Every clipping in this archive printed between 2021 and 2023: 134 of them, oldest first, as plain text that can be read, searched and quoted without running any code. Each entry links to its own record, where the scan is.
· The Arizona Republic · Phoenix · page 1
Phoenix family shares recipe for rice dish
Priscilla Totiyapungprasert, Arizona Republic / USA Today Network
“Ramadan looks different during a pandemic, but Salmah Monsour feels determined to make the most of it. While there are no festive gatherings at her local mosque in Laveen, Monsour still tries to get her children excited by making Palestinian sweets together and decorating their house with ornaments, paper lanterns and strings of lights. And instead of helping herself to catering from the mosque, she’s preparing homecooked meals every day of the holy month. Recently, she made one of her favorites, maqluba. Maqluba, which means ‘upside down’ in Arabic, is a popular dish that Palestinian families like to make during Ramadan, she said. The layered dish is cooked in one pot. Meat such as lamb or chicken is stewed on the bottom with vegetables such as cauliflower and eggplant, then rice is poured on top and everything is cooked together. Right before serving, the pot is flipped upside down on a plate. It can be served with salad and yogurt on the side. ‘We’re always debating what we should make the first week of Ramadan and anytime I talk to anyone from the Levant, Jordanians, Palestinians, they say maqluba. It dates back hundreds and hundreds of years in our history,’ Monsour said… Growing up in California, her family usually celebrated at home with a feast and lots of sweets. Monsour said her favorite activity as a child was rolling the grape leaves and stuffing the squash and eggplant — though she was slow to roll, unlike her mother, who could swiftly roll the leaves between the palms of her hands… ‘I know a lot of households are probably sick of being around each other and want to get out, but I see the opposite here,’ Monsour said. ‘We actually sit down and take the time to talk, not in a hurry to go anywhere or be anywhere. There’s a different closeness I observed, and the time we’ve taken to talk about things that are important to us and family values.’ Maqluba. As told by Salmah Monsour. The reason why we make maqluba is because it’s one of the oldest dishes in Palestinian history. I always end up cooking for an army, so there’s always leftovers. Serves: 6-8 people… About 2 lbs of lamb pieces, bone in, cut 4” by 4”… 4 cups of basmati rice… Handful of browned vermicelli noodles… Toasted almonds and chopped parsley, to garnish… Place the pot on medium-high heat and let it bubble. Then cover the pot and reduce heat to low and let cook for about 50 minutes… Once ready to serve, use a large tray or plate with raised edges to place on top of the pot. Swiftly flip the pot over… allowing gravity to pull the maqluba down. Carefully lift the pot up to keep the maqluba intact.”
“The Monsour family enjoys a meal April 15.” · Thomas Hawthorne / The Republic
A recipe. Weights, timings, a note that she always cooks for an army. The photograph shows the family at the table, laughing. Nothing in it is about the war, and the only reason this is unusual is the rest of this archive.
The iftar meal looks different during a pandemic Ramadan, but Chicago-area Muslims are finding solace in traditional, tenderly made dishes
Zareen Syed, Chicago Tribune
“The table for iftar — the meal marking the end of a day’s fast during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan — is traditionally filled with chewy dates, water, bite-sized snacks and dishes that make an appearance but once a year… A Turkish woman walked viewers through her grocery store trip in preparation for iftar one day, and a Palestinian woman talked about traditions and cultural practices she and her Chilean husband share the next. ‘We get a little snapshot of each other, and it normalizes us,’ Habbal said. One of the people passing the plate is Nadia Labadi, 29, whose multicultural family is keeping festivities close to home this year, but shaking things up a smidge. ‘We didn’t want everything to be on my mom this Ramadan, because it’s just a lot, especially when you have grown adults who have been fasting all day,’ Labadi said of her idea behind ‘rotating iftars.’ Monday through Thursday, Labadi and her adult brothers and sisters-in-law take turns hosting a delectable breaking-of-the-fast meal with dishes from their family’s multitude of heritages and cuisines. Labadi’s dad, Riad Labadi, is Palestinian; and her mom, Susan Labadi, a former assistant principal at the Islamic Foundation School in suburban Villa Park, is a Muslim convert. ‘So we’re already like half-breeds, me and my three brothers,’ Labadi said with a laugh. One of her brothers married a Filipino woman, and another married a Greek woman, who also converted to Islam. With everyone fully vaccinated, the family is gathering this year, although still in smaller numbers than before the pandemic… On the first iftar Labadi hosted, she made her favorite Palestinian dish, maqluba — meaning ‘upside down’ in Arabic — which consists of layers of stewed lamb or chicken, rice and fried vegetables, cooked in a pot of aromatic spices and flipped onto a serving dish to form a steaming and impressive tower. ‘I love making maqluba, but sometimes we might order in on our day, too,’ Labadi said. ‘There are no rules, except that we see each other.’ According to the Illinois Muslim Civic Coalition, Illinois has the largest Muslim American population per capita in the country… ‘Nothing can replace being in person or being with the community, but we’re seeing that we’re still out there,’ she said.”
Not a Palestinian story: the family at the center of it is Bosnian, and the page is about how Chicago Muslims kept Ramadan during a pandemic. Nadia Labadi gets a few paragraphs, and what she chooses to cook for the first iftar she hosts is maqluba. It is the sixth printing of that dish in this archive and the second in 2021 alone, the other being a Ramadan feature in Phoenix eleven days earlier.
If we’re against genocide we should look at Palestine
John Costello, McFarland
“Dear Editor: Following the President’s official recognition of the Armenian genocide, John Nichols shared that it was something ‘he waited his entire life to hear’ because Biden ‘put America on the right side of history’ when he recognized the truth. I confess I didn’t even know about it for much of my life, and honestly, issues over 100 years old don’t usually hit me in the gut. But I can still empathize when I think about a somewhat similar obsession of my own. Or rather I could if the president were to use similar language about it, because as Nichols puts it, ‘the language of denial is so insidious.’ America has denied the true nature of this issue for so long, generations have grown old, ignorant of truths so important to grasp, that our democracy is imperiled, in good measure due to their absence. We’ve spent those generations held hostage morally, ethically and politically, to a set of false narratives that render us unable to resolve issues which can only be resolved if we follow the truth. But our minds have been kept in the dark. Nichols cites Raphael Lemkin as the originator of the term genocide, so it seems appropriate to quote him: ‘More often (genocide) refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight.’ A creeping genocide, that beguiles with phony agreements and poison-pill peace-plans designed to fail but provide plausible deniability of the obvious goal of conquest. I wonder if a president will tell the truth about the erasing of Palestine before it’s gone. He still could. This isn’t history yet. These are current events and America can still find itself on the right side of history.”
A letter arguing the word by going back to the man who coined it, and printed between a letter about Wisconsin’s wolf hunt and one about commuter trains.
Damage is inspected at a house in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip
Said Khatib, AFP via Getty
“Damage is inspected at a house in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Wednesday. Relatives say an Israeli airstrike killed a disabled 33-year-old man in a wheelchair, his pregnant wife and their 3-year-old daughter.” Said Khatib / AFP via Getty Images
“Damage is inspected at a house in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on Wednesday. Relatives say an Israeli airstrike killed a disabled 33-year-old man in a wheelchair, his pregnant wife and their 3-year-old daughter.” Said Khatib / AFP via Getty Images
A photograph and its caption. Three people killed and none of them named: a disabled man, his pregnant wife and their three-year-old daughter, identified only by age and relation, on the word of relatives.
About 60 gather at museum to protest Israeli occupation
Lenore Sobota, Bloomington
“BLOOMINGTON — Noor Alsaqri and her sister Salma of Normal grew up hearing stories from their grandparents of how they were forced out of their homes in Palestine in 1948. They became refugees in Jordan with the formation of Israel and eventually came to the United States. ‘They left without anything,’ said Noor Alsaqri. ‘It was called Nakba, “the catastrophe.”’… ‘I was tortured in an Israeli prison. I wasn’t allowed to go back to Palestine to attend my sister’s funeral.’… ‘When I die, my kid will carry the flag. When my kids die, their kids will carry the flag until Palestine is free,’ said Dabeet… Much attention has been focused on the area recently because of rockets fired into Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas, and Israeli airstrikes that they said targeted Hamas sites but included residential buildings. The 11 days of hostilities, which ended with a ceasefire on May 20, killed more than 230 Palestinians, including 65 children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, along with 12 people in Israel, including a 5-year-old boy and 16-year-old girl, the Associated Press reported. But those speaking at the rally said atrocities and assaults on human dignity against Palestinians go back much further… Mahmoud Ali of Normal, one of the organizers of the rally, said, ‘This is not about talking against Jewish people. This is about the injustice happening there.’ Ali said, ‘I’m against what Hamas does,’ but he also said Palestinians ‘are out of patience.’ Those attending the rally chanted, ‘Free Palestine,’ ‘Stop funding genocide’ and ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’”
“John Dabeet of Muscatine, Iowa, president of Americans and Palestinians for Peace, spoke Sunday at a rally in downtown Bloomington about being arrested and tortured by Israeli forces.”
Filed under a 1991 caption on the microfilm. The story itself is May 2021: the eviction case at Sheikh Jarrah, the ceasefire of 20 May, 230 Palestinians dead, and a Twitter handle in the reporter’s contact line. Corrected by thirty years. The word genocide reaches the page as a chant the reporter writes down. Nakba is in quotation marks, in 2021.
“Again we see military action in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Palestine. The media and politicians declare Israel has a right to defend itself, but none of them dare to speak truth. For a better understanding of the present turmoil you’ll have to look at the distant past. If you look at a current map of Israel, you’ll notice Palestine does not exist. If you look at a map of Palestine pre-1945, Israel does not exist… So here we are, 2021, and still the Palestinian people are being squeezed into shrinking enclaves. Yet, we keep hearing over and over that Israel has a right to defend itself. Even the supposed left media doesn’t bother to show the Palestinian flag during coverage… Palestine does not belong to Israel. That is historically accurate.”
A guest column, run with the writer’s photograph and his email address at the foot. Collected with the genocide search; the word does not appear anywhere in it, so it is not counted in that set.
I am a Palestinian American, my dad is older than the state of Israel
The trauma experienced to go see my family, friends is painful
Rania Batrice, guest columnist
“To be Palestinian is to be perpetually gaslit… This situation isn’t complicated. In fact, it’s only 73 years old. My dad is older than the state of Israel. He was in his first year of life during the British Mandate, when the British government supported ‘a national home’ for Jewish people, leading to the creation of Israel. My people call the 1948 war that uprooted Palestinians from their home ‘al Nakba.’ The rest of the world doesn’t have a name for it because it’s rarely even acknowledged… I’m a proud Palestinian — and an American — and I’ve worked in politics and advocacy for over two decades… I grew up in Texas, and I have a lighter complexion than the rest of my family. Which means that for my entire life, I’ve been Arab-undetected. That means people feel comfortable saying things in front of me they wouldn’t to the rest of my family: they’ve called me, my family, my people terrorists. They’ve quoted the Bible at me as justification for the persecution of Palestinian people. They’ve disparaged ‘those people’ and assumed I would agree. I often let them dig the hole just deep enough before I reveal that I am Palestinian and that the majority of my family is actually Catholic. Because, yes, there are Palestinian Christians — Jesus Christ was Palestinian… The problem, in part, lies in the inability or refusal to separate true antisemitism from the legitimate critiques of the oppressive Israeli regimes that have reigned over Palestinians, carrying out human rights abuses that would not be justified in almost any other circumstance… Even Jewish people who dare to speak out against this oppression are being attacked and labeled antisemitic… The bottom line is standing up for Palestinians isn’t the same as antisemitism. Arabs are Semites too, and ethnic persecution is ethnic persecution. I may not live in Palestine, but the trauma I have to go through in order to go see my family and friends is painful and enraging. I have dual citizenship because of my parent’s forced Israeli citizenship. But I was born in the United States. When I fly to Tel Aviv, my U.S. passport is literally useless. I have been detained for hours on end. My family doesn’t know when to pick me up because my release is based on the whim of that particular day’s security agents. I have been strip searched. My bags and electronics have been ripped apart and scanned and then scanned again and again. The security agents shuffle me from office to office and ask me absurd questions like when was my grandfather born? What was my great grandmother’s maiden name? Why don’t I speak Hebrew? This entire process is meant to anger and intimidate and remind me that I’m not equal. If my American citizenship can’t protect me, imagine how vulnerable every Palestinian living from the West Bank to Gaza feels.”
“Ruins from Kafr Bir’im, a Palestinian Christian village, where the Batrice family began.” Family handout
A Palestinian American given the whole column to write in her own voice, with a photograph of the village her family came from. Kafr Bir’im was depopulated in 1948. The archive holds this village three times: 1972, 1973 and 2021.
Israel's practice of holding on to remains is a form of collective punishment, human rights groups argue
Jack Jeffery, The Associated Press, Abu Dis, West Bank
ABU DIS, West Bank — More than a year after his son was killed by Israeli forces under disputed circumstances in the occupied West Bank, Mustafa Erekat is still seeking his remains. It is one of dozens of cases in which Israel is holding the remains of Palestinians killed in conflict, citing the need to deter attacks and potentially exchange them for the remains of two Israeli soldiers held by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians and human rights groups view the practice of holding bodies as a form of collective punishment that inflicts further suffering on bereaved families… “They always go along with the military’s demands,” Aliyan told the Associated Press. “They are afraid to take any decision against them.”
“‘IT IS MY right for my son to have a good funeral,’ Mustafa Erekat says. His son Ahmed was shot to death by Israeli forces under disputed circumstances last year when he drove his car into a West Bank checkpoint.” Nasser Nasser, Associated Press.
