This is video taken when Jodi Rudoren came to watch a funeral in Beit Ommar. Rudoren spent several weeks following the Abu Hashem family, a family I know quite well. Yet it has become clear that she had no intention of reporting facts on the ground, even ones she witnessed personally.
Perhaps a unique experience for a New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, Rudoren was in the home of a Palestinian family the night that the Israeli forces invaded the home, terrifying the children, assaulting the father, Ahmed Abu Hashem, and eventually arresting both Ahmed and his 17 year old son Mohammed.
Yet Rudoren’s article “In a West Bank Culture of Conflict, Boys Wield the Weapon at Hand” inexplicably spends a total of 7 sentences describing this assault, while writing for over two paragraphs, including video, of Ahmed’s children and neighbors playing “Army and Arabs”. Rudoren does not describe the children during the invasion of their home, their reactions, nor did she include the interviews she conducted of family members.
Clearly, Rudoren had an agenda: to intentionally obscure the harsh realities of life under an occupying regime, and instead present Palestinian youth throwing stones at occupying Israeli soldiers and settlers as merely “a hobby”.
What is even more disturbing is the footage that has come to light of the final day Rudoren spent in Beit Ommar. When she arrived at my house on August 3, she was waiting for a funeral to begin. She told me she needed to see a funeral since “everyone is always talking about them”. She commented to her photographer that she was sure “with her luck, nothing would happen at the funeral” (i.e. there would be no ‘action’). In her article, Rudoren interviews a settler whose car she implies was hit by stones during that funeral. She writes:
On Thursday, after the burial of a 63-year-old retired teacher, a teenager hurled a rock at a passing car with yellow Israeli plates: whack. Another teenager, two more stones: another direct hit.
The settlers stopped their car, got out, and began shouting at the small crowd. Soon, there were soldiers, rifles raised and tear gas at the ready, who eventually hauled a Palestinian taxi driver into a waiting army jeep.
Menuha Shvat, who has lived in a settlement near here since 1984, long ago lost count of the stones that have hit her car’s reinforced windows. “It’s crazy: I’m going to get pizza, and I’m driving through a war zone,” said Ms. Shvat, who knew a man and his 1-year-old son who died when their car flipped in 2011 after being pelted with stones on Road 60. “It’s a game that can kill.”
What Rudoren leaves out, just as she left out the behavior of real Israeli soldiers during the night invasion Rudoren herself witnessed, was a settler’s vicious attack on a local videographer who was documenting the funeral and subsequent clashes.
Guess Rudoren didn’t realize there was video. You can see her talking to soldiers at the very beginning of the video above when they are harassing Nayef Hashlamon (he has a credit in her New York Times article, and was her fixer/translator). Later, after a settler charges at the videographer, you can see Rudoren behind the settler.
It seems beyond comprehension that Rudoren did not find the settler’s attack on a Palestinian videographer “newsworthy” especially as she later quotes a settler saying, “I’m going to get pizza, and I’m driving through a war zone”. And stone-throwing is “a game that can kill”.
Depicting settlers as a frightened bystanders and young Palestinian boys as little more than bored trouble-makers, flew in the face of what I know Rudoren to have personally witnessed. To obfuscate these circumstances, in favor of painting a picture that bears little resemblance to reality, is a disgrace, and can hardly be called ‘journalism’.
The video is by a man named Mohammed Awad who videotapes most stuff in the village.
I can verify all of this, Jodi Rudoren was sitting at my house just before the funeral.
(Correction: An original version of this article assumed Ms. Shvat was the settler in the video, our mistake. ~Ed. )
Great exposure of the cynical, career-oriented ‘journalist’ and how the NYT is a sham of a newspaper. She knew the story wanted to write before she got there, and duly wrote it, ignoring and misrepresenting everything she heard and saw. But she knows what her bosses and audience want to hear, and she likes her nice salary and career prospects, especially churning out PR for the lobby like this. Whatever it is, it isn’t journalism. Opinion has replaced journalism, which in the msm is a mere branch of the PR industry. And the clients are more important than the public, or any quaint old-fashioned ideas of the ethics of journalism. Why should she care about the lives of poor Palestinians, when she has got her index-linked salary and benefits, plus the approval of her peers. What was it Rumsfeld said about creating reality, rather than reporting it?
i’m getting sketchy reception on that video. if that’s happening to you too it can be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=420404394746373&set=vb.100003304490801&type=2&theater
“It’s crazy: I’m going to get pizza, and I’m driving through a war zone,”
the reason it looks like a war zone is because there’s soldiers and tanks all over the place in the middle of cars (leaving?) in a funeral procession. i can see how that might disrupt Menuha Shvat’s trip to get pizza. notice how she did a u turn in the middle of the road?
and where are the rock throwers?
What did happen to the brave Palestinian man who standed up against the armed Israelis ?
Great reporting, Bekah Wolf. Rudoren carries on the longstanding NYT tradition of posting bigots in the office of Jerusalem bureau chief. Should we understand this story to mean that even when the bureau chief is actually “on the beat” in the occupied territories, rather than reclining on her sofa with an iced tea and her laptop taking her stories directly from the IDF wire, that we still shouldn’t expect any form of real historical context? I guess so. Rudoren has her marching orders and she seems to enjoy abiding by them.
Jodi is “owned” and I feel sorry for those kind of slaves that should know better– how do they all sleep at night? I feel much more sorry, though, for the victims of the untruths and brutality of a seemingly endless Occupation.
I guess that $$$$$ does “talk” and gives a platform for far too many.
Many thanks to you, Bekah Wolf, and to your family.