a slaughter with full US support

Alison Weir (not to be confused with the British author), the American journalist whose eyes were opened two decades ago to the Palestinian plight, has for some time published the figures showing the lopsided cost of the strife in Palestine/Israel where state of the art weapons inflict a great number of casualties on the Palestinians. Her website, If Americans Knew, is well worth a visit for the graphics she presents.

Yesterday, I discovered an equally powerful presentation of the same kind of information, shown just below, by way of Prof. Juan Cole's website, Informed Comment. This graphic shows an over 200:1 ratio of fatalities and a 560:1 ratio of injuries within the 13 months of the Palestinian Great March of Return beginning in March of 2018 (referred to as GMR in the graphic below). This documents the assassination and injury of unarmed demonstrators at the Gaza border of Israel by Israel soldiers with sniper rifles. Seeing this, you can understand how Israelis can easily live with the destruction their country inflicts on the Palestinians.

Watch an outstanding investigative video of a Palestinian medic killed by the Israeli sniping from the New York Times, an uncharacteristically honest look at situation by that paper. Informed Comment has also published this: thousands of innocent Palestinians in Gaza at risk of amputation from Israeli sniping.

Donald Neff is dead

Donald Neff is dead. Donald who? That was my reaction. Then I read the tribute to him, an obituary, that I reproduce below. His story is one of a talented author and journalist who achieved fame and then made the career mistake so many have - he wrote honestly about Israel prompted by his own experience there as a bureau chief for TIME. His life story is the classic example of what happens when a line is crossed in pursuit of the truth. 

Donald Neff (1930-2015)

By Alison Weir

One of the top journalists to report on Palestine-Israel has died.

Donald Neff passed away on May 10 in his hometown of York, Pennsylvania, at the age of 84. The cause of death was heart disease and diabetes.

Neff was a luminous writer and meticulous reporter. From humble beginnings, he had reached the top ranks of American journalism. When he then turned his formidable talents to writing books and articles about Palestine, his contracts with mainstream American publishers dried up, his income plummeted, and his fame faded.

Today, even many activists in the growing Palestine solidarity movement are unaware of Neff’s groundbreaking work. This is unfortunate, since he exposed critical facts about Palestine with unparalleled precision and elegance. Much of the information he uncovered is still significant today.

During his long career, Neff reported on the Vietnam War from Tokyo and Saigon and was TIME?magazine bureau chief in Houston, Los Angeles and Jerusalem. One of the first reporters on the scene at the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana, he also covered the Apollo moon landing and reported on the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island (not far from his hometown). In 1980 he won the Overseas Press Club of America’s prestigious Mary Hemingway Award for best magazine reporting from abroad for a 1979 cover story about Colombia’s cocaine network.

Neff was at TIME from 1965-1979. While based in Jerusalem, he exposed an incident that would change the course of his life.

In “Epiphany at Beit Jala,” an in-depth essay written for the?November-December 1995 issue of The Link , Neff wrote about this incident and other eye-opening experiences covering the region.

Like most Westerners, Neff had arrived profoundly sympathetic to Israel. However, he wrote, “As my tour extended into years, I could not ignore a disturbing blindness in some of even the most gentle Israelis. They did not seem to see the Palestinians all around them…In general, this was just as well because when most Israelis did notice Palestinians their reaction to them was one of loathing or fear that quickly could escalate into violence.”

Neff’s experiences also revealed a power dynamic between the U.S. and Israel that he found astonishing.

He reported on Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s frantic attempts to convince Israel to relinquish Egyptian land Israel had acquired through its 1967 war of conquest and had managed to retain through American support during the 1973 “Yom Kippur” war. The U.S. was calling on Israel to return it to Egypt. Israel refused.

“The extent of Israel’s ability to resist U.S. advice,” Neff wrote, “was my first great eye-opener in Israel. I had had little appreciation of the astounding depth and strength of Zionism’s influence in Washington. I was stunned that a country completely beholden to the United States could thumb its nose at Washington.”

Various encounters through the years caused Neff “deep uneasiness” about the views and beliefs of some Israel partisans in the U.S., raising “the question of dual loyalty to a level I had never realized existed.”

