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Of Israel-Palestine by * the New York Times * Associated Press * Los Angeles Times * San Francisco Chronicle * NPR * ABC * CBS * NBC

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Of Israel-Palestine by * the New York Times * Associated Press * Los Angeles Times * San Francisco Chronicle * NPR * ABC * CBS * NBC Published by Americans for The Link Middle East Understanding, Inc. Volume 38, Issue 3 Link Archives: www.ameu.org July-August 2005 The Coverage — and Non-Coverage — of Israel-Palestine by * The New York Times * Associated Press * Los Angeles Times * San Francisco Chronicle * NPR * ABC * CBS * NBC By Alison Weir the fall of 2004, we visited the Palestinian Territories. Such a simple statement, and such a complicated reality. Let me try again… In the fall of 2004, we visited a large, open-air prison. A prison whose guards keep people out, when they choose to, as well as in, humiliating and violating those they dislike; a prison into which the jailers periodically shoot and send regiments of destruction; a prison full of mini-prisons and convoluted rules that change with the wind. A complicated, teeming prison in which there are wedding festivals and dancing; where babies laugh and the tea is flavored with mint and sage; and where desperation silently waits. The Link Page 2 AMEU’s (Continued from Page 1.) Board of Directors In fall, 2004, my daughter and I trav- Jane Adas (Vice President) Alison Weir and Daniel Okrent were eled to Palestine—to the West Bank. And friends and student journalists in Ann Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr. the Israeli guards let us in. But then we Atwater, Bradley & Partners, Inc. Arbor, Michigan. Up until the end of May, Okrent was ombudsman for The went to Nablus, a historic and ancient Edward Dillon New York Times; Weir is executive direc- city in the northern sector of the West Henry G. Fischer (Vice President) tor of If Americans Knew. Bank. We stood in the crowded line full Curator Emeritus, Dept. of Egyptian Art, This past April Weir met with Okrent of women, men, and children waiting to Metropolitan Museum of Art who was preparing a column on the pass through the double turn-style gate John Goelet Times’s coverage of Israel/Palestine. into this interior, mini-prison, until it She gave him a 23-page report, along was our turn, and as we walked, one at a Richard Hobson, Jr. with approximately 40 pages of docu- Vice President, Olayan America Corp. mentation showing the sharp disparity time, through that lonely, eerie twenty in how Israeli and Palestinian deaths are feet, the soldiers’ guns trained on us, the Kendall Landis reported in the “newspaper of record.” soldiers waved us back. “You are not Robert L. Norberg (Vice In this issue of The Link Weir tells allowed in,” they pronounced, and ig- President) what resulted from that meeting. She nored our protests and our American Hon. Edward L. Peck also reports on how other leading news Former U.S. Ambassador passports. outlets cover the Palestine/Israel con- Lachlan Reed flict. But later we found a back way in, President, Lachlan International over the hills, and then we saw a little of Talcott W. Seelye what they didn’t want us to see, and Former U.S. Ambassador to Syria heard about the rest. We visited Balata Donald L. Snook refugee camp, one of the dense commu- Jack B. Sunderland (President) nities around the West Bank and Gaza James M. Wall created by the 1948 Naqba, the “Catastrophe,” when hundreds of thou- Mark R. Wellman (Treasurer) Financial Consultant sands of Palestinians were forced off their land with the creation of Israel. AMEU National Council These refugee communities are often on Hon. James E. Akins, Isabelle the outskirts of town and bear the major Bacon, William R. Chandler, David brunt of Israeli invasions. Their residents S. Dodge, Paul Findley, Dr. are among the poorest and most desper- ate in Palestine, and they contain pockets Cornelius B. Houk, Cynthia Alison Weir Infantino O. Kelly Ingram, of resistance to Israeli military occupa- Moorhead Kennedy, Ann Kerr, tion. John J. McCloy II, David Nes, Mary Alison came to our attention back in 2003. In October of that year, after par- We talked to a man in his late twen- Norton, C. Herbert Oliver, Marie ticipating in a debate at the University of ties who had recently adopted nonvio- Petersen, Dr. John C. Trever, Don California at Berkeley, she received a lent methods of resistance. He told us W. Wagner, Miriam Ward, RSM death threat on her answering machine that he used to have a group of close warning her and her coworkers not to be Executive Director friends—about eight other guys that he’d in their office at 2 p.m. the next day. At 1 John F. Mahoney p.m. on that