February 25, 2002

Dear NPR News,

Peter Kenyon's report on All Things Considered today about the particularly gruesome violence which claimed four lives in the occupied territories today and saw two pregnant women injured was excellent. It also provided a glimpse of the experience of at least one Palestinian family returning to its home badly damaged by Israeli occupation troops who had seized it months ago.

There was however one serious inaccuracy stemming from NPR's evasive and timid treatment of the facts about Israel's settlements in the occupied territories. Jackie Lyden's introduction to the report stated:

"Two Israelis and two Palestinians died today in the West Bank as violence in the Middle East began to heat up again. A Palestinian gunman was also killed after wounding several Israelis at a bus stop in the north of Jerusalem."

The incident at the bus stop actually occurred in Neve Yaacov, an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. Kenyon did a little bit better in his report, describing it as "a settlement that Israel regards as part of Jerusalem," thereby suggesting that Israel does not have the final word.

But why give only Israel's version? In fact, Neve Yaacov is a settlement the vast majority of which was built by the government of Menachem Begin starting in 1981 on occupied West Bank land mostly expropriated from Palestinian owners. This was part of a declared effort to surround occupied East Jerusalem with Jewish-only settlements, cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank.

When the Palestinian-owned land on which Neve Yaacov was built was first expropriated, the Associated Press reported:

"The seizure of 1,100 acres on the northern outskirts of Jerusalem came nine days after the [United Nations Security] council unanimously passed a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in occupied Arab land, including the West Bank of the Jordan River, Egypt's Gaza Strip and the annexed sector of Jerusalem. The United States supported the resolution." ("Israel Expropriates More Jerusalem Land," March 11, 1980)

Whoever wrote Lyden's introduction should know that Neve Yaacov is only in "north Jerusalem" according to a unilateral Israeli decision in June 1967 to annex to Jerusalem 72 square kilometres of occupied West Bank land extending to the limits of the city of Ramallah in the north, Bethlehem in the south, and far east encompassing several Palestinian villages. This decision was specifically declared null and void by the United Nations Security Council on numerous occasions and has not been recognized by any country in the world, including the United States.

Hence, Peter Kenyon could just as easily have described Neve Yaccov as 'a settlement, built on land expropriated from Palestinian owners in the occupied West Bank, which the international community regards as being in violation of international law.' It is puzzling that NPR chooses only to provide the Israeli perspective, at best to hint that another one exists, and not to include other facts which would allow the listener to put Israel's view in context.

Yours,

Ali Abunimah
http://www.abunimah.org