A man who had been serving in the U.S. Navy when Israel tried to sink the USS Liberty, killing 34 and injuring over 170 Americans, told Neff that he had been “torn by the dilemma of whether he could actually participate in a U.S. retaliatory attack against Israel.” (This never came.)

Another American Zionist showed Neff his Israeli passport alongside his U.S. one. Neff was taken aback; it had been illegal for Americans to hold dual citizenship. The man proudly informed him that the policy had been changed in 1967 by the Supreme Court, adding with emphasis that the case had been brought by an Israeli and the swing vote was cast by Abe Fortas.

In later researching Fortas, Neff discovered that Fortas was a Zionist and that among his first thoughts when he left the Supreme Court had been to visit Israel. “There was nothing wrong with that,” Neff wrote, “but it did indicate an attachment of such personal importance that he should have recused himself from the dual citizenship case.” This ruling, Neff wrote, “had destroyed a 200-year tradition.”

Neff’s most intense experience, the “epiphany” of his essay title, came in March 1978, when a freelance reporter called to say that she had “heard reports that Israeli troops had just conducted a cruel campaign throughout the West Bank against Palestinian youth. Many Palestinians had suffered broken bones, others had been beaten and some had had their heads shaved.”

When Neff repeated the report to his TIME bureau staff, all Jewish Israelis, they were indignant. The report was obviously false, they said, because “that is what was done to us in the Holocaust.”

Neff decided to check out the facts for himself, taking along a skeptical Jewish American friend who was living in Israel.

“We went into the small hospital and a young Palestinian doctor who spoke English soon appeared. Yes indeed, he said matter-of-factly, he had recently treated a number of students for broken bones. There were 10 cases of broken arms and legs and many of the patients were still there, too seriously injured to leave. He took us to several rooms filled with boys in their mid-teens, an arm or leg, sometimes both, immobile under shining white plaster casts.”

When TIME published Neff’s report, it provoked outrage from both Israeli authorities and American Zionists. The New York Times failed to report on the incident, making it seem for awhile that Neff’s report was inaccurate. It wasn’t until an Israeli official investigated the incident and confirmed Neff’s facts that other journalists finally reported on it.

As a result of his reporting, Neff was made an honorary citizen of Bethlehem.

After Neff returned to the U.S. he eventually decided to leave periodical journalism in order to write books. He signed a contract with Simon & Schuster and wrote the first in what was to be a trilogy about the Israeli-Arab wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973

The book, Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America into the Middle East (1981), received wide acclaim. It was a National Book Award finalist and an alternate selection for both the Book of the Month Club and the History Book Club.

The Chicago Tribune Book World described it as “A true thriller” and said that the story was “as sobering as it is fascinating….important and compelling reading.”

The Tribune review, however, was to be among the few exceptions to a pattern later described by Ambassador Andrew Killgore, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

Books on the Middle East that editors disliked, Killgore noted, would be assigned to “a Zionist reviewer…the reviewer usually is Jewish, never a Muslim and only occasionally a Christian. If none of the facts presented in the book can be refuted, the book’s substance has to be ignored.” Often they would simply go un-reviewed.

Neff’s second book, Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days That Changed the Middle East, came out in 1985 and was again praised by experts. Former Undersecretary of State George Ball called it indispensable to anyone who wanted to understand “why we are in such a dangerous mess in the Middle East.”

While the Christian Science Monitor called it “one of the most significant contributions to modern historical literature,” most newspapers ignored it.

American Zionists had long disliked Neff’s work. When his report on the Beit Jala incident came out, even some TIME colleagues had complained. Neff was called an anti-Semite to his face, while others shunned him.

The book industry included such Israel partisans, as well. Simon & Schuster did not renew its contract with Neff, and his final book in the trilogy, Warriors Against Israel: How Israel Won the Battle to Become America’s Ally, was published in 1988 by Amana, a much smaller publisher.

Once again, Neff produced a powerful volume. Archibald B. Roosevelt, Jr., a grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, a polyglot who spoke 20 languages, and a former CIA officer with considerable expertise in the Middle East, wrote: “As an observer of Middle Eastern affairs for more than four decades, I was impressed by the originality of Neff’s presentation and surprised by his devastating conclusions, assembled from facts previously known to most of us only piecemeal. It is not only a good read, but essential background for serious students of developments in the Middle East today.”

