New Book Breaks Censorship on Palestinian Issue

New Book Breaks Censorship on Palestinian Issue
Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories
Consortium; September 15, 2004

In a groundbreaking departure, a recently released book by a major progressive
institution dedicated to exposing "censorship" in the American media reveals that
the organization itself also omitted information on the Israeli-Palestinian issue
over its 20-plus years of operations.

The book, CENSORED 2005, is the most recent in a series produced by "Project
Censored," a highly respected media research organization whose mission is "To Tell
The News That Didn't Make the News."

The strongly worded chapter, by If Americans Knew founder Alison Weir, describes the
history of Israel, its continuing violations of human rights, and the cover-up on
this issue in the American press.

While media analysts have increasingly exposed distortion on Palestine in the
corporate media, Weir's chapter is one of the first to detail such censorship in the
progressive community. In addition to its analysis of Project Censored itself, the
chapter also names other progressive organizations with similar lapses.

Observers feel that the inclusion of Weir's chapter may signal a new willingness to
discuss Israel's apartheid system and human rights violations among progressive and
leftist groups that previously were side-tracked by allegations that discussing the
facts on Israel would be "too divisive."

On the other hand, the book also includes an introduction by author Greg Palast, an
Israel-sympathizer who has called Al-Jazeera "Terrorist News Network." (Most experts
consider the Qatar-based network one of the most reliable on the region.)

******

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/sides.html



Israel and Palestine, Choosing Sides



By Alison Weir, If Americans Knew

excerpted from Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories




The most monumental cover-up in media history may be the one I'm about to describe.
In my entire experience with American journalism, I have never found anything as
extreme, sustained, and omnipresent.

Three and a half years ago, when the current Palestinian uprising began, I started
to look into Israel and Palestine. I had never paid much attention to this issue
before and so - unlike many people - I knew I was completely uninformed about it. I
had no idea that I was pulling a loose piece of thread that would steadily unravel,
until nothing would ever be quite as it had been before.

When I listened to news reports on this issue, I noticed that I was hearing a great
deal about Israelis and very little about Palestinians. I decided to go to the
Internet to see what would turn up, and discovered international reports about
Palestinian children being killed daily, often shot in the head, hundreds being
injured, eyes being shot out.[1] And yet little of all this was appearing in NPR
reports, the New York Times, or the San Francisco Chronicle.

There was also little historic background and context in the stories, so this, too,
I began to fill in for myself, reading what has turned into a multitude of books on
the history and other aspects of the conflict.[2] I attended presentations and read
international reports.

The more I looked into all this, the more it seemed that I had stumbled onto a
cover-up that quite possibly dwarfed anything I had seen before. My former husband
had been one of the founders of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), an
institution known for its powerful exposés. He and CIR have won numerous
well-deserved awards from Project Censored from the very beginning of its creation.
Nevertheless, the duration and violence of the injustice I was discovering, and the
extent of its omission and misrepresentation - even in Project Censored itself,
seemed unparalleled.

In February and March of 2001 I went to the Palestinian territories as a freelance
reporter, traveling alone throughout Gaza and the West Bank. I saw tragedy and
devastation far beyond what was being reported in the American media; I saw
communities destroyed, ancient orchards razed, croplands plowed under. I saw
children who had been shot in the stomach, in the back, in the head. I still see
them.

I saw people convulsing and writhing in pain from a mysterious poison gas that had
been lobbed at them; they said it felt like there were knives in their stomach.[3] I
talked to men who had been tortured.[4]

I watched as a mother wept for her small son, and I took pictures of his spilled
blood. I watched a son grieve for his mother, killed on her way home from the market
on a day that I was told was the Muslim equivalent of the day before Christmas, or
Passover, and I thought of my own son, the same age.

I listened to old people who described the start of this holocaust - over fifty
years ago, at the end of an earlier one. They described what it was like when
three-quarters of your entire population is ethnically cleansed from their homes and
land, children dying along the roadside while aircraft shell the fleeing families.
They told of dozens of massacres of entire villages, and I've since read accounts by
Israeli soldiers, published in Israeli publications, of how they raped the women,
and then killed them, of how they used sticks to crush the skulls of children.[5] I
discovered the message sent by Menachem Begin, later elected Israeli prime minister,
to troops following the massacre of Palestinians in one village, Deir Yassin:

"Accept my congratulations on this splendid act of conquest. Convey my regards to
all the commanders and soldiers. We shake your hands. We are all proud of the
excellent leadership and the fighting spirit in this great attack...Tell the
soldiers: you have made history in Israel with your attack and your conquest.
Continue this until victory. As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and
smite the enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest."[6]

Censorship At Work
And I saw the cover-up. I saw how one of the most massive and brutal displacements
of a people in modern times has largely been swept under the rug; how the continuing
and ruthless methods used by a theocratic, exclusionary state[7] to rid itself of
people of the "wrong" religion/ethnicity are covered up. Let me describe how this
censorship works.

