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04/15/2002
ABC News' Claire Shipman filed a story from Jerusalem April 11 on Good Morning America aimed at drawing moral equivalence between a Palestinian murder bomber and one of her victims. Take a look at this:

"This grainy image is the last her family saw of Ayat, a terrorist's videotaped suicide note recorded just before she set off for this Jerusalem grocery store. 'She left the house in the morning to go to school,' remembers her mother. 'We had no idea.' Here she would fatefully collide in the doorway with another 17-year-old, Rachel. . . Both girls were intent on their missions: one, searching for spices and fish for a Sabbath dinner; the other, looking for an answer to her rage."

"When Ayat Al-Akhras pushed the button on the explosives belt strapped to her waist, she stunned the world with the depths of a teenage Palestinian girl's murderous despair… The mothers, now forever linked by fate and grief and unanswered questions, live just four miles apart… The girls were alike in many ways, both excellent students with a passion for writing and pop music, but Rachel tried to ignore the political conflict; Ayat, in this refugee camp, lived in the middle of it…. She was an obvious recruit for a new terrorist group that encourages female bombers. Her family, stunned, expected her to get married and go to college in the fall. Instead, Ayat chose to become the third Palestinian woman ever to turn herself into a deadly weapon."

"Ayat and Rachel have become twin symbols of the brutal toll of this conflict and have transfixed young people here, especially the women."

Note that reference to Ayat's responsibility for her own murderous action is almost completely ignored, as if she turned up in the grocery store with an explosive belt by magic and pushed the button through no fault of her own. If you're not ill yet, just wait. Shipman then began relaying messages between the two mothers.

Shipman (to Rachel's mother): "Palestinians say it's hard for other people to understand the humiliation and anger that they feel."
Abigail Levy, Rachel's mother: "I used to feel sorry for them. Believe me, I used to feel sorry for them."
Shipman: "Ayat's mother was indirect about what she would say to Mrs. Levy. 'If I knew she was planning to do that,' she says, 'I would have prevented her, but this tragic reality makes girls here think that way. We are killed every day.'"
Shipman (to Rachel's mother): "What would you say to the mother of Ayat?"
Levy: "That she has to take care of her kids, you know, watch them and watch what they're doing, and that we don't have any hate for her. That she killed an innocent girl, and whatever they say, it's not true, because most of us want to live in peace with them."

Disturbing story. Disturbing reporting. The message is that we should feel sorry for a murderer because of a few similarities to one of her victims. Shipman is only a tiny baby step from buying into the "martyred hero" propaganda that the Palestinians spew. Offended? Below is the contact information.

ABC
77 West 66th Street
New York, New York 10023

Phone 212-456-7777
FAX 212-456-4292

E-mail contact page

Read more here:

ABC News: Tale of Two Teens

MRC CyberAlert, 04/12/2002