5 killed in mass shooting in Israel, officials say
By Ilan Ben Zion, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — A gunman opened fire in a city near Tel Aviv on Tuesday, killing at least five people in the third deadly attack in Israel in a week, officials said. The shooting in Bnei Brak, an ultra-Orthodox city adjacent to Tel Aviv, was the deadliest yet in a spate of violence that has raised alarms in Israel and threatens to escalate tensions in the Israeli-occupied West Bank… Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett, convened his security chiefs after the shooting and vowed to respond with an ‘iron fist.’… Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the killings, saying the killing of Palestinian and Israeli civilians ‘only leads to further deterioration.’ Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, praised the shooting but stopped short of claiming responsibility… Police said the gunman was shot dead by officers… Israel has carried out near-nightly arrest raids in the occupied West Bank…”
Three of the five sentences the paper prints about who is responsible are attributions: the police say, officials say, Abbas condemns, Hamas praises without claiming. The story that begins the crackdown the rest of this collection is about, on day one, before it has a name.
Israeli police arrest relatives of Palestinian shooter
By Tia Goldenberg, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Israeli security forces on Wednesday arrested relatives of a Palestinian gunman who killed five people the previous day and raided his West Bank hometown, as Israel appeared to be laying the groundwork for a broader military operation… Israel’s prime minister said the attacks were the beginning of ‘a new wave of terror’ and vowed to fight it with ‘an iron fist.’… The Israeli military said it arrested the gunman’s father and two of his brothers overnight… Israel routinely arrests family members of Palestinian attackers for questioning and often demolishes their homes, a practice rights groups say amounts to collective punishment… The United Nations has recorded a sharp rise in deadly violence in the West Bank over the past year…”
The morning after. The archive’s later demolition records begin here, in a single sentence of wire boilerplate: Israel arrests family members and often demolishes their homes, and rights groups call it collective punishment.
Israel tightens security after deadliest attack in 8 years
By Patrick Kingsley and Gabby Sobelman, New York Times, Bnei Brak, Israel
“BNEI BRAK, Israel — Israel deployed thousands of extra police officers and soldiers across the country and along the West Bank border on Wednesday, hours after a Palestinian gunman shot dead five people in an ultra-Orthodox Israeli city in the single deadliest terrorist attack in Israel in eight years… The five fatalities included two Ukrainian nationals, an Israeli-Arab police officer and two Israelis… The Israeli government has said the attacks were unconnected, though the assailants were all inspired by Islamist ideology… Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Israel faced ‘a wave of murderous Arab terrorism.’… Tensions were already high before the attacks, after a year in which Israeli forces killed dozens of Palestinians in the West Bank…”
The superlative the Globe prints is bounded twice over: the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel, in eight years. Neither bound holds Palestinian deaths, which the same page records further down as ‘dozens’ in the previous year. The category, not the arithmetic, does the work.
Palestinians, Israeli police clash at major holy site in Jerusalem
By Joseph Krauss, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Palestinians and Israeli police clashed at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem on Friday as thousands gathered for prayers during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Medics said more than 150 Palestinians were wounded — Palestinians threw rocks and Israeli police fired stun grenades in what was the most serious violence at the site in nearly a year… Israeli police accused Palestinians of ‘defiling and desecrating’ a holy site… Palestinian witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concerns, said a group of Palestinians threw rocks at police, who then entered the compound in force, setting off a wider conflagration… Video footage showed police beating a photographer for the Waqf with batons before knocking him to ground and kicking him. The Waqf said the photographer, Rami Khatib, suffered a broken hand…”
The single named Palestinian is a photographer, and he is named because he was beaten while photographing. Rami Khatib. The archive’s press-itself thread and its naming thread meet in one sentence.
Clashes erupt again at flashpoint Jerusalem holy site
Palestinian aid workers said 17 were injured in unrest after Israeli police entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque site.
By Josef Federman, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Israeli police on Sunday entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City to secure the way for Jewish visitors to the flashpoint holy site, fueling clashes that left 17 Palestinians wounded, according to Palestinian medical workers… Israeli police accused Palestinians of ‘defiling and desecrating’ a holy site, while Palestinian officials accused Israel of trying to divide the sensitive holy site. ‘What happened in Al-Aqsa Mosque is a dangerous escalation, the repercussions of which are to be borne by the Israeli government alone,’ said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas… Amateur videos circulating on social media appeared to show police officers using batons to subdue arrested Palestinians and clear people from the esplanade, drawing accusations they were using excessive force. In one video, an officer clubbed an apparently unarmed man as he stood next to a child.”
Three papers ran this dispatch in the same week under three headlines. This one puts the wounded in the line under the headline and the word clashes in the headline.
“JERUSALEM — Israeli police on Sunday entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City to secure the way for Jewish visitors to the flashpoint holy site, fueling clashes that left 17 Palestinians wounded, according to Palestinian medical workers… Omer Barlev, the Israeli minister in charge of the police, said it was important to ensure freedom of worship ‘but we will not compromise when violence and terror take place.’”
Same dispatch, cut to eight paragraphs. The headline now has two equal subjects clashing, and the seventeen wounded have left the top of the page.
Police try to clear way for Jewish visitors; 17 Palestinians wounded
Josef Federman, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Israeli police on Sunday entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City to secure the way for Jewish visitors to the flashpoint holy site, fueling clashes that left 17 Palestinians wounded, according to Palestinian medical workers… Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett ordered additional security on public buses going to the Old City after a situation assessment with top defense officials. ‘We are working to calm things down on the one hand and are taking vigorous action against violent individuals on the other,’ he said.”
“Palestinians shoot fireworks at Israeli police Sunday in the Old City of Jerusalem.”
The third printing of the same paragraphs. Only here does the line under the headline say who was wounded and who the police were clearing the way for; the headline above it still says only that clashes erupted.
“Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran Palestinian-American journalist who had covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for more than two decades, mostly for Al-Jazeera, was shot and killed on May 11… It didn’t matter that the 51-year-old journalist was wearing the standard outerwear that differentiates credentialed media from combatants on both sides: a blue vest with ‘Press’ emblazoned on it as well as a helmet. It did not protect her… Israel denies that its military intentionally targets journalists. It claims that Palestinian militants in the West Bank shot and killed Ms. Abu Akleh. Left unexplained is why they would want to kill a respected and much beloved journalist who has been chronicling the excesses of the Israeli occupation without fear or favor for decades… Israel has demanded access to the bullet. The Palestinian attorney general has refused, fearing Israel would tamper with the evidence.”
A mural of slain Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh adorns a wall May 15 in Gaza City. Adel Hana/Associated Press.
An American editorial page, arguing about the killing of an American citizen, and printing both the Israeli account and its own objection to it.
Israel arrests Palestinian attackers who killed guard
The Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said Saturday it has arrested a pair of Palestinian assailants who allegedly shot and killed a security guard at the entrance of a Jewish settlement in the West Bank… A string of Palestinian attacks in Israel and the West Bank have left 15 Israelis dead, while at least 27 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces in recent weeks… In Gaza, the leader of the territory’s Hamas rulers Yehiyeh Sinwar called for stepping up attacks against Israeli targets in the West Bank, saying the ‘real battle arena is there.’ In a speech, he saluted the attackers who killed the guard… ‘All the factions of resistance in the Gaza Strip must be prepared and be on alert,’ Sinwar said…”
“A masked Palestinian gunman shoots in the air during the funeral of Yahia Edwan, 27, at the West Bank village of Azzoun, near Qalqiliya, on Saturday. Israeli troops shot and killed Edwan early Saturday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The Israeli army said it had opened fire after a group of suspects threw firebombs toward the soldiers.”
The running count in the fifth paragraph is two-sided and unequal: 15 Israelis, at least 27 Palestinians. Yahia Edwan, 27, is named only in the caption. The page runs beside an invitation to submit Mother’s Day photographs for publication on 8 May.
Israel upholds expulsion order against West Bank hamlets
Human rights groups allege policies amount to apartheid
Joseph Krauss, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Israel’s Supreme Court has upheld a long-standing expulsion order against eight Palestinian hamlets in the occupied West Bank, potentially leaving at least 1,000 people homeless, an Israeli rights group representing the villagers said Thursday. The verdict… marks the end of a more than two-decade legal struggle by Palestinians in the Masafer Yatta region of the southern West Bank to maintain communities they say go back decades. ‘Without warning in the middle of the night, the Israeli High Court of Justice published a verdict with unprecedented consequences,’ the Association for Civil Rights in Israel… said in a statement. ‘The High Court has officially authorized leaving entire families, with their children and their elderly, without a roof over their heads’… ‘The occupation court just decided: My community will be destroyed,’ tweeted Basel Adra, a prominent activist from the area. ‘The army can now place us on trucks, 2,400 people, and expel us from our ancient villages, one by one.’… Three major human rights groups have said Israel’s policies, particularly in the West Bank, amount to apartheid, allegations Israel rejects as an attack on its very legitimacy. One of those groups, the Israeli organization B’Tselem, said that in the Masafer Yatta ruling the justices ‘once again fulfilled their role in Israel’s regime of Jewish supremacy and paved the way for the crime of forcible transfer to be committed.’”
The word apartheid in a Florida headline's second line, the phrase Jewish supremacy in the body, and forcible transfer as a named crime, all attributed to Israeli organizations. The page shares its lower half with an advertisement for Rolex servicing in Boca Raton.
Israel approves plan for Jerusalem tourism site on contested land
By Isabel Kershner, New York Times, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — An Israeli planning committee has approved a controversial development plan for a tourism and archaeological site in a Palestinian neighborhood of East Jerusalem, in an area at the heart of the contest over the city’s sovereignty… The plan drew criticism from Palestinians and from Israeli rights groups who say it is part of a broader effort to bolster Israeli control over East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967 and annexed in a move not recognized by most of the international community, though most countries still consider it occupied territory…”
A planning committee, a tourism site, an archaeological park. The mechanism is administrative and the vocabulary is municipal, and the word occupied survives only in a subordinate clause about what most countries still consider it.
3 killed in axe attack in Israel; manhunt underway
Reuters, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Assailants killed three people with an axe and a knife in an Israeli town near Tel Aviv on Thursday, police said, in the latest of a series of deadly attacks that have raised fears of wider conflict… Israeli forces launched a manhunt… The attack took place in Elad, a religious Jewish town near Tel Aviv, on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day… Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that rules Gaza, praised the attack but did not claim responsibility…”
A four-paragraph wire brief. Praised but not claimed — the formula that appears in nearly every attack story in this collection.
The UN’s antisemitism problem won’t be solved by simply ignoring it
By Jonathan S. Tobin, JNS
“For decades, supporters of Israel have debated what to do about the United Nations. Should they ignore it as a talking shop that makes a lot of noise but can’t impact events on the ground in the Middle East? Or should they treat its growing efforts to smear Israel as an ‘apartheid state’ a genuine threat to the Jewish state?… The world body’s bias against the Jewish state is baked into the cake due to the dominance of Islamist, Marxist and Third World nations that buy into the lie that Zionism is racism. That bias has been expressed in many ways over the years — from the General Assembly’s passage in 1975 of the infamous ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution to its role in convening the 2001 Durban Conference on Racism, which became an anti-Semitic hatefest.… The U.N. Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) is solely focused on ensuring that the descendants of Palestinian Arabs who fled the country during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence remain stateless refugees to be used as propaganda to delegitimize the existence of a Jewish state.”
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in the southern Gaza Strip on July 26, 2018.
The editor in chief of a Jewish news syndicate joins 1975 to Durban in a single sentence and adds apartheid to the list of words the United Nations is accused of misusing. He uses the phrase the administered territories, which is the same phrase a reader in Iowa City had used in 1992.
Al Jazeera reporter killed during an Israeli raid in West Bank
Shireen Abu Akleh’s death could draw new scrutiny of Israel’s open-ended military justice system.
The Associated Press
“Veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, one of the satellite channel’s best-known reporters, was shot and killed on Wednesday while covering an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank. The broadcaster and two reporters who were with her blamed Israeli forces… The Israeli military initially suggested that Abu Akleh might have been killed by stray fire from Palestinians, but Gantz was more cautious Wednesday evening. ‘We are trying to figure out exactly what happened,’ he said. ‘I don’t have final conclusions.’… The head of the Palestinian forensics institute, Rayan al-Ali, said earlier Wednesday that the bullet was deformed, and that he could not yet determine who fired it… Abu Akleh, 51, was a respected and familiar face in the Middle East, known for her coverage on Al Jazeera Arabic of the harsh realities of Israel’s open-ended military occupation of the Palestinians, now in its 55th year. She was widely recognized in the West Bank and was also a U.S. citizen… Lina Abu Akleh, her niece, called her ‘my best friend, my second mom, my companion.’… Five Palestinians were hurt and about half a dozen were detained.”
Protesters hold candles and a photo of slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Haifa, Israel, on Wednesday. Ariel Schalit, Associated Press.
The first day, and the military’s first account is stray fire from Palestinians.
Israeli police beat pallbearers at Al Jazeera journalist’s funeral
Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli troops on Wednesday during a raid in the occupied West Bank, witnesses say
Josef Federman, The Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Israeli riot police on Friday pushed and beat pallbearers at the funeral for slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, causing them to briefly drop the casket in a shocking start to a procession that turned into perhaps the largest display of Palestinian nationalism in Jerusalem in a generation… Thousands of people, many waving Palestinian flags and chanting ‘Palestine! Palestine!’ attended the funeral… Police ripped Palestinian flags out of people’s hands and fired stun grenades to disperse the crowd. Abu Akleh’s brother, Tony, said the scenes ‘prove that Shireen’s reports and honest words … had a powerful impact.’ Al Jazeera correspondent Givara Budeiri said the police crackdown was like killing Abu Akleh again. ‘It seems her voice isn’t silent,’ she said during a report.”
