Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

Israeli officials have been regularly strip-searching children for decades, some of them American citizens.

While organizations that focus on Israel-Palestine have long been aware that Israeli border officials regularly strip search men and women, If Americans Knew appears to be the first organization that has specifically investigated the policy of strip searching women. In the course of its investigation, If Americans Knew was astonished to learn that Israeli officials have also been strip searching young girls as young as seven and below.

According to interviews with women in the United States, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Israeli border officials periodically force Christian and Muslim females of all ages to remove their clothing and submit to searches. In some cases the children are then "felt" by Israeli officials.

Sometimes mothers and children are strip-searched together, at other times little girls are taken from their parents and strip-searched alone. Women are required to remove sanitary napkins, sometimes with small daughters at their side. Sometimes women are strip searched in the presence of their young sons.

All report deep feelings of humiliation. Many describe weeping at the degradation they felt.

"I remember crying and pleading with my mother," Gaza journalist Laila El-Haddad recalls of an experience when she was 12-years-old, hoping that her mother could convince the Israeli official to allow her to keep her undershirt on. But parents are unable to shield their children, El-Haddad and others report.

"They had machine guns," El-Haddad explains. "We just had to submit." El-Haddad, who holds a Masters degree in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, believes that the intention of the strip searches is to humiliate Palestinians so that they won't return to Palestine.

Oregon attorney Hala Gores remembers being strip-searched at the age of 10. Her family, Palestinian Christians from Nazareth, were leaving Israel because of Israeli discrimination against Christians. Gores has never returned to her family's ancestral home in Nazareth, she says, in part because she does not want to repeat the experience of having no control over what is done to her.

The Israeli policy appears to target only Christian and Muslim children, and is equally applied to those with Israeli citizenship and citizenship in other countries, including native-born Americans. There are no reports of Jewish children being strip-searched.

New Jersey stand-up comedian Maysoon Zayid describes being strip-searched at Ben Gurion Airport when she was "seven, eight, nine years old" on family trips to visit her parents' original home in Palestine. On her most recent trip in July 2006, Maysoon, an American citizen, had her sanitary pad taken by officials in Ben Gurion Airport. When the search was completed, she says, the Israeli official in charge, Inbal Sharon, then refused to return her pad or allow her to get another.

Zayid, who has cerebral palsy and was sitting in a wheelchair, was then forced to bleed publicly for hours while she waited for her flight.

Zayid, a former class president and yearbook editor at New Jersey's Cliffside Park High School known for her irreverent comedy routines and strong personality, describes sobbing uncontrollably. "No one spoke up," she remembers. "There were several women, including the woman who was pushing my wheelchair, none of whom said a word."

When she boarded her flight, Zayid recalls, "The flight attendants looked at me in disgust." She told them what had happened, and the attendants then gave her some of their own clothing to use.

In addition to taking her sanitary napkin, Israeli officials also confiscated medication that Zayid is required to take when flying. As a result, she vomited repeatedly throughout the 12-hour flight.

Zayid, who founded a program for newly disabled Palestinian youths ­ many of them permanently disabled from attacks by Israeli forces ­ was so depressed by her treatment that she determined never to return. "But that's what they want," she says, "They want us to get to the point where we don't go back." She says that she is already planning to return to her volunteer work in the West Bank.

Israeli practices vary and seem to be applied randomly, from elderly women to small children. In some instances women are taken into a room alone and are left sitting naked for hours. At other times they are strip-searched in groups, their clothes thrown in a pile. When they are finally allowed to get dressed, they describe having to rummage through the heap of clothing, naked and barefoot, to find their own garments.

Jewish Holocaust Survivor

While these policies largely target Palestinian and Palestinian-American women and children, some non-Palestinian Americans also report being subjected to strip searches by Israeli officials.

St. Louis resident Hedy Epstein, whose parents and extended family perished in Nazi camps, and whose story is featured in the Academy Award winning documentary "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport," reports being strip searched three years ago following her participation in nonviolent protests in the West Bank. Epstein, who was 79 at the time, describes being forced to bend over for an Israeli official to search her internally.

