On Thursday, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier, Eden Natan-Zada, shot and killed four Israeli arabs on a bus before he himself was killed by the crowd that gathered when the incident took place. The young soldier had been aWOL from the Israeli army since he had found out that he would be taking part in this month's withdrawal of settlers from the Gaza Strip.
Using an aP report, The Toronto Star reported the incident under the heading of "Jewish extremist shoots 4 Israeli arabs dead in bus". In addition to the headline, the Star used the words "extreme" or "extremists" a total of four times (and the word "militant" once) in describing Jews in Israel.
The more neutral news sources referred to Natan-Zada as "an Israeli soldier" or words to that effect. Even the associated Press, in later reports dropped the "Jewish extremist" description in favour of "an Israeli soldier".
There would be nothing objectionable to the way the Star chose to describe the 19-year-old if the label "extremist" wasn't limited to Jews. On the same day that the shooting occurred, ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, released a videotape threatening Britain with more attacks. While the Iraq War was given as one reason for the threats, al-Zawahri also repeated the mantra that terrorism will continue until the West leaves "all Muslim lands".
It's not too much of a stretch to label ayman al-Zawahri and al Qaeda as "Muslim extremists". But the only description of al-Zawahri that the Star gave was that of being al-Qaeda's "No. 2".
In keeping with their anti-Israeli and anti-american positions, The Toronto Star used the word "extremist" as much as they could in describing Eden Natan-Zada while judiciously avoiding labelling Muslims such as ayman al-Zawahri in the same way, even when they clearly use Islam as the basis for their terror.