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Almost no one bothered to report it.
A search of the nation's largest newspapers turned up nothing
in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Chicago Sun-Times,
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle
Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Houston Chronicle, Tampa Tribune,
etc.
There was nothing on CBS, NBC,
ABC, CNN, PBS, NPR, Fox News. Nothing.
The LA Times, the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and Associated Press each had one sentence,
at most, telling about her. All three left out the details, the
LA Times had her age significantly off, and the Washington Post
reported that she had been killed by an Israeli tank shell.
It hadn't been a tank shell
that had killer her, according to witnesses. It had been bullets,
multiple ones, fired up close.
Neighbors report that Israeli
soldiers had been beating her husband because he wasn't answering
their questions. Foolishly or valiantly, how is one to say, the
35-year-old woman had interfered. She tried to explain that her
husband was deaf, screamed at the soldiers that her husband couldn't
hear them and attempted to stop them from hitting him. So they
shot her. Several times.
Her name was Itemad Ismail
Abu Mo'ammar.
She didn't die, though. That
took longer. It required her life to flow out of her in the form
of blood for several hours, as Israeli soldiers refused to allow
an ambulance to transport her to help. Her husband and children
could do nothing to save her.
Finally, after approximately
five hours, an ambulance was allowed to take her to a hospital,
where physicians were able to render one service: pronounce her
dead, a few days before the commencement of Ramadan, a season
of family gatherings much like the Christmas season for Americans.
She left 11 children. None of this was in the Washington Post
story, which had reported her death in one half of one sentence.
Her husband's brother, who
lived in the same house, was also killed. He was a 28-year-old
farmer.
Why did this all happen? The
family lived behind a resistance fighter wanted by Israel. They
were simply "collateral damage" in a failed Israeli
assassination/kidnapping operation.
All together, five Palestinians
were killed that day. The other three were young shepherds killed
in another area, two 15 years old and one 14, who seem to have
simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gaza.
None of this was reported in
most of America's news media, and so the American public never
learned about a mother bleeding to death in front of her children,
or young shepherds being blown to pieces. Apparently, it just
wasn't newsworthy.
A Case Study
of "Good" News Coverage
The Washington Post at least
mentioned these deaths, so perhaps those who care about journalistic
standards should laud the Post for its coverage.
And yet, the Post in its short
report got so much so wrong.
In addition to misreporting
Itemad's cause of death and omitting critical facts, the Post's
story portrayed the entire context incorrectly, telling readers
that these five deaths had broken a period of "relative
calm."
The fact is that while it was
true that in the previous six months not a single Israeli child
had been killed by Palestinians, during this period Israelis
had killed 75 Palestinian young people, including an 8-month-old
and several three-year-olds.
I phoned the Post and spoke
to a foreign editor about the need to run a correction, providing
information on Itemad's murder. The editor said that she would
pass this on to their correspondent (who is based in Israel),
but explained that it was "impossible for him to go to Gaza."
When I disagreed, she amended the "impossible" to "very
difficult." She neglected to mention that the Post has access
to stringers in Gaza available to check out any incident the
editors deem important.
Next, I wrote a letter to the
paper containing the above information. Happily, the Post letters
department apparently checked it out and decided it was a good
letter. They sent an email informing me that they were considering
my letter for publication and needed to confirm that I was the
one who had written it, and that I had not sent the information
elsewhere.
I replied in the affirmative,
we exchanged a few more messages, and everything appeared on
target. Normally, when publications contact you in this way,
your letter is published shortly thereafter. I waited in anticipation.
And waited.
It is now almost two weeks
after their report, and I have just been informed that the paper
has decided not to print my letter. The Post has apparently determined
that there is no need to run a correction.
I think I understand.
Although the Washington Post's
statement of principles proclaims, "This newspaper is pledged
to minimize the number of errors we make and to correct those
that occur... Accuracy is our goal; candor is our defense,"
the American Society of Newspaper Editors clarifies these ethical
requirements: corrections need only be printed when the error
of commission or omission is "significant."
And, after all, these were
only Palestinians, and it was just another mother dead.
Alison Weir is Executive Editor of If
Americans Knew, which has produced in-depth studies and illustrative
videos on American news coverage of Israel-Palestine.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
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