The strip searches appear to be illegal under numerous statutes. The Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a signatory, prohibit: "Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment" and specifically emphasize: "Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour"

Article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states: "No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy"

In the US, such policies would appear to violate child abuse statutes. The state of Utah, for example, defines Child Abuse as: "Any form of cruelty to a child's physical, moral or mental well-being." The Encarta Encyclopedia defines child abuse as "Intentional acts that result in physical or emotional harm to children."

While the If Americans Knew investigation focused on practices concerning women, many interviewees reported frequent random strip-searching of males as well; including American citizens, children, and the elderly.

While the practice is widely applied, many people find it too humiliating to speak of. One 68-year-old Christian businessman, who had been stripped naked at Ben Gurion airport in 2006 before being allowed to board his flight to return home, had never revealed his experience to his family until he learned of the If Americans Knew investigation. He then explained to his daughter why he had previously told her that he might never return to his original home, now in the state of Israel.

Christians, a thriving community that made up approximately 15 percent of Palestine's population before Zionist immigration and the creation of Israel (Muslims were 80 percent and Jews 5 percent), have now dwindled under Israeli occupation to approximately two percent of the total population.

Israeli spokespeople and sympathizers have bristled in recent months at the title of a book by former President Jimmy Carter, "Palestine Peace Not Apartheid." In reply, Carter has emphasized that the Israeli "apartheid" he is describing is limited to the West Bank and Gaza. Many analysts have disagreed with Carter, providing evidence of pervasive discrimination within Israel itself. The If Americans Knew finding that Israel has been routinely strip-searching non-Jewish citizens of Israel would also indicate a wider policy of Israeli discrimination.

Since American taxpayers give Israel over $8 million per day, the Council for the National Interest, a Washington DC-based lobbying organization, is organizing a campaign to call on Congress to demand that Israel end these policies.

"We are extremely upset to learn that Israel is using American tax money in ways that degrade and humiliate women and children," says CNI President Eugene Bird. "We call on all Americans to help us on this campaign."

The organization urges people to begin contacting their Congressional representatives immediately, and to disseminate the video report by If Americans Knew as widely as possible.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew. She can be reached at: alisonweir@yahoo.com

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.

I did go back last night to hand out my "Bethlehem Today Christmas cards" at a local church's reenactment of Bethlehem 2000 years ago. (This time alone, since the others had previous commitments). Once again my experience was mixed.

The frantic woman, again dressed as a Palestinian in head scarf and robe, continued hurrying ahead to warn people about me. I don't know what she said, but it caused a tiny fraction to drive by with their windows up, looking straight ahead and appearing uncomfortable and /or angry as I wished them a Merry Christmas. Occasionally I would add a Peace on Earth or a Good Will Toward Men. They would shake their heads.

Most people, of course, simply became curious and lowered their windows as I approached. I smiled and wished them a Merry Christmas, and they responded in kind. I would then briefly explain something like: "I'm not with this church, but I was in Bethlehem not long ago, and families there asked me to tell Americans about them, so I'm trying. Here's a small Christmas card of Bethlehem today to go with the celebration of Bethlehem 2000 years ago." They would thank me for the card, I would thank them, and we would both proceed on our ways, smiling.

I tried to stay away from the Roman Centurion as much as possible, not wishing to replicate my previous experience with him. He did come up to me, however, informing me that the church had called the police to have me arrested and had been told that they could arrest me if I blocked traffic, etc. He seemed extremely eager to have me taken away in handcuffs, but since nothing I was doing was even remotely illegal his dream remained unrealized.

The previous evening someone had taken a bag full of booklets I had brought along in case anyone was interested in learning more about Israel Palestine. They were quite heavy and the plastic bag had begun cutting into my arm, so I had finally placed them on the ground; they weren't the kind of thing you would normally worry about getting stolen.

But they were. At the end of the evening I had told Woman Who Warns that someone had stolen my property and asked for it back. It was probably about $30 to $40 worth of material. She said that taking a bag on the sidewalk was not stealing. This was interesting. I then went up to their plastic bag full of cassette tapes for the Experience and reached for it. She grabbed it out of my hands. Another woman, this one also dressed as a Palestinian, said: "That's stealing!" I told her I agreed, and commented that I would probably report the theft of my property to the police. Of course, if I had done this, very little would have happened. The report, however, would have appeared in the police log, which local newspapers often publish.

