Just
Another Mother Murdered
By Alison Weir
07 October, 2006
Counterpunch
Almost
no one bothered to report it. A search of the nation's largest newspapers
turned up nothing in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Chicago
Sun-Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle
Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Houston Chronicle, Tampa Tribune, etc.
There was nothing on CBS,
NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS, NPR, Fox News. Nothing.
The LA Times, the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and Associated Press each had one sentence,
at most, telling about her. All three left out the details, the LA Times
had her age significantly off, and the Washington Post reported that
she had been killed by an Israeli tank shell.
It hadn't been a tank shell
that had killer her, according to witnesses. It had been bullets, multiple
ones, fired up close.
Neighbors report that Israeli
soldiers had been beating her husband because he wasn't answering their
questions. Foolishly or valiantly, how is one to say, the 35-year-old
woman had interfered. She tried to explain that her husband was deaf,
screamed at the soldiers that her husband couldn't hear them and attempted
to stop them from hitting him. So they shot her. Several times.
Her name was Itemad Ismail
Abu Mo'ammar.
She didn't die, though. That
took longer. It required her life to flow out of her in the form of
blood for several hours, as Israeli soldiers refused to allow an ambulance
to transport her to help. Her husband and children could do nothing
to save her.
Finally, after approximately
five hours, an ambulance was allowed to take her to a hospital, where
physicians were able to render one service: pronounce her dead, a few
days before the commencement of Ramadan, a season of family gatherings
much like the Christmas season for Americans. She left 11 children.
None of this was in the Washington Post story, which had reported her
death in one half of one sentence.
Her husband's brother, who
lived in the same house, was also killed. He was a 28-year-old farmer.
Why did this all happen?
The family lived behind a resistance fighter wanted by Israel. They
were simply "collateral damage" in a failed Israeli assassination/kidnapping
operation.
All together, five Palestinians
were killed that day. The other three were young shepherds killed in
another area, two 15 years old and one 14, who seem to have simply been
in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gaza.
None of this was reported
in most of America's news media, and so the American public never learned
about a mother bleeding to death in front of her children, or young
shepherds being blown to pieces. Apparently, it just wasn't newsworthy.
A Case Study of "Good" News Coverage
The Washington Post at least
mentioned these deaths, so perhaps those who care about journalistic
standards should laud the Post for its coverage.
And yet, the Post in its
short report got so much so wrong.
In addition to misreporting
Itemad's cause of death and omitting critical facts, the Post's story
portrayed the entire context incorrectly, telling readers that these
five deaths had broken a period of "relative calm."
The fact is that while it
was true that in the previous six months not a single Israeli child
had been killed by Palestinians, during this period Israelis had killed
75 Palestinian young people, including an 8-month-old and several three-year-olds.
I phoned the Post and spoke
to a foreign editor about the need to run a correction, providing information
on Itemad's murder. The editor said that she would pass this on to their
correspondent (who is based in Israel), but explained that it was "impossible
for him to go to Gaza." When I disagreed, she amended the "impossible"
to "very difficult." She neglected to mention that the Post
has access to stringers in Gaza available to check out any incident
the editors deem important.
Next, I wrote a letter to
the paper containing the above information. Happily, the Post letters
department apparently checked it out and decided it was a good letter.
They sent an email informing me that they were considering my letter
for publication and needed to confirm that I was the one who had written
it, and that I had not sent the information elsewhere.
I replied in the affirmative,
we exchanged a few more messages, and everything appeared on target.
Normally, when publications contact you in this way, your letter is
published shortly thereafter. I waited in anticipation. And waited.
It is now almost two weeks
after their report, and I have just been informed that the paper has
decided not to print my letter. The Post has apparently determined that
there is no need to run a correction.
I think I understand.
Although the Washington Post's
statement of principles proclaims, "This newspaper is pledged to
minimize the number of errors we make and to correct those that occur...
Accuracy is our goal; candor is our defense," the American Society
of Newspaper Editors clarifies these ethical requirements: corrections
need only be printed when the error of commission or omission is "significant."
And, after all, these were
only Palestinians, and it was just another mother dead.
Alison Weir is Executive Editor of If Americans Knew,
which has produced in-depth studies and illustrative videos on American
news coverage of Israel-Palestine.
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