Israeli police attack mourners Friday as they carry the casket of slain Al Jazeera veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during her funeral in east Jerusalem. Maya Levin/Associated Press.
Her brother and a second Al Jazeera correspondent are both named and both quoted.
Police violence breaks out at funeral of slain journalist
Reuters, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Israeli police officers charged at Palestinian mourners carrying the coffin of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on Friday, before thousands led her casket through Jerusalem’s Old City in an outpouring of grief and anger over her killing. Packed around Abu Akleh’s coffin, dozens of Palestinians, some waving Palestinian flags and chanting, ‘With our soul and blood we will redeem you Shireen,’ began walking toward the gates of St. Joseph’s Hospital… At one point the group carrying her coffin backed against a wall and almost dropped the casket, recovering it just before one end hit the ground as stun grenades detonated… Israeli police said a group of Palestinians outside the hospital, whom they described as rioters, had begun throwing stones at officers. ‘The policemen were forced to act,’ they added… ‘We’re here because we are screaming for justice. Justice for Shireen Abu Akleh and justice for Palestine,’ said one mourner, who did not want to be identified by name.”
Family and friends carry the coffin of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed during an Israeli raid in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, during her funeral on Friday in a church in Jerusalem. Ammar Awad / Reuters.
Both accounts of the same minutes, in adjacent paragraphs: the charge at the coffin, and the police saying they were forced to act.
Staten Island family members of journalist killed in Israel attend vigil
Shireen Abu Akleh was covering an Israeli military raid in the Palestinian town of Jenin early Wednesday when she fatally shot in the head.
David Luces, DLuces@siadvance.com
“Shireen Abu Akleh, 51, a Palestinian-American, who was fatally shot May 11 while covering an Israeli raid in the West Bank for Al Jazeera, is being remembered by family members from Staten Island as a ‘courageous’ person and someone who inspired many during a vigil in New Jersey on Thursday. Samir Akleh, a Staten Island resident and a cousin of Abu Akleh, told reporters from NorthJersey.com that ‘she investigated things’ and was ‘very courageous’… Akleh was part of about 250 people gathered at Gould Park in Paterson, N.J., for a vigil on Thursday… Samir’s nephew, Robert Akleh, was also at the vigil and told the N.J. publication that he was ‘proud to know that his cousin was not afraid to tell the truth.’ ‘Now it’s on us here in America to really start to stand up, speak up, and demand accountability,’ he added… ‘Shireen Abu Akleh was not just a journalist who spoke truth to power. She was someone who taught multiple generations the reality of what life as a Palestinian under occupation is like,’ Abire Sabbagh, community outreach director at the Palestinian American Community Center, told NorthJersey.com.”
Shireen Abu Akleh, a journalist for Al Jazeera network, was fatally shot May 11 while covering an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin. Al Jazeera Media Network.
Three Palestinian-Americans named and quoted in a Staten Island local paper, and the dek’s own dropped word left as printed.
Killing of Palestinian-American journalist demands investigation and accountability
John Nichols, Associate Editor
“Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist who earned international respect for her thoughtful, fact-based reporting on conflicts in the Middle East, was killed last Wednesday in East Jerusalem when she was covering an Israeli military raid on a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank… ‘We were going to film the Israeli army operation and suddenly they shot us without asking us to leave or stop filming,’ recalled Al Jazeera producer Ali al-Samoudi, who was wounded by a bullet in the back… ‘It was clear that the Israeli police were involved in an attempt to block and remove any signs of Palestinian nationalism. Israeli soldiers ripped off Palestinian flags that surrounded her and used tear gas to prevent pallbearers from marching with her body,’ explained Dawud Kuttab, a recipient of the International Press Freedom Award from the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists.”
Lebanese journalists hold portraits of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during a protest in Beirut. Bilal Hussein.
A Wisconsin weekly, quoting a wounded Palestinian producer, a Palestinian press-freedom figure, and three members of Congress.
· The Philadelphia Inquirer · Philadelphia · page 1
Palestinians say journalist killed by Israeli forces
Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was trying to flee when she was shot, an investigation found.
Imad Isseid, The Associated Press, Ramallah, West Bank
“RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian Authority on Thursday announced the results of its investigation into the shooting death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, saying it had proven she was deliberately killed by Israeli forces as she tried to flee. Israel rejected the findings, with Defense Minister Benny Gantz calling them ‘a blatant lie.’… Palestinian Attorney General Akram Al Khateeb said he had determined there were no militants in the immediate area where Abu Akleh was located. ‘The only shooting was by the occupation forces, with the aim of killing,’ he said… Israeli Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi said it was impossible to know who fired the bullet… ‘But there is one thing that can be determined with certainty,’ the military chief said. ‘No soldier fired intentionally at a journalist. We investigated that. We checked it. That is the conclusion. There is no other.’”
Bullet holes on a tree are marked with tape as a portrait and flowers create a makeshift memorial at the site where Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in the West Bank city of Jenin. AP, File.
Both investigations, both denials and both named officials, in one Associated Press dispatch sixteen days after the killing.
· The Philadelphia Inquirer · Philadelphia · page 1
U.N. agency says Israeli troops killed journalist
Shireen Abu Akleh was shot in the head while covering a raid in the West Bank.
Shira Rubin and Kareem Fahim, The Washington Post, Tel Aviv
“A veteran Palestinian American journalist was killed by Israeli forces while covering a military raid in the occupied West Bank, a spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said Friday… ‘All information we have gathered — including official information from the Israeli military and the Palestinian Attorney-General — is consistent with the finding that the shots that killed Abu Akleh and injured her colleague Ali Sammoudi came from Israeli Security Forces,’ the spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani, said in a statement. Abu Akleh was not struck ‘from indiscriminate firing by armed Palestinians, as initially claimed by Israeli authorities,’ she added… The United States has said it is not currently conducting an investigation but has made clear to both Israeli and Palestinian officials it is our goal ‘for through, transparent, and impartial investigations’ into the killing.”
A poster depicts Shireen Abu Akleh near murals of George Floyd (left) and Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Maya Alleruzzo / AP.
The photograph is the argument: her face on a wall in Bethlehem, next to George Floyd.
US: Israeli fire likely killed reporter; no final conclusion
Ellen Knickmeyer, Matthew Lee and Joseph Krauss, The Associated Press, Washington
“WASHINGTON — U.S. officials said Monday that the bullet that killed veteran Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh was likely fired from an Israeli position. But they said it was too badly damaged to reach an absolute determination, and that there is ‘no reason to believe’ she was deliberately targeted… The U.S. ‘found no reason to believe that this was intentional but rather the result of tragic circumstances during an IDF-led military operation against factions of Palestinian Islamic Jihad,’ Price said. He gave no further details on how it reached its conclusion… Israel says she was killed during a complex battle with Palestinian militants and that only a forensic analysis of the bullet could confirm whether it was fired by an Israeli soldier or a Palestinian militant. It has strongly denied she was deliberately targeted… Rights groups say Israeli investigations of the shooting deaths of Palestinians often languish for months or years before being quietly closed and that soldiers are rarely held accountable. The Israeli rights group B’Tselem dismissed the U.S. announcement as a ‘whitewash.’”
Yellow tape marks bullet holes on a tree and a portrait and flowers create a makeshift memorial on May 19, 2022, at the site where Palestinian-American Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed in the West Bank city of Jenin. Majdi Mohammed, AP Staff.
Two months on: likely Israeli fire, no reason to believe it was intentional, a bullet too damaged to be sure, and a rights group calling it a whitewash. All four on one page.
Israeli strikes kill 10 in Gaza, including Islamic Jihad commander
By Alisa Odenheimer and Fadwa Hodali, Bloomberg
“Israeli forces struck the Gaza Strip on Friday, killing at least 10 Palestinians including a commander of the Islamic Jihad militant group, in what Israel described as a pre-emptive operation against an imminent attack… Among the fatalities was a five-year-old girl, according to the Palestinian health ministry, which also reported about 55 people wounded… Taysir al-Jabari, the Islamic Jihad commander for northern Gaza, was killed in a strike on a high-rise building in Gaza City… Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza, said Israel had ‘crossed the red line’ but stopped short of saying it would join the fighting… Israel has in recent months increased the number of permits for Gazans to work inside Israel, part of an effort to improve economic conditions in the territory.”
A Bloomberg wire story, so the frame is economic as well as military: the same paragraph that reports ten dead reports the work permits. Hamas is quoted saying a line has been crossed and quoted, in the same sentence, not joining.
Israel, militants trade fire as Gaza death toll climbs to 24
By Fares Akram and Tia Goldenberg, Associated Press, Gaza City
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli aircraft pounded militant targets in Gaza as rockets rained on southern Israel on Saturday, the second day of an escalation that has killed at least 24 Palestinians, including a 5-year-old girl and a senior militant… Israel said it was targeting the Islamic Jihad militant group… Hamas, the larger militant group that rules Gaza, appeared to stay on the sidelines… ‘Warned us? They warned us with rockets and we fled without taking anything,’ said Huda Shamalakh, who left her home in the border town of Beit Hanoun… The Israeli military said militants had fired around 350 rockets…”
“Mourners carry the body of Tamim Hijazi during his funeral in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on Saturday.”
The one Gazan quoted is a woman leaving her house. She is answering the claim, printed a few paragraphs above her, that residents were warned.
Israel, militants trade fire as Gaza death toll climbs to 24
Fares Akram and Tia Goldenberg, Associated Press, Gaza City
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli aircraft pounded militant targets in Gaza as rockets rained on southern Israel on Saturday… The Israeli military said militants had fired around 350 rockets… Palestinians said an Israeli strike had hit a house in the Jabaliya refugee camp…”
The fifth printing of the same morning’s file. Five papers, five lengths, three headlines.
Fares Akram and Tia Goldenberg, Associated Press, Gaza City
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli aircraft pounded militant targets in Gaza as rockets rained on southern Israel on Saturday, the second day of an escalation that has killed at least 24 Palestinians, including a 5-year-old girl and a senior militant…”
The same copy under a headline in which nobody is killed. Indianapolis prints an exchange of fire; the Daily Herald printed a death toll of twenty-four.
Fares Akram and Tia Goldenberg, Associated Press, Gaza City
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli aircraft pounded militant targets in Gaza as rockets rained on southern Israel on Saturday, the second day of an escalation that has killed at least 24 Palestinians, including a 5-year-old girl and a senior militant…”
A third headline off the same paragraphs, shorter again, with the toll gone.
Israel, militants trade fire as Gaza death toll climbs to 24
Associated Press, Gaza City
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli aircraft pounded militant targets in Gaza as rockets rained on southern Israel on Saturday, the second day of an escalation that has killed at least 24 Palestinians, including a 5-year-old girl and a senior militant…”
Eight paragraphs where the Ann Arbor News ran the full column. Everything after the fourth paragraph is gone, which is where the Gazans were quoted.
Attacks push countries into second day of fighting
By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell, Reuters
“GAZA/JERUSALEM — Israeli air strikes pounded Gaza while the militant Islamic Jihad group fired hundreds of rockets into Israel on Saturday as a cross-border clash continued into a second day, killing at least six people, including four children… At least 24 Palestinians, including six children, have been killed and 203 wounded during the two days of firing, according to the Gaza health ministry.… Hamas said the children were among the dead from a blast close to the Jabalya refugee camp and blamed Israel. The Israeli military denied it was responsible, saying the explosion was caused by a failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch. It distributed a video which appeared to show a rocket being launched from Gaza at night and then veering immediately off course down into a built-up area. Reuters could not independently verify the footage… Around 2.3 million Palestinians are packed into the narrow coastal Gaza Strip… The United States fully supported Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Shahir, 1 of 4 disabled Palestinian siblings from Shamalakh family, is assisted near the rubble of their home Saturday after it was destroyed in an Israeli air strike, amid Israel-Gaza fighting, in Gaza City.
He is named, which is rare in this thread, and the photograph shows five men lifting his wheelchair over what is left of the house he and his three disabled siblings lived in.
Egypt calls for cease-fire, seeking to end Gaza violence
Fares Akram and Tia Goldenberg, Associated Press, Gaza City
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Egyptian mediators worked to end a flare-up between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Sunday… Israel said it launched the offensive because of an imminent threat from the Islamic Jihad… The Palestinian Health Ministry said 31 people had been killed, including six children and four women… Israel said some of the deaths were caused by rockets that fell short… Ultra-nationalist firebrand lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir visited the Jerusalem holy site…”
The fullest of the three. It is also the only one to carry, in the same column, the Israeli claim about rockets falling short and the figure for children killed.
Egypt pushes cease-fire as Gaza violence escalates
By Fares Akram and Tia Goldenberg, Associated Press, Gaza City
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Egyptian mediators worked to end a flare-up between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Sunday… Wissam Jouda, who lives next to the house of a militant leader, said he was told to leave… Ahmed al-Qaissi, another neighbor, said the army had called him too… The dead included Khaled Mansour, a senior Islamic Jihad commander, and members of his family… Hamas, the larger group that rules Gaza, has stayed out of the fighting, possibly because it fears Israeli reprisals and undoing economic understandings with Israel, including Israeli work permits for thousands of Gaza residents, that bolster its control.”
The economic arrangement that governed Gaza until October 2023, set out in an American newspaper in August 2022: work permits, and a calculation about them attributed to Hamas by the Associated Press.
