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CNN Live At Daybreak

Attack in Israel Included American Victims

Aired August 01, 2002 - 05:38   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The latest deadly bombing in Israel tops our international stories this morning. But what's the story behind the number of victims?

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Our senior international editor, David Clinch, joins us -- and hi there, David.

DAVID CLINCH, CNN INTERNATIONAL EDITOR: Good morning.

Yes, well, this is an interesting day for us. I mean we have another event in a sequence of events in the Middle East. But it's not just another event in a sequence of events. All of these suicide attacks or all of these terror attacks -- this was not a suicide attack -- have to be covered in two different ways at the same time by our international correspondents.

We have to look at that sequence of events -- there was an attack in Gaza which the Palestinians blamed on the Israelis, but also the Americans, because they used an F-16 to do the bombing. Today, there was an event -- or yesterday there was an event at the Hebrew University where people were killed. Those two things are connected but there's a human aspect to the story which we can't just use as another event.

We have to look at who was killed, who the victims are, what their stories are and try to understand the true effect that a story like this has on not just Israeli society, but today, sad as it is, we actually have an opportunity to see the effect an event like this has on American society. There were American victims.

We have to understand. We have to work with our national desks and bureaus to understand who these people are, where they come from, why they were in Israel, lots of, again, sad to say, opportunities to actually understand who is involved in this story and...

COSTELLO: Something else I think that people need to understand, we saw the celebrations by some Palestinians...

CLINCH: Yes.

COSTELLO: ... in Gaza City.

CLINCH: Some, not all. But, yes. And that's... COSTELLO: Right. And the guy throwing candy to the crowd, you know, in celebration of these attacks. And is it difficult for you to separate out this group of Palestinians from others?

CLINCH: Well, again, I mean we have to cover it in two different ways. There are Palestinians who do things like this. There are Palestinians who don't. We can't just assume that all Palestinians are represented by those people in Gaza. I can't even assume that everybody who was at that event supports what happened at the university yesterday.

It's a story that's easy to cover in some ways, because there are so many things that happened and so many different elements that you can bring together, but so difficult to covering a human way.

COOPER: Logistically it's also a difficult story to cover. I mean the times I've worked there I was always surprised by, you know, when you're operating in Gaza, it's a whole different group of people one uses than it is when you're operating in Jerusalem, right?

CLINCH: Absolutely. And that's one of the tasks that we have here in Atlanta is to make sure that the people who are operating -- and I've used this phrase a lot about the stories that we cover -- inside the various bubbles that they are in in Gaza or in Ramallah or in Jerusalem or wherever they are in any story for us. Our job is to make sure that they're not just in that bubble, that they're aware of everything else that's going on.

And, again, making sure that they're aware that the demand from our U.S. audience today on this particular story, for instance, is going to be different than it would be on another story. I'm not saying that we don't care when Palestinians or Israelis are killed, but we have a particular responsibility in this case to our American audience, to make sure they understand that there were American victims and to understand who they were as human beings, not just as a fact that they were killed, but why were they there, who were they and to find out the effect that it has, again, on American society.

The U.S. is involved in this now, again, whether they like it or not so.

COSTELLO: Even more so now, probably.

Thank you, David.

COOPER: Thanks a lot.

COSTELLO: We appreciate it.

CLINCH: Thank you.

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