Pressure Groups and Censorship in
Israel/Palestine
Israel and Palestine, Choosing Sides
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/sides.html#end
Alison Weir
Founder and Executive Director of If Americans Knew
Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories
Consortium; September 15, 2004
The most monumental cover-up in media history may be the one I’m about
to
describe. In my entire experience with American journalism, I have
never found
anything as extreme, sustained, and omnipresent.
Three and a half years ago, when the current Palestinian uprising
began, I
started to look into Israel and Palestine. I had never paid much
attention to
this issue before and so – unlike many people – I knew I was
completely
uninformed about it. I had no idea that I was pulling a loose piece of
thread that
would steadily unravel, until nothing would ever be quite as it had
been before.
When I listened to news reports on this issue, I noticed that I was
hearing a
great deal about Israelis and very little about Palestinians. I
decided to go
to the Internet to see what would turn up, and discovered
international
reports about Palestinian children being killed daily, often shot in
the head,
hundreds being injured, eyes being shot out.1 And yet little of all
this was
appearing in NPR reports, the New York Times, or the San Francisco
Chronicle.
There was also little historic background and context in the stories,
so
this, too, I began to fill in for myself, reading what has turned into
a multitude
of books on the history and other aspects of the conflict.2 I attended
presentations and read international reports.
The more I looked into all this, the more it seemed that I had
stumbled onto
a cover-up that quite possibly dwarfed anything I had seen before. My
former
husband had been one of the founders of the Center for Investigative
Reporting
(CIR), an institution known for its powerful exposés. He and CIR have
won
numerous well-deserved awards from Project Censored from the very
beginning of its
creation. Nevertheless, the duration and violence of the injustice I
was
discovering, and the extent of its omission and misrepresentation –
even in
Project Censored itself, seemed unparalleled.
In February and March of 2001 I went to the Palestinian territories as
a
freelance reporter, traveling alone throughout Gaza and the West Bank.
I saw
tragedy and devastation far beyond what was being reported in the
American media; I
saw communities destroyed, ancient orchards razed, croplands plowed
under. I
saw children who had been shot in the stomach, in the back, in the
head. I
still see them.
I saw people convulsing and writhing in pain from a mysterious poison
gas
that had been lobbed at them; they said it felt like there were knives
in their
stomach.3 I talked to men who had been tortured.4
I watched as a mother wept for her small son, and I took pictures of
his
spilled blood. I watched a son grieve for his mother, killed on her
way home from
the market on a day that I was told was the Muslim equivalent of the
day
before Christmas, or Passover, and I thought of my own son, the same
age.
I listened to old people who described the start of this holocaust –
over
fifty years ago, at the end of an earlier one. They described what it
was like
when three-quarters of your entire population is ethnically cleansed
from their
homes and land, children dying along the roadside while aircraft shell
the
fleeing families. They told of dozens of massacres of entire villages,
and I’ve
since read accounts by Israeli soldiers, published in Israeli
publications, of
how they raped the women, and then killed them, of how they used
sticks to
crush the skulls of children.5 I discovered the message sent by
Menachem Begin,
later elected Israeli prime minister, to troops following the massacre
of
Palestinians in one village, Deir Yassin:
“Accept my congratulations on this splendid act of conquest. Convey my
regards to all the commanders and soldiers. We shake your hands. We
are all proud of
the excellent leadership and the fighting spirit in this great
attack...Tell
the soldiers: you have made history in Israel with your attack and
your
conquest. Continue this until victory. As in Deir Yassin, so
everywhere, we will
attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for
conquest.”
6
Censorship At Work
And I saw the cover-up. I saw how one of the most massive and brutal
displacements of a people in modern times has largely been swept under
the rug; how
the continuing and ruthless methods used by a theocratic, exclusionary
state7 to
rid itself of people of the “wrong” religon/ethnicity are covered up.
Let me
describe how this censorship works.
A few days after the deaths of the little boy and of the mother I
mentioned
above, there was a suicide bombing in Israel. I went to a hotel in
East
Jerusalem and saw that the New York Times had published a front-page
story about it.8
I wondered if the paper had run similar headlines about, or at least
had
mentioned, the Palestinian deaths in the days before, and I discovered
that they
had not. But I noticed that the story about the suicide bombing had at
least
contained some information about these preceding Palestinian deaths –
one phrase
each, in the second paragraph. Near the end of the story, full of
extensive,
graphic descriptions of the Israeli tragedies, I also saw that there
were a
few paragraphs about Israeli crowds beating random Palestinian
Israelis to a
pulp – one was almost killed – and chanting “Kill Arabs.”
