March 2, 2002

Dear NPR News,

David Brooks of the Weekly Standard's anti-Palestinian statements in an interview with Jackie Lyden on All Things Considered this afternoon and his repetition of such standard Israeli propaganda that "Arafat launched the Intifada" as well as his condemnation of Palestinian "terrorism against Israel" without reference to Israeli violence against Palestinians which has killed over a thousand pople in the past 18 months, might be fine. So might Norman Podhoretz's rabid commentary on Morning Edition today, if they did not come in a context in which for weeks NPR has permitted only Israelis and Americans to provide in-depth commentary and analysis of the conflict to the total exclusion of Palestinians.

Anthony Lewis' commentary mildly critical of Sharon alongside that of Podhoretz (who had the last word) this morning, does not make up for the exclusion of Palestinian voices.

The other in-depth interviews I could find were with Akiva Eldar, a columnist from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on All Things Considered for February 26, and an interview with Hirsh Goodman of Israel's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies on Morning Edition for February 21.

Other than very brief soundbites from Palestinians in reports from Jerusalem, always "balanced" with soundbites of equal length from Israelis, Palestinian voices have recently been totally excluded from NPR.

In addition to shutting off analysis from Palestinians, NPR's arms-length reporting has often rendered their daily experience nearly invisible. Israel's deadly assault on two West Bank refugee camps has continued now for two days, with tens of thousands of civilians being held hostage under terrfying bombardment. More than twenty people have been killed in the past twenty four hours including a number of children, and more than 150 injured.

If this had been a suicide bombing in central Jerusalem, Linda Gradstein (a reporter who has for years been accepting thousands of dollars in unethical payments from Zionist groups) would have been on the scene immediately. We would hear wailing ambulances and panicked screams and interviews with eyewitnesses. When it comes to Palestinians, instead of taking the short (for her as an Israeli who can pass through checkpoints) drive from her home in west Jerusalem to the occupied West Bank, to find out what is going on in the actual conflict zone, she remains at home reading news wires and monitoring the Israeli media. How is it that this mediocrity and laziness has come to pass for journalism at NPR? Better still you could actually post one of your two reporters to the occupied territories.

There are many stories that could be reported immediately. How are Palestinian hospitals coping with hundreds of victims? What is it like to be in a refugee camp when the world's most sophisticated US-armed force drives through your shack blazing fire? What about some interviews with eyewitnesses? What about an attempt to contact someone inside the camp by phone?

When a bomb goes off in Tel Aviv, Gradstein and NPR do their best to make sure we feel what it is like to experience it, as much as radio can. When Israel carries out a sustained attack against thousands of unarmed civilians in UN-designated refugee camps for more than 24 hours, they give us at best clinical descriptions, claims and counterclaims, and worst of all, while the news is happening a short distance away from where their reporters are, they sit on their hands.

How typical.

Ali Abunimah http://www.abunimah.org