Camera (www.camera.org) reports that National Public Radio (NPR) continues to favor terrorists in their coverage of Palestinians murdering unarmed Israeli civilians.

This time, when a Palestinian terrorist killed an Israeli mother and 3 of her children, including a 5-year-old boy, NPR reported it as follows:

"Israeli officials say Palestinian commandos stormed a house in a Jewish settlement on the West Bank last night killing five people."

Israeli officials said no such thing. Perhaps at NPR such murderers are viewed as commandos, but to most people (and according to dictionaries), commandos are elite troops whose mission is characteristically to save lives and even to rescue hostages from terrorists – not to slaughter defenseless civilians in their homes. As they routinely do in such cases, Israeli officials accurately termed the attackers “terrorists.” If NPR cannot produce actual “Israeli officials” who used the word “commando” to describe the attackers, the network should retract its misleading language and desist from any further use of it.

You may also want to check an email I sent to NPR, "The deliberate killing of unarmed civilians is terrorism" after they described the murder of an Israeli 5-year-old as the "killing of an Israeli settler by a Palestinian militant".

Although I have made several donations to NPR (sometime 2-3 in the same year), I have decided not to help NPR and KQED (the local NPR station) anymore. In the last pledge drive I told KQED to call the Palestinian Islamic Jihad - with all of NPR's support for Palestinian terrorism, coughing up $50-$100 is the least they can do.

Please write NPR and condemn the network for supporting Palestinian terrorism (or covering up for Palestinian murderers, which is the same) - details are found below.

NPR: Palestinians Who Murdered Israeli Mother and Children Were “Commandos"
Camera.org - June 26, 2002
http://world.std.com/~camera/docs/alert/cmndo.html

On June 21, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition once again used biased pro-Palestinian terminology while reporting a Palestinian terrorist attack. Forty-year-old Rachel Shabo of Itamar and three of her sons were slain when a heavily armed terrorist burst into their home and opened fire. An NPR report described the bloody attack with these words:

"Israeli officials say Palestinian commandos stormed a house in a Jewish settlement on the West Bank last night killing five people."

Israeli officials said no such thing. Perhaps at NPR such murderers are viewed as commandos, but to most people (and according to dictionaries), commandos are elite troops whose mission is characteristically to save lives and even to rescue hostages from terrorists – not to slaughter defenseless civilians in their homes. As they routinely do in such cases, Israeli officials accurately termed the attackers “terrorists.” If NPR cannot produce actual “Israeli officials” who used the word “commando” to describe the attackers, the network should retract its misleading language and desist from any further use of it.

This “commando” broadcast by NPR raises another serious question as well. The network has long been criticized for biased and inaccurate Mideast coverage, which it has lately tried to deflect by posting on its website transcripts of its reporting from the region. But despite a seemingly extensive archive, this particular broadcast is omitted – it is nowhere to be found. Posting an incomplete archive, and leaving out such a broadcast, suggests that NPR can’t be trusted to honestly defend itself any more than it can be trusted to honestly report the news.

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The Random House Dictionary definition of “commando” is: “1. (In World War II) a. any of the specially trained Allied military units used for surprise, hit-and-run raids against Axis forces. ...2. any military unit organized for operations similar to those of the commandos of World War II. 3. A member of a military assault unit or team trained to operate quickly and aggressively in especially urgent, threatening situations, as against terrorists holding hostages.”
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Action items:

1) Please email/call NPR to protest the network’s biased pro-Palestinian language and its mischaracterization of terrorist violence against Israelis. The network continues to shun accurate language, choosing instead softer terminology to describe Palestinian attacks.

Contact Kevin Klose, President of National Public Radio at Kklose@npr.org, or call (202) 513-2000. Also contact Robert Coonrod, President of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which channels tax dollars to NPR): Rcoonrod@cpb.org

2) Contact your own NPR affiliate to remind the management that it is this kind of coverage that prompts public ire. To find your local affiliate’s address, go to www.npr.org and click on “Find a station.”

3) Please send a blind copy of your letter to CAMERA: webalerts@aol.com

CAMERA
P.O. Box 35040
Boston, MA 02135-0001

Phone (617) 789-3672
Fax (617) 787-7853
update@camera.org
http://www.camera.org

Posted by David Melle
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