A few days later I was back in the San Francisco Bay Area, and went to
the
library to see how the San Francisco Chronicle had covered these
events. (I had
emailed them on-the-scene reports, incidentally, about both
Palestinian
deaths.) I noticed that this paper, also, had neglected these deaths
at the time. It
had, however, carried the New York Times report about the suicide
bombing
that had followed. When I looked at the S.F. Chronicle’s version of
this report,
however, I was astounded: 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.
Since that time I’ve monitored the media closely, and investigated
numerous
similar incidents, in an attempt to discover the nuts and bolts of
obfuscation
on Israel.
Not long ago Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of
Staff, passed away. For many years Moorer, a four-star admiral and
World War II
hero, had strongly condemned Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty9,
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. In addition, Moorer had been
outraged at the
U.S. government’s abandonment of this crew. 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 else’s
name on it.10
Moorer had long called for an investigation of all this. Last fall, in
fact,
he had chaired an independent commission on this 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.”11
Another admiral – who had been the head of the Navy’s legal branch –
read a
just-released affidavit by the officer who had been the chief attorney
to the
quickie Naval court of inquiry set up by Admiral John S. McCain, Jr.
(Sen. John
McCain’s father) to look into the attack. This affidavit revealed that
there
had been a cover-up at the presidential level – that Pres. Lyndon
Johnson and
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had ordered the court to find,
despite all
evidence to the contrary, Israel innocent of culpability.12
The story of the commission’s unprecedented findings died after one
day of
coverage. Despite an excellent AP report on it, a search of 300
newspapers only
turned up 10 that had printed it.
A few months later Moorer died. The first quick AP obituary that came
out
about him contained one sentence about 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 the sentence on the Israeli
attack had
been taken out.
I have phoned AP many times, asking them why information on the USS
Liberty
was removed from the obituary, and who removed it. Each time, the
person I
reached agreed that the Liberty information was important, and told me
they would
get back to me. I’m still waiting.
I’ll discuss just four more telling examples. While such groups as
Amnesty
International have condemned Israel for its routine torture of
Palestinian
prisoners for decades13, coverage of such abuse virtually never
appears in American
media.
In October of 200214 I received email reports of a Palestinian farmer
who had
been brutally tortured by Israeli settlers. I felt this was an
important
story, and decided to check it out. I phoned the American on the scene
who had
sent out the report and asked for more information. He filled in the
gruesome
details, sent me photos, and gave me the name and address of the
hospital where
the victim was being treated. I then phoned the S.F. Chronicle and
gave the
foreign desk all the information I had gathered. I suggested that they
send one
of their correspondents in the area to cover it, since although
Chronicle
reporters always reside in Israel, they do occasionally visit the
Palestinian
Territories.
No word, however, ever appeared of this incident in the Chronicle.15
In fact,
a search of the Chronicle looking for the words “torture” and “Israel”
in
lead paragraphs turned up only one article in the past 10 years: an
editorial
in 1999 that opined: “Israel’s Supreme Court was courageous,
idealistic and
absolutely right to outlaw torture as an interrogation technique by
the Shin Bet
security force.”16 Unfortunately, Israeli torture did not end after
this
decision.17
Earlier this year, American media reported prominently on a prisoner
swap in
which an Israeli businessman imprisoned by Lebanon was traded for
three
Lebanese resistance leaders and a few hundred Palestinians (who had
been scheduled
for release within a few months anyway). Earlier news stories had
reported that
the Israeli had been tortured in Lebanon, but, happily, upon his
release the
man stated that he had been treated well by his captors.18
On the other hand, I learned through Al-Jazeera that one of the
Lebanese
leaders just released had, two days before, testified for 10 hours in
an Israeli
court describing gruesome sexual abuse by Israeli prison guards, his
claims
validated by a member of the International Red Cross.19 (Incidentally,
I
subsequently saw that accounts of this abuse had been reported in the
foreign press
for years20).
I was in Washington DC at the time, and noticed that there had been no
mention of any of this in the Washington Post, despite extensive
coverage of the
swap. I then did a search of the Post website, typing in “ Mustafa
Dirani” and
“torture,” and was surprised to find a full, detailed report on it by
Peter
Enav of AP.21 In other words, the Washington Post had the information
on Dirani,
the story was on their website, but they had not printed a word of it
in the
newspaper. (And you only found it on the website if you knew to look
for it.)
