The Daily Herald is a Chicago—area newspaper serving primarily the city's northwest suburbs, with a long record of anti—Israel editorials and news coverage.  On the final day of 2004, the Daily Herald distinguished itself by glorifying a collection of Arab murderers who had left this earth in 2004.  Among the paper's honorees as important people who died in 2004 was Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the father of Hamas in the Gaza strip, and the man responsible for suicide bombings which have killed hundreds of Israeli civilians. Another was Abu Abbas, the Palestinian murderer who shoved Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly Jewish man in a wheelchair, vacationing on a cruise ship,  into the water to drown in the mid 1980s when terrorists took over the ship.

The Daily Herald saluted these killers by including them in a photo gallery of 82 individuals who had died in 2004, including Nobel Laureates, US war veterans, entertainers, American soldiers killed in Iraq, an astronaut, sports figures and business leaders. The headline introducing the pictures states:

'Their dramatic legacies live on.' It then goes on:   'They enriched our lives in so many ways.  Their passings diminish us. So as the year draws to a close, here is a last look and tribute to some of the many notable figures no longer with us.'
 
The caption for Yassin notes that he was killed by Israel, presumably the guilty party for eliminating such a fine man from the earth. Only Yassin and a few US soldiers killed in Iraq have their cause of death listed. 

On another page of the paper, Yasser Arafat, the leading Arab terrorist killer of Israelis, gets even more special treatment, pictured alongside Ronald Reagan.

In response to two readers who emailed complaints, the same form letter went out over the signature of Assistant Managing Editor Jim Slusher, maintaining,

You are, of course, correct that Abul Abbas and Sheik Ahmed Yassin should never be included among a list of individuals who, as our headline said, "enriched our lives." That we published them in this way is a great embarrassment and a terrible mistake on our part. The photos Thursday were intended to list deaths of notable individuals, not necessarily people who made life better. Unfortunately, the person who wrote the headline for the package didn't look at every picture and was mistaken about the overall concept, and others involved also failed to review the page with appropriate diligence. Certainly, Yassin and Abbas shouldn't be characterized as positive influences

But this may not be just an editorial slipup. It  looks deliberate to me. The mention of the circumstances of Yassin's death is yet another indication that the Daily Herald is now a newspaper that assertively aligns itself with terrorist murderers of Jews.

This isn't the first time the paper has had trouble because of its affection for terrorists. The paper has run cartoons, news stories, and most egregiously, a long running column by Ray Hanania, most notable for its allergy to facts, and its love of disparaging comments and lies about Jews and Israel. Most newspapers demand at least minimal fact checking, even for opinion pieces.  This is not the case with the Daily Herald and Hanania.

Undoubtedly, the paper will make some sort of feeble apology tomorrow. It won't matter. This kind of outrageous behavior is what one might expect of a Hizbollah newspaper. If the current editors had run the paper during the holocaust, they might have had even more notables for their end of year summaries of the departed then too.

Richard Baehr   12 31 04