Cease-fire holds in Gaza after three days of fighting
44 Palestinians died, but Iron Dome shielded Israel
The Washington Post
“A cease-fire between Israel and the Islamic Jihad militant group held on Monday after three days of fighting that killed 44 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including 15 children… No Israelis were killed. The Israeli military said its Iron Dome air defense system intercepted the great majority of rockets fired…”
The line under the headline sets the two halves of the sentence in two different grammars. The Palestinians died. The Iron Dome shielded. One clause has an agent and the other does not, and they are separated by a comma.
“JERUSALEM — Israeli forces killed three Palestinians, including a local militant leader, in a raid in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, Palestinian officials said, days after a bruising round of fighting in the Gaza Strip… The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the dead as Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, Islam Sabouh and Hussein Jamal Taha… al-Nabulsi was a leader in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades… Israel says the raids are meant to dismantle militant networks… Palestinians say they entrench Israel’s 55-year occupation.”
Three names in the fourth paragraph, and a headline that names none of them and attributes the count to Palestinians.
“JERUSALEM — Israeli forces killed three Palestinians, including a local militant leader, in a raid in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday… Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for the Palestinian president, condemned the raid… The Palestinians and much of the international community consider Israel’s West Bank settlements a violation of international law and an obstacle to a peaceful resolution of the decadeslong conflict.”
The same dispatch, with the paragraphs the Concord Monitor cut: a Palestinian spokesman, the Secretary-General, and the sentence about international law.
“JERUSALEM — Israeli forces killed three Palestinians, including a local militant leader, in a raid in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, Palestinian officials said, days after a bruising round of fighting in the Gaza Strip…”
The third headline off this dispatch, and the one that empties it. No Palestinians, no Israeli troops, no militants: three people killed in a shootout. The lede underneath still says who killed whom.
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The death toll from three days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip rose to 48 on Thursday… Layan al-Shaer, 11, died of wounds sustained in an Israeli strike… Her father, Hani al-Shaer, said she had been playing outside… The dead include Nayef al-Awdat, 14, and Mohammed Abu Ktaifa, 8… Israel says some of the children were killed by rockets that fell short. The Palestinian rights group Al Mezan attributes all of the deaths to Israeli fire…”
Four Gazan children named in one wire story, three of them with ages. The clipping also carries both attributions for how they died, unresolved, which is how the record stood.
Correction: {'note': 'The presentation slide this scan came from paired it with the label for the Lion’s Den feature on the neighboring slide. The two labels are switched; the dispatch here is Fares Akram’s Gaza toll story of 11–12 August 2022.'}
Rights group says Israel strike killed five Palestinians
Associated Press
“JEBALIYA, Gaza Strip — A Palestinian human rights group and an Israeli newspaper reported Tuesday that an explosion in a cemetery that killed five Palestinian children during a flare-up in Gaza was caused by an Israeli airstrike and not an errant Palestinian rocket. It was one of a number of recent blasts that did not bear the tell-tale signs of an Israeli F-16 or drone strike, and which Israel said may have been caused by rockets misfired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group. The five children, aged 4 to 16, had gathered in the cemetery, one of the few open spaces in the Jebaliya refugee camp, on Aug. 7. Residents said a projectile fell from the air. When The Associated Press visited the site, it saw none of the usual signs of an airstrike by an Israeli F-16 or drone, adding to suspicions that the blast was caused by an errant rocket. On Tuesday, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said its investigation of shrapnel and other evidence led it to conclude that the blast was caused by an Israeli airstrike.”
The five children are not named here. They were aged four to sixteen and had gathered in the cemetery because it is one of the few open spaces in the camp. The Associated Press prints its own observation against itself in this brief: its reporters had visited the site, seen none of the usual signs of an Israeli strike, and said so, and that suspicion runs in the same seven paragraphs as the finding that contradicts it.
“JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said Monday that there was a ‘high possibility’ that one of its soldiers had mistakenly shot dead Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American journalist killed in May while covering a raid in the occupied West Bank… The military said it would not open a criminal investigation… Abu Akleh’s family said the findings were an attempt to avoid accountability… Earlier Israeli statements had suggested she might have been killed by Palestinian gunfire…”
Four months from “might have been killed by Palestinian gunfire” to “high possibility” and no criminal case. Both ends of that sentence are in this archive.
“JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said Monday there is a ‘high possibility’ that Shireen Abu Akleh was ‘accidentally hit’ by Israeli army fire… It said it would not open a criminal investigation… B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said: ‘It was no mistake. It’s policy.’”
Two news agencies on one day, one finding. The Associated Press version is the one that carries the Israeli rights group calling the finding a policy rather than an error.
Palestinian strife highlights lost hopes of armed youths
By Sam McNeil, Associated Press, Nablus, West Bank
“NABLUS, West Bank — Palestinian security forces arrested a militant in Nablus this week, setting off clashes with young gunmen who have formed a new armed group outside the control of any faction… The militant group, named the Den of Lions, said in a letter to The Associated Press: ‘We will not abandon our brother… who is wanted by the occupation forces and is currently kidnapped.’… Ghassan Khatib, a political scientist at Birzeit University, said young Palestinians have lost faith in their leadership… Tahani Mustafa, a Palestinian analyst, said the new groups reflect ‘a vacuum’… Polls show a large majority of Palestinians want President Mahmoud Abbas to resign.”
The first naming of the Lion’s Den in an American dispatch, and the agency quotes the group directly from a letter it was sent. Two Palestinian analysts are named and explain the group’s emergence in their own words, which is not how it is usually explained later.
Correction: {'note': 'The slide labels for this scan and the Gaza toll story beside it are switched. This is Sam McNeil’s Lion’s Den feature, filed 22 September 2022.'}
Palestinians mourn boy who died ‘of fear’ of Israeli troops
By Isabel Debre, Associated Press, Tequa, West Bank
“TEQUA, West Bank — A throng of men clutching the body of a 7-year-old Palestinian boy marched through a town in the occupied West Bank toward the child’s final resting place on Friday, a day after his parents say he died from fear of Israeli soldiers. Rayan Suleiman, with bright eyes and a backpack emblazoned with an animated race car, was walking home from school on Thursday when his family says he and his brothers were chased by Israeli soldiers. After the boys bolted home, the troops banged furiously on the door and threatened to arrest the children, their parents say. Just moments later, Rayan, the youngest of the three brothers, was dead… The Israeli army called the death a tragedy and said its soldiers were not to blame… ‘He was just an innocent boy, just 7 years old, what can he do?’ Yasser Suleiman, Rayan’s father, told The Associated Press outside the hospital morgue on Friday, choking back tears… The State Department demanded an investigation… entrenched Israeli military rule that is now in its 56th year.”
A seven-year-old Palestinian named in an American headline, and his father named and quoted outside the morgue. The Israeli army’s account is in the fourth paragraph.
Six killed in raids by Israeli forces, Palestinians say
WEST BANK CLASHES
By Raneen Sawafta, Reuters, Nablus, West Bank
“NABLUS, West Bank — Israeli forces killed six Palestinians in raids in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, Palestinian health officials said, in one of the deadliest days of a months-long Israeli crackdown… The Israeli military said it had targeted the Lions’ Den… Among the dead was Wadi’ al-Houh, 31…”
“Palestinians inspect a damaged building following an Israeli raid in Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Tuesday.”
A third service on the same morning, under a standing section head reading WEST BANK CLASHES over a story in which one side conducted raids and the other was killed.
“JERUSALEM — Israeli forces killed five Palestinians in a pre-dawn raid on the old city of Nablus on Tuesday, in an operation the military said destroyed a bomb-making laboratory belonging to the Lions’ Den, a new armed group… Among the dead was Wadee al-Huh, described by Israel as a leader of the group… Residents said two of the dead were not members… A general strike was called across the West Bank…”
The raid that followed a three-week closure of Nablus, which does not appear in the headline. Who the two disputed dead were is left unresolved on the page.
By Majdi Mohammed, Associated Press, Nablus, West Bank
“NABLUS, West Bank — Israeli troops raided a hideout of Palestinian gunmen in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, killing five… The Palestinian Health Ministry identified one of the dead as Qusai al-Tamimi, 19… Palestinians declared a general strike…”
The Associated Press headline says fighters where its own copy says gunmen and the Washington Post said armed group. Three services, three nouns, one morning.
Israeli PM calls for unity after loss to Netanyahu
Eleanor Reich, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Israel’s prime minister on Sunday issued a plea for national unity, days after he was defeated in national elections by the former premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, with the backing of a far-right ultranationalist party… He appeared to take aim at Religious Zionism, an extremist party whose leaders have made repeated anti-Arab, anti-LGBTQ comments… Religious Zionism also promotes a hard line against the Palestinians and Israel’s own Palestinian minority.”
The election that produced the government the rest of this collection reports on. Palestinians appear in the last paragraph, twice, as people a party has a hard line against.
53, commercial real estate broker, Playa del Rey · Recipe: Maqluba
Hythum Kiswani
“I’M A FIRST-GENERATION Palestinian, immigrating to Northern California at the age of 9. This was just around the time of the Iran hostage crisis and, safe to say, it was not easy for a brown kid living in the ’burbs of NorCal. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t Persian; I was lumped in with anyone from the Middle East as Iranian, so I got a lot of bullying but with an enhanced cultural/racial component. Fast-forward some years, and there was some form of assimilation but not enough for my liking. Thanksgiving dinner became a frustrating event for me. I was desperate to feel less abnormal — to just fit in and feel like I belonged — so I’d beg my mom and dad to have a typical American Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, etc. My requests fell on deaf ears for a few years, but eventually a compromise was had: Sure, we’ll have turkey, but we’ll still have traditional Arabic meals meant for celebrations. So we’d usually have Maqluba. The dish has become a staple of my Thanksgiving meal because of the time and energy required to make it, the wonderfully intense aromatic flavors, and the link to my Palestinian heritage. It’s not found in other Arabic cultures. As such, it’s really a manifestation of families incorporating whatever ingredients were around in the kitchen to provide food for their family. Now Maqluba is one of my favorite dishes. I usually request my sisters make it for me when I visit, and I, in turn, cook dishes from my travels for them. Maqluba varies by recipe: Some add garbanzo beans, others eggplant, and some put a plate in the pot to isolate the meat from the rice. One constant is that it’s a very tasty dish, full of flavor and with wonderful aesthetics and presentation. My mom and sisters all have their own way of preparing it, and I’ve borrowed the best of all of them — with my own touch.”
The fourth maqluba in this archive in five years, after a travel page in Jaffa in 2018, a cookbook review in Michigan in 2019 and a Ramadan feature in Phoenix in 2021. This one is written in the first person by the man eating it: a nine-year-old who arrived during the Iran hostage crisis, was bullied as Iranian, and begged his parents for turkey. He got both.
Bethlehem’s Christmas crowds return after years of pandemic quiet
By Sam McNeil, Associated Press, Bethlehem, West Bank
“BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Christmas crowds are back in Bethlehem… ‘This year is much better,’ said Elias Arja, who owns a hotel in the town and heads the local hotel association… Saliba Nissan, who runs an olive wood workshop, said sales were still below what they were… Mayor Hanna Hanania said the town expected thousands of visitors… Bassem Giacaman, a shop owner, said pilgrims were buying again… Israel controls access to the town, which is ringed by its separation barrier…”
Four Palestinians named in one story, with jobs and opinions, because it is a business story about a good year. The separation barrier is one clause near the end.
Less than 1% of Israel army probes yield prosecution
By Isabel DeBre, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — The Israeli military says it investigates every killing of a Palestinian that it does not consider combat. But over the past five years, less than 1% of those investigations have ended in a prosecution… Of 248 investigations opened into the deaths of Palestinians since 2017, just two produced charges, according to data compiled by the Israeli rights group Yesh Din… The military says its system meets international standards… ‘The system is designed to whitewash,’ said Ziv Stahl of Yesh Din… The figures have taken on new significance after the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh…”
A statistic and its denominator, printed in an American paper on Christmas Day: 248 investigations, two prosecutions. The Israeli military’s own defense of the system runs in the same column.
“JERUSALEM — Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn into office Thursday, taking the helm of the most right-wing and religiously conservative government in Israel’s history… Netanyahu’s government platform says that ‘the Jewish people have exclusive and indisputable rights to all parts of the Land of Israel’ and promises to advance settlement construction in the occupied West Bank. That includes legalizing dozens of wildcat outposts and a commitment to annex the entire territory, a step that would draw heavy international opposition by destroying any remaining hopes for Palestinian statehood and add fuel to calls that Israel is an apartheid state if millions of Palestinians are not granted citizenship… Most of the international community considers Israel’s West Bank settlements illegal and an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.”
The coalition’s own language, in a news-agency dispatch, on a North Carolina page: exclusive and indisputable rights to all parts of the Land of Israel. The word apartheid arrives in the same sentence as a conditional about citizenship.
“JERUSALEM — After five elections that have paralyzed Israeli politics for nearly four years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has finally returned to power… The Palestinians. Many Palestinians have greeted the election of the new government with a shrug. With peace talks already on hold for over a decade, some don’t see how any government can make things worse. But that sense of resignation could turn to anger if the new government steps up settlement activities or annexes the West Bank, the heartland of their hoped-for state…”
A wire analysis with subheadings, one of them The Palestinians. What is reported there is a shrug, and the reason given for it is that peace talks had been over for a decade already.
Israeli minister defies leadership with visit to Jerusalem flash point
Far-right national security chief Itamar Ben Gvir visited a holy site for Jews and Muslims over officials’ objections.
By Shira Rubin, The Washington Post, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, visited a sensitive holy site in Jerusalem on Tuesday, despite reported objections by the prime minister and senior security officials… Tensions increased steadily throughout 2022, which was the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the end of the second intifada in 2005. A spate of Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the spring was met with near-nightly Israeli military raids targeting assailants as well as civilians, according to human rights groups… Ben Gvir’s visit could ‘lead to more tension and violence and an explosive situation,’ Palestinian Authority spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said…”
A third paper, a second news agency, the same visit. This version is the only one of the three whose own voice says the raids targeted civilians as well as assailants.