I phoned the Post and was referred to the editor responsible for
foreign
news. I asked why the paper had not contained information about
Dirani’s testimony
and corroborating statements by others. He replied that they were
waiting to
look into it further, and would probably cover it sometime in the
future. I
pointed out that alleged torture of an Israeli – since proved to be
false – had
been printed, and asked, unsuccessfully, for an explanation of this
double
standard in news coverage. To date, this projected coverage has still
not come.
In fact, index searches revealed that while many newspapers had
covered the
prisoner swap extensively, and a number of newspapers around the
country had
carried the report of Dirani’s abuse buried on their websites
somewhere, I could
find only nine newspapers that had printed these serious allegations
of
Israeli torture of a major Lebanese figure – interestingly, most of
them local
papers.
Moreover, in my searches I also came across the fact that Dirani’s
young
nephew Ghassan had been imprisoned by Israel for ten years. Israel had
never
contended that Ghassan was even political, much less a member of any
resistance
groups; he was simply held as a bargaining chip. At some point he had
apparently
suffered a complete mental breakdown, and was transferred to a
psychiatric
prison. Finally, he was released to his family in Lebanon, his mind,
reportedly,
gone. All of this, also, was unmentioned in American coverage of the
prisoner
swap.22
In June 2002, Foreign Service Journal published what should have been
an
explosive exposé on Israel’s torture of American citizens.23 Yet, when
I went to
the journal’s website, I could not find the article. In fact, there
was no
mention that the issue even contained such a piece. I phoned the
editor, and
discovered that they had decided it was too controversial to put on
their website.
Today, the website does mention the article (in an extremely
expurgated
fashion; minus the word torture, for example), but there is still no
link to the
actual report.24 In addition, I have not been able to find a single
American news
source that even mentioned this thoroughly documented report.
Finally, in the midst of the unfolding scandal about torture and
humiliation
of Iraqi prisoners at Abu-Ghraib, two international human rights
organizations
released findings that 374 Palestinian teenagers imprisoned by Israel
were
being treated with similar cruelty. There was a short AP story on the
report. It
was sent to Britain, Europe, Africa, India, and Asia. It was not,
however,
sent to American newspapers. Phone calls to AP asking why it was
deemed
newsworthy in the rest of the world but not in the United States went
unanswered.
Media Studies
Soon after my visit to the occupied territories I founded an
organization
called If Americans Knew25 to monitor the media and to provide
Americans with
accurate information on this topic. Two years ago, prompted by such
anecdotal
evidence of massive omission, If Americans Knew began conducting
statistical case
studies on coverage of Israel and Palestine. We chose categories that
would
be universally acknowledged as significant and as immune as possible
from
subjective interpretation. We recorded the number of deaths of both
Palestinians
and Israelis mentioned in headlines, then compared the percentages of
overall
deaths that were covered.26
Our findings are staggering.
We discovered, for example, that the San Francisco Chronicle had
prominently
covered 150 percent of Israeli children’s deaths—i.e., many of the
deaths
were the subject of more than one headline in the paper—and five
percent of
Palestinian ones. In other words, Palestinian deaths were rarely
accorded headline
coverage even once.
In the first three and a half months of the current Palestinian
uprising
against Israel’s continuing confiscation of Palestinian land and
suppression of
human rights, Israeli forces killed 84 Palestinian children. The
largest single
cause of their deaths was gunfire to the head.27 During this period,
not one
Israeli child was killed. Not one suicide bombing against Israelis
occurred.28
Of these 84 Palestinian children, only one received headline coverage
in the
Chronicle – Mohammed al-Durra, the little boy whose murder while he
was
cowering with his father was recorded for all the world to see by a
French TV crew.
Was the Chronicle alone in such unbalanced news coverage?
No. A study of National Public Radio that Seth Ackerman29 conducted
for
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) showed that NPR had reported
on 89
percent of Israeli children’s deaths and 20 percent of Palestinian
ones. In other
words, NPR, which has been accused of being “pro-Palestinian,”
reported Israeli
deaths at a rate four and a half times greater than Palestinian
deaths.
Two studies we conducted of the San Jose Mercury News – for a total of
twelve
months of data – also revealed enormous distortion in coverage. For
example,
we discovered that front-page headline coverage of all deaths (adults
and
children) had so emphasized Israeli deaths over Palestinian ones that
the
newspaper had, in effect, reversed reality – and then widened the gap.
