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I suspect that very few people know how misinformed the American
public is on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. As Ive looked into
American media coverage of this issue over the last five years, I
have discovered deeply troubling patterns of omission, distortion,
and systemic manipulation. Given that this is an issue of
life-and-death importance to Americans, to people of the region and
to citizens throughout the world, it is profoundly troubling to find
U.S. press coverage that is so consistently and pervasively flawed.
Because of this situation, Americans are tolerating and, at times,
actively supporting governmental policies regarding the Middle East
that are not only acutely injurious to the region and its peoples,
but are also intensely detrimental to the United States and American
citizens as well.
To determine how well the American media are
fulfilling their critical function, our organization has conducted
statistical studies of media coverage on this issue. Our methodology
is to examine clear, significant categories that are as impervious
as possible to subjective bias. It is our view that the medias job
is to report as accurately as possible the facts on a topic.
Indications about the extent to which the press is accomplishing
this can be objectively measured. Our findings have been staggering.
We have looked at the extent to which certain
media outlets, for example, The New York Times or ABC World
News Tonight, cover the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians in the
conflict. This approach allowed meaningful statistical analysis that
would be impossible in a qualitative study and provided a yardstick
by which to determine whether media demonstrate even-handed respect
for human life, regardless of ethnic or religious background. We
calculated the number of reports of deaths for each side during a
given period, and then compared these to the number of people
actually killed.
Reliable data for both populations is available
from the widely respected Israeli human rights organization, BTselem[1][2].
In our studies, we only included Israeli deaths directly caused by
the actions of Palestinians and vice versa. In addition to analyzing
coverage of all deaths, we specifically examine reports on childrens
deaths. These tragedies represent an especially human side of the
uprising and one that lies outside most peoples views of acceptable
violence in armed conflict. The killing of children is especially
repugnant to most people and these deaths elicit extreme disfavor
for those responsible for them. For this reason, studying how the
media covered the death of children is particularly significant.
In spring 2005, we completed studies of The
New York Times, the newspaper of record, and three of the major
television network evening news shows; ABC World News Tonight, CBS
Evening News, and NBC Nightly News. Not only are these news media
the major sources of information for millions of Americans around
the country, they are also the windows through which editors and
producers of smaller newspapers and broadcast news stations
throughout the nation view the conflict and gauge the accuracy of
their own coverage. Their significance in the formation of American
views on Israel/Palestine cannot be overemphasized.
For each of these media outlets, we examined coverage of deaths over
two separate year-long periods.
First, we analyzed coverage for the first year of the current
uprising, September 29, 2000 through September 28, 2001. This period
was selected for study in order to evaluate viewers and readers
first impressions, which are crucial as they continue to try to make
sense of the conflict. Coverage of this year set the context within
which all subsequent reporting on the conflict is viewed, forming
viewers and readers opinions as to who was initiating the violence
and who was retaliating.
Second, we studied the coverage for 2004 to
discover whether the patterns we found for the first year had
continued, diminished, or increased several years into the intifada.
We looked at two types of reporting on deaths.
The first and major focus of our study was on timely/specific
reports and mentions of deaths; e.g. four Palestinians/Israelis were
killed yesterday. It is this ongoing reporting of deaths that
provides people with their impression of a conflict. We also
calculated follow-up stories so that, in theory, numbers of death
reports could surpass actual number of deaths, giving percentages
that exceed 100 percent. We were surprised to find that this
frequently occurred but only for one population.
Secondarily, we examined cumulative reports,
e.g. The violence has left 200 Palestinians dead or 200 Israelis
have been killed in suicide bombings. While we believe that such
summaries of deaths can provide useful information, especially when
numbers for both populations are given in the same report (which,
sadly, rarely occurred), it was our view that such mentions are not
the equivalent of 200 individual reports on each of these deaths,
and needed to be enumerated in their own, separate category.
