Apartheid

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When Israelis are killed by Palestinians, the acts are often referred to by both the
private and the public US media (and by extension, many media around the world) as the end
of a ‘calm’ period, as a ‘flare-up in violence’, even if many more Palestinians were killed by
Israelis in the preceding days or weeks. Israel and the Occupied Territories are thus ‘calm’
unless, and only unless, violence is perpetrated against Jews.
For example, on September 18 and 19, 2002, six Israelis were killed in the first two
Palestinian suicide bomb attacks in six weeks. All major US news outlets referred to the
preceding six weeks as ‘calm’. However, during those six weeks, 54 Palestinians were killed
by Israelis, most of them unarmed civilians, totally uninvolved in resistance activities, some
of them in their homes. At least seven of the Palestinians killed during this time were children,
at least 15 were teenagers, and two were women. 685
During peace negotiations between Israelis, Palestinians and Americans in Jordan in
June 2003, Israeli soldiers embarked on a large number of unprovoked attacks, some fatal,
against Palestinian civilians in Palestinian cities and towns. The US mass media, with the sole
exception of the newspaper, Newsday, did not report these attacks, in some cases even
explicitly and falsely stating that there was no violence at all. 686
Although media monitoring organizations and concerned individuals have protested
these practices they seem to have become even more widespread as time passes. In the
December 2003 reporting of the first suicide bombing in 12 weeks targeting Israelis – and
killing three along with the bomber – not only US media, but also foreign media, including
the otherwise relatively objective British-owned Reuters news agency referred to the
preceding two-and-a-half months as ‘relative calm’ or ‘quiet’, although 117 Palestinians had
in fact been killed by Israelis during this time. 687 The occupied indigenous population is thus
always, implicitly or explicitly, accused of breaking the peace, of launching provocative,
rather than provoked, attacks.
A related kind of bias, i.e. selectively incomplete information, became manifest to
impartial outside observers when the US and other western media commemorated the thirtieth
anniversary of the murders in Munich of eleven Israeli Olympic athletes by Palestinian
until it was no longer possible to count or inspect the scores of Palestinian bodies, due to their decomposition.
The UN then gave up and the apparent massacre in Jenin remains uninvestigated by an authoritative neutral
body. On the basis of a compilation from public information, mostly from the observer missions of individual
countries and a variety of NGO reports, the UN did however finally publish a report on August 1, 2002, in which
the word ‘massacre’ was not used, although the UN faulted Israel for keeping out aid and medical services from
the city after the raids as well as blaming Palestinian militants for using civilian residential areas as bases. It said
at least 52 Palestinians died in Jenin, as many as half of them civilians, while Israel lost 23 soldiers there. But
497 Palestinians were killed between March 1 and May 7 in the course of the Israeli incursion into Palestinian
cities and towns including Jenin, the report said, citing UN figures. Another 1,447 Palestinians were wounded,
including 538 live ammunition injuries, the report said, criticizing Israel for using heavy weaponry in densely
populated areas. However, much criticism was immediately levelled at the UN ‘report’ for exonerating the
Israelis. Wael Qadan, general director of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, questioned the UN figures. He
said his organization had recorded 65 Palestinians killed in Jenin, including those in the camp who were not from
Jenin itself. He also said there was no breakdown for civilians and gunmen in the UN report. Human rights
groups said that Israeli soldiers used Palestinians as human shields in house-to-house searches, that they tore
down buildings in full knowledge that civilians inside would be killed, and that they executed unarmed civilians
who had already surrendered to the soldiers. See Arieff: UN Says Israel, Arabs, Put Civilians in Harm’s Way,
2002; N.N.: Israel Says UN Jenin Report Ends “Misconceptions”, August 1, 2002; Hauser: Months after
Incursion, Jenin’s Scars Not Healing, 2002; Leopold & Arieff: No Israeli Massacre in Jenin but Grave Abuses,
2002. The important thing in this context, it should be reiterated, is not that the New York Times was wrong in
its estimate of Palestinian deaths, but that it downplayed, even ignored, a huge Palestinian death toll in favor of a
much smaller Israeli death toll.
685
Brown and Abunimah: Killings of Dozens Once Again Called Period of Calm by US Media, 2002. See also
footnotes 676-679, above.
686
Abunimah: US Media Ignores Israeli Violence After Aqaba Summit, 2003
687
Abuminah: 117 Palestinians Killed, Hundreds Injured During Media’s “Relative Calm”, 2003