From: Ali Abunimah
To: morning@npr.org, nprnews@npr.org
Subject: Monday morning news leaves out the weekend's events

November 26, 2001

Dear NPR News,

Many people tune in on Monday morning, I suspect, to hear not only the day's news but also to catch up on important events they have perhaps not been paying close attention to over the weekend, especially if it is Thanksgiving weekend.

Yet Linda Gradstein's news spot in the 8 AM Eastern Time news bulletin provided not even a minimal summary of the bloody events over the weekend in the occupied territories. She only reported that two Israeli soldiers had been slightly injured when a Palestinian suicide bomber allegedly blew himself up at a checkpoint in Gaza today.

She did not mention at all that over the weekend Israeli occupation forces killed 12 Palestinians, at least six of them children. One Israeli occupation soldier was also killed when a mortar fired by Palestinians hit the illegal colony he was guarding in the occupied Gaza Strip.

Leave side what happened over the weekend, if Gradstein wants to inform us what happened today, why did she not mention that early this morning a family of five Palestinians were wounded in their home in Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza when Israeli tanks shelled it? Two of the wounded were young children, according to the French news agency. Nor did she mention that after a period of relative calm, the latest round of violence was triggered first by the bomb Israel planted in a refugee camp which killed five children, and second by the extrajudicial execution of several members of Hamas by an Israeli death squad.

Once again listeners are left with the impression that Palestinians have perpetrated most of the violence against Israelis when in fact the opposite is true. Such has become the trademark of Gradstein's reporting.

Sincerely,

Ali Abunimah
http://www.abunimah.org