The Palestinian Authority massive intimidation of journalists

national | miscellaneous | news report

Monday October 07, 2002 11:50

by Omar

OmarSarid at yahoo dot com

The Palestinian Authority massive intimidation of journalists

http://palestinefacts.org/pf_faq_palestine_palestinian_press.php

www.palestinefacts.com

The Palestinian Authority (PA) -- in fact, all Arab regimes -- are undemocratic and bear no sense of responsibility to protect freedom of the press. Censorship is routine.

The largest Palestinian newspaper is the East Jerusalem Al-Quds. Unfortunately, its editor can be jailed for publishing anything that Yasser Arafat considers unfavorable to him. In the classic style of dictatorships, in the first two years after the Palestinian Authority took over Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza in 1994, security forces made more than thirty arrests of journalists and editors of all political leanings, with detentions lasting from several hours to a few weeks. Reporters Sans Frontiers, a watchdog group based in Paris, released a report at the end of 1995 deploring the Palestinian Authority's policy of suspending newspapers and employing threats and violence against journalists. It also criticized the press law issued in 1995, which prohibits publication of everything from security secrets to immoral or blasphemous material.

In the electronic media, the Voice of Palestine radio station has been primarily used for anti-Semitic, anti-Israel incitement while the TV station mostly does the same or covers Yasser Arafat's public appearances.

Since the Palestinian Authority does not directly control the Western media, they have resorted to physical intimidation to skew the coverage their way. Through both official policy and covert methods, the Palestinian Authority has kidnapped the truth. The reference article Palestinian Intimidation of Journalists lists these incidents and more:

British photographer Mark Seager told how he was punched in the face by a Palestinian and had his camera smashed to the floor when he tried to photograph Palestinians engaged in violent activities.

Aguirre Bertrand of France's TF1 says that Palestinian police took a videotape of from his crew at gunpoint.

Chicago Tribune reporter Hugh Dellios was severely beaten by Palestinians in Jerusalem's Old City while covering Palestinian riots.

Canadian Broadcasting Company foreign correspondent Neil Macdonald was threatened by a group of Arab rioters in Nablus.

In a now-famous incident, the barbaric lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in October 2000, PA operatives did their best to confiscate and destroy tape of the grisly event. According to firsthand reports, a Polish television crew was surrounded by Palestinian security forces, beaten and relieved of their film of the lynching. A British photographer, Mark Seager wrote in London's Sunday Telegraph Oct. 22:

I was composing the picture when I was punched in the face by a Palestinian. Another Palestinian pointed right at me, shouting 'no picture, no pictures,' while another guy hit me in the face and said, 'Give me your film.' One guy just pulled the camera from me and smashed it to the floor.
But most of the TV cameramen were Palestinians. Given PA intimidation of Palestinian journalists, it's not surprising that almost all of them, except for one working for the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera and another cameraman for the independent Italian station, RTI, meekly handed over their film. Italian TV's Ricardo Christiano was forced to congratulate and bless the Palestinian Authority, and then apologize for the Italian who did the filming. Israel Defense Forces used the images to target and arrest the perpetrators, infuriating the Palestinians who went into a frenzy of media intimidation as a result. Officially, the Palestinians deny that any tape was seized.

Non-partisan sources, such as the US State Department, Amnesty International, Freedom House, and even Palestinian rights groups report that the Palestinian Authority routinely harasses, arrests, beats and tortures journalists who print or report items critical of the PA or Arafat.

Palestinian police closed down Hebron's Nawras TV for discussing issues involved in the Palestinian teachers' strike, and the Palestinian Authority's General Intelligence called Khalid Amayreh in for interrogation about the content his Hebron newspaper, Akhbar al-Khalil. When Mr. Amayreh cited press freedom guarantees and questioned the legality of this interrogation, they laughed: "Where do you think you are, Switzerland?"

Such heavy-handed treatment fostered self-censorship throughout the Palestinian media. All the major dailies enjoy cozy relations with the PA, and the mainstream press routinely avoids coverage of sensitive issues such as PA corruption and mismanagement, human-rights abuses by security forces, or any reporting that might cast Arafat in a negative light.

Sources and additional reading on this topic:

Palestinian Intimidation of the Press
http://honestreporting.com/followup/background_press.asp

Journalists describe constant Palestinian intimidation
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/intimidation.html

Palestinian Intimidation of Journalists http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/middleeast/Palestinian_Intimidation_of_Journalists.asp