Have you heard . . .

Probably, not. After all . . .

Almost no one bothered to report it. A search of the nation's largest newspapers turned up nothing in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Chicago Sun-Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Houston Chronicle, Tampa Tribune, etc.

There was nothing on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS, NPR, Fox News.

Nothing.

The LA Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Associated Press each had one sentence, at most, telling about her. All three left out the details, the LA Times had her age significantly off, and the Washington Post reported that she had been killed by an Israeli tank shell.

It hadn't been a tank shell that had kille[d] her, according to witnesses. It had been bullets, multiple ones, fired up close.

Neighbors report that Israeli soldiers had been beating her husband because he wasn't answering their questions. Foolishly or valiantly, how is one to say, the 35-year-old woman had interfered. She tried to explain that her husband was deaf, screamed at the soldiers that her husband couldn't hear them and attempted to stop them from hitting him. So they shot her. Several times.

Her name was Itemad Ismail Abu Mo'ammar.

She didn't die, though. That took longer. It required her life to flow out of her in the form of blood for several hours, as Israeli soldiers refused to allow an ambulance to transport her to help. Her husband and children could do nothing to save her.

Finally, after approximately five hours, an ambulance was allowed to take her to a hospital, where physicians were able to render one service: pronounce her dead, a few days before the commencement of Ramadan, a season of family gatherings much like the Christmas season for Americans. She left 11 children. None of this was in the Washington Post story, which had reported her death in one half of one sentence.

Her husband's brother, who lived in the same house, was also killed. He was a 28-year-old farmer.

Why did this all happen? The family lived behind a resistance fighter wanted by Israel. They were simply "collateral damage" in a failed Israeli assassination/ kidnapping operation.

All together, five Palestinians were killed that day. The other three were young shepherds killed in another area, two 15 years old and one 14, who seem to have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gaza.

None of this was reported in most of America's news media, and so the American public never learned about a mother bleeding to death in front of her children, or young shepherds being blown to pieces.

Apparently, it just wasn't newsworthy.

Of course, THEY are the ones who decide what's newsworthy and what is NOT.

If your mother dies because she was shot several times and left to bleed to death before your eyes because she was trying to protect your deaf father from bloodthirsty soldiers, will "the media" report it?

That depends - on whether she was human and whether it was newsworthy.

And of course, THEY get to decide.

Make no mistake - it's just a matter of time before those who treat other human beings like they did this woman do the same to US.




___________
Thanks, Fred


UPDATE:
Another source reporting the incident - for die-hard apologists who refuse to believe that their beloved 'Israel' is a terrorist state

2nd UPDATE: A message from Alison Weir, author of the original article, citing her references:

The Washington Post article

The initial report from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza

Information on children's deaths

My letter to the editor contained the basic information on this incident and on the deaths. The fact that the Post letters department considered printing it for so long would seem to indicate that the facts checked out.

They gave me no reason for not printing it -- they only said "we have decided not to print it."

- Alison