Happily, last night Woman Who Warns told me she had, miraculously, "found" the bag! She returned it to me.

A little later a man dressed as a shepherd came up to me as I handed out my Bethlehem cards a block away from the church and said angrily, "You're not invited to the party!" I was startled, but then appreciative. He had nicely crystallized the nature of the event. I wonder who else wouldn't have been invited. I can't imagine John the Baptist receiving an invitation, or Peter, or--probably least of all--the one whose birth this "shepherd" was partying around.

On the other hand, most people were friendly and their children sweet. Several people asked with concern about what was going on in Bethlehem today. One woman, having been warned of me, rolled down her window and even before I'd had a chance to greet her, thanked me for being there. Another woman asked for an extra card. A man asked me for a stack. He attended another church nearby, he said, and wanted to take them back to the congregation. He said that they already had things from Jerusalem, and would be pleased to pass these out.

It was a good evening.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew.

A little over a week ago, some members of our organization, If Americans Knew, met with New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent to discuss the findings of a detailed study we had completed of two years worth of Times news stories on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Okrent was going to be writing a column discussing the paper’s coverage of Israel/Palestine, and we felt our study would be an important resource.

Using a PowerPoint presentation, we explained our findings and gave him copies of the 23-page report, along with approximately 40 pages of supporting documentation. (The report can be read at http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/nyt-report.html)

In order to find as clear and objective a measure as possible, our studies examine how news organizations report deaths among both populations, Israelis and Palestinian. Basically, we simply count the deaths reported on both sides of the conflict, and then compare these to the actual number of deaths that had occurred. It is our view that all deaths are equally tragic regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity; we hoped that the Times shared that perspective.

Findings

Our statistical analysis of their coverage, however, showed that there was startling disparity in how deaths were reported, depending on the ethnicity of the victim.

For example, we found that in 2004, at a time when 8 Israeli children and 176 Palestinian children were killed – a ratio of 1 to 22 – Times headlines and lead paragraphs reported on Israeli children’s deaths at a rate almost seven times greater than Palestinian children’s deaths.

A one-month sub-study indicated that this disparity grew even larger when the entire article was analyzed, with Israeli children’s deaths mentioned (through repetitions of deaths reported on previous days) at a rate ten times greater than Palestinian children’s deaths.

Times coverage of deaths of all ages, while less dramatically skewed, showed similar distortion. In the first year of the current Palestinian uprising, which began in fall of 2000, we discovered that the Times reported prominently on 42 percent of Palestinian deaths, and on 119 percent of Israeli deaths (follow-up headline articles, we find, frequently push coverage of Israeli deaths over 100 percent). In other words, the Times reported Israeli deaths at a rate approximately three times greater than Palestinian deaths.

During this period over three times more Palestinians were being killed than Israelis.

Overall, we found that in every single category Times coverage reported Israeli deaths at rates three or more times greater than Palestinian deaths.

Such patterns of distortion gave readers the impression that equal numbers of people on both sides were being killed – or that more Israelis were being killed – when the reality is that Palestinians have always been killed in far greater numbers. In particular, we found that Times stories so often repeated reports of Israeli children’s deaths that in some periods they were reporting on Israeli deaths at a rate of 400 percent.

In contrast, the majority of Palestinian deaths – particularly children’s deaths – were never reported by the Times at all.

According to Israeli human rights groups and others who assiduously gather data on all children killed in the conflict, at least 82 Palestinian children were killed before any Israeli children were killed – and the largest single cause of these Palestinian children’s deaths was “gunfire to the head.” Yet, almost no one is aware of this, since Times coverage consistently omitted or minimized coverage of these Palestinian deaths.

In other words, we found that New York Times coverage of Israel-Palestine exhibited highly disturbing patterns of bias.

To make matters worse, since the Times is often considered “the newspaper of record,” with hundreds of newspapers subscribing to the New York Times News Service, the paper’s distortions become replicated throughout the country.

Unintentionally, editors around the country are reporting this issue with a distortion based on ethnicity that most would oppose, if they were aware that they were doing it.

