Month: July 2014

Following are a few short questions for the New York Times in regard to a recent news report:

1. When are you going to cover the killing of Palestinians the same way you cover the killing of Israelis?

Israel’s killing of at least 8 civilians in one day was relegated to the second half of the story and not mentioned in the headline.

The murder of a father of three children, a staff member for Defense for Children International, got two sentences in the 17th paragraph. Israeli forces’ killing of a 17-year-old got one sentence in the 25th paragraph. The killing of a 12-year-old and a 15-year-old got a half sentence – between them – in the 27th paragraph.

2. When are you going to stop calling Palestinians who are fighting to protect their homeland “militants” and start calling them resistance fighters?

3. When are you going to stop framing this as “Israel against Hamas” rather than Israel against Gazans? Or Israel against Palestinians?

The vast majority of the over 800 people Israeli forces have killed in the last 19 days are civilians, many of them children. The vast majority of the over 5,000 injured are civilians, many of them children.  Israel is, once again, destroying large amounts of civilian infrastructure: hospitals, schools, roads, family homes, etc.

4. When are you going to include crucial context on the American connection – that hard-pressed American taxpayers give Israel $8.5 million per day?

When are you going to mention that we have given tiny Israel far more of our tax money than to any other country – In total, over $233.7 billion (corrected for inflation). Currently, on average, 7,000 times more per capita than to others around the world.

5. When are you going to tell your readers that senior “objective” reporter Isabel Kershner was a British citizen who went to Israel to become an Israeli citizen? When are you going to divulge her family ties to the Israeli military?

6. When are you going to include the true context of the violence:

• Gaza is basically an open-air prison that Israel has been starving for over seven years (an Israeli official called it putting Palestinians “on a diet“),
• Rockets from Gaza began in April 2001 AFTER Israeli invasions and shelling of Gaza, that the vast majority of these rockets are small, home-made projects that cause no damage (and that this was the case long before the Iron Dome system was deployed),
• During entire time the rockets have been used they have killed a total of approximately 30 Israelis, while during this same period Israeli forces have killed over 4,700 Gazans?
• The Jewish state was created through a war of ethnic cleansing, and that the allegedly “only democracy in the Middle East” has no constitution and has never declared its borders,
• Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are living on approximately 15 percent of their original land.

7. When are you going to give readers the facts without Israeli spin?

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Alison Weir is president of the Council for the National Interest, executive director of If Americans Knew, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: How the US was used to create Israel.

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCE

Statistical Report on New York Times coverage of Israel-Palestine

There are some videos posted on Youtube with titles such as “CNN’s Jake Tapper Demolishes PLO Spokeswoman.” Tapper’s questioning is extremely aggressive and reflects a pro-Israel approach to the current violence. (Israel is again massacring Gazans like shooting fish in a goldfish bowl. Instead of discussing this, Tapper focuses on the rockets from Gaza, but seems to know/care little about the real facts about these and about the conflict in general.)

I wondered where Tapper’s bias came from, and learned some information about his upbringing that I suspect influences his journalism:

Tapper attended Akiba Hebrew Academy, since re-named Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy, which is proud of inculcating its students with loyalty to Israel.

The school website states that it “offers a unique study abroad program in Israel during the fall trimester of a student’s junior year.  In this program, learning comes to life as students supplement their formal academic studies with trips to historical sites that parallel their study of the history of the Jewish people and Israel…”

The site notes that many of their students report that their experiences in Israel “are life-changing; they return to Barrack with greater maturity as well as a stronger personal connection to Israel and their Jewish roots.”

Tapper’s alma mater emphasizes: “…we are committed to the centrality of Israel and the State of Israel.”

There is, of course, always the hope that Tapper will transcend this early conditioning, shared by so many US journalists. However, so far there is little indication that he has done so. Especially, of course, when pro-Israel elements are so strong in today’s media, it’s not a good career move to report too fully and honestly on the conditions of Palestinians.

RELATED STORIES:

Myra Noveck & the New York Times:  Another journalist with children in the Israeli military, “US Media and Israeli Military: All in the Family,” “Jodi Rudoren, Another Member of the Family: Meet the New York Times‘ New Israel-Palestine News Chief,” and “Ethan Bronner’s Conflict With Impartiality“

 

 

Since US media are reporting the latest Israeli massacre in Gaza as though it is a defensive action, I thought I would set the record straight. Israeli forces shelled and invaded Gaza BEFORE the rockets began. Rockets were fired only after numerous Palestinians, including many children, had been killed.