day, Weir went to her office, grown up with. They would always escorted by Berkeley police who first hang out together, joke around. When had made a sweep of the building and Israeli forces launched a major invasion neighborhood. She was still there, with- into Balata and Nablus—100 tanks de- AMEU (ISSN 0024-4007) grants out police protection, at 2 p.m. permission to reproduce material scended on the area in April 2002—many We are pleased to welcome Alison joined the Palestinian resistance. One by from The Link in part or in whole. Weir to the pages of The Link. AMEU must be credited and one one all these friends have been killed, copy forwarded to our office at 475 Our books and videos are listed on and now “Sami,” as we’ll call him, was pages 14-15. Riverside Drive, Room 245, New the only one still alive. York, New York 10115-0245. Tel. John F. Mahoney 212-870-2053; Fax 212-870-2050; Executive Director We learned that Israeli forces in ar- E-mail: [email protected]; Website: mored vehicles periodically invaded Ba- www.ameu.org. The Link Page 3 lata, occupying homes and shooting residents without showed us a scar on his leg, where he had been shot previ- provocation. While sometimes there were small numbers ously. While we were in the hospital, we came across sev- of Palestinian men with guns trying to resist these inva- eral other kids who had been shot. One had a fractured sions, often there was no armed resistance at all. In many femur. He said he hadn’t even been throwing stones, but cases there were only kids throwing stones at these invad- that next time he would. Another boy had been shot in the ing vehicles. The Israeli soldiers would then shoot these chest. The doctors had barely saved him. Another boy, a kids. The main street down which these Israeli armored visitor, showed us a scar at the corner of his mouth and vehicles would drive was bullet riddled and teeming with missing teeth from when he had been shot. We had a cam- children. We also interviewed two old ladies whose home era along and filmed all of this. had occasionally been taken over by Israeli soldiers, who After a few days we returned to Jerusalem. would then shoot out the windows at the people below. We saw a cemetery where children played—it was one of Again, this sounds so deceptively simple. We made the few open spaces in this dense community—and peo- our way through armed Israeli checkpoints, rode in ple described how Israeli soldiers would taunt the chil- crowded vehicles that were stopped by Israeli police, dren. Several kids had recently been killed there. wondered when or if we would be harassed. When we arrived in Jerusalem, we went straight to the AP bureau. We were told of an incident that had occurred ap- We discovered that it was in a large building in the Israeli proximately two weeks before. There had been another of section of Jerusalem that appeared to house most, maybe these regular Israeli “incursions” down the main street. all, of the major U.S. news bureaus. We went up to the 8th The vehicles had stayed there for twenty minutes, assert- floor, still carrying our packs, and entered the AP office. ing their control, and there had been no resistance against them. At one point an Israeli soldier poked his gun out the We walked up to the bureau chief, Steve Gutkin, and porthole of his vehicle, aimed at a boy nearby, and pulled asked him about this incident and why the tape was the trigger. The boy, who looked to be about 13, was shot erased instead of broadcast. He became flustered and said in the lower abdomen with a metal bullet coated by rub- he wasn’t allowed to say anything, that AP requires its ber. A Reuters photographer had photographed this inci- Corporate Communications office to respond to all re- dent, and an Associated Press cameraman had filmed it. quests for information. Later, when we returned to the We were told that the video of the incident had been sent U.S., we phoned AP Corporate Communications and to the Associated Press bureau in Jerusalem, and that it asked Jack Stokes, director of media relations, about this had been erased. incident. I told Stokes about what I had learned, and asked him whether AP had indeed erased this video, and, We were shocked. On what possible basis could this if so, why. He said he would look into this and get back to footage not be considered newsworthy? We decided to me with the information. When I phoned him a few days look into this incident further. In Balata there was a hand- later, he said that he had looked into it, and that this was ful of international peace activists, members of the Inter- “an internal AP matter” that he could tell me nothing national Solidarity Movement, who were there to act as about.
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