New York Times Reaction

We presented these findings, complete with charts, spread-sheets, clear sourcing, and extensive additional documentation, to Okrent and his assistant. We gave him the names and details of 32 Palestinian children who had been killed during the first month of the uprising – none of whom had been the subject of Times’ articles. (28 of these children, it was found, had been killed by gunfire to the head or chest.)

Okrent appeared to accept our findings readily – even commenting at one of our findings that he “wasn’t surprised.”

His subsequent column, purporting to examine Times coverage of Israel-Palestine, given all of the above, is perplexing. There is no mention whatsoever of our report, no mention of our two-year study, no mention of the 40-some pages of supporting evidence, no mention, even, of our lengthy face-to-face meeting (despite the fact that it appears we were one of the few groups to present our information in person).

In his 1,762-word column, there are a total of three mentions of us.

One is an off-hand sentence claiming that we “say” that the Times “ignores” the deaths of Palestinian children, whom, we “say” are often shot in the head or chest by Israeli soldiers. Instead of this loose, somewhat flawed paraphrase, Okrent could simply have quoted our report directly, perhaps even mentioning our substantial evidence. One wonders why he didn’t.

A second reference, potentially damaging, significantly misrepresents what we said. (We have phoned the Times asking for a correction and space for rebuttal to Okrent’s allegations.)

In his column, Okrent writes: “During my research, representatives of If Americans Knew expressed the belief that unless the paper assigned equal numbers of Muslim and Jewish reporters to cover the conflict, Jewish reporters should be kept off the beat. I find this profoundly offensive.”

Actually, Okrent is referring to his own words at the meeting, not ours. Let us tell you the complete version. It is quite illuminating.

Even before we had finished presenting our findings, Okrent interrupted to ask us why there was such distortion in Times coverage, what was causing the bias. He asked what we would suggest doing about it.

I replied that I wondered if there was a lack of diversity in the reporters and editors working on the issue. I pointed out that since this was a conflict between a state whose identity and purpose of existence was to be a Jewish state, it seemed to me that the number of Jewish-American reporters covering it should be balanced by approximately an equal number of Arab/Muslim-American reporters, or that there be reporters and editors working on it – for example, Asian-American or African-American journalists – without predisposition to partisanship toward either side.

Okrent said that it was impossible to find equal numbers of Arab/Muslim journalists of sufficiently high quality to balance out the number of Jewish reporters available to cover it, and ignored the suggestion that other groups be included in the reportorial/editorial pool. He said that there shouldn’t be an “ethnic litmus test” and that Jewish reporters shouldn’t be excluded just because there weren’t enough Muslims for the Times to employ. I agreed with him that there should not be a litmus test, and then asked him if he thought only Jewish reporters could cover it.

No, he said, the problem, he felt, was that Times reporters only lived in Israel and didn’t live in the Palestinian territories. He then said that when he had suggested to reporters that they also live in the West Bank or Gaza, a person he “trusted” told him that this was too dangerous; they would be kidnapped. I then said that he needed to reconsider the reliability of this anonymous person, since I myself had traveled throughout Gaza and the West Bank as a freelance reporter without any danger from the Palestinian population.

Finally, I said that fundamentally it was up to the Times to figure out how to improve their system of reporting – that I only saw the results. I said that we had provided free outside consultation, had found patterns I was sure they would find as disturbing as we did, and that it was now up to the Times to determine and remedy the cause.

Overall, I found this exchange bizarre. We had expected some questions about our study, its methodology, what additional patterns we had noticed, etc. Almost none of this took place. On the other hand, we came away with the very strong impression that Okrent, who is himself Jewish, felt basically that only Jewish reporters could cover this issue and that, while their reporting would be more accurate if some of them lived in the West Bank or Gaza, they probably wouldn’t do this because it would be too dangerous for them (despite the fact that such Jewish Israeli journalists as Amira Hass have lived there for years).

The fact that it could be both possible and valuable to have additional ethnic groups involved in covering this issue, including some without ethnic connection to this ethnic dispute, seemed incomprehensible to him. Finally, we were astounded at his assumption that it would be impossible for the Times to find sufficient numbers of high quality journalists of Muslim or Arab heritage to work on this issue.