The first rocket fired by Gazan resistance groups into Israel was in October 2001.

By happenstance, I was traveling throughout the Palestinian Occupied Territories just before that – during February-March 2001 – as a freelance reporter.

While I was there, Israeli forces were regularly shelling both the West Bank and Gaza, and had been doing so for several months. Gaza was particularly hard hit. (An article I wrote at the time can be read here.)

Below are some of my photos from Gaza from February 2001 (i.e. BEFORE any rockets had been fired, and long before Hamas was elected in 2006.)

A few months before, in fall 2000, massive unarmed demonstrations against Israeli occupation began, eventually growing into what is known as the “Second Intifada” (uprising).* Israeli forces immediately used lethal means to try to put this down. An Israeli newspaper reported that the Israeli military fired over a million bullets in the first few days alone.

In the following three months Israeli forces killed over 90 Palestinian children – before a single Israeli child was then killed, and long before any rockets were fired. (The largest single cause of these Palestinian children’s deaths was gunfire to the head.)

In fact, in every year since, far more Palestinian children have been killed than Israeli children:

Israeli shelling, military ground invasions, and abductions of Palestinians have continued throughout the following years, occurring, except for few  ceasefires (which Israeli violence consistently ends), virtually every day.

Some groups (usually not Hamas), have also periodically fired rockets at Israel through these years.

During that time Israeli forces killed 4,000 Gazans, while Gazan resistance fighters using rockets killed 27 Israelis. On average, Israelis have killed a Palestinian child every three days.

By the way, the Iron Dome sysem has played a somewhat minimal role in the small number of Israeli deaths from rockets. Iron Dome wasn’t begun to be put in place until March 27, 2011. In the ten years before, there were only 17 deaths. For a full analysis go here.

Who originally began this violence?

Of course, the conflict between the two groups began before fall 2000, so let us go back and see how this all started, and which party initiated the violence.

That’s actually quite easy to do.

You don’t need to go back “thousands of years,” as some people believe. In reality, in the late 1800s this region – known as Palestine – was peaceful and had been so for centuries. Its population was about 80 percent Muslim, 15 percent Christian, and a little under 5 percent Jewish; all practicing their faiths side by side largely without conflict on land considered sacred to all three groups.

The problem began when a political movement called “Political Zionism” began in the late 1800s in Europe (and also in the United States) with the goal of pushing out the inhabitants and creating a Jewish state on this land.

The culmination of their efforts came in 1948-49, when Israel was created through warfare. At least 750,000 of Palestine’s non-Jewish inhabitants, approximately half of the total population, were ethnically cleansed, their lands, businesses, orchards, and other property (worth many millions of dollars) confiscated by the newly created Jewish state, Israel.

The Palestinians’ crime was being there.

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By the way, the belief – also pushed by US media – that the current wave of violence began with the abduction and murder of three young Israelis is also incorrect.

The fact is that Israeli forces had killed at least 4 Palestinian children and approximately 35 Palestinian adults in 2014 BEFORE the abduction/murder of the 3 Israelis.

Also, one of the largest group hunger strikes in history was going on among Palestinians who were being held illegally in Israeli prisons — these “administrative detainees,” Israel’s Orwellian term, are prisoners who have never even been charged with a crime, yet are held for months or years. Many are tortured.

Even JJ Goldberg, a fervently pro-Israel journalist, says that Israeli “politics and lies” are behind Israel’s current aggression.

The pro-Israel spin, despite being repeated over and over, just doesn’t survive the facts.

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For a synopsis of the history go here, for a more thorough discussion go here, for the US history go here.)

An account by another person who visited Khan Yunis (this is also spelled Khan Younis) a year later can be read here. Below is one of his photos:

And below are some photos I took when I was last in Gaza, July 2009:

 

 

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* This is also sometimes called the “Al Aqsa Intifada,” after the location where some of the first demonstrations began.

“Intifada” literally means “shaking off” of oppression. The American Revolutionary War, for example, could be similarly called the American Intifada against the British.