A far-right Israeli Cabinet minister’s foray is denounced by the U.S. and others.
By Ilan Ben Zion, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — An ultranationalist Israeli Cabinet minister on Tuesday visited a contentious Jerusalem holy site for the first time since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new far-right government took office last week… On Monday, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem said 2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians since 2004, a period of intense violence during a Palestinian uprising. It said nearly 150 Palestinians were killed by Israel in the West Bank and East Jerusalem… Early Tuesday, Palestinian officials said a 14-year-old boy was killed by Israeli fire near the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, the third fatality in the West Bank this year…”
The 2022 figure, from an Israeli organization, and a fourteen-year-old killed before dawn the same day, both inside a story about a minister’s visit. The boy is not named.
“JERUSALEM — An ultranationalist Israeli Cabinet minister on Tuesday visited a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site for the first time since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new far-right government took office last week… Ben-Gvir, a West Bank settler leader who draws inspiration from a racist rabbi, entered the site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary… Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said Ben-Gvir’s visit was ‘a continuation of the Zionist’s occupation aggression on our sacred places and war on our Arab identity.’ ‘Our Palestinian people will continue defending their holy places and Al Aqsa Mosque,’ he said…”
The dispatch calls him a settler leader who draws inspiration from a racist rabbi, in its own voice, in the fourth paragraph.
7 killed in shooting outside synagogue in East Jerusalem
By Patrick Kingsley and Aaron Boxerman, New York Times, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — A Palestinian gunman killed seven people outside a synagogue in East Jerusalem on Friday night… The attack took place in Neve Yaakov, an Israeli settlement in the northern tip of East Jerusalem… It came a day after Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians during a raid on the Jenin refugee camp, the deadliest single Israeli operation in the West Bank in years… More than 170 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in 2022, the highest toll since 2004…”
The New York Times calls Neve Yaakov an Israeli settlement in its second paragraph. The chain in this story runs one day back, to Jenin, and then to a yearly figure.
“JERUSALEM — A Palestinian gunman opened fire outside an east Jerusalem synagogue Friday night, killing seven people and wounding four before police shot him… It was the deadliest attack on Israelis in years… The attack, which took place as worshippers were celebrating the Jewish Sabbath, came a day after an Israeli military raid killed nine people in the West Bank… In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the attack was ‘a revenge and natural response’ to the killing of nine Palestinians in Jenin on Thursday… Palestinians had marched in anger earlier Friday as they buried the last of the 10 Palestinians killed a day earlier…”
Both funerals in one story. The seven at the synagogue and the ten in Jenin, in that order, with Hamas’s claim of a reason quoted and not adopted.
Palestinians brace for reprisals after Jerusalem attack
By Isabel DeBre, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Palestinians braced Saturday for Israeli reprisals after a gunman killed seven people outside a synagogue… ‘Every day there’s more and more fear, more tension,’ said Eyad Shaher, 45, a construction worker from Bethlehem who crosses into Israel for work. ‘Somehow I’m living with this idea that at any moment I could be shot dead.’… Ibrahim Salameh, 21, said he had stopped going out at night… Israel’s security cabinet was expected to approve punitive measures, including sealing the attacker’s family home…”
Two ordinary Palestinians named and quoted at length, in a story about what is going to happen to them next. A construction worker with a permit and a twenty-one-year-old who has stopped going out.
“JERUSALEM — Secretary of State Antony Blinken appealed for calm… He arrived days after a Palestinian gunman killed seven people outside a synagogue in an east Jerusalem Jewish settlement and a day after Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians in a raid in Jenin… National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir ordered the demolition of illegally built Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem in response to the attack, which Palestinians denounced as collective punishment…”
The Associated Press also calls Neve Yaakov a settlement. The response to the attack, in the same paragraph, is the demolition of other people’s houses.
Nablus operation is deadliest in West Bank since 2005
Aref Tufaha and Josef Federman, Associated Press, Nablus, West Bank
“NABLUS, West Bank — Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians and wounded scores of others in a rare daytime raid in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday… The dead ranged in age from 16 to 72… The Israeli military said the raid targeted three militants… Video circulating on social media appeared to show two men, apparently unarmed, being shot as they ran. Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an army spokesman, said the footage was ‘problematic’ and that it was being examined…”
Not one of the ten is named on this page. It runs directly above the obituary column, where nine people from Westchester County are given their names, their ages, their towns and their funeral arrangements.
Nablus operation is deadliest in West Bank since 2005
Aref Tufaha and Josef Federman, Associated Press, Nablus, West Bank
“NABLUS, West Bank — Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians and wounded scores of others in a rare daytime raid in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday… The dead ranged in age from 16 to 72…”
The same headline and the same second line in a second state. Some dispatches cross the country without a word being touched.
“JERUSALEM — Israel’s far-right government granted approval for more than 7,000 new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, settlement backers and opponents said Thursday. The move defies growing international opposition to construction in the occupied territory. The announcement came just days after the U.N. Security Council passed a statement criticizing Israeli settlement construction on occupied lands claimed by the Palestinians…”
Three paragraphs for seven thousand homes. The figure is attributed to the people who support them and the people who oppose them, because the government did not give one.
“HUWARA, West Bank — Dozens of Israeli settlers rampaged through Palestinian towns in the occupied West Bank on Sunday night, torching cars and homes and killing a man, hours after a Palestinian gunman killed two Israelis. The scenes from the town of Huwara and other communities bore the trademark of a violent, once-prominent settler movement known as ‘price taggers,’ whose mission was to extract a ‘price’ for any Palestinian attacks, or Israeli moves to limit settlement expansion… Huwara residents said this was the worst attack they had experienced in years and blamed the Israeli military for not intervening.”
“Palestinians walk past burned cars in the town of Hawara, near the West Bank city of Nablus, on Monday. Scores of Israeli settlers went on a violent rampage in the northern West Bank, setting cars and homes on fire after two settlers were killed by a Palestinian gunman. Palestinian officials say one man was killed and four others were badly wounded.”
The same dispatch cut to four paragraphs. Hundreds of settlers becomes dozens, towns becomes town, and every Palestinian who was named in the full version is gone.
Israeli settlers attack Palestinian town after killings
By Patrick Kingsley and Isabel Kershner, New York Times
“Hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank on Sunday night, setting fire to dozens of homes and cars… ‘This is the tax for living in Palestine,’ said Ammar Damedi, 37, a gold trader whose shop was destroyed… Tzvika Foghel, a lawmaker from the far-right Jewish Power party, said: ‘I am very pleased with the result. Wherever terrorists come to murder me, I want to see that place in flames. Metaphorically.’”
A second news agency, the same night. A Palestinian shopkeeper and an Israeli lawmaker are quoted in consecutive paragraphs, and the lawmaker adds the word metaphorically himself.
Israeli settlers, seeking revenge, rampage in Palestinian towns
By Miriam Berger and Shira Rubin, The Washington Post, Huwara, West Bank
“HUWARA, West Bank — Hundreds of Israeli settlers rampaged through Palestinian towns in the occupied West Bank on Sunday night, torching cars and homes and killing a man, hours after a Palestinian gunman killed two Israelis… ‘I’m a migrant now,’ said Ziad Dmeidi, 48, whose house was set on fire with his six children inside… Ammar Demandi, a gold trader, watched his shop burn… Sameh al-Aqtash, 37, a father of five, was shot dead in the nearby village of Za’tara. ‘One bullet ended his life and left behind five orphans,’ said his nephew, Fadi al-Aqtash… Ghassan Douglas, a Palestinian official who monitors settlement activity, said the army stood by… The two Israelis killed were brothers, Hillel Menachem Yaniv, 22, and Yagel Yaakov Yaniv, 20…”
Everyone in this story has a name: the brothers who were shot, the man shot in Za’tara, the gold trader, the father whose house burned with his children in it. The reporting credit at the bottom names two Palestinian journalists, Fatima Abdul Karim and Sufian Taha.
Israel says slain motorist in West Bank was U.S. citizen
Authorities suspect a Palestinian shot the Connecticut man, a dual national.
Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Israeli authorities said Tuesday that a motorist shot to death by a suspected Palestinian gunman in the occupied West Bank held both American and Israeli citizenship… Ganeles grew up in West Hartford, the son of doctors Andrew and Carolyn Ganeles. He served in the Israel Defense Forces from 2016 to 2018, then returned to the U.S. to attend Columbia University, graduating last year with a bachelor’s degree in sustainable development and neuroscience, according to his LinkedIn profile… ‘I can’t comprehend that you were killed in an act of terror. You were the kindest, sweetest, most caring friend,’ Stanley Block, a fellow Connecticut native who lives in Israel, wrote in a Facebook posting… So far this year, 62 Palestinians, about half of them affiliated with armed groups, have been killed by Israeli troops and civilians. In the same period, 14 Israelis and one American civilian have been killed in Palestinian attacks.”
Both parents, the university, the degree, the years of service and a friend’s Facebook post. Sixty-two Palestinians appear in the last paragraph as a number. This page and the Nablus page of eight days earlier, where ten dead were given only an age range, were printed by American newspapers in the same fortnight.
Israel: Motorist killed in West Bank held U.S. citizenship
Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Israeli authorities said Tuesday that a motorist shot to death by a suspected Palestinian gunman in the occupied West Bank held both American and Israeli citizenship… The government identified the slain man as Elan Ganeles, 27, of West Hartford, Conn.… The killing occurred a day after two Israelis were killed by a Palestinian gunman in the northern West Bank, triggering a rampage in which Israeli settlers torched dozens of cars and homes in the Palestinian town of Hawara and one Palestinian was killed… Palestinian U.N. ambassador Riyad Mansour urged the council to take steps to protect Palestinian civilians, ‘especially after the criminal and terrorist act by settlers in Hawara.’”
An American killed in the West Bank, and the Palestinian ambassador using the word terrorist about settlers in the same story.
Police crack down on anti-Netanyahu protesters in 2 cities
By Isabel DeBre and Ilan Ben Zion, Associated Press, Tel Aviv, Israel
“TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli police Wednesday fired stun grenades and water cannons at demonstrators who blocked a Tel Aviv highway… ‘Every person here is trying to keep Israel a democracy and if the current government will get its way, then we are afraid we will no longer be a democracy or a free country,’ said Sivan Shapira, a protester in Tel Aviv… In Tel Aviv and later in Jerusalem, the protesters shouted ‘Where were you in Hawara?’ at policemen, referring to Sunday’s settler rampage that went largely unchecked and unpunished.”
Same dispatch. One headline has two subjects clashing; the other says the demonstrations turned violent. The chant about Huwara is in both.
Stun grenades, tear gas, water cannons greet ‘national disruption day’
Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police on Wednesday fired stun grenades and water cannons at demonstrators who blocked a Tel Aviv highway, while protesters scuffled with police near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence in Jerusalem as weeks of anti-government protests turned violent for the first time… Netanyahu made no mention of a call Wednesday by his Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a firebrand West Bank settler leader, for Hawara to be ‘erased’ by the Israeli state. U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price called on Netanyahu to ‘publicly and clearly reject’ Smotrich’s comments, describing them as ‘repugnant,’ ‘disgusting’ and ‘irresponsible.’”
A minister of finance calls for a Palestinian town to be erased and the American State Department calls the remark repugnant, and both are paragraphs eleven and twelve of a story about Israeli traffic protests.
Israeli army blocks activists’ rally for West Bank town
Jews and Arab citizens protest attack by radical settlers
By Majdi Mohammed and Isabel Debre, Associated Press, Hawara, West Bank
“HAWARA, West Bank — Israeli troops fired stun grenades and tear gas on Friday to block busloads of Israeli left-wing activists from staging a solidarity rally in a Palestinian town that was set ablaze by radical Jewish settlers earlier this week… According to Sally Abed from the group Standing Together, at least two protesters were briefly arrested… In another case, a group of soldiers violently pushed former Israeli parliament speaker Avraham Burg, until he stumbled to the ground… ‘It is ridiculous that the army allows settlers to enter Hawara as we speak, but we — Israeli Jews and Arabs who wish to show our solidarity — are told that there is no entry,’… The protesters chanted, ‘No to occupation’ and ‘End Jewish terror.’”
Israeli Jews and Palestinian citizens of Israel, on buses, stopped by their own army on the way to a Palestinian town. The chant printed here is End Jewish terror.
This time, the state of Israel is under attack from within
By Uri Dromi, Miami Herald
“The recent turbulence in Israel evokes a strong feeling of déjà vu. As one of the Yom Kippur War generation, I remember vividly those dark days in October 1973… Today, 50 years later, we are attacked again, and we feel the same sense of urgency, of a serious danger to the state of Israel. Except that this time, the attack comes not from the outside, but from within… The Religious Zionist Party calls for annexing the West Bank, thus creating one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, where millions of Palestinians might become second-rate citizens. In reaction to the pogrom Israeli settlers had carried out in the Palestinian village of Hawara, in revenge for the murder of two Israeli settlers, party leader Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, said: ‘Hawara should have been wiped out.’…”
The word pogrom, in an American newspaper, from a former spokesman for two Israeli governments, describing what settlers did at Huwara.
