PLO Intimidation of the Media Over Temple Mount Tours

...Why is the PLO so concerned about organized tours to the Temple Mount that aren’t under its own close control? Could it be the possibility that visitors may be given a historically accurate overview that includes irrefutable Jewish links to the site such as the existence of the First and Second Temples? Or perhaps it could be the potentially negative coverage when journalists see what’s actually going on in the Temple Mount compound as experienced by a group of visiting US Congressmen in August 2015?

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
03 September '15..








It’s hardly a surprise to find that the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) doesn’t encourage a free press. But the PLO’s latest press release demonstrates a disturbingly blatant attempt to intimidate the media with what it has called an “Advisory to Journalists Visiting the Al-Aqsa Compound“:

It has been brought to the attention of the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department that there is an ongoing attempt by Israeli governmental and non-governmental organizations to organize visits to the sacred Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, with a focus on foreign media. We hereby urge the foreign press not to accept or participate in tours that are part of Israel’s campaign to change the historical narrative of Occupied East Jerusalem, and particularly its religious sites.

In previous media advisories, the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department issued an advisory concerning the use of the inaccurate term “Temple Mount” to refer to Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound in Jerusalem. The advisory urged “All international media representatives to adhere to international law and correct any other existing terminology used. The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is not a disputed territory and all other terms, therefore, are null and void”.

By participating in these tours, foreign media is legitimizing and encouraging the daily violations committed by Israeli Occupation Forces against Palestinians, including incitement, hate speech, the denial of freedom of worship at Muslim and Christian holy sites, as well as denial of the presence, identity, and traditions of Palestinian Muslims and Christians in the occupied Palestinian capital.

Tweet from PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Dept.

Why is the PLO so concerned about organized tours to the Temple Mount that aren’t under its own close control?

Could it be the possibility that visitors may be given a historically accurate overview that includes irrefutable Jewish links to the site such as the existence of the First and Second Temples?

Or perhaps it could be the potentially negative coverage when journalists see what’s actually going on in the Temple Mount compound as experienced by a group of visiting US Congressmen in August 2015?

Ben Wedeman trying to undermine Israel on its Aid to Gaza: But even he has to admit…

Richard Landes
Augean Stables
14 January '10

Here’s Ben Wedeman in the second week of the war commenting on Israel’s response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, by supplying Gazans with aid.

This is a particular gem of MSNM moral and intellectual confusion since his overall thrust is that Israel’s aid is a) just PR for show, b) pretty pathetic given that “ironically, their actually bombing the place,” and c) that no one’s impressed in Gaza since Israel’s to blame for the blockade in the first place. In the process of dismissing Israel’s effort, he makes an error which forces him to correct himself in mid-stream, which then leads him in another direction. The result: a revealing piece of euphemistic nonsense well worth savoring.



Well Israel has allowed a steady number of trucks coming with humanitarian goods uh into Gaza. This rather ironically as they’re actually bombing the place they’re sending food in as well. My understanding is 66 trucks went in today, so they do want to be at least seen as, as uh caring or providing or allowing others to provide humanitarian relief to the civilian population. Uh, but that sort of thing doesn’t necessarily go down very well, because it’s only Israel that controls the crossings, uh, into Gaza, with the exception of the one in Egypt and uh so, therefore if Israel were to cut off the supply altogether, uh, they would depend on Egypt and that’s not a good, uh, place to depend on.

(Read full article)
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Covering the Disturbances on the Temple Mount: Insights into the Intimidation of Journalists

Augean Stables
Richard Landes
09 November 09

The following is an account written up by an Israeli journalist who feared for his life while covering the disturbances. S/he wants to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

The following occurred on October 9, 2009, after a week of heightened tension in east Jerusalem and the Old City….

A group of reporters – myself included – had been covering a potential flashpoint in the Wadi Joz neighborhood of east Jerusalem, just opposite the Old City, on Friday morning, as hundreds of Muslim worshippers participated in a prayer session at the entrance to the neighborhood, meant to protest “Israeli aggressions” on the Temple Mount .

All ages of men from the neighborhood had come out into the street, and approached a police road block, which was meant to stop younger residents of the area from flocking to the Temple Mount for noon prayers, which were expected to be tense. Nonetheless, tension made its way to Wadi Joz as well, as scores of police in riot gear faced the the massive gathering of worshippers, who in turn listened to a fiery speech from their imam, as he spoke through a bullhorn.

But nothing happened. The prayers concluded, and worshippers loitered in the street momentarily before heading home. The tension in Wadi Joz eased.

Around the same time, my police beeper went off, notifying reporters that a number of young men in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood, next to the Mt. of Olives Cemetery, were throwing rocks at police officers and setting fire to piles of debris. A friend and I hopped into a cab and rushed up the hill from Wadi Joz (around the walls of the Old CIty) to Ras al-Amud, hoping to catch the story.

Upon arrival, the smell of burning trash was thick in the air, and a large Border Police presence was visible. But the main square of the neighborhood, which includes the local mosque, a few small grocery stores and vegetable stands, was quiet. A few people milled around, but, as we soon found out, the “action”, as it were, was down in the alleyways of the neighborhood.

So we made the descent, and almost immediately, saw a group of some six officers behind riot shields, being slammed with salvos of rocks. A group of young men, “shababs” as they’re called colloquially, were seen in the distance, their faces wrapped in t-shirts and keffiyehs, hurling the stones and other objects at the officers.