Neff’s next book, on the history of U.S.-Israel relations, was published in 1995 by the Institute for Palestine Studies, headquartered in Lebanon. A second, updated edition was published in 2002.

Neff himself, and many others, considered this his most important book. Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy Towards Palestine and Israel Since 1945 provides a detailed history of how Zionists overcame the recommendations of U.S. diplomats, the Pentagon, and intelligence agencies to create today’s uniquely special relationship with Israel.

Citing a multitude of memos and official studies, Neff’s opus details U.S. officials’ failed attempts and frequent frustration at a special interest lobby that held more influence over U.S. policies than they did. Already by 1949 “Israeli officials were openly bragging about the power of the Jewish American community to influence U.S. policy.”

Pillars shows the deep roots of many current issues. “By 1968,” Neff reported, “the CIA was convinced Israel had produced nuclear weapons, or was capable of doing so, and informed President Lyndon Johnson. His response was to order the CIA not to inform any other members of the administration, including Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk.”

Although, again, scholarly reviewers praised Neff’s book, most mainstream media chose not to review it. An exception was The Washington Post, which assigned it to Tad Szulc, a Jewish American journalist whose primary expertise was Latin America and Eastern Europe. Szulc called Pillars “deeply flawed” and charged Neff with being “more Palestinian than the Palestinians.”

Neff’s final book, Fifty Years of Israel, was published on the 50th anniversary of Israel’s creation. A collection of the “Middle East History” columns Neff wrote for this magazine beginning in 1993, its short, footnoted chapters were based on a detailed handbook compiled daily of events related to Israel and Palestine from 1947 to the end of the 20th century. (See excerpt in sidebar here.)

Long before Google and other Internet search engines made their appearance, Neff’s computerized database was a frequently called upon source of information for authors and journalists. As theWashington Report’s late executive editor, Richard H. Curtiss, noted in his introduction to Fifty Years: “Over the phone I could hear the ‘click, click’ as he entered into his computer—which seemingly always was turned on—the key words that brought up almost instantaneous answers to whatever questions I asked.”

Donald Neff brought honesty, precision, and courage to a topic of world-shaking significance that most top journalists feared or obfuscated. For this, he paid dearly.

Those working to rectify one of the world’s most significant injustices and causes of ongoing tragedy owe deep gratitude to Donald Neff.

I personally am profoundly indebted. I first stumbled across Neff’s books when I ­visited the Washington Report bookstore in Washington, DC in the spring of 2001. While I had already seen at first-hand Israel’s ferocious treatment of Palestinians, I was largely unaware of Israel’s power in and over the United States. Neff’s work was as enlightening as it was disturbing.

A few years later I had the honor of meeting Donald Neff in person and conducting a long interview with him about his work. (A few minutes from this are on a video If Americans Knew subsequently released.)

I expect that eventually Neff’s books and articles, like those of other journalists who worked to tell Americans about Palestine but were largely erased from public awareness, will be rediscovered, as a new generation intent on justice discovers the power and relevance of his pioneering work.

Neff is survived by his companion of 15 years, Washington Reportmanaging editor Janet McMahon, as well as son Gregory Neff of York; two stepdaughters, Victoria Brett of Northampton, MA, and Abigail Miller of Portland, ME; a granddaughter; and two great-grandsons.

unprecedented Israel forum in DC

I have mentioned the indefatigable Alison Weir several times on this blog. She was once a small town newspaper reporter who (like me) became curious about the relationship between the United States and Israel after contemplating the fact that Israel always seems to come out a winner while defying official U.S. foreign policy, while criticism of that country is never heard on Capitol Hill. Alison has long been involved with the Council for the National Interest and she has her own website If Americans Knew that graphically details the lopsided reporting about Israel in the United States.

Along with many other intrepid explorers of the "special relationship" she has just participated in the unprecedented National Summit to Reassess the U.S. - Israel Special Relationship, a day long event held in Washington DC at the National Press Club. It featured outstanding authors who have published books looking into every detail of the history of Israel with regard to the United States.

