Danusha V. Goska

NPR Middle East Coverage

This is Danusha Goska.

Recently on this program a listener argued that NPR has not discussed Israeli behavior as cause of Palestinian violence. In fact, though, NPR repeatedly offers its microphones to Palestinians and their supporters who blame Israel and the US for Palestinian violence.

Rather, NPR has been lax in placing Palestinian violence in a context that has nothing to do with Israel, or her ally, the U.S. That context? Jihad.

Recent years have seen the systematic rape and disemboweling of women in Algeria, the torture and enslavement of Christian black Africans in Sudan, the murder and exile of the Bahai in Iran, house arrest conditions for women in Afghanistan, and anti-Chinese pogroms in Indonesia. In each case, perpetrators of violence invoked Jihad, or the Muslim duty to make holy war against infidels. Recently, in the New York Times, a Palestinian father said he sends his three teenage boys to throw stones at Israeli soldiers: "I pray only that God will choose them," for martyrdom, he said. Another said, "It's jihad now, we have direct orders from God."

The causes of any outbreak of violence are always complex. Laying blame exclusively at the door of any one party or philosophy is usually incorrect. In understanding violence, all factors must be taken into account, including any underlying philosophical system that valorizes violence over negotiation and domination over co-existence.

For Speak Your Mind, this has been Danusha Goska.

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