A few days after the deaths of the little boy and of the mother I mentioned above,
there was a suicide bombing in Israel. I went to a hotel in East Jerusalem and saw
that the New York Times had published a front-page story about it.[8]

I wondered if the paper had run similar headlines about, or at least had mentioned,
the Palestinian deaths in the days before, and I discovered that they had not. But I
noticed that the story about the suicide bombing had at least contained some
information about these preceding Palestinian deaths - one phrase each, in the
second paragraph. Near the end of the story, full of extensive, graphic descriptions
of the Israeli tragedies, I also saw that there were a few paragraphs about Israeli
crowds beating random Palestinian Israelis to a pulp - one was almost killed - and
chanting "Kill Arabs."

A few days later I was back in the San Francisco Bay Area, and went to the library
to see how the San Francisco Chronicle had covered these events. (I had emailed them
on-the-scene reports, incidentally, about both Palestinian deaths.) I noticed that
this paper, also, had neglected these deaths at the time. It had, however, carried
the New York Times report about the suicide bombing that had followed. When I looked
at the S.F. Chronicle's version of this report, however, I was astounded: someone
had surgically excised the sentences near the top of the story telling of the
Israeli killing of a nine-year-old Palestinian boy and a mother of three. The person
had also deleted all information about the Israeli mob violence.

Since that time I've monitored the media closely, and investigated numerous similar
incidents, in an attempt to discover the nuts and bolts of obfuscation on Israel.

Not long ago Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
passed away. For many years Moorer, a four-star admiral and World War II hero, had
strongly condemned Israel's 1967 attack on the USS Liberty[9], a virtually unarmed
US Navy intelligence ship. Israeli forces had killed 34 American servicemen and
injured 172; stretcher-bearers were machine-gunned and lifeboats were shot out of
the water. In addition, Moorer had been outraged at the U.S. government's
abandonment of this crew. Following the attack, crew members, surrounded by blood
and body parts, had been ordered by the government not to speak to anyone about what
had just been done to them, and were dispersed to new postings around the world. One
critically injured crewman who had been evacuated to a hospital in Germany woke up
to find military policemen on either side of him, and an identity band on his wrist
with someone else's name on it.[10]

Moorer had long called for an investigation of all this. Last fall, in fact, he had
chaired an independent commission on this incident, reading a report on Capitol Hill
that said, among other things: "Israel committed acts of murder against American
servicemen and an act of war against the United States."[11]Another admiral - who
had been the head of the Navy's legal branch - read a just-released affidavit by the
officer who had been the chief attorney to the quickie Naval court of inquiry set up
by Admiral John S. McCain, Jr. (Sen. John McCain's father) to look into the attack.
This affidavit revealed that there had been a cover-up at the presidential level -
that Pres. Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had ordered the
court to find, despite all evidence to the contrary, Israel innocent of
culpability.[12]

The story of the commission's unprecedented findings died after one day of coverage.
Despite an excellent AP report on it, a search of 300 newspapers only turned up 10
that had printed it.

A few months later Moorer died. The first quick AP obituary that came out about him
contained one sentence about the Israeli attack. It was minimal, but present. Within
a few hours a longer obit came out, containing a great deal of additional
information about Moorer. But the sentence on the Israeli attack had been taken out.

I have phoned AP many times, asking them why information on the USS Liberty was
removed from the obituary, and who removed it. Each time, the person I reached
agreed that the Liberty information was important, and told me they would get back
to me. I'm still waiting.

I'll discuss just four more telling examples. While such groups as Amnesty
International have condemned Israel for its routine torture of Palestinian prisoners
for decades[13], coverage of such abuse virtually never appears in American media.

In October of 2002[14] I received email reports of a Palestinian farmer who had been
brutally tortured by Israeli settlers. I felt this was an important story, and
decided to check it out. I phoned the American on the scene who had sent out the
report and asked for more information. He filled in the gruesome details, sent me
photos, and gave me the name and address of the hospital where the victim was being
treated. I then phoned the S.F. Chronicle and gave the foreign desk all the
information I had gathered. I suggested that they send one of their correspondents
in the area to cover it, since although Chronicle reporters always reside in Israel,
they do occasionally visit the Palestinian Territories.