Still disturbed at the oddness of this meeting, afterwards I sent a follow-up email again explaining my view. I will print it below:

Email to Dan Okrent

Dear Dan,

Thank you for meeting with us, and for your willingness to take on what is certainly one of the most volatile issues in the news today -- and one of the most urgent. I hope our study will help alert the New York Times to patterns of omission that I'm sure you find as disturbing as we do.

Regarding your important question about what changes I would suggest: Truthfully, it is difficult for me to offer solutions, since I only see the results, and have no idea what the internal dynamics are of the Times' reporting and editing that have created these patterns. It seems to me that news organizations themselves, once alerted to flaws in their coverage, are in the best position to undertake thorough analyses of the causation, and then to implement whatever changes are required.

I suspect that your idea that coverage would improve greatly if reporters lived in the West Bank and Gaza as well as Israel is quite correct.

One possibility, of course, is that the Times could hire some of the excellent Palestinian journalists living in these areas. When I visited Birzeit University a few months ago, I met a professor and a number of students in the journalism department that I found quite impressive. I haven't visited any journalism departments in Gaza, but I did visit some classes in American literature at Islamic University in Gaza City in 2001, and found a level of teaching equivalent to the finest in US universities.

At the same time, of course, it is important that those editing these reports be as unpartisan as possible -- which, I suspect, requires that those in this position have diverse backgrounds. While I'm not Jewish, I can imagine similar situations in which I might believe that I had arrived at a neutral position, not realizing that I was still influenced by what my mother had believed, or what my aunt would say, or the narrative I had absorbed as a child -- in other words, I might write and edit within parameters that would interfere with the accuracy of my work.

Finally, below is some more recent information about the disturbing -- and unreported, in the Times -- pattern of Israeli forces shooting and abusing children and other civilians.

1. Here is the link to the Remember These Children information: http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/remember2000.html. Again, please note the high number of young people shot in the head, neck, and chest in 2004 and 2005. Please ask Mr. Erlanger why Times' readers have not learned of these patterns. At least 29 Palestinian children have already been killed through March of this year, and one Israeli child. As you know, several more Palestinian young people have been killed this month.

2. The fact that Israeli forces have been targeting children and civilians has been noted in diverse reports. For example, Physicians for Human Rights reported: "Physicians for Human Rights analysis of fatal gunshot wounds in Gaza reveals that approximately 50% were to the head. This high proportion of fatal head wounds suggests that given broad rules of engagement, soldiers are specifically aiming at peoples' heads." Following are a few of the excellent and thorough articles on this topic that have appeared in the Israeli press, and some of the human rights reports on this topic.

Gideon Levy article from Ha’aretz, "Suffer the Little Children"

Another Gideon Levy article (I highly recommend his column 'twilight zone'):

Defence for Children International report: "Status of Palestinian Children's Rights"

Report on child prisoners

3. I understand that Times reporters are reluctant to spend much time in the West Bank and Gaza. Nevertheless, I would like to offer to personally take Times reporters to visit Palestinian hospitals to verify the high number of young people being shot by Israeli forces. In return, it would be excellent if Times' reporters would then take me to visit Israeli prisons, so that we might investigate the conditions in which Palestinian prisoners -- particularly children -- are being kept.

Again, thanks for your time. It was nice seeing you again -- it has certainly resurrected many memories of Ann Arbor and The Michigan Daily.

Best Wishes,

Alison

(As the last sentence of this email indicates, Dan Okrent and I were friends and fellow student journalists many years ago.)

Editor’s Admission

In his column, Okrent makes one other statement purportedly about us, but that actually seems to be a veiled confession: “I don't think any of us can be objective about our own claimed objectivity.” Given that admission, it seems that it would have been appropriate for Okrent to at least note the existence of our statistical study, so that his readers could examine our findings for themselves.

Truthfully, however, it is not rare for newspapers to cover up negative information about their organization, and for their ombudsmen to participate in the attempt to suppress such information.

Fortunately, however, the internet provides an increasingly effective counter to such media censorship; this study, and others, are all available for viewing and downloading from our website: http://www.ifamericansknew.org/ We hope that anyone who feels Americans should be accurately informed on all topics – including Israel-Palestine – will tell others about these studies.