PMWATCH
(PMW-AP group) - October 11, 2002 --
Throughout much of the year the Associated Press has been posting
comprehensive overviews of Palestinian attacks on Israelis. We issued an
action call on one of these summaries ("Israel Attacks Glance") back in
August (see: http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/cast/ap.asp )
and complained about both the distorted and misleading nature of these overviews, and the AP's ongoing failure to provide a single overview on Palestinian casualties.
Ten weeks later, the Associated Press has finally posted a report
called "A look at Israeli attacks on Palestinians, causing civilian
casualties," which appeared monday afternoon in the wake of an Israeli attack
on civilians in Khan Younis. Given that somewhere in the vicinity of
1,650 Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and
settlers in the past 730 days -- an average of 16 civilians a week for the
past two years* -- one would expect this to be a lengthy report. (The
total number of deaths is 1,939, of which 85% are reported to have been
civilians.)
Remarkably, despite thousands of Israeli attacks in the last two
years, the long-awaited Associated Press "list of Israeli attacks" describes
only FIVE incidents, accounting for 48 deaths -- only about 2% of the
total number of Palestinians killed in this period!
The misleading headline is qualified in the text of this 16-line
report by the inclusion of the word "extensive." We are now supposedly
looking at a list of only those Israeli attacks which caused "extensive
civilian casualties." We might then wonder why this very short list
includes the Israeli missile attack of September 26, 2002 which killed
two people, but not the June 21, 2002 shelling of a crowded Jenin market place which
left three children and a school teacher dead and dozends wounded
(see
http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/reports/tally/ ? Why exclude the countless other
attacks which have killed more than two Palestinians, and injured dozens?
Why the arbitray trimming and for what purpose?
The AP report also makes much ado about "civilians," going to
surprising lengths to identify the "targets" and victims of the Israeli attacks
in each case as (1) "mostly policemen" and a "Hamas militant", (2)
"the wife of an Islamic militant and her children" and "Hamas leader
Kweik," (3) "Head of the Hamas military wing and his bodyguard," (4) "Hamas
bombing mastermind Deif," and (5) "armed men killed in battle. Such hedging
is clrealy aimed at obfuscating the naked reality that of 1,939 Palestinian deaths to date,
only about 15% of the victims have been combattants. The vast majority of
all Palestinian deaths are civilian deaths, contrary to what this AP
story would lead us to believe.
No such speculation about the good or bad nature of the victims was
shown in the AP's July 30 accounting of "73 Palestinian suicide bombing
attacks against Israelis," in which no differention was made between
Israeli soldiers/combattants and Israeli civilians. For the AP, all
Israeli victims -- even settlers and Occupation Soldiers -- were simply
"Israelis", while all Palestinian victims must be characterized according to
their political belilefs and affiliations, or their spouse's or
parent's political affiliations, whenever possible.
Furthermore, the AP feels it is important to list EVERY attack against
Israelis, regardless of whether anyone was harmed or whether the attack
took place in the Occupied Territories. No such meticulous concern is
shown for the Palestinians. The 48 deaths reported by the AP leave
thousands of attacks unmentioned and 1,841 Palestinians unaccounted for.
No mention is made of the fact that the deaths of almost 2,000 people
are only a fraction of the misery inflicted by Israel in the last 2
years: over 41,000 people wounded severly enough to require medical
treatment, including over 7,000 children; thousands permanently disabled;
millions of Palestinians confined to their homes 24 hours a day under
virtually permanent military curfews, and deprived of water, food, fuel,
medicine, schools, and food; daily terrorism, bombings, murders,
burglaries, stabbings, shootings and arson by settlers, and the daily threat of
random military violence, assassinations, bombings and shelling from
Israeli F-16's, Apache's and Merkava Tanks which patrol every inch of
Occupied Palestine.
Given that Palestinian casualties outnumber Israeli casualties by 4 to
1, one might expect that an unbiased overview of Palestinian casualties
would be four times as long as an overview of Israeli deaths. At the
AP, their list of Israeli attacks is 15 TIMES SMALLER than the
corresponding list of Israeli deaths. Furthermore, because the list of
Palestinian attacks on Israelis also listed attacks in which no one was
killed, might we not reasonably expect that the list of Israeli attacks
on Palestinians also noted attacks which led to non-fatal injuries?
Over 41,000 Palestinians wounded by Israeli attacks in the last two years
would have been grateful to have been noticed for the first time by the
AP.
As we noted in the August report, the AP has an enormous worldwide distribution and
the news it sees fit to print form a significant share of the news the
entire world sees every day. Our criticism and concerns, if noted by
the AP, could have an enormous impact on the way this conflict is
portrayed. Please take the time to call and write a letter to the Associated
Press.
New York Headquarters: Tel 212-621-1500 Fax 212-621-7523
Washington Bureau: Tel 202-776-9400 Fax 202-776-9570
You can quickly dispatch your letter to the AP by using the interface below
or by sending email to: intdesk@ap.org and
info@ap.org. Make sure you bcc us at:
pmw-letters@yahoogroups.com.
It is worth your five minutes!
For
our latest alerts on AP, please visit:
Thomas Olson
Director, PMW-AP group
Palestine Media Watch
http://www.pmwatch.org
*All above statistics taken from The Palestine Monitor
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/factsheet/Palestinian_intifada_fact_sheet.htm