While 313
Israelis and 884 Palestinians had been killed during this period,
Mercury News
front-page headlines had reported on 225 Israeli deaths, and only 34
Palestinian
ones – 72 percent of Israeli deaths and 4 percent of Palestinian
ones.30
What do these case studies tell us about American coverage in general?
A
great deal.
Let us imagine what would have happened if a newspaper’s headlines had
reported the World Series backwards – that the score had been
reversed, the winning
team declared the loser. The paper would have been the laughingstock
of the
country; late-night comics around the nation would have had a field
day.
Yet, here was 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 most people were accessing – television,
radio,
magazines – communicated similar inversion.
As a result, the public is staggeringly misinformed. During the
current
intifada, Palestinian children were being killed – often shot in the
head – day
after day, week after week, month after month, before a single Israeli
child’s
death. Yet a survey taken later that year showed that 93 percent of
the
respondents either had no idea which children had died first, or
believed them to be
Israeli. 31And this despite ample coverage of the conflict in general:
the
Chronicle, for example, ran over 250 stories on Israel and Palestine
during this
period.
Also omitted was information on US tax money to Israel: well over $10
million
per day – more than to all of sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean put
together.32 Our study showed that in six months of extensive reporting
on Israel,
the Chronicle had never even once reported the total amount of US
money being
sent to Israel.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg of omission on this issue.
Let us look at Project Censored, itself – a highly respected
media-monitoring
institution intent on bringing attention to critical information not
covered
by the corporate media. Each year it screens thousands of articles in
hundreds
of journals, drawing on the participation of a long list of experts.
It has
helped publicize profoundly valuable information on a wide variety of
topics,
with particular sensitivity to injustice, racism, and the plight of
oppressed
populations.
Yet, it has largely missed one of the longest and most egregious cases
of
oppression of the 20th (and now 21st ) century.
Over fifty years ago, the massive dispossession of almost an entire
indigenous population was carried out by a colonial population
pursuing ethnic “purity”
33 – a purity Muslim and Christian Palestinians did not fit into.
Israeli
writer Yshar Snmilasky described this beginning: “We came, shot,
burned, blew up,
pushed and exiled... will the walls not scream in the ears of those
who will
live in this village?”34
In 1967 this nation then overran the small remnants of land left to
the
indigenous population, and placed the inhabitants under brutal
military occupation.
In 1982 this apartheid nation35 invaded yet another country in its
quest to
prevent the original inhabitants of what was now Israel from returning
to their
land. Some 20,000 men, women, and children in Lebanon were killed, and
hundreds of thousands injured – through the illegal use of
American-made weapons.
One American physician wrote at the time that she had never before
seen “such
hideous injuries.” In one day, 1,000 mangled limbs were amputated.36
In 1987 there was more violence, when the virtually unarmed indigenous
population in the occupied territories attempted to rise up against
their occupiers
and died at the rate of 7 per every one Israeli death. The Palestinian
death
rate would have been higher, but the occupation forces chose a less
reported
form of violence to subdue the rebels – soldiers held them down and
broke their
bones. In the first three days of this new strategy, 197 people were
treated
for fractures at one hospital in Gaza alone.37 The policy was
implemented by
Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli leader later known as a “peace-maker”
before being
assassinated by a Jewish extremist. One episode was caught on film,
and can be
viewed in various documentaries.38 The Israeli cameraman was later
killed by
Israeli forces.39
Through this entire period there was an ongoing campaign to break the
indigenous people’s spirit. Tens of thousands were incarcerated
without recourse to
judge and jury. Tens of thousands were tortured, humiliated, maimed.
Homes were
destroyed by the thousands, cropland plowed under and replaced with
concrete
colonies from which the ancestral owners of the land were to be
eternally
excluded. Families were ripped apart, sons deported, schools closed.40
And in its first 20 years, Project Censored made no mention of any of
this –
of this profoundly covered-up conflict, of these people, of this
oppression.
The longest-standing military occupation of modern times –
unmentioned. The
largest refugee population in today’s world (an estimated 8 million),
and the
longest dispossessed – unmentioned.
Actually, Project Censored carried one story on Israel during this
period –
an exposé of its support of oppression in Central America. Then
finally, in
2001, in Project Censored’s 25th anniversary edition, there was notice
of
Israel’s oppression of Palestinians – it was mentioned in the
introduction and in a
story about ethnically specific bioweapons.41
Astoundingly, the first time that a topic pertaining to Israel’s
treatment of
Palestinians made it onto the Project Censored list was just last
year. After
including a story about U.S. tax money to Colombia in the previous
volume –
the #3 choice of that year – Project Censored decided to also cover
U.S. tax
money to Israel – a vastly larger amount, that has been dispensed far
longer.