No word, however, ever appeared of this incident in the Chronicle.[15] In fact, a
search of the Chronicle looking for the words "torture" and "Israel" in lead
paragraphs turned up only one article in the past 10 years: an editorial in 1999
that opined: "Israel's Supreme Court was courageous, idealistic and absolutely right
to outlaw torture as an interrogation technique by the Shin Bet security force.[16]"
Unfortunately, Israeli torture did not end after this decision.[17]

Earlier this year, American media reported prominently on a prisoner swap in which
an Israeli businessman imprisoned by Lebanon was traded for three Lebanese
resistance leaders and a few hundred Palestinians (who had been scheduled for
release within a few months anyway). Earlier news stories had reported that the
Israeli had been tortured in Lebanon, but, happily, upon his release the man stated
that he had been treated well by his captors.[18]

On the other hand, I learned through Al-Jazeera that one of the Lebanese leaders
just released had, two days before, testified for 10 hours in an Israeli court
describing gruesome sexual abuse by Israeli prison guards, his claims validated by a
member of the International Red Cross.[19] (Incidentally, I subsequently saw that
accounts of this abuse had been reported in the foreign press for years[20]).

I was in Washington DC at the time, and noticed that there had been no mention of
any of this in the Washington Post, despite extensive coverage of the swap. I then
did a search of the Post website, typing in " Mustafa Dirani" and "torture," and was
surprised to find a full, detailed report on it by Peter Enav of AP.[21] In other
words, the Washington Post had the information on Dirani, the story was on their
website, but they had not printed a word of it in the newspaper. (And you only found
it on the website if you knew to look for it.)

I phoned the Post and was referred to the editor responsible for foreign news. I
asked why the paper had not contained information about Dirani's testimony and
corroborating statements by others. He replied that they were waiting to look into
it further, and would probably cover it sometime in the future. I pointed out that
alleged torture of an Israeli - since proved to be false - had been printed, and
asked, unsuccessfully, for an explanation of this double standard in news coverage.
To date, this projected coverage has still not come.

In fact, index searches revealed that while many newspapers had covered the prisoner
swap extensively, and a number of newspapers around the country had carried the
report of Dirani's abuse buried on their websites somewhere, I could find only nine
newspapers that had printed these serious allegations of Israeli torture of a major
Lebanese figure - interestingly, most of them local papers.

Moreover, in my searches I also came across the fact that Dirani's young nephew
Ghassan had been imprisoned by Israel for ten years. Israel had never contended that
Ghassan was even political, much less a member of any resistance groups; he was
simply held as a bargaining chip. At some point he had apparently suffered a
complete mental breakdown, and was transferred to a psychiatric prison. Finally, he
was released to his family in Lebanon, his mind, reportedly, gone. All of this,
also, was unmentioned in American coverage of the prisoner swap.[22]

In June 2002, Foreign Service Journal published what should have been an explosive
exposé on Israel's torture of American citizens.[23] Yet, when I went to the
journal's website, I could not find the article. In fact, there was no mention that
the issue even contained such apiece. I phoned the editor, and discovered that they
had decided it was too controversial to put on their website. Today, the website
does mention the article (in an extremely expurgated fashion; minus the word
torture, for example), but there is still no link to the actual report. [24] In
addition, I have not been able to find a single American news source that even
mentioned this thoroughly documented report.

Finally, in the midst of the unfolding scandal about torture and humiliation of
Iraqi prisoners at Abu-Ghraib, two international human rights organizations released
findings that 374 Palestinian teenagers imprisoned by Israel were being treated with
similar cruelty. There was a short AP story on the report. It was sent to Britain,
Europe, Africa, India, and Asia. It was not, however, sent to American newspapers.
Phone calls to AP asking why it was deemed newsworthy in the rest of the world but
not in the United States went unanswered.

Media Studies
Soon after my visit to the occupied territories I founded an organization called If
Americans Knew[25] to monitor the media and to provide Americans with accurate
information on this topic. Two years ago, prompted by such anecdotal evidence of
massive omission, If Americans Knew began conducting statistical case studies on
coverage of Israel and Palestine. We chose categories that would be universally
acknowledged as significant and as immune as possible from subjective
interpretation. We recorded the number of deaths of both Palestinians and Israelis
mentioned in headlines, then compared the percentages of overall deaths that were
covered.[26]

Our findings are staggering.

We discovered, for example, that the San Francisco Chronicle had prominently covered
150 percent of Israeli children's deaths-i.e., many of the deaths were the subject
of more than one headline in the paper-and five percent of Palestinian ones. In
other words, Palestinian deaths were rarely accorded headline coverage even once.

In the first three and a half months of the current Palestinian uprising
against Israel's continuing confiscation of Palestinian land and
suppression of human rights, Israeli forces killed 84 Palestinian
children. The largest single cause of their deaths was gunfire to the
head.[27] During this period, not one Israeli child was killed. Not one
suicide bombing against Israelis occurred.[28]

Of these 84 Palestinian children, only one received headline coverage in
the Chronicle - Mohammed al-Durra, the little boy whose murder while he
was cowering with his father was recorded for all the world to see by a
French TV crew.

