Fatahgate Fallout: Where are the Media? "Editors Are Not Interested Unless It Has an Anti-Israeli Angle"

Nina Rosenwald
Hudson New York
17 February '10

Jerusalem. The new corruption scandal, first exposed by Khaled Abu Toameh, has rocked the Palestinian Authority and left its leaders in a state of disarray -- But where are the media?

The revelations of Fahmi Shabaneh, the former senior intelligence officer of the Palestinian Authority's Anti-Corruption Department for the past four years, first appeared as a banner headline in the Jerusalem Post on January 29th ("Corruption will let Hamas take W. Bank"), five days before Israel’s Channel 10 TV picked up the story. The station, however, failed to note that its “exclusive scoop” had already been published by Abu Toameh (who also writes for Hudson New York.)

Shabaneh, who lives in East Jersualem, Israel, said he decided to break the story to Abu Toameh after most of the Arab and Western journalists, including those at Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, refused to listen to him. Shabaneh said the journalists cited various reasons, including fear of retribution from the Palestinian Authority; a lack of desire to publish anything that would reflect negatively on the Palestinians; fear of "losing access," and, “Editors are not interested in a story unless it has an anti-Israeli angle.”

Shabaneh presented a written letter, which he had sent to the Al Jazeera bureau in Ramallah: it included an offer to expose cases of corruption among the high echelons of the Palestinian Authority.

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