This story was #24. Since many reports about Project Censored list
only the top
ten stories, this low rating meant that this story went widely
unmentioned.
Such long neglect of this issue is startling, particularly given the
subject
matter that Project Censored regularly addressed, and the numerous
powerful
exposés on Israel related to these subjects that were ignored by the
mainstream
press – stories that seemed right up the Project Censored alley.
For example, Project Censored has done an excellent job of covering
nuclear
power and proliferation. Yet, through all these years there was no
mention –
ever – of Israel’s possession of hundreds of nuclear weapons; no
mention of the
young technician who blew the whistle on their nuclear weapons
program, and
was then kidnapped by Israel, brought back for a kangaroo trial under
grotesque
conditions and held in solitary confinement in a cell two meters by
three
meters for over 12 of his 18 years of incarceration.42
Similarly, Project Censored promoted important articles about
Iran-Contra and
on the oil embargo that shot oil prices through the roof and threw
thousands
out of work. Yet, there was no mention of the fundamental role played
by
Israel in both events.43
Projected Censored highlighted a moving and powerful report on the
“Death of
a Nation: The Tragedy of Transkei” in South Africa, yet there was no
such
article about the death of Palestine, and the various strategies being
implemented
to expel its remaining inhabitants.44
While Project Censored contained valuable information on “The Most
Powerful
Secret Lobby in Washington” (the Business Roundtable), there was no
mention of
the pro-Israel lobby that has been at the forefront of influencing US
foreign
policy in the Middle East for over half a century.45
If space permitted, this list would go on and on.
Even last year, after Project Censored had begun to discover
Palestine, the
book’s top censored story of the year, which exposed the
neoconservatives’
role behind the attack on Iraq, astonishingly omitted any mention
whatsoever of
these neoconservatives’ close, long-term ties to Israel and the
documented
record of their work on its behalf.46 Similarly, there was no mention
of what
should have been an award-winning exposé on Israeli torture of
American citizens
that came out the same year.
Finally, this year, a story revealing that top U.S. governmental
officials
have been investigated by U.S. intelligence agencies for decades for
spying for
a foreign government – a story that should have produced
reverberations
throughout the country, resulting in Congressional inquiries and calls
for special
prosecutors47 – was not only unmentioned by the mainstream media, it
was missed
by Project Censored and its array of experts as well. The foreign
government
was Israel.
In other words, while the corporate media was ignoring the slaughter,
torture, and dispossession of Palestinians, while it was ignoring a
presidential
cover-up that dwarfed Watergate in its significance, while it was
ignoring the
attempts of abandoned vets to get recourse from their government,
while it was
ignoring multitudes of stories of potentially world-shaking importance
about
Israel and its actions, Project Censored was, too.
I don’t know why or how this has been happening, but I suspect that
Project
Censored’s omission of this issue is largely a reflection of what has
been
going on throughout much of the progressive press – and community –
for many
years. A search of the Center for Investigative Reporting’s website,
for example,
reveals only two stories, 25 years apart, about Israel or Palestine –
both by
the same author.
When we approached CIR and Media Alliance, another organization known
for its
ethical actions against censorship, to join us in activities regarding
our
Chronicle and Mercury-News studies, the reaction was disappointing.
CIR, we were
told, was in the midst of negotiating with the Chronicle on some
future
projects. (We also later noticed that David Yarnold, Executive Editor
of the
Mercury-News, is on the CIR advisory board.) When we contacted Media
Alliance about
co-sponsoring a forum on our studies, a project that we had thought
would mesh
well with the organization’s progressive philosophy, our phone calls
went
unreturned.
When we asked Peace Action why their brochures about nuclear weapons
omitted
any mention of Israel’s large arsenal of such weapons, we were told
that
discussing Israel would interfere with the group’s ability to lobby
Congressman Tom
Lantos (one of Israel’s most fervent Capitol Hill supporters and a
major
promoter of both Iraq wars).
These are not isolated incidents.
All of the above organizations – and many others with equally dubious
records
on Palestine – have produced profoundly important, often courageous,
work.
Why has there so often been a “blind spot” on Israel?