Was the Chronicle alone in such unbalanced news coverage?

No. A study of National Public Radio that Seth Ackerman[29] conducted for Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) showed that NPR had reported on 89 percent of
Israeli children's deaths and 20 percent of Palestinian ones. In other words, NPR,
which has been accused of being "pro-Palestinian," reported Israeli deaths at a rate
four and a half times greater than Palestinian deaths.

Two studies we conducted of the San Jose Mercury News - for a total of twelve months
of data - also revealed enormous distortion in coverage. For example, we discovered
that front-page headline coverage of all deaths (adults and children) had so
emphasized Israeli deaths over Palestinian ones that the newspaper had, in effect,
reversed reality - and then widened the gap. While 313 Israelis and 884 Palestinians
had been killed during this period, Mercury News front-page headlines had reported
on 225 Israeli deaths, and only 34 Palestinian ones - 72 percent of Israeli deaths
and 4 percent of Palestinian ones.[30]

What do these case studies tell us about American coverage in general? A great deal.

Let us imagine what would have happened if a newspaper's headlines had reported the
World Series backwards - that the score had been reversed, the winning team declared
the loser. The paper would have been the laughingstock of the country; late-night
comics around the nation would have had a field day.

Yet, here was an equivalent error in a situation involving life and death,
literally, and virtually no one noticed. Why? The logical conclusion is that the
entire environment of news most people were accessing - television, radio, magazines
- communicated similar inversion.

As a result, the public is staggeringly misinformed. During the current intifada,
Palestinian children were being killed - often shot in the head - day after day,
week after week, month after month, before a single Israeli child's death. Yet a
survey taken later that year showed that 93 percent of the respondents either had no
idea which children had died first, or believed them to be Israeli.[31] And this
despite ample coverage of the conflict in general: the Chronicle, for example, ran
over 250 stories on Israel and Palestine during this period.

Also omitted was information on US tax money to Israel: well over $10 million per
day - more than to all of sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean put together.[32] Our
study showed that in six months of extensive reporting on Israel, the Chronicle had
never even once reported the total amount of US money being sent to Israel.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg of omission on this issue.

Let us look at Project Censored, itself - a highly respected media-monitoring
institution intent on bringing attention to critical information not covered by the
corporate media. Each year it screens thousands of articles in hundreds of journals,
drawing on the participation of a long list of experts. It has helped publicize
profoundly valuable information on a wide variety of topics, with particular
sensitivity to injustice, racism, and the plight of oppressed populations.

Yet, it has largely missed one of the longest and most egregious cases of oppression
of the 20th (and now 21st ) century.

Over fifty years ago, the massive dispossession of almost an entire indigenous
population was carried out by a colonial population pursuing ethnic "purity"[33] - a
purity Muslim and Christian Palestinians did not fit into. Israeli writer Yshar
Snmilasky described this beginning: "We came, shot, burned, blew up, pushed and
exiled. will the walls not scream in the ears of those who will live in this
village?" [34]

In 1967 this nation then overran the small remnants of land left to the indigenous
population, and placed the inhabitants under brutal military occupation. In 1982
this apartheid nation[35] invaded yet another country in its quest to prevent the
original inhabitants of what was now Israel from returning to their land. Some
20,000 men, women, and children in Lebanon were killed, and hundreds of thousands
injured - through the illegal use of American-made weapons. One American physician
wrote at the time that she had never before seen "such hideous injuries." In one
day, 1,000 mangled limbs were amputated.[36]

In 1987 there was more violence, when the virtually unarmed indigenous population in
the occupied territories attempted to rise up against their occupiers and died at
the rate of 7 per every one Israeli death. The Palestinian death rate would have
been higher, but the occupation forces chose a less reported form of violence to
subdue the rebels - soldiers held them down and broke their bones. In the first
three days of this new strategy, 197 people were treated for fractures at one
hospital in Gaza alone.[37] The policy was implemented by Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli
leader later known as a "peace-maker" before being assassinated by a Jewish
extremist. One episode was caught on film, and can be viewed in various
documentaries.[38] The Israeli cameraman was later killed by Israeli forces.[39]

Through this entire period there was an ongoing campaign to break the indigenous
people's spirit. Tens of thousands were incarcerated without recourse to judge and
jury. Tens of thousands were tortured, humiliated, maimed. Homes were destroyed by
the thousands, cropland plowed under and replaced with concrete colonies from which
the ancestral owners of the land were to be eternally excluded. Families were ripped
apart, sons deported, schools closed.[40]

And in its first 20 years, Project Censored made no mention of any of this - of this
profoundly covered-up conflict, of these people, of this oppression. The
longest-standing military occupation of modern times - unmentioned. The largest
refugee population in today's world (an estimated 8 million), and the longest
dispossessed - unmentioned.