“Since its founding, Israel has faced a host of external threats to its very existence. Today, however, the nation is being rent from within… Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to protest what have been put forth as alleged judicial reforms by the ruling right-wing coalition… Smotrich, now with a bigger platform from which to rail, last week said of a Palestinian village in the West Bank, the scene of a previous attack by Israeli settlers, ‘The village of Huwara needs to be wiped out. I think the State of Israel should do it.’… This week more than 100 American Jewish leaders signed a statement opposing Smotrich’s planned visit to the United States… ‘We agree with Israeli opposition leader and former prime minister Yair Lapid that Smotrich’s comments constitute incitement to a war crime,’ the group said in a statement.”
An American newspaper editorial, quoting a hundred American Jewish leaders quoting an Israeli opposition leader on incitement to a war crime.
“The recent unrestrained extreme violence of Jewish settlers just towards Palestinians, though unprecedented, is the result of decades of a pressure cooker fed by Israeli enabling. It’s abhorrent that not one of the perpetrators has yet been called to account for the crimes committed. There is plenty of blame to go around in Israel.… A world where way too many see Zionism as a dirty word, Jews as alien and enemy… A world where Zionism is simply misunderstood because demonizing Zionism remains a handy undercurrent for demonizing Jews. That’s not the Zionism of those protesting in Israel by the hundreds of thousands right now. These are the brave Israelis who are proud Zionists protesting against all Netanyahu represents. They are against settlement expansion. They believe in improving civil rights for all her citizens. They still believe in a two-state solution.… This also meant the unfortunate displacement of many Palestinian Arabs from what would soon be the new Jewish State of Israel… Zionism is not racism. It is not colonialism. Zionists are not religious zealots… Zionism is not Netanyahu, he is the antithesis.”
Israelis protest against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government to overhaul the judicial system, in Tel Aviv, Israel, on March 16.
The last clipping in this section, and the sentence it answers is forty-eight years old. A cantor in the northern hills of New Hampshire writes against settler violence, against Netanyahu, and against the resolution, in that order, while a photograph of the judicial-overhaul protests runs above her.
Israel, Palestinians aim to curb violence as holiday nears
By Samy Magdy and Josef Federman, Associated Press, Cairo
“CAIRO — Israel and the Palestinians pledged Sunday at a meeting in Egypt to take steps to lower tensions ahead of a sensitive holiday season — including a partial freeze on Israeli settlement activity and an agreement to work together to ‘curb and counter violence.’… The Israeli pledges were largely symbolic. Israel recently approved the construction of thousands of new settlement homes, and there were no immediate plans to approve additional construction… Netanyahu made no mention of Sunday’s summit in his weekly Cabinet meeting. Later, he called the Israeli man who was shot a ‘wounded hero.’”
“A Palestinian boy watches Israeli soldiers Sunday as they patrol the town of Huwara, in the occupied West Bank, following a shooting attack on an Israeli vehicle in the area.”
Two bylines, two headlines, one communiqué. Only this version tells the reader, flatly, that the pledges were largely symbolic.
West Bank attack casts shadow over Israel-Palestinian talks
By Samy Magdy and Tia Goldenberg, Associated Press
“A Palestinian gunman opened fire at an Israeli vehicle in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, wounding two people, Israeli officials said. The attack cast a shadow over Egyptian-mediated efforts to lower tensions ahead of a sensitive holiday period beginning this week… More than 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire and more than 40 Israelis or foreigners killed in Palestinian attacks in Israel’s year-long spasm of violence… Israel pledged to stop discussion of new settlement construction for four months, and to stop plans to legalize unauthorized settlement outposts for six months… Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for Hawara to be ‘erased’ after last month’s settler rampage, apologizing after an international outcry.”
The pledges made at Sharm el-Sheikh, printed with the running two-sided count above them.
Dozens of worshipers are removed in a second night of unrest at Jerusalem holy site.
By Isabel Debre and Fares Akram, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Violence resumed for a second straight night in Jerusalem on Wednesday when Palestinian worshipers barricaded themselves inside Al Aqsa Mosque… Amin Risheq, a 19-year-old from East Jerusalem, said that after being beaten and forced to lie on the floor of the mosque with dozens of others, his hands zip-tied behind his back, he was taken to the police station, where he said he did not have access to a toilet, medical attention or water for more than six hours. ‘They treated us like animals,’ he said… Moayad abu Mayaleh, 23, said he blocked a door of the mosque with hundreds of others to prevent the police from entering before they broke in. ‘We can’t let them get away with this,’ he said…”
The same paragraphs as the Miami Herald page, under a headline with an actor and an object. This version also runs far enough to reach the two young men who were arrested, and names them.
Violence resumes at Jerusalem holy site for 2nd night
By Isabel Debre and Fares Akram, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Violence resumed for a second straight night in Jerusalem on Wednesday when Palestinian worshippers barricaded themselves inside Al-Aqsa Mosque at the Old City’s sensitive compound and Israeli police used force to remove dozens of the worshippers… Israeli police said that at least 50 people were injured. Israeli police said they were not immediately able to confirm the reports and videos showing officers beating Palestinians but said 350 were arrested… Israeli lawyer Khaled Zabarqa, who represents several of them, put the total number of those arrested at 450… Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, expressed ‘outrage and condemnation’ at the attack…”
A headline in which violence resumes by itself. The lede underneath has police using force to remove worshippers.
Violence at Jerusalem holy site raises fears of escalation
By Isabel Debre and Fares Akram, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City early Wednesday, firing stun grenades at Palestinians who hurled stones and firecrackers in a burst of violence during a sensitive holiday season… Medics from the Palestinian Red Crescent said that at least 50 people were injured… U.N. Mideast envoy Tor Wennesland said he was ‘appalled by the images of violence’ at Al-Aqsa…”
“Israeli police arrest a Palestinian woman at Al-Aqsa Mosque compound following a raid Wednesday at the site in the Old City of Jerusalem during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which overlaps with the Jewish Passover.”
A third paper, a third headline, and this lede is the only one of the three that begins Israeli police stormed.
Faith community must condemn raids at Al-Aqsa Mosque
By Samina Sohail, guest columnist
“At the convergence of Lent/Easter, Passover and Ramadan, this season marks the holiest time of the year for the three Abrahamic religions… As a Muslim American living in a predominantly Christian country, I’ve been privileged to sit with my Christian friends and share the experience of our respective fasts… And yet, what is now becoming a sad Ramadan tradition, we are forced to witness the devastation of what happens to our fellow worshipers in Masjid Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. It profoundly hurts us to see our fellow worshipers being terrorized by raids, intimidation and destruction. The images of worshipers shackled and forced to lay face down on the ground is an outrage… Over and over, when members of my faith tradition commit acts of terror, we are called upon to condemn it. We will continue to do so as any act of terror is contrary to our faith. Today, I am calling upon all faith voices to put politics aside, condemn this violation and recommit to preserve the sanctity of houses of worship.”
An American Muslim doctor, writing under her own name in an Ohio daily, two days after the raid. She takes the demand usually made of her — condemn this — and turns it around.
“JERUSALEM — A high-profile Palestinian prisoner died in Israeli custody on Tuesday after a hunger strike of nearly three months… ‘We lay the responsibility for his death at the feet of the Israeli authorities,’ said Dana Moss, from the rights group. ‘Hunger strikes are one of the few nonviolent tools left to Palestinians as they battle against Israel’s unfair legal system, set within a context of long-term occupation and a regime of apartheid.’”
“Randa Musa, wife of Khader Adnan, a Palestinian militant who died in Israeli prison after a nearly three-month hunger strike, speaks to reporters Tuesday in the West Bank village of Arrabe. Adnan began his strike shortly after being arrested Feb. 5.”
The same headline and second line in a second paper, with the photograph of his widow speaking, and the word apartheid inside a quotation from an Israeli rights group.
“JERUSALEM — A high-profile Palestinian prisoner died in Israeli custody on Tuesday after a hunger strike of nearly three months, Israel’s prison service announced… Khader Adnan, a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group, helped introduce the practice of protracted hunger strikes by individual prisoners as a form of protest against Israel’s mass detention of Palestinians without charge. On Tuesday, the 45-year-old became the first long-term hunger striker to die in Israeli custody… Around 200 people gathered outside Adnan’s home in the occupied West Bank town of Arraba, holding signs bearing his image and calling for revenge. Adnan’s widow, Randa Musa, told those gathered outside that ‘we do not want a single drop of bloodshed’ in response to his death. ‘We do not want rockets to be fired, or a following strike on Gaza,’ she told the crowd… As Israeli-Palestinian violence has spiked, the number of administrative detainees has risen to more than 1,000 over the past year, the highest number in two decades.”
His widow, named, standing outside her own house asking publicly for no rockets. The administrative detention figure — more than a thousand, the highest in twenty years — is a single sentence far down the column.
Israeli strikes kill 3 Islamic Jihad commanders, several civilians in Gaza
By Steve Hendrix, Shira Rubin and Niha Masih, The Washington Post
“Israeli airstrikes killed three senior commanders of the Islamic Jihad militant group in the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, along with several civilians including children, Palestinian officials said… The commanders were identified as Khalil Bahtini, Jehad Ghanam and Tareq Izzeldeen. All three were killed in strikes on their homes, along with members of their families… Israel said the operation, named Shield and Arrow, was a response to rocket fire that followed the death in custody of the hunger striker Khader Adnan… Hamas did not immediately join the fighting…”
The commanders were killed at home. The civilians in the headline are the families in the houses, and the story says so in its fourth paragraph.
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes killed three senior commanders of the Islamic Jihad militant group and 10 civilians in the Gaza Strip early Tuesday… Among the dead was Jamal Khaswan, a dentist, along with his wife and son… Dawood Shahab, an Islamic Jihad spokesman, said the group would respond… Israel said it had targeted the commanders over rocket fire…”
Two news agencies on one morning. The Washington Post says several civilians; the Associated Press counts them in the line under the headline and names one of them, a dentist, killed with his wife and son.
Fiercest fighting in years erupts in West Bank camp of Jenin, at least 5 Palestinians killed
By Ilan Ben Zion and Majdi Mohammed, Associated Press
“JENIN, West Bank — Israeli troops and Palestinian militants fought for hours in the occupied West Bank on Monday in some of the fiercest fighting in years, with Israel deploying helicopter gunships for the first time in two decades… At least five Palestinians were killed and 91 wounded, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Eight Israeli soldiers were wounded… The Health Ministry identified the dead as Khaled Asasa, 21, Qassam Abu Sariya, 29, Qais Jabarin, 21, Ahmed Daraghmeh, 19, and 15-year-old Ahmed Saqr… Wissam Bakar, director of Jenin Government Hospital, said the wounded included… Hazem Nasser, a Palestinian cameraman, was wounded…”
Five names and five ages in one dispatch, one of them fifteen. The same paragraphs ran in five American papers that week under five different headlines; this one is the only one that puts the dead in the headline and says they were Palestinian.
Israeli forces, Palestinian militia battle for hours in Jenin refugee camp; at least 5 killed
By Ilan Ben Zion and Majdi Mohammed, Associated Press
“JENIN, West Bank — Israeli troops and Palestinian militants fought for hours in the occupied West Bank on Monday… At least five Palestinians were killed and 91 wounded…”
Second headline off the same file. The dead are still in it, but they are no longer Palestinian: at least 5 killed.
Fiercest fighting in years erupts in West Bank’s Jenin
By Ilan Ben Zion and Majdi Mohammed, Associated Press
“JENIN, West Bank — Israeli troops and Palestinian militants fought for hours in the occupied West Bank on Monday in some of the fiercest fighting in years… The Health Ministry identified the dead as Khaled Asasa, 21, Qassam Abu Sariya, 29, Qais Jabarin, 21, Ahmed Daraghmeh, 19, and 15-year-old Ahmed Saqr… Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior Palestinian official, said the raid was ‘a dangerous escalation’…”
Third headline. Nobody is killed in it at all. The five names are still in the sixth paragraph, where the headline cannot reach them.
“LOD, Israel — A relentless wave of violent crime within Israel’s Palestinian minority is turning cities and towns into bloody battlefields… Activists say Israeli authorities have historically ignored deadly crime among Arabs, doing little to deter violence or hold criminals to account…”
“Mourners attend the funeral of Rami and Naeem Marjiyeh, Palestinian citizens of Israel killed when a gunman opened fire at a car wash.”
The same dispatch. One headline names the government the crime is happening under; this one does not, and puts the explanation in the mouths of the people it is about. Two of the dead are named in the caption.
Ilan Ben Zion and Majdi Mohammed, Associated Press
“JENIN, West Bank — Israeli troops and Palestinian militants fought for hours in the occupied West Bank on Monday… Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Palestinians seek those territories for a future independent state. Israel has been staging near-nightly raids in the West Bank in response to a spasm of Palestinian violence early last year…”
Fifth headline off one file, and the shortest way of saying it: five Palestinians killed in a raid. This is also the only one of the five that keeps the standing paragraph in which the agency itself says why the raids are happening.
Crime within Israel’s Palestinian minority reaches new heights under Netanyahu’s government
By Tia Goldenberg, Associated Press, Lod, Israel
“LOD, Israel — A relentless wave of violent crime within Israel’s Palestinian minority is turning cities and towns into bloody battlefields, exasperating a community feeling increasingly forsaken by Israeli authorities… More than 100 people have been killed in violent crime in Arab communities this year, nearly three times higher than at the same time last year, according to the Abraham Initiatives… ‘Will a person who is busy making racist comments against Arabs protect them,’ said Thabet Abu Rass, co-director of the Abraham Initiatives. ‘We are citizens of this country. We deserve to feel secure like anyone else in this country. And that is his responsibility.’… ‘We leave the house, we’re scared. The kids are at school, I am afraid for them. I am always thinking “will my son return home or not?”’ said Mirvat Saleh, 48, a plant and flower vendor at a market in Lod… Israeli Arab citizens are descendants of Palestinians who remained within the borders of what became Israel in 1948.”