I suspect that the causes are complicated and multi-factorial. I
suspect that
I and others like me – who remained ignorant and negligent on this
issue for
so long – bear much of the guilt. I suspect that others whose
emotional ties
to Israel served as blinders on this subject share in our culpability.
I
suspect that still others who knew the truth and refused to speak of
it, or who
participated in its cover-up, bear a significant portion of this awful
responsibility. I suspect that the career damage48 and death threats49
that often result
when one begins to speak out on this issue played a part.
Whatever the cause, it is time that we all, finally and resoundingly,
move
forward. It is time that we bring to an end what we have all helped to
perpetuate.
Perhaps one of the places we can start is by recognizing and
disseminating
the immense body of work created through the years by journalists
diligently
digging up the still mostly-buried facts on Israel and Palestine. Many
of these
people are nearing the end of their careers, and it is time we thanked
them,
and joined in their efforts.
I propose a special Lifetime Most Censored Award, and that among the
first to
receive it be the following writers whose extraordinary work has
continually
been censored out of American discourse on the Middle East: (in
alphabetical
order) Richard Curtiss, for his massive research into all aspects of
Israel and
Palestine, in particular on U.S. aid to Israel and Israeli PACs; James
Ennes,
for being the first to gather and expose the story of the USS Liberty
and its
cover-up; Andrew Killgore, for his numerous writings and his historic
role,
with Richard Curtiss, in founding and keeping alive the Washington
Report on
Middle East Affairs and the American Educational Trust book
publishing; Paul
Findley, for ground-shaking research on the Israel lobby and the
injustice being
done to Palestinians and Muslims; Stephen Green, for his meticulous
investigative reporting on Israeli spying and arms procurement; Alfred
Lillienthal, for
his early and principled exposes of Israel; and, especially, Donald
Neff, for
his brilliant and comprehensive books on all aspects of Israel,
Palestine, and
the core injustice at the center of the Middle East.
In memoriam awards should go to Edward Said, who broke through this
censorship, and to Grace Halsell and Elmer Berger, who sadly did not.
I am at a loss to
describe the tribute that should go to 23-year-old Rachel Corrie,
whose life
and death, as well as whose words, have been largely erased or
distorted in
media discourse on Israel and Palestine – including by some
publications once
considered progressive, such as Mother Jones.50
Next, I hope future editions of Project Censored will include work by
some of
the other superb writers and reporters on this topic today: Ali
Abunimah,
Naseer Aruri, Dennis Bernstein, Jerri Bird, Jeff Blankfort, Lenni
Brenner,
Alexander Cockburn, Kathleen Christison, Norman Finkelstein, Delinda
Hanley, Rashid
Khalidi, Janet McMahon, Rachelle Marshall, Nur Masalha, Nigel Parry,
Jason
Vest, Ahmed Yousef, Mazin Qumsiyeh, Charlie Reese, and the many others
deserving
of recognition. I apologize for those I’m forgetting to mention and I
hope
others will add to this list. ( I have not included here foreign
journalists of
note, because it is my understanding that Project Censored
concentrates on
censorship inside the U.S.)
Finally, we must help to end the censorship of the ongoing reports by
Palestinian and international journalists, including Israeli ones, who
report at
great risk from inside the Palestinian territories (in the past four
years twelve
journalists have been killed there and 295 wounded51), as well as by
writers
from such organizations as Christian Peacemaker Teams and the
International
Solidarity Movement, and, especially, from among the Palestinian
population
itself, who are daily sending out searing first-hand accounts from the
very center
of the violence.
May they all survive.
Endnotes
1. A few of the best online sources include Al Jazeera; Reports by
Robert
Fisk and Phil Reeves in the London Independent; The UK Guardian; The
Washington
Report on Middle East Affairs; The Palestinian Red Crescent Society;
and
B’Tselem. Regarding eye injuries, an example is: “By May 2001, there
were already
two hundred people treated for eye wounds at St. John Eye Hospital in
Jerusalem
alone.” Tanya Reinhart, Israel/Palestine, Seven Stories Press, New
York, p.
