On 30 March 1976, thousands of people belonging to the Palestinian minority in Israel gathered to protest Israeli government plans to expropriate 60,000 dunams of Arab-owned land in the Galilee. In the resulting confrontations with Israeli police, six Palestinians were killed, hundreds wounded, and hundreds jailed. In the intervening years, those events have become consecrated in the Palestinian memory as Land Day. Read more about What is it that Palestinians commemorate on Land Day?
David Bloom, Patrick O'Connor and Tom Wallace4 February 2004
The self-imposed US media blackout on the Wall’s construction finally began to lift last August when President Bush mentioned the problems created by Israel’s wall “snaking its way through the West Bank.” Last December, a year and half after bulldozers began cutting the Wall’s path through Palestinian villages, Thomas Friedman hosted a Discovery Channel program in association with The New York Times, and Bob Simon anchored a CBS60 Minutes segment introducing the controversy surrounding one of the world’s largest construction projects. David Bloom, Patrick Connors, and Tom Wallace examine the two programs. Read more about The US Media and the Wall: Thomas Friedman and 60 Minutes
Many leading media sources were quick to declare that an Israeli assassination in Gaza, followed by a Palestinian bombing in Tel Aviv on 25 December marked the end of a period of “relative calm” or “lull” in Israeli-Palestinian violence, that had supposedly lasted since the last Palestinian suicide attack in Haifa on 4 October. In fact, the period since 4 October has been one of intense Israeli violence, in which 117 Palestinians were killed, including 23 children. At the same time, Israel destroyed almost five hundred Palestinian homes throughout the Occupied Territories. EI’s Ali Abunimah examines the systematic media misrepresentation of the latest events. Read more about 117 Palestinians killed, hundreds injured during media's "relative calm"
Casualties in Tel Aviv. Casualties in Rafah. Where does CNN go? Tel Aviv. And it was absolutely right to go to Tel Aviv. It’s failure came in an inexcusable unwillingness to send a second crew to Rafah. CNN also posted seven transcripts Thursday mentioning the Tel Aviv explosion. Six of these transcripts clearly noted in the link heading that they dealt with the Tel Aviv explosion. How many headings dealt with the Rafah incident? Zero. And only one of the seven transcripts even bothered to mention the attack on Rafah. Michael Brown examines the transcripts. Read more about CNN: Two stories, one news agency
For months, CNN has misrepresented the facts of where Israel’s apartheid barrier will run. Repeated interventions only brought marginal improvements, until November 5-6, when CNN changed the reported length and cost of the project after contacting the Israeli government to check: “According to Defense Ministry spokeswoman Rachel Niedak-Ashkenazi, the planned fence route, which has been approved by the government, will be 690 kilometers (429 miles) long. Cost is estimated at $1.5 billion.” Michael Brown reports for EI. Read more about Correcting CNN's measurement of Israel's Apartheid Wall
Various news organisations reporting on the killing of one Turkish and one Swiss member of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) have included the Israeli claim that it was Palestinian gunmen who opened fire on the TIPH vehicle. A TIPH spokesperson, reached by telephone in Hebron by The Electronic Intifada today categorically stated that TIPH had “No information on the shooting.” Read more about Advisory: TIPH reports "no information on the shooting" of two of its personnel
Mother Jones demonstrated how low it could set its standards for investigative journalism when it hired Newsweek reporter Joshua Hammer to surf the web and write a 7000-word feature story on Rachel Corrie and the International Solidarity Movement (“The Death of Rachel Corrie”, Sept/Oct 2003). Indeed fact-checking and verification was not a priority in the production of this article. Phan Nguyen reports. Read more about Speculative Journalism: The making of "The Death of Rachel Corrie"
The deadly bus bombing in Jerusalem on August 19 was foreshadowed by a pair of suicide attacks a week earlier which killed two Israeli civilians. While U.S. media tended to portray these attacks as a return to violence after a relatively peaceful period, there were numerous killings in the weeks leading up to the suicide bombings that underscore the lack of evenhanded attention given to loss of life in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. FAIR reports. Read more about Journalists find "calm" when only Palestinians die
During my formative years in North Carolina, my daddy used to say to me, “Son, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” My father’s adage applies all too well to CNN. Over the past 16 months, Partners for Peace has repeatedly contacted CNN to explain that Shebaa Farms is not in Israel, but in occupied territory. Time and again, we have sent letters stating that the United Nations regards Shebaa Farms as Syrian while Hezbollah sees it as Lebanese. The one thing we know is that it is not Israeli. Michael Brown writes for EI. Read more about Shebaa Farms: CNN and the US media encounter difficult terrain
Israel’s Separation Barrier, dubbed the “Apartheid Wall” or “Berlin Wall” by Palestinians, has increasingly attracted international media attention, largely due to the hard-to-ignore scale of the project. The most obvious historical parallel to the barrier is the Berlin Wall. Israel’s barrier, still under construction, is expected to reach at least 403 miles in length.Yet discussion of the structure and route have proved problematic for both diplomats and the media. EI’s Nigel Parry reports. Ali Abunimah, Michael Brown, and Arjan El Fassed also contributed to this report. Read more about Is it a Fence? Is it a Wall? No, it's a Separation Barrier
