Action Items

Having become the recipient of large numbers of concerned e-mails resulting from The Electronic Intifada’s special report, “NPR’s Linda Gradstein Takes Cash Payments from Pro-Israeli Groups”, NPR has now confirmed that it will enforce its conflict of interest policy banning such payments. Ali Abunimah and Nigel Parry report.

Last week, armed Israeli policemen burst into the East Jerusalem YMCA offices and arrested Haytham Hammouri, a YMCA staff member. He was handcuffed and taken into police custody. No charges were made, and he was kept incommunicado for three days. Finally, he was able to see a lawyer, taken in front of an Israeli court, and sentenced to six months “administrative detention” in an Israeli prison. No charges were made against him, and there has been no trial. Haytham joins more than 12,000 Palestinians in a similar situation, and he may be the only Palestinian resident of Jerusalem held under this arbitrary pretext. To find out what you can do to help, read on.

National Public Radio’s Israel correspondent Linda Gradstein has received cash honoraria from pro-Israeli organizations in what appears to be a clear violation of NPR policy, an Electronic Intifada investigation has revealed.

On 22 February 2002, Emanuel A. Winston wrote an article in USA TODAY that expressed extreme racist sentiments towards Arabs and advocated the “resettlement” of Palestinians in Jordan.

Following our publication of “Special Report: NPR’s Linda Gradstein takes cash payments from pro-Israeli groups” (19 February 2002) and Follow-up: NPR replies to concerns about cash payments to reporter, conflict of interest (20 February 2002), National Public Radio’s Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin’s Media Matters column of February 22nd discussed “NPR’s Middle East ‘Problem’ ”. The following open letter to Jeffrey Dvorkin is our response.

Following our publication of the special report, “NPR’s Linda Gradstein takes cash payments from pro-Israeli groups” (19 February 2002), and several follow-up reports, NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin responded to our concerns on 25 February 2002 and the March 11th issue of the Current, a public broadcasting trade publication ran an in-depth story on the revelations, NPR Mideast correspondent broke ban on speaker fees, by Mike Janssen. Meanwhile, Gradstein’s unchecked bias continues to surface. EI’s Ali Abunimah and Nigel Parry report.

Israel has failed to prove a credible direct link between Arafat and acts of terrorism. It pursues and promotes this myth to delegitimise the Palestinian national cause and demonise the Palestinian people as a whole. In truth, this smear tactic is effective, as Arafat has no more capacity to prevent suicide attacks than the Israelis were able to when they controlled 100% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Last night on MSNBC’s popular program Hardball, House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) recommended the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land and endorsed Israel’s illegal conquests of the occupied territories.

Bowing to strong Israeli pressure, CNN is to broadcast a special series profiling Israeli victims of terror. Astonishingly, neither the website nor the planned series profile any of the more than 1,000 unarmed Palestinian civilians—one quarter of them children—killed or any of the 19,452 Palestinians injured in the past 21 months by Israeli occupation forces.

The New York Times’ editorial praises the Israeli Labor party’s decision to join a “national unity” government on the grounds that it could exert a “moderating influence” on the new government’s approach “on issues like military tactics against Palestinian unrest.” EI notes that if the outgoing Labor government has been “moderate” in its response, Palestinians could well be forgiven for wondering what a harsh response would look like.