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The Electronic Intifada - 4 January 2005<br>
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3476.shtml" eudora="autourl">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3476.shtml<br><br>
<br>
</a>Letters to the Media:<br><br>
NPR hides an atrocity but highlights the reaction<br><br>
Dear National Public Radio,<br><br>
NPR's Morning Edition today featured a report by Peter Kenyon about
the<br>
upcoming election for Palestinian Authority president in the occupied
West<br>
Bank and Gaza Strip. Kenyon's report was informative but did little
to<br>
challenge the dull conventional wisdom that Palestinian reform rather
than<br>
an end to Israel's military tyranny is the key to peace, and failed
to<br>
address in any detail the substantial obstacles Israel, the
Palestinian<br>
Authority and the international peace process industry have placed in
the<br>
way of genuinely free and fair elections. Nor did NPR pay attention to
the<br>
reality that the majority of Palestinians, who live in forced exile,
have<br>
been denied the opportunity to vote or to return home and participate,
while<br>
Afghan refugees were allowed to vote outside their country, and Iraqi
exiles<br>
are also scheduled to vote if their country's elections are held. Why
does<br>
no one involved in the peace process industry want Palestinian refugees
to<br>
have a say in their own future? Hmmm....<br><br>
Most disturbing, however, was Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep's
lead-in<br>
to Kenyon's report. Inskeep introduced the report thus:<br><br>
"Sunday's election for Palestinian president could provide clues to
the<br>
future of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The frontrunner is Mahmoud Abbas.
He's<br>
seen in the west as a potential partner for peace talks. He's calling
for<br>
demilitarizing the struggle against Israeli occupation and he
criticized<br>
some violence just today, but also today Abbas described Israel as
the<br>
"Zionist enemy." He has to appeal to Palestinian voters, many
of whom<br>
recently supported the Islamist Hamas in municipal
elections."<br><br>
This intro highlighted the phrase "Zionist enemy," and
suggested that it was<br>
a deliberate appeal to Palestinian extremism. But Inskeep did not
mention<br>
the shocking context in which Abbas used this, for him,
uncharacteristic<br>
language. What Abbas actually said, at a campaign appearance was,
"We came<br>
to you today, while we are praying for the souls of the martyrs who
were<br>
killed today by the shells of the Zionist enemy in Beit
Lahiya."<br><br>
The "martyrs" he was referring to were seven Palestinian
children, the<br>
youngest of them aged 10, murdered by Israeli occupation forces in
the<br>
northern Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) in
Gaza<br>
reported today:<br><br>
"According to preliminary investigations conducted by PCHR, at
approximately<br>
07:45 on Tuesday, 4 January 2005, [Israeli Occupation Forces] positioned
in<br>
military posts between "Elli Sinai" and "Nissanit"
settlements to the north<br>
of Beit Lahia fired a tank shell at Palestinian agricultural areas
located<br>
to the south of the fence separating the two settlements and Beit Lahia.
<br>
The shell directly hit a number of Palestinian children who were
farming<br>
their land. Seven children, including 2 brothers, were
killed."<br><br>
PCHR gave the names and ages of the dead as follows:<br><br>
Their names are: Hani Mohammed Kamel Ghaben, 17; Mohammed Hassan
Mousa<br>
Ghaben, 17; Rajeh Ghassan Kamel Ghaben, 10; Jaber 'Abdullah Ghaben,<br>
16; Bassam Kamel Mohammed Ghaben, 17; Mahmoud Kamel Mohammed Ghaben, 12;
and<br>
Jibril 'Abdul Fattah al-Kaseeh, 16.<br><br>
In addition, PCHR reported that two more children, aged 15 and 17, and a
41<br>
year-old male were injured in the attack. Israel, as usual, justified
the<br>
massacre as self-defense and claimed it was firing at a
"rocket-launching<br>
terror cell" and that the dead and injured were members of
Hamas.<br><br>
NPR often uses lead-ins to reports which have been filed earlier to
provide<br>
updated information. But Inskeep made absolutely no mention of this<br>
atrocity, and NPR apparently decided that Abbas' comment rather than
the<br>
killing of seven children was the "news."<br><br>
Once again we are faced with the question: if seven Jewish children had
been<br>
murdered in cold blood in this way would NPR have simply ignored it?
Would<br>
it have reported that Israelis chanted "Death to the Arabs" (as
they often<br>
do), without mentioning a minor detail like the killing of seven
children?<br><br>
From many long years of experience, we know the answer.
Consistently, year<br>
after year, we have documented that NPR is able to ignore the daily
deaths<br>
of Palestinians, while carefully reporting on much rarer
Palestinian<br>
violence against Israel. It is amazing that after years and years,
NPR<br>
continues to willfully devalue Palestinian lives with such bias. Is the
fear<br>
of being labeled pro-Palestinian now so great at NPR that it has lost
all<br>
integrity and perspective?<br><br>
Yours,<br>
Ali Abunimah<br><br>
Related Links:<br><br>
Ali Abunimah's Letters to NPR archive<br>
<a href="http://abunimah.org/nprletters/nprindex.html" eudora="autourl">http://abunimah.org/nprletters/nprindex.html<br><br>
</a>National Public Radio's Middle East coverage archive <br>
<a href="http://www.npr.org/news/specials/mideast/transcripts/index.html" eudora="autourl">http://www.npr.org/news/specials/mideast/transcripts/index.html<br>
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