks with harsh criticism of the role of the media.

At the city’s Hadassah hospital, caretaker Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir visited four of the nine wounded. He appealed for calm and criticized Israelis who set upon journalists at the scene of the pipe-bomb blast on Monday.

“Journalists are not responsible for all these sad things, and even if people are irritated by what journalists write, they shouldn’t do these things,” Shamir said.

Yossi Olmert, director of the government press office, apologized to journalists attacked in the Mahane Yehuda market, and police promised to improve protection for reporters.