Questions
Nine questions, answered from the clippings
These are the questions this archive is asked. Each answer is drawn from the 1,624 clippings in it, and links to the printed page it rests on.
Where an answer states a number, that number is counted from the archive at build time, not typed in.
Did American newspapers cover Palestinians before Hamas existed?
Yes, continuously. Hamas was founded in Gaza in December 1987. Of the 1,624 clippings in this archive, 853 were printed before that date, the oldest in 1799. They ran in ordinary local and regional dailies, not only papers of record.
In the archive: The Vergennes Gazette and Vermont and New-York Advertiser, 1799 · Akron Beacon Journal, 1893 · The Perris Progress, 1901
When was Hamas founded and why?
Hamas was founded in Gaza in December 1987, within days of the start of the first intifada, out of a Muslim Brotherhood welfare network that Israel had licensed in 1979 and tolerated as a counterweight to the secular PLO. Its charter followed in August 1988.
In the archive: Background. This is the one answer on this page not drawn from a clipping in the archive.
Were ordinary Palestinians named in American newspaper coverage?
Rarely, before 1987. Across the 853 clippings in this archive printed before December 1987, 22 ordinary Palestinians are named. After 1987 there are 119. Officials were named throughout; ordinary people appeared as quantities.
Did American newspapers call Zionist settlement colonization?
Yes, in their own headlines, until 1948. Examples in this archive include Plan of Colonizing Palestine With Jews (1902), Jewish Colonists Advancing (1908) and Jewish Colonists Redeem Palestine (1912). Every use by a paper describing the project as it happened falls before 1948.
In the archive: The New York Times, 1902 · The New York Times, 1908 · The New York Times, 1912
Did Jews publicly oppose Zionism in the American press?
Yes, as routine news. Between 1914 and 1922 the New York Times and the American Israelite printed Jewish opposition to Zionism, including Jewish Nation Not Wanted in Palestine, published three weeks after the Balfour Declaration.
In the archive: The New York Times, 1917 · The American Israelite, 1920 · The American Jewish World, 1922
Were there Palestinians before 1948?
American newspapers wrote about the Arab population of Palestine long before Israel was founded. This archive holds clippings from 1799 onward, including a Cincinnati Enquirer account from 1910 describing village land tenure, a sheikh who governed and was called the father of the community, and a building kept in every village for strangers. Papers used the word Palestinian for the people of the country, and printed their political organizations, congresses and protests from 1919 on.
In the archive: The Cincinnati Enquirer, 1910
Is anti-Zionism the same as antisemitism?
American newspapers record when that comparison was first made. On 17 October 1944 the Baltimore Sun reported Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld telling the Zionist Organization of America convention that anti-Zionism was a manifestation of prejudice whose basic psychology could be compared to the psychology underlying anti-Semitism. Before that, Jewish opposition to Zionism ran in American papers as ordinary news, including Jewish Opposition to Zionism in 1905 and The Anti-Zionist Protest in the American Jewish World in 1922. The archive shows when the comparison was made and by whom; it does not settle whether it holds.
In the archive: The Baltimore Sun, 1944 · The Spokesman-Review, 1905 · The American Jewish World, 1922
What is administrative detention?
An order that holds a person in prison with no charge, no trial and no end date, renewable for as long as the authorities choose. American papers report it in Palestine from 1939, when the Morning Call described the first Arab woman sentenced under the emergency defense regulations, and describe it as a practice held over from British Mandate rule that Israel retained. This archive holds 27 clippings whose headline subject is Palestinian imprisonment, across 24 American newspapers between 1939 and 2023.
In the archive: The Morning Call, 1939
What is the Covering Palestine archive?
A collection of 1,624 newspaper clippings about Palestinians published between 1799 and 2023 in 621 American newspapers, assembled and fact-checked by the artist and researcher Maria Robles. Every clipping is a photograph of the page it ran on. Nothing in it was printed after 6 October 2023.