If an incident is not reported in the news, does that mean it never happened? Clearly, the answer is no. When the unreported incident is treated as fact, it does, however, raise suspicions. In Nael Musleh’s letter to the editor (“Israeli forces hurt innocent Palestinian families, April 25, p.6) he describes several incidents that he claims took place in his Ramallah neighborhood, which I am unwilling to label as concocted. I would simply like to raise my eyebrow in calling some “facts” into question and provide context, which Musleh fails to do.
After searching dozens of word combinations in the Google and Yahoo search engines, as well as several newspaper archives — including Palestinian media watch groups, Palestinian human rights groups, and Al-Jazeera — I have found not a single mention of three children killed by an Israeli — let alone an Israeli sniper — on May 22, 2002. I also checked May 21 and May 23, to make sure I understood what Musleh meant by “[a]t midnight on May 22, 2002.” Alas, those searches also turned up empty.
Interestingly — and inadvertently — what the search did yield is that on May 22, 2002, a Palestinian was in fact killed. The Palestinian ended his own life when he blew himself up in a pedestrian mall in the Israeli town of Rishon Letzion. In the process, the bomber took the lives of Elmar Dezhabrielov, 16, and Gary Tauzniaski, 65, as CNN and thousands of other media sources reported.
The truth is, I have no tangible way and no plans of accusing Musleh of falsifying some personal stories to try to make a point. I won’t, for example, even think of calling into question why the young children about whom Musleh writes were on their way to a store at midnight to buy milk and bread for their mothers and siblings. I also won’t exercise any skepticism as to Musleh’s ability to precisely count the 22 Israelis who he claims entered his house on April 18, 2005.
In fact, I will agree with Musleh: Checkpoints are humiliating. Unfortunately, they’ve become necessary. Checkpoints may be uncomfortable for innocent Palestinians, but the vast minority of extremists who have subscribed to the horrific ideology of suicide bombing make the situation terrible for everyone involved, Palestinian and Israeli. I hate the hassle and humility of going through a metal detector when entering a restaurant, movie theater or mall in Israel, but I really hate reading about 16-year-old Daniel Wultz, an American injured in last week’s Tel Aviv suicide bombing who has already lost his spleen, kidney and leg, as reported in the news.
Drawing upon Musleh’s analogy of checkpoints to Boston University’s campus, allow me to follow in Musleh’s steps and make a point to which BU students can relate. Imagine eating with friends in the Warren Towers cafeteria when all of a sudden a terrorist enters and blows himself up, killing and maiming everyone in the room. Would it make sense to blame the security guards for the hassle of swiping our BU IDs to enter?
I realize that May 2002 was a tough month for Musleh. Without passing judgment, I’d have to say that May 2002 was a tougher month for some 28 Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists, which included four suicide bombings within 20 days of each other and two separate shootings on the same day. As reported, Hamas, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine all willingly took responsibility for at least one of the aforementioned attacks.
While personal accounts like Musleh’s are very important, they carry a lot more weight when they are backed up by facts. Otherwise, it’s Musleh’s word against thousands of news services’.
Aaron Kaplowitz COM ’06
The writer is a former columnist for The Daily Free Press and a fellow in the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.