For The New York Times we studied
prominent reporting on deaths, i.e. deaths reported in headlines
and/or lead paragraphs, and then conducted a month-long sub-study on
deaths reported in the entire article. (Interestingly, we found that
the patterns discovered in our study of prominent reporting
essentially held true.)
For the television networks we studied
transcripts of the full newscasts in addition to introductions by
anchors. Our findings are disturbingly decisive as they reveal a
pervasive pattern of distortion. For every time period, for every
news source, for every category, except one, one populations deaths
were covered at significantly higher rates than the other in one
case 13 times greater. The favored population was the Israeli one.
We found that the only category in which Palestinian deaths were
reported at similar rates to Israeli deaths was in cumulative
reports, 200 Palestinians/Israelis have been killed, and that this
occurred only during the first months of the first year. After that,
even cumulative reports disproportionately covered Israeli deaths
over Palestinian deaths.
In addition, we were startled to find that not
only was daily reporting profoundly skewed, but that in 2004 not a
single network even once reported the kind of full, two-sided
cumulative one would expect to be a regular feature of news coverage
- the number of people killed among both populations since the
intifada had begun.
A clear picture emerges when we consider what
was actually going on and then at how events were reported. In the
first year of the current uprising, 165 Israelis and 549
Palestinians were killed. In 2004, a phase that the media reported
as a period of decreased violence,
107 Israelis and an enormous 821 Palestinians were
killed. In other words, the media were using a highly
Israeli-centric index for measuring calm/violence. A thread that our
findings showed to be common.
This pattern was found to be even greater for
reports on children killed in Israel and the Palestinian
Territories. In the first year, 28 Israeli children and 131
Palestinian children were killed. In 2004, eight Israeli children
and 179 Palestinian children were killed. In other words, during our
second study period, over 22 times more Palestinian children were
killed than Israeli children.
Many people have the reverse impression of
these death rates and of their trends, with many Americans believing
the chronology of deaths in this conflict to be the opposite of its
reality. A survey two years after the intifada had begun found that
90 percent of respondents either had no idea which children were
killed first in the conflict or thought them to be Israeli children,
despite the fact that at least 82 Palestinian children were killed
before a single Israeli child died, and that this killing of
Palestinian children had gone on for three and a half months before
a single loss of life occurred among Israeli children. The largest
cause of death of Palestinian children was gunfire to the head.
Our studies show why so many Americans have
such diametrically incorrect impressions.
In the first year of coverage, the New York
Times headlines and first paragraphs reported on Israeli deaths
at a rate almost three times greater than Palestinian deaths. This
2.8 to 1 ratio was the closest to parity that we found in all of our
studies. Perhaps that is why some pro-Israeli groups allege that the
Times is pro-Palestinian. ABC, CBS, and NBC covered Israeli
deaths at rates 3.1, 3.8, and 4.0 times greater, respectively, than
they covered Palestinian deaths.
Those who rely on these sources for their
understanding of the conflict are left with an illusion that
approximately the same number of Israelis and Palestinians have died
in the conflict; as all of the media outlets reported similar
numbers of deaths on both sides. ABC reported on 305 Israeli deaths
and 327 Palestinian deaths. The Times reported on 197
Israeli deaths and 233 Palestinian deaths in headlines and first
paragraphs. CBS and NBC both reported on more Israeli deaths
than Palestinian deaths. Hence, they were all giving the impression
of balanced coverage of a balanced violence during a time when 3.3
times more Palestinians were being killed.
For children, the disparity in coverage was
even larger for all four outlets.
The New York Times reported
prominently on Israeli childrens deaths at a rate almost 7 times
greater than Palestinian childrens deaths.
Significantly, we found that while the number
of New York Times prominent reports on Israeli childrens
deaths, through follow-up stories, exceeded 100%, prominent reports
on the death of Palestinian children represented a small fraction of
the number actually killed.
As a result, Times coverage gave the
impression that more Israeli children were killed than Palestinian
children during a time when 4.7 times more Palestinian children were
actually killed. Most of the networks were even worse: ABC reported
Israeli childrens deaths at a rate 13.8 times greater than
Palestinian childrens deaths, CBS at a rate 6.4 times greater, and
NBC at a rate 12.4 times greater.