The entire event was broadcast and recorded by CSPAN and the panels are all available to be seen. I've just viewed the panel "History: How did the special relationship come to be?" with lead-off presenter Stephen Walt (shown below) co-author with John Mearsheimer of "The Israel Lobby", the book that broke the ice regarding the lobby, with the unremarkable idea that the interests of United States and Israel are not identical.

Please watch. I promise you will be impressed and educated.

Jeff Blankfort and media censorship

Though most Americans may consider their press free and the Internet is truly providing a way to go to sources for news, it has long been a fact, and continues to be, that mainstream media news about Israel is highly selective and much doesn't make it to the pages of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Post - let alone regional newspapers and the major TV networks.

If you don't believe it, you can check out the excellent media analysis site at If Americans Knew, the work of Alison Weir, who has devoted the last ten years of her life to documentation of the gaping hole between what happens in the Middle East and what Americans are allowed to read or view about it.

I have an audio interview for you that Weir gave to Jeffrey Blankfort, an American non-Zionist Jew who, in his own right, has had much experience with Zionist censorship over the years. Please listen as he and Alison relate their experiences with censorship (about 30 minutes).

This interview is another in the Jersalem Calling series that I have been editing for brevity, produced by the Council for the National Interest.

By the way, did you know Fox News personality Wolf Blitzer was formerly a writer for AIPAC, the number one Zionist lobbying organization in the United States? You do know, I hope, that his boss, Rupert Murdoch, is also a dedicated Zionist and major supporter of Israel. This should make you think twice about what you see on Fox News.

Shot in the Head

Alison Weir, the tireless investigator of what Israel does to the Palestinians and the lack of reporting on it in the United States, has written a very powerful piece on the occasion of the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson.

Alison is executive director of CNI and produces the powerful reference source If Americans Knew. She speaks around the country (I have heard her) and is known for backing up what she says with facts, as the extensive footnotes that follow her article indicate.

Gabrielle Giffords, Tom Hurndall and Palestinian Children

Shot in the Head

By ALISON WEIR

There is something particularly horrifying when someone is shot in the head. Perhaps it’s the gruesome image, the destruction of the brain, the clear intent to kill. The recent shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is made even more nightmarish by the location of her devastating injury.

Those of us who focus on Israel-Palestine are acutely aware of this horror.

Several years ago, I was researching the cause of death of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces during the first months of the Second Intifadah, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. As I counted up the numbers, I was chilled to discover that the single most frequent cause of death in those beginning months was “gunfire to the head.”

In the past 10 years Israeli forces have killed at least 255 Palestinian minors by fire to the head, and the number may actually be greater, since in many instances the specific bodily location of the lethal trauma is unlisted. In addition, this statistic does not include the many more Palestinian youngsters shot in the head by Israeli soldiers who survived, in one form or another.

Below is a small sampling of those who died. (The term IDF stands for “Israeli Defense Forces,” although these forces are, in reality, an occupation army and are almost always deployed offensively; the incidents below took place on Palestinian territory):

Sami, 12, died of head wounds from IDF gunfire during a demonstration. Abdul, 9, was killed by IDF gunfire to his head during a funeral. Ala, 14, died of head wounds from IDF gunfire while on the terrace of his home one hour after injuring an Israeli soldier with a stone. Omar, 11, died of head wounds from IDF gunfire during a demonstration. Diya, 3 months, was killed, along with her older brother, by Israeli settler gunfire to her head and back. Bara, 10, was killed by IDF gunfire to his head while near his home. Ayman, 15, was killed by IDF tank fire to his head while farming. Khalil, 11, was killed by IDF tank fire to his head while playing with a friend. Rami, 13, was killed by IDF helicopter fire to his head while playing in front of his house. Yaser, 11, died of head wounds from an IDF rubber-coated bullet fired at close range during a demonstration…/1/

Imagine if these names were Bobby… Michael… Susan... Melissa… Jimmy…
and that the foreign troops killing them were invading Arizona, Connecticut, Ohio...

I remember seeing one little brain-dead boy when I was in Gaza in February of 2001; long before any rockets had been fired out of this already assaulted enclave. It’s not a sight you forget, regardless of the name or nationality.

