NEWSWEEK'S journalist Joshua Hammer was kidnapped by Fatah in Gaza but remains unsympathetic to Israel. In April 2002, he wrote an article about a teenage female suicide bomber Ayat al-Akhras and her teenage victim Rachel Levy. Instead of stating that Ayat murdered Levy he sympathetically wrote:

"Martyrdom - or, depending on your point of view, murder - is becoming mainstream."

   He did not mention in his story the second victim of the suicide bomber, security guard Haim Smadar.  Bret Stephens Haim Smadar in the Jerusalem Post (4/12/2002). He wrote about Haim as follows:

He was a father of five. Two of his children are deaf. He had been married for more than 30 years. He made a security guard's salary. He prided himself on his alertness. He received a commendation the previous year from Mayor Ehud Olmert for his diligence. His knowledge of Arabic - he was born in Tunisia - may have alerted him to the danger posed by Akhras. Witnesses attest that his last words, as he struggled to stop Akhras from entering the supermarket were, "You are not coming in here. You and I will blow up here." He may have saved 12 or 20 or 30 lives, or more.

   According to HonestReporting.com Hammer wrote another article "Wanted – A Week of Quiet" (July 9 edition) in which he wrote about the "ordeal" of Palestinians traveling through the West Bank where "armed Jewish settlers prowl the roads, hurling rocks through the windshields of Palestinian buses." He did not report on why these settlers were prowling the roads. He did not report on the attacks on Jewish civilians traveling along the roads, by armed Palestinian gunmen who shoot at them. Hammer did not report on the 28-year old Israel woman shot and killed the previous week as she drove home with her 4-year-old son in the back seat. (Her murder took place at an intersection where the Israeli army took down a roadblock earlier in the week.) Hammer did not report on the Palestinians stoning Israeli cars and buses and the Israeli baby killed two weeks before by a boulder thrown through the windshield. He did not report what daily life and death at the hands of Arab snipers is like for the settlers of Judea and Samaria.


Arab Propaganda Associated Press BBC Boston Globe Chicago Tribune ABC NBC CBS CNN European Press
Los Angeles Times Newsweek New York Times NPR Philadelphia Inquirer Reuters Shockers Time Magazine