4 November 2009
The LA Times has published a great article (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-nonviolence4-2009nov04,0,226753.story?page=1&track=rss) about Bil’in and the popular struggle in today’s edition (November 4th).
As past experience teach us, an assault by Israel’s supporter is sure to follow immediately, and be directed at both the paper itself, its editors and the reporter.
These attacks are beyond mere nuisance – they apply real pressure on those targeted, and often dissuade major media from covering Palestinian issues in an objective and truthful manner.
Media coverage generally and articles such as this are of great importance for us here on the ground, and we would like to do everything within our power to counter the attacks that threaten them.
I urge you to dedicate just a few minutes of your time and send a supportive letter to the LA Times and to the reporter, Richard Boudreaux.
The emails to send letters to are, respectively:
letters@latimes.com and boudreaux@latimes.com
Original letters are of course better, but also feel free to use or model yours after the sample letter attached below.
Please bear in mind that letters to the editor in the LA Times have a word limit of 150, and must include your full name, mailing address, daytime phone number, and e-mail address. This information is seen only by the letters editors and is not used for any commercial purpose.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Dear LA Times,
I was very pleased to see Richard Boudreaux’s article “Palestinians who see nonviolence as their weapon” in your November 4th edition.
As readers, we have gotten so used to seeing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict solely through the perspective of the barrel of a gun, that any civic engagement in it erroneously appears marginal and unimportant to most audiences.
This misguided view of the Palestinian struggle is too often the one that dominates the media’s discourse. Most Palestinians, like most people everywhere else, are not gun-toting fanatics hell bent on violence, but rather are ordinary people determined to attain freedom and justice from under an unbearable military occupation. Articles like Boudreax’s, which depicts Palestinian resistance, as it is – multifaceted and diverse – are as important as they are rare.
I hope the LA Times will continue to defy the governing notions in the media about Israel-Palestine, and publish articles true to the reality on the ground.
Yours,