The Israel Government Press Office circulated the following excerpt from an article by Ben Caspit in the Maariv Weekend Magazine of Friday, March 19. The article takes the form of an open letter written to foreign editors working in Israel:
"Dear Editors,
"Peter Dudzik, from the German ARD television network, Dietmar Schumann, from the German ZDF television network, Jorg Bremer from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, Joel Perry from Frances Le Monde, Patrick St.-Paul from Le Figaro, our friend Charles Enderlin from the France 2
television network, Ms. Emma Hurd from Sky, Steve Pearl from The Times, all of you are respected journalists who represent important media. You are colleagues.
"Maybe one of you has an idea why, until now (Thursday morning), you haven't bothered to report to the millions of your viewers/readers about the story of 10-year-old (maybe he was 12 years old) Abdallah Quran, who was sent by Palestinian freedom fighters to carry a deadly bomb through an IDF
checkpoint for five shekels? Is there no public interest in this story
()? Does it lack spicy details?
"How is it, Ms. Hurd from Sky, that when the first rocket hit in Gaza, your network went live, during prime time, for almost seven minutes (a television eternity), without updated pictures (images of Palestinian pedestrians were broadcast), but passed on the story of the Palestinian child bomb? How is it possible to explain the almost total ignoring of this story by the French media? (I understand the Spanish, who reported on the story briefly; they had 200 dead to bury.) AFP devoted 1.25 lines to it somewhere and emphasized that this was a story of doubtful credibility.
"And indeed gentlemen, the credibility of the story was not in doubt. IDF checkpoints are a harsh, unsympathetic, phenomenon; they must be covered and reported on and this you are doing. And so are we; ask [Haaretz journalist] Gideon Levy. But, on the other side, there is no B'Tselem and no anti-terror units; there are people who take 10-year-old boys and send them on their way to our side with NIS 5 in their pocket and a backpack full of explosives. In order to fully understand the checkpoints, from both sides, you must report on it. Whoever doesn't report, deceives both their public and themselves. If I were in a position of authority here, all of you would now be on a plane home. This is, perhaps, why I'm not in a position of authority here."
"Dear Editors,
"Peter Dudzik, from the German ARD television network, Dietmar Schumann, from the German ZDF television network, Jorg Bremer from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, Joel Perry from Frances Le Monde, Patrick St.-Paul from Le Figaro, our friend Charles Enderlin from the France 2
television network, Ms. Emma Hurd from Sky, Steve Pearl from The Times, all of you are respected journalists who represent important media. You are colleagues.
"Maybe one of you has an idea why, until now (Thursday morning), you haven't bothered to report to the millions of your viewers/readers about the story of 10-year-old (maybe he was 12 years old) Abdallah Quran, who was sent by Palestinian freedom fighters to carry a deadly bomb through an IDF
checkpoint for five shekels? Is there no public interest in this story
(
"How is it, Ms. Hurd from Sky, that when the first rocket hit in Gaza, your network went live, during prime time, for almost seven minutes (a television eternity), without updated pictures (images of Palestinian pedestrians were broadcast), but passed on the story of the Palestinian child bomb? How is it possible to explain the almost total ignoring of this story by the French media? (I understand the Spanish, who reported on the story briefly; they had 200 dead to bury.) AFP devoted 1.25 lines to it somewhere and emphasized that this was a story of doubtful credibility.
"And indeed gentlemen, the credibility of the story was not in doubt. IDF checkpoints are a harsh, unsympathetic, phenomenon; they must be covered and reported on and this you are doing. And so are we; ask [Haaretz journalist] Gideon Levy. But, on the other side, there is no B'Tselem and no anti-terror units; there are people who take 10-year-old boys and send them on their way to our side with NIS 5 in their pocket and a backpack full of explosives. In order to fully understand the checkpoints, from both sides, you must report on it. Whoever doesn't report, deceives both their public and themselves. If I were in a position of authority here, all of you would now be on a plane home. This is, perhaps, why I'm not in a position of authority here."