Again, we saw a pattern among the networks in
which there were numerous follow-up stories on Israeli deaths, while
only a small fraction of Palestinian deaths were being similarly
covered:
In 2004, these distortions were amplified.
The New York Times reported prominently on overall Israeli
deaths at a rate 3.7 times greater than Palestinian deaths, and on
Israeli childrens deaths at a rate 7.5 times greater than
Palestinian childrens deaths.
ABC, CBS, and NBC reported Israeli childrens
deaths at rates 9.0, 12.8, and 9.9 times greater, respectively, than
Palestinian childrens deaths.
If graphs of these deaths and reports are drawn
chronologically for all four news outlets for both years of study,
Palestinian deaths are shown along a curve that closely resembled
the Israeli death rate, when in reality the actual curve for
Palestinian deaths is far higher and slopes upward far sooner. This
provides a striking visual illustration of the difference between
the reality, in which deaths are heavily concentrated on one side,
and the impression created in the major American media of a balanced
conflict.
The greater-than-100% figure for reporting on
Israeli deaths is explained by the fact that many Israeli deaths
were mentioned in multiple articles or newscasts, and Israeli deaths
often generated follow-up stories, whereas Palestinian deaths, when
they were mentioned at all, were usually only mentioned once. There
were, however, interesting exceptions to this rule. In 2004, for
example, two Palestinian leaders of Hamas were assassinated within a
month of each other. All four news sources reported each of these
for multiple days.
In our one-month sub-study of deaths reported
in full New York Times articles (as opposed to the headlines
and lead paragraphs), we found that the disparity in reporting grew
even greater. The number of Palestinian deaths that were reported
increased when the entire articles were studied. Ten Palestinian
deaths were reported for the first and only time in the last two
paragraphs of articles, but reports of Israeli deaths increased
also, and at an even greater rate, due to the repetition of reports
on Israeli deaths that had occurred in previous days.
Balance
The phenomenon of achieving a deceptive
appearance of reportorial balance, achieved through actual enormous
imbalance, was documented first by analyst Seth Ackerman of the
media monitoring organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
(FAIR). Ackerman conducted a study of National Public Radios
coverage of Israeli and Palestinian deaths during the first six
months of 2001, and entitled his report The Illusion of Balance.
Ackerman found that NPR, which was being accused by Israel partisans
as being Pro-Palestinian, had in reality reported Israeli deaths at
a rate almost two and a half times greater than Palestinian ones and
Israeli childrens deaths at rates almost four and a half times
greater than Palestinian deaths. (For his study, Ackerman considered
each reported death only once. If follow-up reports had been
included, it is possible that the disparity would have been even
larger.)
Moreover, Ackermans study included an
additional and extremely interesting category: a comparison of
reports on deaths of armed combatants amongst both populations. He
found that while an Israeli civilian victim was more likely to have
his or her death reported on NPR, Palestinians were far more likely
to have their deaths reported if they were security personnel than
if they were civilians. Such distortion, of course, gives the
impression that the Israelis being killed are civilians, and that
the Palestinians being killed are armed fighters. The reality is
that large numbers of civilians are being killed on both sides and
that far more Palestinian civilians have been killed than Israeli
civilians.
Such distortions on a national scale often grow
even greater on a local level, as news stories are cut to fit
smaller editorial holes and editors choose which to place on front
pages. For example, a six-month study of the San Francisco
Chronicles coverage of childrens deaths during the first six
months of the intifada found that they had reported Israeli
childrens deaths at a rate 30 times greater than Palestinian
childrens deaths. A similar study by Stanford professor John McManus
of media monitoring organization Grade the News found that San
Jose Mercury News front-page headlines had reported on Israeli
deaths at a rate 11 times greater than Palestinian deaths.