Palestinian citizens of Israel, named and quoted, as the subject rather than the backdrop. The last paragraph explains who they are by saying which people they are descended from and which year did it.
At least 4 are killed in the attack, claimed by Hamas.
Isabel Debre, Associated Press
“A Palestinian attacker opened fire at a gas station near an Israeli settlement in the West Bank on Tuesday, killing at least four people… The Hamas militant organization claimed both assailants as members… The surge in violence has killed 128 Palestinians and 24 people on the Israeli side so far this year, according to a tally by the Associated Press… Palestinian health officials identified the man as 24-year-old Khaled Sabah…”
The attacker is named; the four people killed at the gas station are not, because their identities had not been released. The running tally is 128 and 24.
Palestinian kills at least 4 people at West Bank gas station
By Isabel Debre, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — A Palestinian attacker opened fire at a gas station near an Israeli settlement in the West Bank on Tuesday, killing at least four people and wounding several others, Israeli medics said, as violence continued to roil the occupied territory… The intense surge in violence has killed 126 Palestinians and 24 people on the Israeli side so far this year…”
An earlier cycle of the same dispatch: 126 Palestinians here, 128 two hours later in Grand Rapids. Print editions freeze whichever number the paper had.
Palestinian attacker opens fire at West Bank gas station, kills 4
By Isabel Debre, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — A Palestinian attacker opened fire at a gas station near an Israeli settlement in the West Bank on Tuesday… ‘Now is the time for a military operation in Judea and Samaria,’ said Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, using the biblical term for the West Bank. From the scene of the attack, he demanded that the government launch ‘targeted assassinations from the air,’ ‘take down buildings,’ deport Palestinian assailants and impose the death penalty on terrorists… On Tuesday, the death toll from the raid rose to six when 48-year-old Amjad Abu Jaas succumbed to wounds… In the Palestinian town of Husan, west of Bethlehem, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man who they alleged threw a firebomb… The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the man killed as 21-year-old Zakaria al-Zaoul.”
Three Palestinians named in a story about four Israelis killed: Amjad Abu Jaas, 48, Zakaria al-Zaoul, 21, and the attacker. The minister’s four demands are printed in his own words.
Attack by Palestinian gunmen ignites Israeli vigilante anger
Violent settlers set multiple fires
By Patrick Kingsley, New York Times, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Israeli extremists caused widespread damage in a wave of attacks on Palestinian towns that lasted from Tuesday night until Wednesday night in revenge for the killing of four Israelis by Palestinian gunmen outside a nearby settlement in the territory… Scores of Israeli arsonists entered the Palestinian communities closest to the site of the shooting… Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the settler attacks unacceptable, saying: ‘The State of Israel is a state of law’… But Netanyahu also attempted to assuage hard-line allies… by announcing that he would immediately advance plans to build 1,000 more homes in Eli… ‘Our answer to terrorism is to strike at it forcefully and build up our country,’ Netanyahu said… Palestinians accused the Israeli security forces of standing by as the settlers attacked and even engaging in some of the violence itself.”
Israeli extremists, Israeli arsonists, violent settlers: the New York Times uses all three in its own voice. The government’s stated answer, in the same column, is a thousand more houses.
In West Bank, Palestinian towns stormed by settlers
Israeli airstrike on car adds to unrest amid crackdown
By Isabel Debre, Associated Press, Turmus Ayya, West Bank
“TURMUS AYYA, West Bank — Hundreds of Israeli settlers stormed into a Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, setting fire to dozens of cars and homes… ‘It was terrifying, we just saw mobs of people in the streets, masked, armed,’ said Mohammed Suleiman, 56, a Palestinian-American who lives in Chicago and was visiting his hometown. Suleiman blamed the Israeli military, saying the soldiers turned their guns on the Palestinian residents instead of the vandals… Abdulkarim Abdulkarim, 44, a resident of Ohio, said his family’s four cars were burned and house damaged. ‘They call us terrorists, but here you have terrorism supported by the government,’ he said… Tayem Abu Awwad, 15, a U.S. citizen from Northern California, was shot in an attack last week… Mayor Lafi Adeeb said some 30 houses and 60 cars were partly or totally burned…”
Turmus Ayya is a town where many residents hold American passports, so the dispatch is full of Chicago, Ohio and Northern California. It is also the clearest instance in this collection of a Palestinian being quoted turning the word terrorism around.
Killing of Palestinian teen casts light on civilian casualties in West Bank
By Isabel Debre, Associated Press, Jenin, West Bank
“JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — Sadeel Naghniyeh, 15, was at home when the Israeli raid began… Her father, Ghassan Naghniyeh, 46, said she had gone up to the roof with her cousins to watch… She was shot in the head… The Israeli military said it was examining the incident… ‘She was not a fighter, she was a child,’ said her uncle, Nidal Naghniyeh… Shawan Jabarin, director of the Palestinian rights group Al Haq, said… Mohammed Shehata of the Freedom Theater in the camp said children in Jenin have known nothing else… ‘Sadeel had nothing else around her but death and destruction,’ he said. ‘So what does she think about? What does she dream of? Death.’”
A whole American wire feature about one fifteen-year-old Palestinian girl, with her name in the headline, her father named, her uncle named, and two Palestinians from the camp explaining what it is like there. It is one of very few in this archive.
“JENIN, West Bank — Israel launched a large-scale military operation in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin early Monday, with drone strikes and hundreds of troops pushing into a refugee camp… At least eight Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded… National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote on social media: ‘Praying for their success.’… Jamal Huweil, a political activist in the camp, said the residents would not leave… U.N. humanitarian coordinator Lynn Hastings said she was ‘alarmed by the scale’… Israel has occupied the West Bank for 56 years…”
The verb in this headline is invade. No other American paper in this archive uses it for that week’s operation; the others say targets, raid, or offensive.
Israel begins pullout from Jenin after two-day operation
By Shira Rubin and Hazem Balousha, The Washington Post
“Israeli forces began withdrawing from the Jenin refugee camp early Wednesday after a two-day operation that killed 12 Palestinians… Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said all of the 10 Palestinians killed by Wednesday morning were combatants, a claim Palestinians disputed… A Palestinian man rammed a car into a Tel Aviv bus stop and stabbed passersby on Tuesday… The Israeli authorities identified him as Abdel Wahhab Issa Hussein Khalayleh… Hamas, which earlier misidentified his brother, Hussein, as the attacker, claimed him as a member… Eitan Dangot, a former Israeli military official… Khaled al-Batsh, a senior Islamic Jihad official in Gaza… Far-right members of the government have called for a long-term occupation of the city.”
Everyone quoted here is an official. Not one resident of the camp reaches the page, and two other papers ran this same dispatch with three of them in it.
By Shira Rubin and Hazem Balousha, The Washington Post
“Israeli forces began withdrawing from the Jenin refugee camp… Mahmoud Balas, 47, a resident of the camp, said his family had fled on foot… Umm Haitham al-Batawi, 66, spoke from the hospital where her daughter-in-law was being treated after being attacked by Israeli army dogs. ‘I’m tired of having to leave my house again and again,’ she said… Nidal Al-Obeidi, Jenin’s mayor, said the infrastructure damage would take months to repair… Miri Eisin, a former Israeli intelligence officer, said the operation was what Israelis call ‘mowing the grass’ — to lower the risks…”
The same Washington Post dispatch as the Miami Herald page, run long. Three residents of the camp are named and quoted here, including a sixty-six-year-old woman speaking from a hospital. None of them survives the Miami cut.
Israel withdraws troops from Jenin but warns raid is not a one-off
By Majdi Mohammed and Imad Isseid, Associated Press, Jenin Refugee Camp, West Bank
“JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — Israel withdrew its troops from the Jenin refugee camp early Wednesday after a two-day military operation… Twelve Palestinians were killed, including four children, and one Israeli soldier… Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the operation was ‘not a one-off’… Thousands of residents who had fled returned to find roads torn up and water and electricity cut… U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was concerned by the use of ‘excessive force’…”
Four of the twelve dead were children, and the dispatch says so in the second paragraph without naming them.
‘Everything is destroyed’: Jenin residents return to wreckage
By Shira Rubin and Hazem Balousha, The Washington Post, Jenin, West Bank
“JENIN, West Bank — Ishmael Hussam, 24, returned to find his street torn up… Fathya al-Sadi, 69, a widow, had sheltered with her grandchildren while the bulldozers worked. ‘The children were screaming; I had to hug them all the time,’ she said… Fadi Shibly said his brother Hussein had been killed… Nidal Al-Obeidi, the mayor, put the damage in the millions… Gabriel Naumann of Doctors Without Borders said ambulances had been blocked… Adi Carmi, a former Israeli security official, said the operation would not change the underlying situation…”
A widow of sixty-nine describing two days in her own house, at length, under her own name.
“GAZA CITY — Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets across the Gaza Strip on Sunday in a rare show of public anger against the territory’s Hamas rulers, protesting chronic power cuts and dire living conditions… Hamas security forces dispersed some of the protests… Gaza receives only a fraction of the electricity it needs… Israel and Egypt have maintained a blockade on the territory since Hamas seized power in 2007…”
Palestinians in Gaza protesting against Hamas, in an American newspaper, ten weeks before October 2023. Five papers in this archive ran this dispatch.
Thousands take to streets to protest Gaza conditions
Associated Press
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets across the Gaza Strip on Sunday in a rare show of public anger…”
Cut to three paragraphs and run beside a second brief about fighting in the Ein el-Hilweh camp in Lebanon, which is Palestinians fighting Palestinians. Both are on the page and neither is a headline.
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets across the Gaza Strip on Sunday in a rare show of public anger against the territory’s Hamas rulers, protesting chronic power cuts and dire living conditions. Hamas security forces dispersed some of the protests.”
Two paragraphs, in a roundup of world briefs between an ATV crash and a plane hitting a hangar. One dispatch, five papers, from nine paragraphs down to two.
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets across the Gaza Strip on Sunday in a rare show of public anger against the territory’s Hamas rulers…”
Thousands take to streets in Gaza in display of discontent with Hamas
Associated Press, Gaza City
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets across the Gaza Strip on Sunday… ‘Where is the electricity and where is the gas?’ the crowds shouted… Qatar distributes $100 to needy families, but a fee of about $15 is deducted… Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007…”
The longer version, with what the crowds were actually shouting and the arithmetic of the Qatari stipend.
Israel arrests 2 after rampage on village leaves 1 Palestinian dead
Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Israeli police said Saturday that they arrested two Israeli settlers after they stormed a Palestinian village in the West Bank in a rampage that left one Palestinian dead. Armed settlers entered Burqa, a herding village east of the city of Ramallah, late Friday, shooting and killing 19-year-old Qusai Matan, Palestinian health officials said. Israeli media reported that one of the arrested settlers used to work as an aide, who remained unnamed, for a lawmaker of the far-right Israeli ‘Jewish Power’ party… Police said they arrested two settlers after detaining five for questioning.”
Qusai Matan, 19, is named. The headline has a rampage that leaves a man dead, with no one doing it, above a lede in which armed settlers entered and shot him. Four paragraphs, between flooding in China and a gunfight in Kashmir.
Israeli settlements thrive as Palestinian farmers’ taps run dry
By Isabel Debre, Associated Press, Jiftlik, West Bank
“JIFTLIK, West Bank — Across the dusty villages of the occupied West Bank, where Israeli water pipes don’t reach, date palms have been left to die. Greenhouses are empty and deserted. Palestinians say they can barely get enough water to bathe their children and wash their clothes — let alone sustain livestock and grow fruit trees. In sharp contrast, neighboring Jewish settlements look like oases. Wildflowers burst through the soil. Farmed fish swim in neat rows of ponds. Children splash in community pools… ‘People are thirsty,’ said Hazeh Daraghmeh, a 63-year-old Palestinian date farmer in the Jiftlik area of the valley… ‘They’re trying to squeeze us step by step.’… ‘They don’t want us to be farmers,’ Fathi Sawafta, a local council member, said of Israeli authorities. ‘They don’t want us to be self-sufficient.’…”
Two Palestinians named, with their jobs. The comparison in the line under the headline is the Associated Press’s own: settlements thrive, taps run dry.
Palestinian villages on West Bank continue to empty
Residents blame Israeli settler attacks, violence
By Julia Frankel, Associated Press, Al-Qabun, West Bank
“AL-QABUN, West Bank — The Palestinian hamlet of al-Qabun in the central occupied West Bank was silent this week — the grazing fields for sheep deserted, the empty schoolhouse locked, the makeshift homes left as steel carcasses. The last families living there packed up two weeks ago… ‘I feel like I’m a refugee here, and settlers are the owners of our land,’ said Ali Abu Kbash, a shepherd who fled al-Qabun with his four children and 60 sheep… Settler attacks have displaced nearly 500 Palestinians, including 261 children, in the past year and a half, the office estimates. A spokesperson for settlers in the region denied accusations of violence or aggression against Palestinian communities. ‘No one forced them out,’ said Eliana Passentin. ‘They chose to leave.’ … ‘The rest of my village is too scared to return,’ said Mustafa Arara, a 24-year-old resident who recently went back.”
A village emptying in 2023, reported while it happened, with the settlers’ spokeswoman given the sentence that denies it. The headline has the villages emptying by themselves.
3 Palestinian villages have emptied out; residents blame Israeli attacks
By Julia Frankel, The Associated Press, Al-Qabun, West Bank
“The Palestinian hamlet of al-Qabun in the central occupied West Bank was silent this week… While Bedouin are traditionally nomadic, the recent departures are not voluntary seasonal migrations, residents and researchers said. Instead of moving to nearby hamlets before returning, Bedouin are fleeing the open areas of the West Bank for populous towns under Palestinian Authority administrative control…”
The same dispatch. One headline says villages continue to empty; this one says three of them have emptied and who the residents blame. It also keeps the paragraph that rules out the explanation the settlers’ spokeswoman gives.