A 2009 article in the UK Telegraph entitled “Bullets in the brain, shrapnel in the spine: the terrible injuries suffered by children of Gaza,” investigated a situation in which doctors at a hospital near Gaza were “almost overwhelmed by the number of Palestinian children needing treatment for bullet wounds to their heads.”/2/

The article began: “On just one day last week staff at the El-Arish hospital in Sinai were called to perform sophisticated CAT brain scans on a nine-year-old, two 10-year-olds and a 14-year-old – each of whom had a bullet still lodged in their brain, after coming under fire during the Israeli ground assault on Gaza.”

Asked about the nature of these shootings, a physician replied:

“I can't precisely decide whether these children are being shot at as a target, but in some cases the bullet comes from the front of the head and goes towards the back, so I think the gun has been directly pointed at the child."

Israeli soldiers in a group called “Breaking the Silence” have provided chilling testimonies about Israeli military culture; the titles alone tell a great deal. Following are a few:

“The battalion commander ordered us to shoot anyone trying to remove the bodies”, “The commander of the navy commandos put the muzzle of the rifle into the man’s mouth”, “They told us to shoot at anybody moving in the street”, “You can do whatever you feel like, nobody is going to question it.”/3/

Another person shot in the head by Israeli forces was 21-year-old Tom Hurndall. The anniversary of his death is this week. Hurndall, a student and photographer, had wanted to “make a difference” with his life. In 2003 he went to Gaza to join the nonviolence movement against Israeli aggression and to photograph what he saw. /4/

On April 11th he was nearby when a group of children who had been playing suddenly came under Israeli rifle fire. Most of the children fled, but three, aged four to seven, froze with fear. Hurndall dashed over, rushed one small boy to safety and returned for two little girls. Just as he was reaching to lift one up, an Israeli sniper shot him in the head.

Despite the urgency of his injury, Israeli officials delayed his transport to specialized medical care for over two and a half hours. A British television crew in the area filmed a powerful on-the-scene report that was aired on England’s Channel 4 /5/ but has never, to my knowledge, been shown on American television. Tom remained in a vegetative state for nine months, finally dying on Jan. 13t, 2004.

From the end of 2002 to the spring of 2003, Israeli forces killed four internationals and shot another in the face. One of the dead was a UN official, Iain Hook. As with Hurndall, Israeli forces retarded efforts to provide critical medical care. /6/ Another was filmmaker James Miller, who had been waving a white flag. He was shot in the throat. /7/

Two recent non-Palestinian victims shot in the head, in this case by high velocity tear gas canisters, are 37-year-old Tristan Anderson /8/ and 21-year-old Emily Henochowicz. /9/ Both have survived, Emily without an eye and Tristan in a wheelchair. Part of his right frontal lobe has been removed, he is partially paralyzed, blind in one eye, and it is unclear to what degree his cognitive abilities will return. After shooting him at close range, Israeli forces twice delayed his ambulance to a hospital.

It is difficult to know how many of the 45,000 Palestinian men, women, and children killed or injured by Israeli forces since September 29, 2000 /10/ have been shot in the head. Quite likely the number is staggering. Former Yale professor and author Mazin Qumsiyeh describes one:

[Mohammed] was 12 years old when Israeli soldiers shot him in the head with a rubber coated steel bullet, fragmenting his skull and damaging part of his brain. Ten years later, Israeli army officers severely beat and tortured him. He got married… the young couple received a blessing in the form of a donation of a very small plot of land from their uncle and they built a humble one room house… they lived in this house for 3 years…Then the Israeli army demolished the home saying that it was built without permit (Israel gave no permits for any houses in the village since the occupation began in 1967.) The family rebuilt the house but Israeli threats forced them to not live in it (Israel wants also some NIS 20,000 for the cost of destroying the home and wants to levy other fines on the family.) So the young family came to live in a small dwelling underground… /11/

A Dec. 23rd news story by the International Middle East Middle Center mentions another:

“After being brought to the hospital, 22-year old Salamah Abu Hashish succumbed to his wounds. He had been shot in the back by Israeli troops stationed at the border. Another of the victims was a 14-year old boy who was critically injured when he was shot in the head while collecting rubble near where Abu Hashish was tending his sheep.” /12/

The stories go on and on.