115
2. Some of the best books I have read are listed at the end of the
article
and online at http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/materials.html#books
3. For more information about the nerve gas being used, see Brooks,
James,
“The Israeli Poison Gas Attacks: A preliminary investigation”, Media
Monitors
Network, January 8, 2003, http://www.mediamonitors.net/jamesbrooks2.html
4. There are numerous human rights reports on Israeli torture, see for
example, “Israel Increases Its Use of Torture Practices Among
Palestinian
Prisoners”, A Report Issued by the Palestinian Prisoner Society, June
21, 2002,
http://www.ppsmo.org/e-website/Reports/Israeli%20Tourture%20July%202002.htm
5. Davar, June 9, 1979: Testimony of an Israeli soldier who
participated in
the massacre at al Duwayma Village on Oct. 29, 1948: “[they] killed
between 80
to 100 Arabs, women and children. To kill the children they fractured
their
heads with sticks. There was not one house without corpses. The men
and women
of the villages were pushed into houses without food or water. Then
the
saboteurs came to dynamite the houses. One commander ordered a soldier
to bring two
women into a house he was about to blow up ... Another soldier prided
himself
upon having raped an Arab woman before shooting her to death. Another
Arab
woman with her newborn baby was made to clean the place for a couple
of days, and
then they shot her and the baby. Educated and welll-mannered
commanders who
were considered “good guys”... became base murderers, and this not in
the storm
of battle, but as a method of expulsion and extermination. The fewer
the
Arabs who remained, the better.” For additional information on
Israel’s
beginnings: Masalha, Nur, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept
of “Transfer” in
Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948, The Institute for Palestine
Studies:
Washington D.C., 1992.
6. Ball, George W. and Douglas B. Ball, The Passionate Attachment:
America’s
Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present, W. W. Norton & Company:
New
York, 1992, p. 29.
7. See for example, Amir S Cheshin., Bill Hutman, and Avi Melamed,
Separate
and Unequal: The Inside Story of Israeli Rule in East Jerusalem,
Harvard
University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1999, and David McDowall, Palestine
and Israel,
University of California Press, 1989, pp. 123-145
8. Deborah Sontag, “Suicide Bomber Kills 3 Israelis,” New York Times,
March
5, 2001; it’s interesting to see how this situation was reported
elsewhere;
for example, the Houston Chronicle carried Sontag’s story under the
headline:
“Palestinian suicide bomber kills 3 Israelis: Attack gladdens West
Bank
mourners as conflict grows”
9. For more information about the attack on the Liberty, visit
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ussliberty.html
10. Assault on the Liberty (Random House 1980; Ballantine 1986;
Reintree
Press 2002), http://www.ussliberty.org.
11. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ul-commfindings.html
12. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ul-boston.html;
http://www.freewebs.com/gidusko/boston
13. 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.
14. http://www.flashpoints.net/index-2002-10-30.html
15. For first-hand reports, visit http://www.palsolidarity.org,
http://www.hearpalestine.org, or http://www.cpt.org/hebron/hebron.php
16. San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 10, 1999, A20
17. 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
18. http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/01/29/prisoner.exchange
19. “Hizb Allah leader says Israel tortured him”, Al Jazeera, January
27,
2004,
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/EC01FA53-F114-44AF-89F9-75903CB8008F.htm;
Gutman, Matthew and Tovah Lazaroff, “Dirani to Testify on Rape
Charges,” Jerusalem Post, Jan 27, 2004
20. For example: “Facility 1391: Israel’s Secret Prison,” UK Guardian,
Nov.
14, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1084796,00.html;
“Lebanese group calls on ICRC to prevent Israeli torture in jails,”
Deutsche
Presse-Agentur, March 13, 2000
21. Enav, Peter, Associated Press, “Militant says he was abused by
Israel”,
Jan. 27, 2004.
22. “Israel Surrenders A Bargaining Chip,” Washington Post, April 6,
2000,
p. 1
23. Jerri Bird, “Arab-Americans in Israel: What ‘Special
Relationship’?”,
June 2002, http://www.partnersforpeace.org/inmedia/db200206010/
24. http://www.afsa.org/fsj/2002.cfm
25. If Americans Knew is dedicated to providing full and accurate
information
to the American public on topics of importance that are underreported
or
misreported in the American media. Our primary area of focus at this
time is
Israel/Palestine.
26. All four of our studies completed so far can be found online at
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/report_cards.html
27. Information about Israeli and Palestinian children killed in the
conflict
is available online at http://www.rememberthesechildren.org
28. http://www.btselem.org
29. Ackerman, Seth, “The Illusion of Balance: NPR’s coverage of
Mideast
deaths doesn’t match reality”, Extra!, November/December 2001,
http://www.fair.org/extra/0111/npr-mideast.html
30. The second study is online at
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/merc2/report.html
31. Retro Poll of September/October 2002, online at
http://www.retropoll.org/results_poll_01.htm
32. 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
33. There are numerous excellent histories that cover this period; two
are
Sharing the Land of Canaan, Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, Pluto Press, and Nur
Masalha,
Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist
Political
Thought, 1882-1948, The Institute for Palestine Studies: Washington
D.C., 1992.