Family loses home to Israel’s punitive demolitions
Son had lunged at Israeli police officer with knife
By Isabel Debre, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — With the walls stripped bare and furniture dismantled, the east Jerusalem apartment is a far cry from the vividly-hued haven it was in early February, when members of the Zalabani family played cards on the cobalt couch and feasted on stewed chicken with richly spiced rice… ‘This is no solution,’ said Mohammed’s mother, Fida Zalabani, her eyes wet as she recalled the effort that went into decorating a house that Israeli security forces ransacked and boarded up, drilling holes into the walls for explosives… ‘Home demolitions intentionally harm innocent people in the hopes that they deter other people from committing attacks,’ said Jessica Montell, HaMoked’s director… ‘When Palestinians see that we destroy houses, their level of fear and frustration and hatred increases,’ said Ami Ayalon, former director of Israel’s Shin Bet security service… The practice is based on regulations imposed by the British Mandate in 1945, which authorized commanders to destroy insurgents’ homes.”
The origin of the practice, printed in a Boston newspaper: a British Mandate regulation of 1945. A former head of the Shin Bet is quoted saying it does not work.
Recognized by UNESCO in 2021, culture’s traditional embroidery, a symbol of national pride, faces challenges in a modern world
Raja Abdulrahim, The New York Times, Birzeit
“BIRZEIT, West Bank — In every stitch, there is a story. Like layers of history, the hand-stitched Palestinian embroidery known as tatreez, traditionally used to ornament Palestinian dress, tells of towns and villages lost, old customs abandoned, past lives and survival. The stitched designs and symbols once functioned almost as an identification card. The rooster, an old Christian symbol, indicated the wearer’s faith. A red bird on a blue-threaded robe worn by widows meant the woman was ready to remarry. An image of a particular plant or fruit suggested the garment’s origin, such as orange blossoms adorning robes from Jaffa or cypress trees on those from Hebron. ‘Every town’s embroidery has a special characteristic,’ said Baha Jubeh, collections and conservation manager at the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, as he stood among a long row of these dresses, known as thobes, some dating back decades and others more than a century. ‘But all of them together combine to create a historical Palestinian identity.’ The craft ‘is a central part of the Palestinian heritage,’ he added. In 2021, UNESCO added Palestinian embroidery to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, recognizing it as ‘a widespread social and intergenerational practice in Palestine,’ a symbol of national pride and a way in which women supplement family income.… Those efforts include plans to reintroduce embroidery in curriculums in Palestinian schools, to include it as part of school uniforms and to open an academy in the Israeli-occupied West Bank dedicated to the handicraft… In July, the museum inaugurated a Textile Conservation Studio to preserve Palestinian thobes and other heritage fabrics… ‘We need to practice our heritage so we don’t lose it,’ said Maha Saca, founder and director of the Palestinian Heritage Center in Bethlehem, who helped submit the UNESCO application and is now working on opening the academy.… Women’s tradition of embroidering their own thobes became widespread across the Middle East starting in the ninth century, said Hanan Munayyer, a Palestinian American who wrote the book Traditional Palestinian Costume: Origins and Evolution… Decades ago, the thobe was an everyday item worn and embroidered mostly by rural Palestinian women. Its colors and designs were drawn from the flowers, plants and animals around them. Some were worn throughout a lifetime, with fabric added to mark a marriage and seams expanded to allow for pregnancy and breast feeding. Since the 1970s, most Palestinian women have abandoned the thobe in favor of Western clothes or the generic Islamic styles worn across the Middle East… Saca said images on traditional thobes that came from different towns and cities in present-day Israel told a political story. ‘We prove our presence here for thousands of years through our heritage,’ she said. ‘How do we have a Jaffa thobe and an Akka thobe and a Beersheba thobe if we were not there? The biggest evidence of our presence in these areas is our thobe.’”
“Taghrid Hudoosh, director of the Surif Women’s Cooperative, collects dry tatreez, or pieces of embroidery, from a clothesline last month in the West Bank city of Surif. Several Palestinian organizations are working to revive the culture’s traditional embroidery and to preserve the fabric that tells Palestinian history.” · Samar Hazboun / The New York Times
Printed twenty-six days before the line this archive stops at. Four Palestinians are named, three of them women, and the argument one of them makes is the whole presence case put through needlework: how do we have a Jaffa thobe and an Akka thobe and a Beersheba thobe if we were not there. The detail that stays with you is the dress worn for a lifetime, with fabric added at a marriage and the seams let out for pregnancy and feeding. Written by a Palestinian reporter and photographed by a Palestinian photographer, in the same West Bank town whose empty museum this archive holds from 2016.
The threads of identity show in Palestinian handmade dresses
Raja Abdulrahim, New York Times, Birzeit
“BIRZEIT, West Bank — In every stitch, there is a story… In 2019, when Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., was sworn in as the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress, she wore a red-and-black thobe that once belonged to her mother. That led to a hashtag, #TweetYourThobe, that encouraged other Palestinian women to share photographs of themselves in their own thobes. At the time, Tlaib wrote that she wanted to bring to Congress ‘an unapologetic display of the fabric of the people in this country.’… In 1948, about 700,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their homes in the war surrounding the creation of Israel, a period that Palestinians call the nakba, or catastrophe. Most ended up in refugee camps in neighboring countries and across the West Bank and Gaza. Suddenly uprooted from their homes, lands and sources of income, women began to sell one of their few possessions of value: their thobes. The nakba — and, nearly two decades later, the naksa, which is what Palestinians call the mass displacement around the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 — forced many women to become the breadwinners in their families. Embroidery was a major skill, transformed from a personal craft to one driven by trade. The designs and colors of the embroidery began to change because women were away from the lands and local inspirations they once drew from. The embroidery became more homogenized and less of an identity card.… ‘We prove our presence here for thousands of years through our heritage,’ she said. ‘How do we have a Jaffa thobe and an Akka thobe and a Beersheba thobe if we were not there?’… She was referring to the phrase ‘a land without a people for a people without a land,’ used by some Zionists before the establishment of Israel to contend that the land of historical Palestine was uninhabited. At the Surif Women’s Cooperative, in a small town on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Hebron, Halima Fareed, 58, put the final touches on a green-and-black embroidered pillowcase. Sitting near a wall covered in colorful rolls of thread and fabric, she sewed on a label: Palestinian needlework. West Bank. Made in Hebron. Around the edges were little cypress trees that resembled the tall cypress that stands outside the cooperative. It is one of the few local symbols that the cooperative, which makes embroidered household items but not thobes, still preserves in its designs, which now tend toward the Christmas candles, camels and Canaanite stars favored by customers. The embroidery of Hebron and its surrounding towns used to be marked primarily by reds and purples. Now, many of the cooperative’s pillowcases, place mats and stoles are dominated by the more popular blues and greens. As the handicraft evolves, its practitioners see it in the context of history. ‘This is not the old heritage,’ Fareed said as she sewed the edges of a multicolored pillowcase. ‘It is our heritage, but it has been modernized.’ The director of the cooperative, Taghrid Hudoosh, 55, nodded. ‘We are a continuation of our heritage,’ she said.”
“A square of hand-stitched Palestinian embroidery known as tatreez at the Bethlehem Museum in the West Bank in 2022. The Palestinian government and cultural organizations are working to revive traditional Palestinian embroidery.” · New York Times
The same New York Times story the Santa Fe New Mexican ran the same day, printed longer, and what the shorter version lost is the heart of it. The 1948 figure, and what displacement did to the craft: seven hundred thousand people uprooted, women selling the thobes that were among their few things of value, and embroidery turning from a personal record into a trade. The phrase a land without a people for a people without a land, named and attributed. Rashida Tlaib sworn into Congress in her mother’s dress. And the closing scene, which needs no argument at all: Halima Fareed, 58, sewing a label onto a pillowcase that reads Palestinian needlework, West Bank, Made in Hebron, and her director saying we are a continuation of our heritage.
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — A powerful explosion killed at least four Palestinians and wounded several others during a protest along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel on Wednesday, Palestinian health officials said. The cause of the blast was not immediately known. The Israeli military said demonstrators had tried to hurl an explosive device across the border fence and that it detonated prematurely.”
Two paragraphs for the start of the last fence protests before October. The cause is not known, and the only account of it in the clipping is the Israeli military’s.
Deadly Israeli raids: 4 Palestinians killed in West Bank and Gaza
Associated Press
“Israeli forces killed three Palestinians during a raid in the occupied West Bank early Wednesday, and a fourth man was killed by Israeli fire during a protest along the Gaza border, officials said. The raid on the Jenin refugee camp was the latest in a months-long Israeli crackdown…”
Four Palestinians killed, filed as one item in a roundup between a story about flood recovery in Libya and a story about a British comedian.
Israel strikes Gaza for the 2nd time in 2 days after clashes
Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Israeli aircraft struck targets in the Gaza Strip for a second day on Saturday… The strikes came after days of protests along the perimeter fence and the launching of incendiary balloons… Israel has barred some 18,000 Palestinian laborers from Gaza from entering… ‘As long as these provocations continue, the protests will continue,’ said Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem… Hamas says the protests are a response to Jewish visits to a sensitive Jerusalem holy site…”
Eighteen thousand workers barred from crossing, two weeks before October. Hamas is quoted giving a reason for the protests and the paper does not adopt it.
By Issam Adwan, Associated Press, Rafah, Gaza Strip
“RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Mohammed Zorob, 31, shares a 215-square-foot hut with nine other members of his family… His father, Moneer, built it from cinder block and corrugated metal… Gaza has not been allowed to build new housing for refugee families since… Ibrahim Abrash, a political scientist and former Palestinian culture minister, said… Jawad al-Agha, an official with the Palestinian housing ministry, said…”
A family of ten in a room, named, in an American newspaper twelve days before October 2023. Nobody in this story is killed.
Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza for the 3rd day in a row as West Bank violence intensifies
By Aref Tufaha, Associated Press, Nour Shams Refugee Camp, West Bank
“NOUR SHAMS REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — Israeli forces killed two Palestinians during a raid on a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank early Sunday… The Palestinian Health Ministry identified them as Asid Abu Ali, 21, and Abdulrahman Abu Daghash, 32… Israeli bulldozers tore up the camp’s main road and water pipes… In Gaza, Israeli aircraft struck for a third straight day… Protesters said they were demonstrating over the treatment of Palestinian prisoners and Jewish visits to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound…”
Two names, twelve days before October. The reasons the protesters gave are printed as theirs: prisoners and Al-Aqsa.
“Mourners carried the body of Majdi Ghabayen, 18, who was killed during a protest along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel, during his funeral in the Jabaliya refugee camp on Monday.”
A photograph and a caption, and no story attached. This is the only page found in this archive that gives a name to one of the young men killed at the Gaza fence in September 2023.
Archaeologists unearth lead sarcophagi in Gaza in Roman-era cemetery
By Issam Adwan, Associated Press, Gaza City
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Archaeologists in the Gaza Strip have unearthed two ornate lead sarcophagi in a Roman-era cemetery… Fadel Al-Otul, a Palestinian archaeologist, said the find was the most important in the territory in years… The cemetery was discovered last year during construction work funded by Egypt… Rene Elter, a French archaeologist who has worked in Gaza for years, said… ‘The Gazans deserve to tell their stories,’ Al-Otul said…”
A Palestinian archaeologist excavating a two-thousand-year-old cemetery, eleven days before October 2023, saying that the Gazans deserve to tell their own stories.
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israel reopened its main crossing with the Gaza Strip on Thursday, allowing thousands of Palestinian laborers to return to work after a closure of nearly two weeks…”
The same brief in a second state, also in a roundup. Nine days later the arrangement it describes had ended.
Israel reopens Gaza border crossing for Palestinian laborers
Associated Press, Gaza City
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israel reopened its main crossing with the Gaza Strip on Thursday, allowing thousands of Palestinian laborers to return to work after a closure of nearly two weeks prompted by violent protests along the border. The reopening followed Egyptian and Qatari mediation…”
The last dispatch about Gaza found in this archive before October 2023. It ran as a brief in a column of world items, between a paragraph about a spotted lanternfly found in Illinois and a paragraph about shootings in Sweden.
“President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at the Wye River Conference Center in Queen Anne’s County to work toward an Israeli-Palestinian agreement that will allow negotiations that hopefully lead to a lasting peace.”
A Maryland county paper’s local history column, on 6 October 2023, remembering the Wye River summit of 1998 because it happened down the road. It runs beside an item about a speed camera and a notice of a county commission forum.
“The United States added Israel to its visa waiver program, allowing Israelis to travel to the U.S. without a visa, despite concerns over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and Arab-American travelers.”
One bullet point in a California weekly’s week in review, printed on 6 October 2023. Palestinians appear once, in a subordinate clause, as a concern.
Arabia Saudí exige garantías a Israel sobre los palestinos
EFE, Jerusalén
“JERUSALÉN — Arabia Saudí exige a Israel garantías sobre la cuestión palestina como condición para avanzar en la normalización de relaciones… entre ellas el compromiso a no anexionarse Cisjordania ocupada y a parar la construcción y expansión de colonias israelíes…”
A Spanish-language American daily, in Miami, on the last day. The word it uses for the settlements is colonias — colonies. English-language papers on the same morning call them settlements. Same object, same country, same day, two words.
Part of Covering Palestine, an archive of 1262 newspaper clippings about Palestinians printed in 512 papers between 1799 and 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles. Nothing here was printed after 6 October 2023.