The New York Times and Israel

The problem with the Times' depiction of Palestinian violence, however, on the occasion of Amnesty's 2007 annual report and other such reports, is that Amnesty actually reported the opposite—in 2006 Israel killed over 650 Palestinians, including 120 children, while Palestinians killed 27 Israelis, including one child.

One Israeli child killed by Palestinian terrorists is one child too many; likewise with respect to the 20 Israeli civilians that Palestinians also killed in 2006. Most people in the United States rightfully condemn the Palestinians who kill innocent and unarmed Israelis. But what about the Israeli government and military officials who authorized and carried out the policies that killed 120 Palestinian children and another 200 Palestinian civilians in 2006? Would most people in the US even guess that in 2006 more Palestinians than Israelis were killed by a ratio of 24 to 1, let alone condemn Israeli terrorism in the occupied territories?

For many years, including since the start of the Second Palestinian Intifada on September 29, 2000, Amnesty International has issued annual reports detailing Israeli and Palestinian casualties. In its 2001 report (covering events in 2000), Amnesty reported that "More than 350 Palestinians, including nearly 100 children, were killed mostly through excessive use of lethal force by Israeli security services." Amnesty also reported that "More than 60 Israelis, including more than 30 civilians, were killed by Palestinian armed groups and individuals." The fact is that Israel has killed well over 800 Palestinian children since September 2000.

On December 31, 2000, a Switzerland-based human rights organization, Defense of Children International, which has consultative status with UNESCO and UNICEF and the Council of Europe, issued a report, and the chart below, detailing how those 100 Palestinian children were killed "through excessive use of lethal force" from September 30, 2000 to December 31, 2000. This chart, in addition to numerous other reports issued by DCI on the Israeli killing of Palestinian children, contradicts Israel's repeated claims that it does its utmost to avoid harming innocent people.   

In its 2002 annual report, Amnesty reported that 460 Palestinians, including 79 children, were killed during 2001 by Israeli security forces, while Palestinian armed groups killed 187 Israelis, including 154 civilians. This pattern of casualties was repeated in each of Amnesty International's annual reports from 2003 to 2007. The same pattern of much higher Palestinian casualties is also reported by Human Rights Watch in its annual reports. 

As of yesterday (May 24), B'Tselem, Israel's most important human rights organization, reported fatalities as follows: From September 29, 2000 to April 30, 2007, 4,098 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces and Israeli civilians, while 1,021 Israelis were killed by Palestinians.

Despite many more fatalities on the Palestinian side throughout this period, the New York Times has featured Palestinian violence in its coverage of the conflict. From September 29, 2000 to December 31, 2005, the Times published nearly 50 front-page articles on Palestinian suicide bombings and other terrorist acts,[i][1] in addition to 25 articles on Palestinian terrorism reported elsewhere in the front section.[ii][2] This reporting accounted for the vast majority of Palestinian suicide bombings and other terrorist acts inside Israel's borders. In contrast, there was much less emphasis in the Times on the far more numerous Israeli killings of Palestinians in the occupied territories during the same period. And as far as I can tell, using the New York Times search engine, the Times neglected to cover any of the annual reports from Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch on Israel throughout the period, nor has it ever mentioned the reports on the Israel-Palestine conflict issued regularly by Defense for Children International.  

There is another major problem with the Times' coverage. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch monitor violations of international humanitarian law, which protects civilians in armed conflict and belligerent occupation. The Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) is the main instrument of such law as it applies to Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories. Both Amnesty and HRW frequently cite Israeli violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, not only with respect to Israel's excessive lethal force, but also with regard to beatings and abuse, house demolitions as collective punishment, and administrative detention and torture, in addition to Israel's settlements in Palestinian territory. Article 49(6) of the Convention states: "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." This key stipulation is universally recognized (except by Israel) as prohibiting, and thus outlawing, Israel's settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, again as far as I can tell, the New York Times has ignored the Fourth Geneva Convention and the fact that it outlaws Israel's settlements. This amounts to nothing less than a rejection of the rule of law by the Times as it applies to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Consistent with its pattern of ignoring the annual reports of Amnesty International as they apply to Israel's occupation, the Times appears to have ignored Amnesty's just-published 2007 report as well. There was no reference to the report, or at least to the section on Israel, in either the print or online editions on May 24. However, if you were to intuitively type Amnesty International into the Times' search engine, you would have found an Associated Press report titled, "Israel Killed 650 Palestinians in 2006," which summarizes Amnesty's 2007 report on Israel. The AP report begins: "Israeli troops killed more than 650 Palestinians last year—half of them unarmed civilians including some 120 children—a threefold increase from 2005, a leading human rights group said Wednesday [May 23]." Inexplicably, the AP report states that "No such killings [by Israeli soldiers and settlers] were documented in the report." However, Amnesty's report documents several such incidents, as reproduced below:

