July 30, 2002

Dear NPR News,

NPR's detailed and obsessive coverage of the injury of several Israelis today and the killing of two settlers is mirrored by its studious silence about the unprovoked rampage by Jewish settlers in Hebron on Sunday, July 28 in which a Palestinian girl was killed and more than a dozen people injured..

Israeli settlers rampaged through the city shooting indiscriminately. A 14-year old Palestinian girl, Niveen Jamjum was shot dead in her home, while a nine-year old boy was stabbed. Haaretz quoted the Israeli army saying that in all 15 Palestinians were injured in the rampage and an equal number of Israeli police hurt in what the newspaper termed "the Jewish violence." Two of the injured were Niveen's brothers, hit by settler gunfire when they attempted to rescue their sister.

The settler rampage was termed "a pogrom against the Arabs of Hebron," by Moshe Givati, the settlement security advisor to the Israeli public security minister Uzi Landau. According to Haaretz, Givati who was at the scene when the rampage took place "said he witnessed 'brutal acts' and rejected absolutely explanations by the Jewish Community of Hebron Council spokesmen who said they were acting in self-defense against Palestinian stone-throwing." (Minister's aide calls Hebron riots a 'pogrom', July 30, 2002)

Givati described the settlers attacking Palestinians unprovoked and firing indiscriminately at their homes. Many other eyewitness reports have confirmed this account.

I have found no reports in the NPR archives covering these events. Peter Kenyon's report on All Things Considered this afternoon appears to be the first full-length report on Israeli-Palestinian violence since the events in Hebron. This report should have included those events.

As usual, the report went into great detail about a suicide bombing in occupied Jerusalem today which lightly injured five Israelis, and the killing of two settlers in the occupied West Bank. There was actuality from the scene of the bombing at a falafel stand. Kenyon even found time to report that a Moroccan Jewish immigrant was shot and injured by an Israeli minister's bodyguards and yet he made absolutely no mention whatsoever of the events in Hebron.

What possible reason could there be for this?

Yours,