June 20, 2002

Dear NPR News,

The two latest suicide bombings which killed 26 Israelis, including a number of young children and teenagers, are horrifying as the graphic reports from the scenes by Linda Gradstein have made chillingly clear. I join the call of numerous Palestinians that such attacks directed at innocent civilians should stop immediately and completely, first because it is simply immoral for any side to target innocent civilians as both Israelis and Palestinians have done mercilessly over the past 21 months, and secondly because the attacks undermine the legitimacy of what everyone in the world knows is an indisputably just cause, the cause of Palestinian freedom and self-determination.

While absolutely nothing can justify such attacks, I do believe that geographical accuracy in reporting remains supremely important, especially when dealing with news bound to generate intense emotions and outrage among many listeners.

In the 7 AM ET news bulletin, Karl Kassel described the two latest suicide bombings as having taken place in "Jerusalem." In his introduction to Linda Gradstein's report on Morning Edition today about Israel's latest rampages in the West Bank, Bob Edwards referred to the second bombing as having taken place on a "busy Jerusalem street." Linda Gradstein referred to the first attack as having taken place on "a Jerusalem bus."

In fact neither of the attacks took place in Jerusalem. The first attack took place in the Israeli West Bank settlement of Gilo which is adjacent to the town of Beit Jala and is built on land occupied in 1967 and expropriated from the town of Beit Jala. Only Israel in its unilaterally expanded and internationally rejected boundaries calls this area "Jerusalem," in an attempt to gain legitimacy for its occupation and colonization of Palestinian land.

The second attack took place in French Hill a settlement east of Jerusalem, also built entirely on West Bank land occupied in 1967. It is an indisputable fact that French Hill, a Jewish-only colony, was built largely on 1,000 acres of land expropriated by the Israeli occupation authorities in 1968 from the Palestinian east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, and the adjacent villages of Shu'fat and Issawiya.

Israel has conducted a relentless campaign for decades to obscure the origin of these colonies, to gain legitimacy for them, and to convince the world media that they are merely "neighborhoods" or "communities" of "Jerusalem", or failing that to intimidate reporters into being too afraid to identify clearly and unambiguously that these "communities" are settlements built on land repeatedly and clearly defined by the Security Council as being under belligerent Israeli military occupation and which was seized by force from its Palestinian owners and inhabitants. Since these Israeli practices lie at the heart of the conflict, it can hardly be irrelevant to a listeners' understanding of the context.

Yet, sadly, Israel's tactics appear to have worked with NPR.

If at some point Israel's government declares more areas of the West Bank to be part of "Israel" or "Jerusalem" as it has done over the years with vast tracts of land around Jerusalem, will NPR immediately accept and adopt those decisions? If not, where will you draw the line? How does NPR decide which Israeli annexations and land seizures are legitimate and to be unquestioningly accepted and reported to the public as indisputable fact?

Allowing the powerful alone to define reality and the parameters of reality, as NPR does when it unquestioningly adopts Israel's terminology is not journalism. It is politics and sloppiness.

Ali Abunimah
http://www.abunimah.org