From: Ali Abunimah
To: nprnews@npr.org, atc@npr.org
Subject: News spot reports on death of Israeli teenager, omits Palestinian

July 24, 2001

Dear NPR News,

I listened with interest to Linda Gradstein's news spot in the 17.00 Eastern Time news bulletin. Gradstein reported that the body of an 18-year old Israeli youth found in the occupied West Bank and bearing bullet holes and stab wounds had been handed over to Israel by Palestinian Authorities. Israel suspects that Palestinians may have been responsible for the killing.

Absent from this bulletin, and any of the other hourly news bulletins I heard on NPR over the past twenty four hours was any mention of 15-year-old Rifat Al-Nahal, a Palestinian boy who was machine-gunned to death by Israeli occupation troops in Rafah refugee camp in the southern occupied Gaza Strip on Monday night.

Did you report on this killing with similar detail to the Israeli in one of the bulletins that I missed, or has Linda Gradstein resumed her long-standing practice of treating only Israeli victims as newsworthy? Given her long record of doing this, I cannot assume that you did report it.

None of the bulletins I heard mentioned that an elite Israeli army death squad extrajudicially executed 28 year-old Mustafa Yassin on Monday in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin. Israel claimed that Yassin had been involved in planning attacks against it. Also on Monday, an activist from Islamic Jihad was wounded when four masked men pulled alongside his car in Bethlehem and opened fire before fleeing, in what appears to have been an unsuccessful execution attempt by the occupation forces.

I shall not jump to conclusions, but I will look forward to a response.

Sincerely,

Ali Abunimah
http://www.abunimah.org