The grammar of a death headline20 of 32 headlines name no killer · 1957 to 2022
Who is the subject of the sentence
The grammar of a death headline
This archive holds 32 news headlines that report Palestinians or Arabs being killed. Sorted by nothing more controversial than grammar, they fall three ways.
Twenty headlines report a death with nobody doing it. Someone is killed the way weather happens. “Three Palestinians killed, 137 injured.” “4 Palestinians killed in occupied territories.” “Heavy Toll in Gaza Protests.”
Six name Israel as the one doing it, across thirty-seven years. One of those six adds “witnesses say.”
The same habit, from the other side
When the state does appear in the sentence, it is often the one answering. Somebody else started it. Sixty-one years apart, the same construction:
British troops blew up three Arab houses at Daharia, near Hebron, “in reprisal for an Arab raid.”
Omaha World-Herald. The demolition is the answer. The raid is the deed.
CP-1937-010“Palestinian youths threw stones and bottles Sunday at Israeli troops who responded with rubber bullets.”
Houston Chronicle. Youths throw. Troops respond. One side acts and the other replies, and which is which was settled before the sentence began.
CP-2022-003Nine clippings here use the language of retaliation, reprisal or response. In six the state is the one retaliating; in two, Palestinians. Nine is a small number and is offered as an observation, not a measurement.
The same test, run on both sides
One headline, two deaths
4 Israelis killed in firebombing of bus; Arab dies in clash
Clarion-Ledger, 31 October 1988 · Associated Press
Same sentence, same paper, same day.
name a specific violent act — firebombing, ambush, shooting, stabbing
use only a mutual or weather noun — clash, unrest, violence, toll
Israeli deaths in these years mostly came from discrete attacks; Palestinian deaths mostly came during protests and military operations, so some of this is circumstance. But offensive, raid, bombardment, tank and incursion all appear in the body text of the same stories whose headlines say violence and toll. The eight were found by searching for Israeli deaths, which makes them purposive rather than random.