Al Jazeera forbids reporters from calling Jerusalem Israel’s capital — report

The Al Jazeera news network forbids reporters from referring to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, calling Israel’s military the IDF and referring to Israel as the Jewish State, according to The Washington Free Beacon, which said it had obtained the outlet’s style guide.

The style guide tells reporters, “Do not use Jewish state as a synonym for Israel,” and, “Do not use ‘Jerusalem’ as a synonym for the government of Israel, as one might use ‘Washington to imply the US government.”

For West Jerusalem, the guide from the Qatar-funded news agency says, “Never refer to it as the capital of Israel.”

Reporters are told to call Jewish visits to the Temple Mount as “incursions,” not visits. The Temple Mount is Judaism’s holiest site.

For the Israeli military, the guide says, “Do not call it Israeli Defense Forces or IDF. Also avoid ‘security forces.'”

The guide tells journalists to report the deaths of IDF soldiers “even if the Israeli Army has asked us to wait for its permission” so that the military can inform the soldiers’ families, if the soldiers are not named.

Gaza is to be referred to as occupied, even though Israel withdrew from the Strip in 2005, the guide says, arguing that Israel controls Gaza’s airspace and borders.

The guide also forbids writers from calling ISIS a terrorist group and from using the terms “jihad” or “Islamist. The term “fundamentalist” is barred, except when referring to some Christian groups.

The guide bars reporters from describing Turkey’s mass killings of Armenians in the early 20th century as a genocide, but says the Bosnian killings of Muslims in the 1990s should be called a genocide.