Gabrielle Giffords

Ironically, the American Congresswoman recently so tragically shot in the head has been extremely close to the Israel lobby, which has played a critical role in enabling the tragedies sketched above. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) works year after year to ensure that the approximately $7-8 million per day of American tax to Israel /13/ keeps flowing regardless of how many civilians its troops kill. /14/

Giffords has been known as “a safe pro-Israel vote in the House” /15/ and could be counted on to support AIPAC’s various initiatives to shield Israel from negative consequences for its ruthless and illegal use of American weaponry. /16/

She called a 2001 visit to Israel a turning point in her life (Israeli forces killed 103 children that year, 31 of them shot in the head) and wrote in 2006 (a year in which Israeli forces killed 665 Palestinians, 139 of them children, and Palestinians killed 23 Israelis, two of them children) that “the United States must do everything possible to secure Israel’s long-term security.” /17/ Palestinian victims – killed first and in far greater numbers – seem to have been invisible to her. /18/

Giffords, of course, wasn’t the only victim of the Tucson shooting; 14 were injured and six were killed. It is deeply saddening to read about the dead and to imagine the unending grief for their survivors. /19/ It is particularly difficult to view the sweet, smiling picture of nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green, knowing that her bright life is no longer before her.

It is equally tragic to read of nine-year-old Akaber, killed by Israeli gunfire to her head while riding in her uncle’s car to get medical stitches removed, and of the 29 other nine-year-olds killed by Israeli forces in the past decade, eight of them by Israeli gunfire to the head.

It is too late for Akabar, Diya, Mohammed, Tom, and the multitude of others. But there is hope that Gabrielle Giffords is going to survive. Let us pray that she recovers fully, that she is able to return to Congress, and that she then works to prevent others – including Palestinians – from being shot in the head.

We have better uses for our money than to fund atrocities.

Alison Weir is President of the Council for the National Interest and Executive Director of If Americans Knew, which has produced posters and cards for people to disseminate in commemoration of the seventh anniversary of Tom Hurndall’s killing (http://ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/hurndall-articles.html ) and about Palestinian children, (which contain a picture of the Gaza boy she saw). (http://ifamericansknew.org/about_us/opcard.html) She can be reached at alisonweir@ifamericansknew.org.

Notes and Citations

1. Remember These Children http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2000.html; Since Sept 29, 2000 Israeli forces have killed at least 1,452 Palestinian children; Palestinians have killed 124 Israeli children. Every single one of these deaths is a tragedy. 91 Palestinian children were killed before any Israeli children were killed. http://ifamericansknew.org/stats/children.html

2. “Bullets in the brain, shrapnel in the spine: the terrible injuries suffered by children of Gaza,” The Telegraph, Jan. 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/;

Related: “Doctor Decries Israeli Attacks,” video of CBS news report, Jan. 5, 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev6ojm62qwA

3. “The Darkness to Expel! Israeli soldiers' book ‘Breaking the Silence’ describes ‘routine’ oppression,” The Missing Headlines, Uri Avnery, Dec. 27, 2010 http://www.israel-palestinenews.org/

4. Section with articles on Tom Hurndall, If Americans Knew website http://ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/hurndall-articles.html

5. “Dispatches: The Killing Zone,” Sandra Jordan and Rodrigo Vasquez, UK Channel 4, May 19, 2003 http://ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/kzone.html

6. “Israel's killing of British citizen Iain Hook, UNRWA's Project Manager in Jenin
Caoimhe Butterly as told to Annie Higgins writing from Jenin Refugee Camp,” Live from Palestine, 22 November 2002 http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article906.shtml

7. “Film-maker's death 'was murder',” BBC News, April 4, 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/4876176.stm

8. “Facts about Tristan” http://justicefortristan.org/

9. “EXCLUSIVE...Emily Henochowicz Speaks Out: Art Student Who Lost Her Eye After Being Shot by Israeli Tear Gas Canister in West Bank Protest Discusses Her Life, Her Art, and Why She Plans to Return,” Democracy Now, Aug 5, 2010 http://www.democracynow.org