Actually, Project Censored carried one story on Israel during this period - an
exposé of its support of oppression in Central America. Then finally, in 2001, in
Project Censored's 25th anniversary edition, there was notice of Israel's oppression
of Palestinians - it was mentioned in the introduction and in a story about
ethnically specific bioweapons.[41]

Astoundingly, the first time that a topic pertaining to Israel's treatment of
Palestinians made it onto the Project Censored list was just last year. After
including a story about U.S. tax money to Colombia in the previous volume - the #3
choice of that year - Project Censored decided to also cover U.S. tax money to
Israel - a vastly larger amount, that has been dispensed far longer. This story was
#24. Since many reports about Project Censored list only the top ten stories, this
low rating meant that this story went widely unmentioned.

Such long neglect of this issue is startling, particularly given the subject matter
that Project Censored regularly addressed, and the numerous powerful exposés on
Israel related to these subjects that were ignored by the mainstream press - stories
that seemed right up the Project Censored alley.

For example, Project Censored has done an excellent job of covering nuclear power
and proliferation. Yet, through all these years there was no mention - ever - of
Israel's possession of hundreds of nuclear weapons; no mention of the young
technician who blew the whistle on their nuclear weapons program, and was then
kidnapped by Israel, brought back for a kangaroo trial under grotesque conditions
and held in solitary confinement in a cell two meters by three meters for over 12 of
his 18 years of incarceration.[42]

Similarly, Project Censored promoted important articles about Iran-Contra and on the
oil embargo that shot oil prices through the roof and threw thousands out of work.
Yet, there was no mention of the fundamental role played by Israel in both
events.[43]

Projected Censored highlighted a moving and powerful report on the "Death of a
Nation: The Tragedy of Transkei" in South Africa, yet there was no such article
about the death of Palestine, and the various strategies being implemented to expel
its remaining inhabitants.[44]

While Project Censored contained valuable information on "The Most Powerful Secret
Lobby in Washington" (the Business Roundtable), there was no mention of the
pro-Israel lobby that has been at the forefront of influencing US foreign policy in
the Middle East for over half a century.[45]

If space permitted, this list would go on and on.

Even last year, after Project Censored had begun to discover Palestine, the book's
top censored story of the year, which exposed the neoconservatives' role behind the
attack on Iraq, astonishingly omitted any mention whatsoever of these
neoconservatives' close, long-term ties to Israel and the documented record of their
work on its behalf.[46] Similarly, there was no mention of what should have been an
award-winning exposé on Israeli torture of American citizens that came out the same
year.

Finally, this year, a story revealing that top U.S. governmental officials have been
investigated by U.S. intelligence agencies for decades for spying for a foreign
government - a story that should have produced reverberations throughout the
country, resulting in Congressional inquiries and calls for special prosecutors[47]
- was not only unmentioned by the mainstream media, it was missed by Project
Censored and its array of experts as well. The foreign government was Israel.

In other words, while the corporate media was ignoring the slaughter, torture, and
dispossession of Palestinians, while it was ignoring a presidential cover-up that
dwarfed Watergate in its significance, while it was ignoring the attempts of
abandoned vets to get recourse from their government, while it was ignoring
multitudes of stories of potentially world-shaking importance about Israel and its
actions, Project Censored was, too.

I don't know why or how this has been happening, but I suspect that Project
Censored's omission of this issue is largely a reflection of what has been going on
throughout much of the progressive press - and community - for many years. A search
of the Center for Investigative Reporting's website, for example, reveals only two
stories, 25 years apart, about Israel or Palestine - both by the same author.

When we approached CIR and Media Alliance, another organization known for its
ethical actions against censorship, to join us in activities regarding our Chronicle
and Mercury-News studies, the reaction was disappointing. CIR, we were told, was in
the midst of negotiating with the Chronicle on some future projects. (We also later
noticed that David Yarnold, Executive Editor of the Mercury-News, is on the CIR
advisory board.) When we contacted Media Alliance about co-sponsoring a forum on our
studies, a project that we had thought would mesh well with the organization's
progressive philosophy, our phone calls went unreturned.

When we asked Peace Action why their brochures about nuclear weapons omitted any
mention of Israel's large arsenal of such weapons, we were told that discussing
Israel would interfere with the group's ability to lobby Congressman Tom Lantos (one
of Israel's most fervent Capitol Hill supporters and a major promoter of both Iraq
wars).

These are not isolated incidents.