A book list can be found at
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/materials.html#books
34. http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0794/9407072.htm
35. Desmond Tutu & Ian Urbina,“Against Israeli Apartheid,”
International
Herald Tribune, 07/02
36. Mallison, Sally V. and W. Thomas, Armed Conflict in Lebanon 1982:
Humanitarian Law in a Real World Setting, American Eduational Trust.
37. McDowall, David, Palestine and Israel: The Uprising and Beyond,
University of California Press (1989): “Defense Minister Yitzhak
Rabin, shifted away
from firearms, telling his soldiers to use ‘might, power, and
beatings’...
Soldiers armed with cudgels beat up those they could lay their hands
on regardless
of whether they were demonstrators or not, breaking into homes by day
and
night, dragging men and women, young and old, from their beds to beat
them. At
Gaza’s Shifa Hospital 200 people were treated during the first five
days of the
new policy, most of them suffering from broken elbows and knees. Three
had
fractured skulls...A government official explained: ‘A detainee sent
to prison
will be freed in 18 days... but if soldiers break his hand, he won’t
be able to
throw stones for a month and a half.”
38. For example, “People and the Land”, Director: Tom Hayes;
“Palestine is
Still the Issue”, Director: John Pilger.
39. Personal conversation with filmmaker Tom Hayes, Director of
“People and
the Land.”
40. http://www.hrw.org/un/chr59/israelot.htm;
http://www.dci-pal.org/reports/dcireports.html;
http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/israel_and_occupied_territories/reports.do
41. “Human Genome Project Opens the Door to Ethnically Specific
Bioweapons,”
#16
42. Mordechai Vanunu, see Mark Gaffney, Dimona, the third temple? :
the story
behind the Vanunu revelation, Amana Books, : Brattleboro, VT, 1989
43. Green, Stephen, Living by the Sword, pp. 193-218;
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0591/9105011.htm; Neff, Donald, Fifty
Years of Israel, pp. 279-287,
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/1097/9710070.html , Donald Neff,
“Nixon
Administration Ignores Saudi Warnings, Bringing On Oil Boycott,”
Washington Report on
Middle East Affairs, Oct/Nov, 1997, pp. 70-72
44. http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/032486/860324012.html;
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0689/8906021.htm
45. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/pg-blankfort.html;
http://www.wrmea.com/aipac; http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0198/9801065.htm
46. Numerous excellent articles can be found at
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/neocons.html, Israeli media by
the way, have covered this aspect
openly, eg: Ha’aretz, Friday April 04, 2003: “The war in Iraq was
conceived by
25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing
President Bush to change the course of history...”
47. Green, Stephen, “Serving Two Flags”, CounterPunch, Feb. 28-29,
2004,
http://www.counterpunch.org/green02282004.html
48. Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out, Lawrence Hill Books,
Chicago, 1989,
pp. 295-314; Democracy Now, Thursday, April 24, 2003, “San Francisco
Chronicle
Fires Reporter for Attending Peace Protest,”
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/sf_chronicle_fires_042403.htm
49. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/death_threat.html
50. Phan Nguyen, “Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie: Specious
Journalism in
Defense of Killers,” CounterPunch, Sept. 20, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/nguyen09202003.html. In contrast, Harper’s
magazine ran a number of Corrie’s
letters. These can be read in full at
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/rachelsletters.html
51. Palestine Monitor, “Palestinian Intifada Fact Sheet”,
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/new_web/factsheet_intifada.htm#Statistics%20for%20the%20Palestini
an%20Intifada.
+++++++
"Deep down, I believe that a little anti-Semitism is a good thing for
the
Jews - reminds us who we are." --Jay Lefkowitz (NYT Magazine. Feb.12,
1995. Page
65). Jay Lefkowitz is now Deputy assistant to the President for
Domestic
Policy. A sick man! Don't you think?
"An anti-Semite is someone that the Jews hate."
---Joe Sobran
Another way of putting it:
An anti-Semite used to be someone who does not like Jews; now it is
someone who the Jews do not like.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Peace is patriotic!
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
253 West 72nd street #1711
New York, NY 10023
http://www.RePortersNoteBook.com
Available for Talk-Radio interviews 24hours 212-787-7891
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