August 9, 2002

Dear NPR News,

I have appreciated several examples of NPR's recent coverage, including Robert Siegel's interview with Edward Said a week ago, and Annie Garrels' report on Morning Edition today which exposed the racist, fascist views surrounding the internal debate over Israel's latest chimera, the fence which is supposed to protect Israelis from the people they are colonizing and oppressing.

Linda Gradstein's report on All Things Considered for August 8, however, about a debate over whether the presence of Israeli soldiers on civilian buses makes those buses more attractive targets for suicide bombers contained at least two incredibly idiotic statements.

At one point Gradstein was addressing demands for special buses to transport soldiers. Gradstein said:

"Israeli army spokeswomen Brigadier General Ruth Yaron says military transport is provided in the West Bank and Gaza Strip because Israeli buses do not travel in Palestinian controlled areas."

This sentence makes no sense, because it implies that special vehicles are transporting Israeli soldiers in and around "Palestinian-controlled areas." Obviously areas which are teeming with Israeli soldiers traveling around in special "transport" (does this refer to buses, or also armored personnel carriers and tanks?) are not "Palestinian controlled" but, as even the US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer had to admit this week, under Israeli military occupation. This is a simple concept and by now Gradstein ought to be able to grasp it.

Even more egregiously, Gradstein asserted:

"All Israelis, men and women, except ultra-orthodox Jews do compulsory military service."

In fact, all Israeli JEWS, except for ultra-orthodox do compulsory military service. Gradstein simply omitted the fact that more than one million Palestinian citizens of Israel--people who were all there before Israel came and imposed itself on them--are excluded from military service essentially because the state of which they are nominally citizens views and treats them like enemies.

At a time when there is a concerted campaign in Israel to delegitimize non-Jewish citizens, such an error--whether conscious or unconscious--is simply inexcusable. In recent months, non-Jewish citizens of Israel have been subjected to intensified measures of repression: Arab members of parliament have been stripped of their immunity and put on trial for making speeches, they have had their freedom of movement and travel revoked, and now the Israeli government has begun proceedings to strip some Palestinian citizens of Israel of their citizenship allegedly on "security" grounds. The cabinet reversed its recent decision to enshrine in law Israel's long-standing apartheid housing and land-use practices, only because of the feeling that the same goals could be achieved without the trouble and embarasssment of revealing its goals through legislation.

(Needless to say, no one in Israel has proposed stripping Yitzhak Rabin's Jewish murderer of his citizenship, nor demanded that the immunity of Jewish members of parliament who vociferously demand ethnic cleansing be lifted.)

Rhetorically, at least as far as Linda Gradstein is concerned, these efforts have already suceeded. Gradstein's slip demonstrates that like many Israelis, she views only Jews as worthy of being acknowledged and treated as citizens.

Sincerely,