Take Action! CNN report on Ahed Tamimi omits essential facts

CNN’s Oren Liebermann broadcast a report about Ahed Tamimi on Jan. 5, 2018.

CNN’s report about Ahed Tamimi completely omitted the fact that shortly before the incident an Israeli soldier had shot her cousin in the face. The report by Oren Liebermann, an Israeli citizen, also failed to mention the killing of another Tamimi teen. Other highly significant information was also left out. Use this simple form to tell CNN to report the full story on Ahed and others…

By Alison Weir

A January 5, 2018 CNN report about 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi omitted many essential facts. The report, by Oren Liebermann, showed footage of Tamimi slapping an Israeli soldier. The report did not mention that:

• An hour before the incident, Israeli soldiers had shot Ahed’s young cousin in the face. The rubber coated steel bullet had entered the boy’s face below his nose, breaking his jaw and then lodging in his skull. According to a witness, “The blood was pouring from his face like a fountain.” Ahed was responding to this shooting.

• The combat-armed Israeli soldiers were invading the Tamimi property, which Israeli forces had previously tear-gassed.
• Israeli settlers who have slapped and assaulted Israeli soldiers are rarely even detained. For example, after Yifat Alkobi slapped a soldier, the settler was released on bail the same day and allowed to return home. The settler had previously been convicted five times but was not jailed once. A writer in Haa’retz reports that the difference is “because one is Jewish, the other Palestinian.”
• The earlier video of Ahed that they mention but don’t show, was of her at 11, demanding information about her brother who had been taken by Israeli soldiers, and ends with a mob soldiers chasing and arresting a foreign journalist.
• A previous video of Ahed, not mentioned, was of her at 14 stopping Israeli soldiers from forcibly taking away her little brother, who had a broken arm.

• Ahed and her family are resisting Israel’s confiscation of their land.
• When Ahed was 10, Israeli soldiers killed her cousin; when she was 11 they killed her uncle; when she was 13 they shot her mother in the leg – she was on crutches for two years.
• An Israeli soldier had recently killed another Tamimi teen, with a bullet to his neck.

CNN also failed to disclose the fact that Oren Liebermann, their Jerusalem correspondent, is an Israeli citizen. (This information is also omitted from CNN’s extensive bio for him.) Holding Israeli citizenship, however, does not preclude full reporting, as demonstrated by the excellent Ha’aretz report about Ahed Tamimi by Israeli journalists Gideon Levy and Alex Levac.

To tell CNN to report the full story, use this form – which sends emails, tweets & public Facebook posts to CNN management and staff