Wednesday morning I received a phone call accusing The Register of sympathizing with Hamas, the terrorist group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
“How dare you print stories by terrorists,” she said. “You are spreading their message.”
And there was more. Not fit for print.
She also said she’s not renewing her subscription.
I wasn’t in the mood to convince her otherwise, but I did thank her for her call.
The woman assumed that because three of the four Associated Press reporters writing about the Hamas incursion had “un-American” sounding names, they are jihadists.
“But that reporter Matthew Lee, he’s OK,” she said.
Sigh.
She swore she had done her “homework” by researching the others’ backgrounds.
The Associated Press is renowned for its reporting precisely because its reporters are from all over the world.
In my research of the AP reporters, I found that Najib Jobain is currently based in Gaza City, Palestine, home of some of the most intense bombing. He’s from Cairo, Egypt, and has worked for the AP for 29 years. On his Facebook page he recently celebrated his daughter’s graduation from medical school. In browsing his posts, I could find nothing incendiary.
AP reporter Samya Kullab is based in Baghdad, Iraq, and also writes for the esteemed publications Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy and The London Globe and Mail as well as the BBC and NPR. In 2017, she wrote the book, “Escape from Syria,” detailing the Syrian refugee crisis. The graphic novel was shortlisted for the School Library Association’s Information Book Award.
Ravi Nessman is the director of AP’s global text division. Though he, too, has a deep background covering Mideast affairs, he lives in Georgia, is a graduate of Northwestern University in Illinois and was a Harvard University Neiman Fellow.
I know, a disappointment.
DURING MY exchange Wednesday with the woman, I said little, well aware I was not temperamentally equipped to call out her racist slurs.
Racial profiling — assuming someone is guilty of some crime because of the color of their skin, their heritage, or their funny-sounding name — is what got 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume killed last Saturday.
That is not a typo.
Wadea was the tender age of 6, a first-grader, at Central Elementary School in Plainfield, Ill.
Wadea lived with his mother on the first floor of a house. Their landlord, Joseph Czuba, and his wife lived on the second floor.
According to reports, Mr. Czuba was upset with the attacks on Israel and associated the mother and son’s Palestinian heritage with the violence. Court documents attest Czuba knocked on the family’s door that Saturday morning and began arguing with Wadea’s mother about the Israel-Hamas war.
