De: Ioan Rosca
Date: Samedi 25, Septembre 2004 18:40
Objet: Re: Iata si americani care gindesc (si actioneaza) altfel
Influenta Israelului asupra politicii americane
Informatiile din document sint, cred, foarte relevante pentru ce se intimpla
acum in Romania: redeschiderea procesului pentru holocaust (in locul
genocidului comunist ai carui actori conduc inca tara), trimiterea soldatilor
romani in Iraq, denuntarea nationalismului romanesc etc.
Ele sugereaza ce agenda pot avea in Romania Statele Unite, cit timp sint conduse
de o guvernare credincioasa Izraelului si influentate de o presa majoritar
pro-Izraeliana.
Nu cred ca slugarnicia fata de o astfel de orientare americana, contestata de
americanii emancipati, e in interesul Romaniei.
Ioan Rosca
marta476 wrote:
> Dear Mr.Rosca,
>
> I'm aware about the most of the censored story in the American media ...
>
> So, please don't spam ...
>
> I'll be glad to read about Romania only., not about The Arabs .
>
> Sincerely,
De: Ioan Rosca
Date: Vendredi 24, Septembre 2004 3:51
Objet: Iata si americani care gindesc (si actioneaza) altfel
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/sides.html
Israel and Palestine, Choosing Sides
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.
Un-Censoring: Some Recommended Reading on Israel-Palestine:
Fallen Pillars: US Policy towards Palestine and Israel since 1945
by Donald Neff Buy it!
Deliberate Deceptions
by Paul Findley Buy it!
Perceptions of Palestine
by Kathleen Christison Buy it!
Fifty Years of Israel
by Donald Neff Buy it!
Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel
by Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky Buy it!
Sharing the Land of Canaan
Mazin B. Qumsiyeh Buy it!
Assault on the Liberty
by James Ennes
(First-hand account of Israel's attack on US Navy ship) Buy it!
Journey to Jerusalem
Grace Halsell Buy it!
Expulsion of the Palestinians
Nur Masalha Buy it!
They Dare to Speak Out
Paul findley Buy it!
The Lobby
Edward Tivnan Buy it!
The Passionate Attachment
George W. Ball, Douglas Ball Buy it!
Samed
Raja Shehadeh Buy it!
Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement
by Robert Friedman Buy it!
The New Intifada
edited by Roane Carey Buy it!
Fateful Triangle
Noam Chomsky Buy it!
Endnotes
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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
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"
For more information about the attack on the Liberty, visit
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ussliberty.html
Assault on the Liberty (Random House 1980; Ballantine 1986; Reintree
Press 2002), http://www.ussliberty.org.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ul-commfindings.html
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ul-boston.html;
http://www.freewebs.com/gidusko/boston
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.
http://www.flashpoints.net/index-2002-10-30.html
For first-hand reports, visit http://www.palsolidarity.org,
http://www.hearpalestine.org, or http://www.cpt.org/hebron/hebron.php
San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 10, 1999, A20
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
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/01/29/prisoner.exchange
"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
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
Enav, Peter, Associated Press, "Militant says he was abused by Israel",
Jan. 27, 2004.
"Israel Surrenders A Bargaining Chip," Washington Post, April 6, 2000,
p. 1
Jerri Bird, "Arab-Americans in Israel: What 'Special Relationship'?",
June 2002, http://www.partnersforpeace.org/inmedia/db200206010/
http://www.afsa.org/fsj/2002.cfm
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.
All four of our studies completed so far can be found online at
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/report_cards.html
Information about Israeli and Palestinian children killed in the
conflict is available online at http://www.rememberthesechildren.org
http://www.btselem.org
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
The second study is online at
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/merc2/report.html
Retro Poll of September/October 2002, online at
http://www.retropoll.org/results_poll_01.htm
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
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
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0794/9407072.htm
Desmond Tutu & Ian Urbina,"Against Israeli Apartheid," International
Herald Tribune, 07/02
Mallison, Sally V. and W. Thomas, Armed Conflict in Lebanon 1982:
Humanitarian Law in a Real World Setting, American Eduational Trust.
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."
For example, "People and the Land", Director: Tom Hayes; "Palestine is
Still the Issue", Director: John Pilger.
Personal conversation with filmmaker Tom Hayes, Director of "People and
the Land."
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
"Human Genome Project Opens the Door to Ethnically Specific Bioweapons,"
#16
Mordechai Vanunu, see Mark Gaffney, Dimona, the third temple?: the
story behind the Vanunu revelation, Amana Books,: Brattleboro, VT, 1989
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
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/032486/860324012.html;
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0689/8906021.htm
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/pg-blankfort.html;
http://www.wrmea.com/aipac;
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0198/9801065.htm
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..."
Green, Stephen, "Serving Two Flags", CounterPunch, Feb. 28-29, 2004,
http://www.counterpunch.org/green02282004.html
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
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/death_threat.html
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
Palestine Monitor, "Palestinian Intifada Fact Sheet",
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/new_web/factsheet_intifada.htm#Statistics%20for%\
20the%20Palestinian%20Intifada.