All of the above organizations - and many others with equally dubious records on
Palestine - have produced profoundly important, often courageous, work. Why has
there so often been a "blind spot" on Israel?

I suspect that the causes are complicated and multi-factorial. I suspect that I and
others like me - who remained ignorant and negligent on this issue for so long -
bear much of the guilt. I suspect that others whose emotional ties to Israel served
as blinders on this subject share in our culpability. I suspect that still others
who knew the truth and refused to speak of it, or who participated in its cover-up,
bear a significant portion of this awful responsibility. I suspect that the career
damage[48] and death threats[49] that often result when one begins to speak out on
this issue played a part.

Whatever the cause, it is time that we all, finally and resoundingly, move forward.
It is time that we bring to an end what we have all helped to perpetuate.

Perhaps one of the places we can start is by recognizing and disseminating the
immense body of work created through the years by journalists diligently digging up
the still mostly-buried facts on Israel and Palestine. Many of these people are
nearing the end of their careers, and it is time we thanked them, and joined in
their efforts.

I propose a special Lifetime Most Censored Award, and that among the first to
receive it be the following writers whose extraordinary work has continually been
censored out of American discourse on the Middle East: (in alphabetical order)
Richard Curtiss, for his massive research into all aspects of Israel and Palestine,
in particular on U.S. aid to Israel and Israeli PACs; James Ennes, for being the
first to gather and expose the story of the USS Liberty and its cover-up; Andrew
Killgore, for his numerous writings and his historic role, with Richard Curtiss, in
founding and keeping alive the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and the
American Educational Trust book publishing; Paul Findley, for ground-shaking
research on the Israel lobby and the injustice being done to Palestinians and
Muslims; Stephen Green, for his meticulous investigative reporting on Israeli spying
and arms procurement; Alfred Lilienthal, for his early and principled exposes of
Israel; and, especially, Donald Neff, for his brilliant and comprehensive books on
all aspects of Israel, Palestine, and the core injustice at the center of the Middle
East.

In memoriam awards should go to Edward Said, who broke through this censorship, and
to Grace Halsell and Elmer Berger, who sadly did not. I am at a loss to describe the
tribute that should go to 23-year-old Rachel Corrie, whose life and death, as well
as whose words, have been largely erased or distorted in media discourse on Israel
and Palestine - including by some publications once considered progressive, such as
Mother Jones.[50]

Next, I hope future editions of Project Censored will include work by some of the
other superb writers and reporters on this topic today: Ali Abunimah, Naseer Aruri,
Dennis Bernstein, Jerri Bird, Jeff Blankfort, Lenni Brenner, Alexander Cockburn,
Kathleen Christison, Norman Finkelstein, Delinda Hanley, Rashid Khalidi, Janet
McMahon, Rachelle Marshall, Nur Masalha, Nigel Parry, Jason Vest, Ahmed Yousef,
Mazin Qumsieh, Charlie Reese, and the many others deserving of recognition. I
apologize for those I'm forgetting to mention and I hope others will add to this
list. (I have not included here foreign journalists of note, because it is my
understanding that Project Censored concentrates on censorship inside the U.S.)

Finally, we must help to end the censorship of the ongoing reports by Palestinian
and international journalists, including Israeli ones, who report at great risk from
inside the Palestinian territories (in the past four years twelve journalists have
been killed there and 295 wounded[51]), as well as by writers from such
organizations as Christian Peacemaker Teams and the International Solidarity
Movement, and, especially, from among the Palestinian population itself, who are
daily sending out searing first-hand accounts from the very center of the violence.

May they all survive.



#



Un-Censoring: Some Recommended Reading on Israel-Palestine:



Fallen Pillars: US Policy towards Palestine and Israel since 1945
by Donald Neff



Deliberate Deceptions
by Paul Findley



Perceptions of Palestine
by Kathleen Christison



Fifty Years of Israel
by Donald Neff



Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel
by Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky



Sharing the Land of Canaan

Mazin B. Qumsiyeh



Assault on the Liberty
by James Ennes
(First-hand account of Israel's attack on US Navy ship)



Journey to Jerusalem

Grace Halsell



Expulsion of the Palestinians

Nur Masalha



They Dare to Speak Out

Paul Findley



The Lobby

Edward Tivnan



The Passionate Attachment

George W. Ball, Douglas Ball



Sameed

Raja Shehadeh



Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement
by Robert Friedman



The New Intifada
edited by Roane Carey



The Fateful Triangle

Noam Chomsky







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[1] A few of the best online sources include Al Jazeera
(http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage ; Reports by Robert Fisk and Phil Reeves in
the London Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk The UK Guardian
(http://www.guardian.co.uk); The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
(http://www.wrmea.com ; The Palestinian Red Crescent Society
(http://www.palestinercs.org); and B'Tselem (http://www.btselem.org). Regarding eye
injuries, an example is: "By May 2001, there were already two hundred people treated
for eye wounds at St. John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem alone." Tanya Reinhart,
Israel/Palestine, Seven Stories Press, New York, p. 115