The U.S. Connection
Finally, in some way of even greater
significance, American connection to this conflict is virtually
never reported to the American public. This, while much of the rest
of the world is aware that American citizens are enabling Israeli
actions, Americans have no idea of this fact. More American tax
money goes to Israel than to any other nation on earth, accounting
for upwards of 30 percent of the entire US foreign aid expenditure.
When one adds the amount of aid sent to Egypt, disbursed as part of
an arrangement in which the Egyptian government reduced its support
of Palestinian rights, the amount of US tax money expended overseas
on behalf of Israel increases to over fifty percent of all US tax
money sent abroad.
Despite the considerable significance of this
information, analysis of the first six months of extensive reporting
on Israel in the San Francisco Chronicle revealed that
the Chronicle had never once reported the total amount of US
money being sent to Israel. In fact, in only three stories out of
251 did the newspaper even mention that US money goes to Israel.
Similarly, a study of the Mercury News found that only 1.1%
of the articles on Israel/Palestine contained information that the
US is providing aid to Israel and that the paper had never
reported to readers the full amount of money that American taxpayers
are giving to Israel.
What do all these case studies tell us about
American coverage in general? Let us imagine what would have
happened if a newspapers headlines had reported a sports event, for
example the World Series, backwards; that the score had been
reversed, the winning team declared the loser. The paper would have
been the laughing stock of the country.
Yet, in the reporting by all of these news
organizations there is an equivalent error in a situation involving
life and death, literally, and virtually no one noticed. Why? The
logical conclusion is that the entire environment of news that
Americans were accessing; television roundtables, radio talk shows,
magazine articles, etc., all communicated similar inversion.[1][3]
As a result of such patterns of omission, the
American public is deeply misinformed. Americans are often unaware
of even the simplest facts of the current uprising, and while the
rest of the world understands the American responsibility for
Israeli human rights violations, most Americans do not.
While we have not yet conducted the kind of in-depth study necessary
to answer the question what is causing this distortion and omission
in the American media?; we have stumbled across incidents that may
provide clues. Following is some anecdotal information to consider.
Filter #1:
Problems with the Associated Press in Israel
The Associated Press is the oldest and largest wire service in the
world and is the major source of foreign news for American
newspapers and television stations throughout the country. It is
also a major source of the problem.
Last fall, during a visit to the West Bank, we stumbled upon two
highly revealing incidents. The first took place in Balata Refugee
Camp outside Nablus, where
we
were told of an incident that had occurred approximately two weeks
before. There had been one of the regular Israeli incursions into
the camp, in which Israeli armored vehicles drive down the narrow,
densely crowded main street of the camp, asserting their control.
The vehicles had stayed there for twenty minutes and there had been
no resistance against them. At one point an Israeli soldier poked
his gun out the porthole of his vehicle, aimed at a boy nearby and
pulled the trigger. The boy, who looked to be about 13, was shot in
the lower abdomen with a metal bullet coated by rubber. A Reuters
photographer had photographed this incident and an Associated Press
cameraman had filmed it. We were told that the video of the incident
had been sent to the AP bureau in Jerusalem and that it had been
erased.
We were shocked that this footage was not
considered newsworthy and decided to look into the incident further.
In Balata, there were a handful of international peace activists,
several of whom had witnessed the event and described it to us in
detail. They had recorded the number of the Israeli armored vehicle
and had written down the names of the two photographers who had
filmed the incident. We talked to both photojournalists, who
confirmed the facts. We found the hospital where the boy was still
being treated, interviewed the boy himself, his father, his older
brothers and the doctor who had treated him. All the facts confirmed
what we had been told. The boy was named
Ahmad Mohammed Karan
and it turned out that he was actually 14, though he looked
considerably younger. He had been shot with a rubber-coated steel
bullet, which had penetrated his bladder. He had undergone an
operation and was still recovering.
The boy told us he was afraid of Israeli
soldiers. He showed us a scar on his leg, where he had been shot
previously. While we were in the hospital, we came across several
other youths who had been shot. One had a fractured femur. He said
he hadnt even been throwing stones, but that next time he would.