• On 9 June, seven members of the Ghalia family—five children and their parents—were killed and some 30 other civilians were injured when Israeli forces fired several artillery shells at a beach in the north of the Gaza Strip. The beach was crowded with Palestinian families enjoying the first weekend of the school holidays. The Israeli army denied responsibility for the killings but failed to substantiate their claim.

• In the early morning of 8 November, 18 members of the Athamna family were killed and dozens of other civilians were injured when a volley of artillery shells struck a densely populated neighbourhood of Beit Hanoun, in the north of the Gaza Strip. The victims, eight of them children, were killed in their sleep or while fleeing the shelling, which lasted for around 30 minutes and during which some 12 shells landed in the area. The Israeli authorities expressed regret for the killings, saying that the houses were mistakenly struck due to a technical failure, but rejected calls for an international investigation. The attack came in the wake of a six-day Israeli army raid in Beit Hanoun code-named "Autumn Clouds", during which Israeli forces killed some 70 Palestinians, at least half of them unarmed civilians and including several children and two ambulance emergency service volunteers. The raid also injured some 200 others, including scores of children.

• Eight-year-old Akaber 'Abd al-Rahman 'Ezzat Zayed was shot dead by Israeli special forces who opened fire on the car in which she was travelling to hospital with her uncle, who was seriously injured in the attack. The incident took place on 17 March in Yamun village, near the northern West Bank town of Jenin.

• On 19 December, 14-year-old Dua'a Nasser 'Abdelkader was shot dead by Israeli soldiers as she approached the fence/wall with a friend near Fara'un, a village in the north of the West Bank.

• Nine members of the Abu Salmiya family were killed when an Israeli F16 fighter jet bombed their home at 2.30am on 12 July. According to the Israeli army, a senior leader of Hamas' armed wing was in the house at the time of the strike but survived. However, the strike wiped out an entire family: the owner of the house, Nabil Abu Salmiya, a Hamas political leader and university lecturer; his wife Salwa; and seven of their children all aged under 18. Dozens of neighbours were also injured and several other houses were damaged in the strike.

• In the evening of 25 March a group of Israeli settlers assaulted 'Abderrahman Shinneran as he slept in his tent with his wife and three children in Susia in the southern Hebron Hills. When his brother 'Aziz went to his rescue he too was assaulted and injured.

• On 18 November, Tove Johansson, a 19-year-old Swedish human rights defender, was assaulted by Israeli settlers as she accompanied Palestinian school children through an Israeli army checkpoint near the Tel Rumeida Israeli settlement in the West Bank city of Hebron. She was struck with a broken bottle and sustained facial injuries. Israeli soldiers at a nearby checkpoint took no action to stop the attack or apprehend the perpetrators.

Despite continuing US military and financial support of Israel, in addition to the US boycott of the elected Palestinian government, the Times chose to ignore these incidents as presented in Amnesty's 2007 annual report.

While Andrew Rosenthal's tenure as editor of the Times' editorial page has substantially improved at least that page's performance with respect to a number of important issues, that shift has occurred in the context of a persistent 30 percent approval rating of President Bush in public opinion polls and an apparent rejection of the administration's policies in the 2006 congressional elections. Tougher tests of journalistic oversight occur when conditions are not so favorable for principled criticism and commentary. The Times catastrophically failed those tests with respect to its coverage throughout most of the US war in Vietnam and in recent years in Iraq. The Times is failing that test today in its coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. While Israel has done most of the killing and has violated a preponderance of the applicable law, the Times, in a relative sense, has persistently over-represented Palestinian violence and lawlessness. By failing also to integrate applicable international law into its editorial standards, while mostly ignoring the human rights organizations (which regularly invoke international law in their reports), the Times apparently has no editorial policy to apply to the conflict aside from an historical and contemporary disposition to support Israel's illegal policies.