[2] Some of the best books I have read are listed at the end of the article and
online at http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/materials.html#books

[3] For more information about the nerve gas being used, see Brooks, James, "The
Israeli Poison Gas Attacks: A preliminary investigation", Media Monitors Network,
January 8, 2003, http://www.mediamonitors.net/jamesbrooks2.html

[4] There are numerous human rights reports on Israeli torture, see for example,
"Israel Increases Its Use of Torture Practices Among Palestinian Prisoners", A
Report Issued by the Palestinian Prisoner Society, June 21, 2002,
http://www.ppsmo.org/e-website/Reports/Israeli%20Tourture%20July%202002.htm

[5] Davar, June 9, 1979: Testimony of an Israeli soldier who participated in the
massacre at al Duwayma Village on Oct. 29, 1948: "[they] killed between 80 to 100
Arabs, women and children. To kill the children they fractured their heads with
sticks. There was not one house without corpses. The men and women of the villages
were pushed into houses without food or water. Then the saboteurs came to dynamite
the houses. One commander ordered a soldier to bring two women into a house he was
about to blow up . Another soldier prided himself upon having raped an Arab woman
before shooting her to death. Another Arab woman with her newborn baby was made to
clean the place for a couple of days, and then they shot her and the baby. Educated
and well-mannered commanders who were considered "good guys". became base murderers,
and this not in the storm of battle, but as a method of expulsion and extermination.
The fewer the Arabs who remained, the better." For additional information on
Israel's beginnings: Masalha, Nur, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of
"Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948, The Institute for Palestine
Studies: Washington D.C., 1992.

[6] Ball, George W. and Douglas B. Ball, The Passionate Attachment: America's
Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present, W. W. Norton & Company: New York,
1992, p. 29.

[7] See for example, Amir S Cheshin., Bill Hutman, and Avi Melamed, Separate and
Unequal: The Inside Story of Israeli Rule in East Jerusalem, Harvard University
Press: Cambridge, MA, 1999, and David McDowall, Palestine and Israel, University of
California Press, 1989, pp. 123-145

[8] Deborah Sontag, "Suicide Bomber Kills 3 Israelis," New York Times, March 5,
2001; it's interesting to see how this situation was reported elsewhere; for
example, the Houston Chronicle carried Sontag's story under the headline:
"Palestinian suicide bomber kills 3 Israelis: Attack gladdens West Bank mourners as
conflict grows"

[9] For more information about the attack on the Liberty, visit
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ussliberty.html

[10] Assault on the Liberty (Random House 1980; Ballantine 1986; Reintree Press
2002), http://www.ussliberty.org.

[11] http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ul-commfindings.html

[12] http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ul-boston.html
http://www.freewebs.com/gidusko/boston

[13] Neve Gordon & Ruchama Marton, Torture: Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the
Case of Israel, Zed Books, London; See for example, Amnesty International Report,
"Israel and the Occupied Territories: Mass detention in cruel, inhuman and degrading
conditions", May 23, 2002, http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engmde150742002.

[14] http://www.flashpoints.net/index-2002-10-30.html

[15] For first-hand reports, visit http://www.palsolidarity.org
http://www.hearpalestine.org or http://www.cpt.org/hebron/hebron.php

[16] San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 10, 1999, A20

[17] See for example, Amnesty International Report, "Israel and the Occupied
Territories: Mass detention in cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions", May 23,
2002, http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engmde150742002

[18] http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/01/29/prisoner.exchange

[19] "Hizb Allah leader says Israel tortured him", Al Jazeera, January 27, 2004,
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/EC01FA53-F114-44AF-89F9-75903CB8008F.htm;
Gutman, Matthew and Tovah Lazaroff, "Dirani to Testify on Rape Charges," Jerusalem
Post, Jan 27, 2004

[20]For example: "Facility 1391: Israel's Secret Prison," UK Guardian, Nov. 14,
2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1084796,00.html "Lebanese group
calls on ICRC to prevent Israeli torture in jails," Deutsche Presse-Agentur, March
13, 2000

[21] Enav, Peter, Associated Press, "Militant says he was abused by Israel", Jan.
27, 2004.