Another boy had been shot in the chest. The doctors had barely saved
him. Another boy, a visitor, showed us a scar where part of his lip
should be and missing teeth that had been shot out. We had a video
camera along and filmed all of this.
A few days later, we traveled to Jerusalem and
went straight to the AP bureau. We questioned the bureau chief,
Steve Gutkin, about this incident and why the tape was erased
instead of broadcast. He became flustered and said he wasnt allowed
to say anything and that AP requires its Corporate Communications
office to respond to all requests for information. In other words,
AP had video footage of an Israeli soldier specifically and
intentionally shooting a young Palestinian boy who was not attacking
them and they erased it. I wonder how often they do this.
Misleading Bylines and Datelines
While we were still in the West Bank, we
decided to investigate further. Months earlier I had heard that AP
had a bureau in Ramallah in the West Bank, but when I had phoned AP
in Washington DC and New York about this, no one seemed to have
heard of it. AP receptionists kept trying to look it up and then
would give me the number for the Jerusalem bureau, saying that was
the only one listed.
We traveled to Ramallah, phoned a Palestinian
agency and asked if there was indeed an AP bureau in the city. They
said there was and gave us the phone number. We called this and were
readily given directions to the bureau. When we arrived, we found a
fully-staffed, professional bureau. While the Jerusalem bureau,
which is in Israel, had appeared to be largely, perhaps exclusively,
staffed by Israelis and Jewish Americans, this office appeared to
contain highly trained journalists of Palestinian ethnicity.
We spoke to the bureau chief and an associate
at length. They described how their news process worked. They and
other correspondents throughout the Palestinian territories would
cover events that took place in the area then send or call their
reports to editors in the Jerusalem bureau who would write the
actual article.
While we were there, they received a phone call
from a correspondent in Nablus. A 12-year-old boy had just been
killed. The boy, Bashar Zabara, had been throwing stones toward
Israeli forces approximately 300 meters away. He had been shot in
the throat with live ammunition. The bureau chief immediately phoned
the Jerusalem bureau with all the details. He told us that
journalists in the Jerusalem bureau would then write up the story
and send it out to the many worldwide papers that subscribe to APs
services.
The fact that everything reported by the West
Bank bureau was vetted by the Jerusalem bureau flagged our
attention. AP Jerusalem was the bureau that had recently erased
footage of a similar incident. We asked the Ramallah bureau
journalists if they could send out wire stories themselves. They
said no, that all reports went through the Jerusalem bureau.
We remembered the Ramallah bureau chiefs name
from having occasionally seen articles with his byline in the past.
Confused, we asked him if he ever wrote news stories himself. He
said no, that he always called the information into Jerusalem and
that they then wrote the stories there.
We were surprised and concerned to learn that
the bylines and datelines of stories were being misrepresented in
this way. Given the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and
the fact that the two ethnicities live and suffer in two different
(if neighboring) locations, both the location and ethnicity of
journalists writing about the conflict are particularly relevant.
While it is certainly appropriate to give full credit to journalists
who gather information for a story, it was highly misleading if
stories with a Palestinian byline and West Bank dateline are
actually being written by Israeli and Jewish correspondents living
in Israel.
If such a situation is, for some reason,
necessary it would seem important to disclose this fact with more
accurate attribution. Instead, we have articles containing a spin
that I suspect the authors cited in the byline would often be
displeased to see, much less to receive credit for writing.
Back in the US, I looked up AP coverage of the
12-year-old who was shot in the throat while we were in the Ramallah
bureau, and found no story. The Jerusalem bureau had not sent out a
story on the incident. I found an AP photo on the internet but could
not find a single American publication that printed it; perhaps
because there was no connecting story. In addition, AP Jerusalem had
sent out no reports about any of the children with shattered bodies
that we had visited in the Nablus hospital, despite the on-the-scene
presence of paid AP journalists.
Finally, I also phoned AP Corporate
Communications and asked about the missing videotape. I gave all the
details to the director who, when I phoned him a few days later,
said that he had looked into it, and that this was an internal AP
matter, and that he could tell me nothing about it.