Now, for a reporter, this is certainly a story, and one in which every development can be used for “color” or extra detail in an article. And nothing beats being there, seeing it for yourself, and then relying on your own eyes and testimony to paint the re-paint the picture. So I ventured farther in, at first behind the police, but in the chaos that ensued, I soon found myself in the crossfire - between the officers and the rock-throwers. While I am not required to take pictures, I do bring a camera with me, and I found a “safe” place between two cars, and began to snap some shots.

The shababs soon noticed me, and while other press were in the area, I could tell that a few of them had begun looking at me strangely. Suddenly, one of them ran up to me, his face shrouded in a t-shirt, and he grabbed me by the straps of my backpack. “You’re an undercover cop!” he screamed in Arabic, a rock in his right hand as he grabbed onto me with his left.

“No, I’m a journalist!” I answered back, caught off guard at by the sudden jolt.

“No you’re not- you’re an undercover cop!” he screamed back. “Prove to me that you’re not an undercover cop!”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my government-issued press card, thinking at the same moment that he would see the name of my publication, realize that it was an Israeli one, and my troubles would only grow. But as he was scanning the card, another journalist, an Arab photographer, approached the both of us, and told the young man in Arabic that I was in fact a journalist.

“Enough, let him go,” he told him. And the young man did as he said.

But as the shababs made their way past me - onward towards the officers - another Arab photographer, from an Arab news outlet, told me, “You should get out of here.”

I didn’t heed his advice – in truth, I found it insulting – but was more careful from that point on. At a later point during the day, another young shabab, his face also wrapped in a t-shirt, yelled at me from a balcony - “Are you a journalist or an undercover cop?”

(Continue reading...)

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Freedom of the Press in Israel: The NGO Inversion

Richard Landes
Augean Stables
July 09

Discussion of Adi Schwartz: “How did Israel Stop being a Free Country?”
Carlo Strenger, “The Self-Righteous Left’s Simplistic World”

There is a direct link between over-coming the imperatives of honor-shame cultures and freedom of the press. In a culture where it is not only expected, legitimate, even required to shed someone’s blood for the sake of one’s honor, it is incumbent on people in power to shed the blood of any commoner who has the nerve to publicly criticize him (or her). In such cultures, public criticism constitutes an assault on the authority, indeed, the very person, of the one criticized. Not to respond will clearly signal weakness, impotence, or lack of will to power, and hence bring on the jackals.

As James Scott points out repeatedly in Domination and the Arts of Resistance, the vast majority of the time, protests are either private or, if public, anonymous, lest there be necessary retaliation. Scott calls them “private transcripts” which are often diametrically opposed to the deferential public transcripts these same powerful figures demand. “When the great lord passes, the wise peasant bows low and silently farts.” Silently. Not on the pages of Ha-aretz, translated into English and pumped around the world via internet.

Of course, everyone feels the desire for honor and the fear of shame (even Gates and Crowley and Obama). Even Western countries have private transcripts, and no press is free; no one can say whatever they want without repercussion. Access journalism will always play a role in pressuring journalists to report what the informant wants. The key, however, is the tripswitch to violence: how rapidly do those whose face has been blackened by public criticism take out hits on imprudent journalists? After all, no one would be stupid enough to think that he can say whatever he wants — even if it’s all true — and not have people retaliate, at least by shunning them. What kind of reporting would we have if it did not take courage to criticize people?

Well, we’d get something resembling the coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, not only in its grotesque daily disinformation, it’s stunning expressions of entitlement to a free ride by critics, and its stunning data manipulation that ranks the free-est press in the world as “potentially free.”

I have written extensively about the remarkable, and now more than occasionally pathological, tendency of Jews and Israelis to be self-critical. I will repeat my claim: no national culture is as self-critical as Israel; no country’s own citizens are as pervasively critical in theMainstream News Media as the Israeli press; and no country tolerates criticism from abroad more than Israel. Ha-aretz may be the New York Times of Israel in terms of its status and its (often justified) intellectual pretensions, but when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict it has writers that would only find publication in the USA on the pages of the Nation, or Counterpunch, or the Guardian. And all this occurs under wartime conditions, when even the nations most dedicated to a free press, curtail those freedoms sharply.

And yet, an NGO that ranks press freedom around the world hasrecently ranked Israel below the cut-off point as a “free press” and, therefore, a nation with a “partially free press.” The contrast between my “seat of the pants,” honor-shame analysis and this NGO’s carefully callibrated and allegedly rigorous methodology suggests a problem.

Adi Schwartz, now freelance journalist, formerly a senior editor at Ha-aretz, the most virulently self-critical of Israeli newspapers, noticed the bizarrity of it all.

That was odd: if anything, the Israeli press might be blamed for over-aggressiveness, lack of respect for privacy matters and tendency towards sensationalism. Maybe much more so than many other Western media, the Israeli press is robust and boisterous, and far from not being free.

So he inquired how such the Freedom House arrived at such a remarkable conclusion. What he found was an appropriately bizarre, unthinking application of the “methodology” to the anomalous Israeli case. The result, a perfect black heart, a stunning mistake that undermines the whole paradigm that could not only produce this ranking, but not sound anyone’s alarms. As Schwartz puts it as a byline:

Here’s a story about how un-professional a pro-democracy organization becomes when dealing with the State of Israel.”

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