The Media Accountability Project  

In the case of Tuesday morning’s 8:00 a.m. news slot, you highlight the story of an American citizen from Connecticut who was killed by Palestinians.  One might reasonably ask, “What was an American citizen from Connecticut doing outside Nablus, a large Palestinian city in the West Bank, territory slated to be part of a future Palestinian state?”  In fact, the individual killed was not only an American citizen, but also an illegal Israeli “settler.”  Since 1967, when Israel militarily occupied the West Bank through war, Israel has been colonizing (“settling”) Palestinian territory, and to date, there are over 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank.  Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention – the international law applying to situations of war and occupation – strictly forbids the colonization of occupied territory.  As you can imagine, the indigenous Palestinians in this land are highly threatened by presence of 700,000 (and growing) illegal Israeli settlers.  Frequent confrontations and violence are the result.