Filter #2:
Associated Press in the U.S.
Flaws with AP coverage are not restricted to
this and another example is news reports on the death of Admiral
Thomas Moorer, a four-star admiral and former Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking military position in the United
States.
For many years Moorer, a World War II hero, had
strongly condemned Israels 1967 attack on the USS Liberty[1][4],
a virtually unarmed US Navy intelligence ship. Israeli forces had
killed 34 American servicemen and injured 172; stretcher-bearers
were machine-gunned and lifeboats were shot out of the water.
Following the attack, crew members, surrounded by blood and body
parts, had been ordered by the Government not to speak to anyone
about what had just been done to them and were dispersed to new
postings around the world. One critically injured crewman, who had
been evacuated to a hospital in Germany, woke up to find military
policemen on either side of him and an identity band on his wrist
with someone elses name on it.[1][5]
Moorer had been outraged both at the attack and
at the U.S. governments cover up of Israels actions, both regarding
the USS Liberty and elsewhere, once stating If the American
people understood what a grip these people have got on our
government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens dont have any
idea what goes on[1][6].
Moorer had long called for an investigation
and, a few months before his death, he had chaired an independent
commission on the incident, reading a report on Capitol Hill that
said, among other things: Israel committed acts of murder against
American servicemen and an act of war against the United States.[1][7].
A few months later Moorer died. The first quick
AP obituary that came out about him contained one sentence about his
statements on the Israeli attack. It was minimal, but present.
Within a few hours, a longer obit came out containing a great deal
of additional information about Moorer, but someone had removed the
sentence on the Israeli attack.
Leaving Americans Out of the Loop
Further to the above, there have been incidents in which news
reports were sent out on APs international wire but were not
distributed to American newspapers, or were only sent after long and
perplexing delays.
On September 29 2004, two American Christian nonviolent protestors
walking Palestinian children to school were beaten brutally by
Israeli settlers using chains and baseball bats.[1][8]
There were reports of this incident by Reuters and AFP but nothing
by AP. It was extraordinary that an attack on US citizens was not
covered by the largest and oldest US wire service. After phoning
various AP desks in Washington and New York asking about the story,
finally, a day and a half after the world media had covered it, AP
ran a story.
On October 5th, a 13-year-old girl was killed in Gaza,
her body riddled with at least a dozen bullets reportedly shot from
close range by an Israeli platoon commander. There was an AP story
about it, which was on the Haaretz website. The story, once
again, had been sent around the world, except to US newspapers.
After more phone calls demanding an explanation, that evening,
approximately 12 hours after the report was sent on the
international wire, AP sent the report to US newspapers.
The next day a 10-year-old girl was shot in the chest while sitting
in a school in Gaza. Again, the story was sent worldwide. Again, it
was not sent to US newspapers. Again I phoned and phoned. This time
the story came out on US wires.
My findings are that the determination of where to disseminate APs
news stories is made by its international desk in New York. I have
been unable to learn on what basis these editors considered the
above stories newsworthy in Norway but not in New York.
Filter #3:
Local Newspapers
Near the beginning of the current Intifada I
was in the West Bank as a freelance journalist and visited the home
of a nine-year-old boy minutes after he was killed by Israeli
forces, shelling the neighborhood in which he and his family lived.
Two days later I was at the funeral of a mother of three who had
been killed by Israeli fire as she returned from the market. A few
days later there was a suicide bombing in Israel. I happened to
visit a hotel in East Jerusalem and saw that the New York Times
had published a front-page story about the Israeli deaths.[1][9]
The paper had not run similar headlines about the two Palestinian
deaths, but the article about the suicide bombing had contained some
information about both: one phrase each, in the second paragraph.
Near the end of the article, which was full of graphic descriptions
of the Israeli tragedies, there were a few paragraphs about Israeli
crowds beating random Palestinian-Israelis to a pulp and chanting
Kill Arabs.