10. If Americans Knew website, from B’Tselem and Remember These Children http://ifamericansknew.org/

11. “The Story of a Palestinian Shot in the Head with a Rubber-Coated Steel Bullet by Israeli Occupation Soldiers,” Mazin Qumsiyeh, Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, September 20, 2010 http://www.aljazeerah.info/

12. “Shepherd killed; 3 injured in Northern Gaza,” IMEMC, Dec. 23, 2010 http://www.imemc.org/article/60257

13. “U.S. Military Aid and the Israel/Palestine Conflict,” If Americans Knew, from Congressional Research Service reports http://ifamericansknew.org/stats/usaid.html ;

“$3.4b in US military aid delayed: US military aid to Israel in 2011 is due to be largest amount Israel has ever received,” Globes Israel’s Business Arena, December 26, 2010 http://www.globes.co.il/

14. “The Israel Lobby,” London Review of Books, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, March 23, 2006 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the-israel-lobby

15. “Gabrielle Giffords Shot in the Head,” The Forward, Jan 8, 2011 http://forward.com/articles/134547/

16. “Israel Violates Law on U.S. Weapons in Mideast,” IPS, Jan 17, 2006 http://ipsnews.net/

17. AIPAC Facebook post, Jan. 9, 2011, 3:35 pm http://www.facebook.com/aipac

“A Tribe of Candidates Leads Drive To Retake House for Democrats,” The Forward, Sept. 22, 2006: “…Several candidates who spoke with the Forward did say that they would be strong advocates for Israel in Congress. This is ‘an opportunity to send someone to Congress who’s going to work for Israel,’ Giffords told the Forward…” http://www.forward.com/articles/4693/

18. B’Tselem - Israeli Information Center for Human Rights http://www.btselem.org/

If Americans Knew http://ifamericansknew.org/

19. “Thumbnail sketches of those shot in Arizona,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jan. 11, 2011 http://www.ajc.com/

Alison Weir - telling Americans the truth

Tonight I attended a meeting held by a Palestinian student group at North Eastern Illinois University in Chicago. The keynote speaker was Alison Weir (pictured above) who is the creator of the invaluably informative website If Americans Knew. I wanted to meet Alison because I've heard lots about her and I was not disappointed in the talk she gave, unfortunately cut short by a delay in the start of the program.

Alison described how ten years ago she was a reporter for a local paper in northern California when, horrified by what was going on during the period of the Second Intifada suicide bombings, she decided to learn about the situation in Israel for herself and took a trip there that turned her perception of the situation upside down - because she could see the facts for herself unfiltered by American news reports. Ever since, her mission has been to let Americans know the truth about the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

The truth, you say, but don't we get the truth from the news?

We don't. Alison presented several graphics drawn from research done on the news reports about the Middle East from the major outlets for foreign reports - ABC, CBS, NBC, the Associated Press and the NY Times.

Here is an example of what was found - in this case for the NY Times alone. The following graphic shows the number of children killed in Israel and the occupied territories in 2004. Israeli children killed are shown in blue and Palestinian children killed, in red. Note that for every Israeli child killed, 22 Palestinian children were killed. Data is taken from B'Tselem (bet SELL em), the Israeli human rights organization.
Now take a look at how this was reported in the NY Times. This time the bars show the percentage of deaths reported in a story headline or first paragraph. The ratio is 7.3 to 1. Translation - 50% of the Israeli children killed, 4 children, received headline or first paragraph coverage but only 7% of the far larger number of Palestinian children killed received such coverage.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. A more recent study of NPR coverage was less biased but still tilted heavily in favor of Israel. The other media outlets are similar to the NY Times.

The result of such skewed reporting is Americans perceive that Israel is taking far higher casualties than it is in comparison to those of the Palestinians. This only encourages the view of Palestinians as crazed terrorists preying on innocent people who are only defending themselves. But the actual figures from B'Tselem show that the Israeli military exacts a heavy toll of Palestinian lives, both adults and children, year after year after year.

In fact, the widely held view that violence subsided after the Second Intifada was true only for Israel. Palestinian deaths at the hands of the IDF increased. Even if we leave aside deaths, daily violence in the form of roughing up, beatings and tear gassing are the norm for Palestinians.

I encourage you to get the full picture