[22] "Israel Surrenders A Bargaining Chip," Washington Post, April 6, 2000, p. 1

[23] Jerri Bird, "Arab-Americans in Israel: What 'Special Relationship'?", June
2002, http://www.partnersforpeace.org/inmedia/db200206010/

[24] http://www.afsa.org/fsj/2002.cfm

[25] If Americans Knew is dedicated to providing full and accurate information to
the American public on topics of importance that are underreported or misreported in
the American media. Our primary area of focus at this time is Israel/Palestine. For
more information visit us online at http://www.ifamericansknew.org

[26] All four of our studies completed so far can be found online at
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/report_cards.html

[27] Information about Israeli and Palestinian children killed in the conflict is
available online at http://www.rememberthesechildren.org

[28] http://www.btselem.org

[29] Ackerman, Seth, "The Illusion of Balance: NPR's coverage of Mideast deaths
doesn't match reality", Extra!, November/December 2001,
http://www.fair.org/extra/0111/npr-mideast.html

[30] The second study is online at
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/merc2/report.html

[31] Retro Poll of September/October 2002, online at
http://www.retropoll.org/results_poll_01.htm

[32] Richard Curtiss, "The Cost of Israel to US Taxpayers, Washington Report on
Middle East Affairs,, Dec. '97, pp 43-45,
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/1297/9712043.html

[33] There are numerous excellent histories that cover this period; two are Sharing
the Land of Canaan, Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, Pluto Press, and Nur Masalha, Expulsion of
the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948,
The Institute for Palestine Studies: Washington D.C., 1992. A book list can be
found at http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/materials.html#books

[34] http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0794/9407072.htm

[35] Desmond Tutu & Ian Urbina,"Against Israeli Apartheid," International Herald
Tribune, 07/02

[36] Mallison, Sally V. and W. Thomas, Armed Conflict in Lebanon 1982: Humanitarian
Law in a Real World Setting, American Educational Trust.

[37] McDowall, David, Palestine and Israel: The Uprising and Beyond, University of
California Press (1989): "Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, shifted away from
firearms, telling his soldiers to use 'might, power, and beatings'. Soldiers armed
with cudgels beat up those they could lay their hands on regardless of whether they
were demonstrators or not, breaking into homes by day and night, dragging men and
women, young and old, from their beds to beat them. At Gaza's Shifa Hospital 200
people were treated during the first five days of the new policy, most of them
suffering from broken elbows and knees. Three had fractured skulls.A government
official explained: 'A detainee sent to prison will be freed in 18 days. but if
soldiers break his hand, he won't be able to throw stones for a month and a half."

[38] For example, "People and the Land", Director: Tom Hayes; "Palestine is Still
the Issue", Director: John Pilger.

[39] Personal conversation with filmmaker Tom Hayes, Director of "People and the Land."

[40] http://www.hrw.org/un/chr59/israelot.htm
http://www.dci-pal.org/reports/dcireports.html
http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/israel_and_occupied_territories/reports.do

[41] "Human Genome Project Opens the Door to Ethnically Specific Bioweapons," #16

[42] Mordechai Vanunu, see Mark Gaffney, Dimona, the third temple? : the story
behind the Vanunu revelation, Amana Books, : Brattleboro, VT, 1989

[43] Green, Stephen, Living by the Sword, pp. 193-218;
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0591/9105011.htm; Neff, Donald, Fifty Years of
Israel, pp. 279-287, http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/1097/9710070.html , Donald
Neff, Nixon Administration Ignores Saudi Warnings, Bringing On Oil Boycott,
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Oct/Nov, 1997, pp. 70-72

[44] http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/032486/860324012.html
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0689/8906021.htm

[45] http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/pg-blankfort.html;
http://www.wrmea.com/aipac; http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0198/9801065.htm

[46]Numerous excellent articles can be found at
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/neocons.html, Israeli media by the way, have
covered this aspect openly, eg: Ha'aretz, Friday April 04, 2003: "The war in Iraq
was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are
pushing President Bush to change the course of history."

[47] Green, Stephen, Serving Two Flags, CounterPunch, Feb. 28-29, 2004,
http://www.counterpunch.org/green02282004.html

[48] Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out, Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago, 1989, pp.
295-314, Democracy Now, Thursday, April 24, 2003, "San Francisco Chronicle Fires
Reporter for Attending Peace Protest,"
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/sf_chronicle_fires_042403.htm

[49] http://www.ifamericansknew.org/about_us/death_threat.html

[50] Phan Nguyen, "Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie: Specious Journalism in Defense
of Killers," CounterPunch, Sept. 20, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/nguyen09202003.html . In contrast, Harper's magazine ran
a number of Corrie's letters. These can be read in full at http://www.ifamericansknew.org

[51] Palestine Monitor, "Palestinian Intifada Fact Sheet",
http://www.palestinemonitor.org/factsheet/Palestinian_intifada_fact_sheet.htm.

Alison Weir If Americans Knew http://www.ifamericansknew.org 310.441.8580