In the San Francisco Bay Area library, while
checking the San Francisco Chronicle coverage of the events,
it was apparent that this paper also had neglected these deaths at
the time. It had, however, carried the New York Times article
about the suicide bombing that had followed. However, it was
astounding to see that someone had surgically excised the sentences
near the top of the story telling of the Israeli killing of a
nine-year-old Palestinian boy and a mother of three. The person had
also deleted all information about the Israeli mob violence.
While such groups as Amnesty International have
condemned Israel for its routine torture of Palestinian prisoners
for decades[1][10],
coverage of such abuse virtually never appears in American media.
In sum, Americans relying on their media for information on the
current situation in Israel and Palestine have little idea that
Palestinian civilians are being killed in far greater numbers than
Israeli civilians, that Palestinian children are being killed in far
greater numbers than Israeli ones, that Palestinian casualties began
significantly sooner than Israeli ones, that Palestinian prisoners
are routinely abused and that Americans are directly involved in
this conflict. We have just touched the tip of the iceberg of this
pattern of distortion and omission.
Why Does This Matter?
American citizens have the power to overturn governmental policies
with which they disagree. When large numbers of Americans became
convinced that the Vietnam War was wrong, they ended it. When
growing numbers of Americans opposed U.S. support for South Africas
system of apartheid, this support was eliminated.
Interestingly, despite the pro-Israel distortion sketched above,
American support for Israel is already less whole-hearted than one
might expect. In fact, according to dozens of opinion polls
conducted over many years, three-quarters of Americans think the
United States shouldnt take sides on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. In other words, Americans already oppose the massive
amounts of their tax money being sent to Israel and the consistent
intercession of the U.S. on behalf of Israel in the international
arena, they just dont know these things are going on. There is no
doubt that when Americans learn these facts, as well as additional
information about how Israel is using the power handed it by the
United States, they will exert their electoral power to revamp U.S.
foreign policy once again.
At that point, the power dynamics in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict will change drastically and Israeli leaders will finally,
for the first time in its history, be forced to begin to adhere to
international law and morality. We urge anyone who seeks justice in
Palestine, peace in the Middle East, and the creation of the kind of
world all our children deserve, to help in our efforts to
overcome the information blockade on Palestine. I am convinced that
with unified and unwavering efforts we will succeed in this quest.
We must.
*
Alison Weir is the Executive Director of If Americans Knew, an
organisation whose mission it is to educate and inform the American
public on the issues of major significance that are unreported,
underreported, or misreported in the American media. Alison Weir is
also an independent journalist.
[1] For more information, visit
www.btselem.org.
Because of conditions in the Palestinian Territories, confirmations
of deaths often lag behind their occurrence. Thus, BTselems
statistics for Palestinian deaths tend to increase over time. For
this reason the numbers on Palestinian deaths in this study slightly
exceed the numbers noted in our previous studies.
[2] Richard Curtiss, The Cost of Israel to US
Taxpayers, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Dec. 97,
pp 43-45,
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/1297/9712043.html
[3] For more information about the attack on
the Liberty, visit
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ussliberty.html
[4] Assault on the Liberty, James Ennes
(Random House 1980; Ballantine 1986; Reintree Press 2002),
http://www.ussliberty.org.
[5] They Dare to Speak Out (Lawrence
Hill Books, 1989), Paul Findley, p. 161.
[6]
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ul-commfindings.html
[7]
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/heroism.html
[8] Deborah Sontag,
Suicide Bomber Kills 3 Israelis, New York Times, March 5,
2001; its interesting to see how this situation was reported
elsewhere; for example, the Houston Chronicle carried Sontags
story under the headline:
Palestinian suicide bomber kills 3 Israelis: Attack gladdens West
Bank mourners as conflict grows
[9] Neve Gordon & Ruchama Marton, Torture:
Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the Case of Israel, Zed Books,
London; See for example, Amnesty International Report, Israel and
the Occupied Territories: Mass detention in cruel, inhuman and
degrading conditions, May 23, 2002,
http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engmde150742002.
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