Interview - Award-winning Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh

Charley J. Levine..
Hadassah Magazine..
September '13..

Khaled Abu Toameh, 50, an award-winning Israeli journalist and documentary filmmaker, has reported on Arab affairs for three decades. He writes for The Jerusalem Post and the New York-based Gatestone Institute, a nonpartisan, not-for-profit international policy council and think tank, where he is a senior adviser. Since 1989, he also has been a producer and consultant for NBC News. He grew up in the Arab Israeli town of Baqa al-Gharbiyye near Haifa and studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He now lives in Jerusalem.

Q. What are the challenges of working as a journalist in the West Bank and Gaza?
A. Before the Oslo peace process began, Arab journalists had almost no problem traveling throughout the West Bank and Gaza, speaking freely with Palestinians. But ever since the Palestinian Authority came to the West Bank and Gaza, the situation has become much more challenging and dangerous. The P.A. expects you to serve as an official spokesperson and avoid criticism of its leaders.

With Hamas in power in Gaza, it’s become even more dangerous for independent Arab journalists. Because of the BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] movement against Israel, journalists representing the Israeli media, like myself, face not only difficulties but threats and even physical violence when we go to Ramallah. The P.A. leadership in the West Bank promotes BDS against Israel and also fights normalization with Israel. It bans meetings between Palestinians and Israelis and condemns the Israeli media as extremely hostile, which makes it impossible to work there and endangers our lives.

Q. How does the Arab street respond to your reporting?
A. No one tells me that what I am reporting is inaccurate or untrue. I am often criticized, however, for reporting the facts. I am only reporting what many Arab journalists want to report. If I resided in Ramallah, I would not be reporting many things. There are P.A. journalists who post critical things on Facebook and risk prison. Those who ask the wrong questions at press conferences are sometimes detained or even tortured.

I live inside Israel, so my reality is sharply different. I receive more threats from pro-Palestine students and academics in the U.S. than I do from local Palestinians.

Q. What happened to the moderate Palestinian center?
A. Palestinians have been so radicalized that you will find very few Palestinians who will openly talk about making any significant compromise with Israel. No P.A. leader would dare to sign any agreement with Israel for fear of being condemned as a traitor. Israel has been delegitimized in the eyes of most Palestinians and this is the result of decades of indoctrination and incitement against Israel. This is true throughout the entire Arab world.

Ironically, this incitement intensified after the peace process began. The Palestine Liberation Organization leadership used the media, the mosques and every available podium to delegitimize and discredit Israel in the eyes of the Palestinians. By doing so, the P.L.O. has actually shot itself in the foot. P.A. leaders know that they have radicalized their people to the point where there are people who don’t want to hear about peace with Israel at all. I believe this is why [Mahmoud] Abbas will not sign any agreement with Israel. He simply doesn’t want to go down in history as a traitor.

Q. Is there anything Israel should be doing differently?
A. Israel is facing two camps in the Palestinian community. One is the radical camp that doesn’t believe in Israel’s right to exist and seeks its destruction. With that camp, there’s nothing that can be done. The second, less radical, camp is represented by some P.L.O. leaders in the West Bank who are unable to deliver [change or peace]. This is a camp that lacks grass-roots support. It has further been discredited due to its close relations with the U.S., Europeans and even Israel. So Israel is facing one camp that doesn’t want to deliver and another that cannot practically do so.

Free Speech, the Arab World and Facebook's "Accidental Mistake"

Many Palestinian journalists, and those in the Middle East, are forced to use Facebook to publish what their own media will not accept. But the problem becomes worse when Facebook itself starts removing material that bothers dictatorships and tyrants. One can only hope that the same Facebook employee who "accidentally" removed the article will make the same mistake and and close down the accounts belonging to terrorist organizations and their leaders. It is the duty of Facebook and Western societies to side with those seeking freedom, and not to be complicit in suppressing their voices.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
18 January '13..

"All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship." — George Bernard Shaw

Earlier this week, Facebook closed down this writer's account for "security reasons," arguing that he had posted an item that violates its terms of use.

Twenty-four hours later, Facebook issued a "sincere apology" and said that a member of its team had "accidentally removed something you posted on Facebook. This was a mistake."

Although Facebook did not say which "problematic" item had prompted it to take such a drastic measure, apparently it was referring to an article that had been published by Gatestone Institute: The Palestinian Authority's Inconvenient Truths.

Facebook's move came at a time when Arab dictatorships in general, and the Palestinian Authority in particular, have been cracking down on Facebook users.

During the past year alone, a number of Palestinian journalists and bloggers were arrested by Western-funded Palestinian Authority security services in the West Bank for criticizing the PA leadership on their Facebook pages.

Journalist Removed By Facebook for Posting Articles on Palestinian Corruption

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
15 January '13..

(Update: According to Lori Lowenthal Marcus of the JP: ...“Fatah couldn’t stop me, Hamas couldn’t stop me, not even Facebook will stop me from continuing my work,” is what Arab Israeli journalist Khaled abu Toameh told The Jewish Press Tuesday morning, January 15, in a lengthy interview about Facebook’s bizarre treatment of his Facebook page. In the space of less than 24 hours, abu Toameh’s page was shut down, parts of it were scrubbed, and then it was back, without a word of explanation. For everyone who breathed a sigh of relief that this journalist hasn’t been censored, who hoped it had just been a glitch – the truth is that something very wrong has happened. Several articles dealing with corruption in the Palestinian Authority and in the Jordanian intelligence were scrubbed from abu Toameh’s page while his page was hidden from the public... cont.)

Khaled Abu Toameh is an internationally respected journalist and is a regular speaker on HonestReporting’s Missions. He is probably the bravest journalist operating in the Palestinian territories today, reporting on Palestinian affairs where others are either too intimidated or in thrall to the Palestinian Authority or Hamas to expose the ills of Palestinian society and its leadership.

The Commentator reports:

Social networking website Facebook has today been accused of attempting to silence critics of the Palestinian Authority as it cracked down on the page owned by Arab-Israeli writer Khaled Abu Toameh.

Abu Toameh, the son of an Arab Israeli father and a Palestinian mother, is a former senior reporter for the Jerusalem Post. He has reported that as of yesterday, his Facebook page had been deactivated.

The Commentator has learned that following complaints from the Palestinian Authority and Jordanian security authorities about his articles dealing with corruption, Facebook had taken the steps necessary to effectively censor his work.

Marcus - The Silencing of the Middle East

Lori Lowenthal Marcus..
Z Street..
07 June '12..

The Middle East is becoming quieter. No, the swords are not turning into ploughshares, it’s not that kind of quiet. Instead, it is the sound of truth that’s slowly being silenced. And it’s happening not only because the PA grows stronger, but also because the west grows weaker.

Thirty years ago the young Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh quit working for PLO media outlets. They did not allow reporting on what Abu Toameh saw as the news people needed to know. Instead, he was told to take the words dictated by the Arab leadership, and cut and paste them into the stories they then published, but under his byline. They weren’t his words and it wasn’t the news, so he turned to western media for outlets that allowed him to write and speak about what people needed to know.

In those thirty years the PA media has not become more open. Instead, the PA leadership has become more emboldened and the western media - either because of physical or moral exhaustion - is allowing the PA’s censorship to seep into and rot away at core freedoms, both of speech and of the press.

Tobin - Palestinian Politics Jenin Style

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
10 May '12..



In today’s New York Times, new Israel correspondent Jodi Rudoren writes of how the recently deceased Palestinian governor of the city of Jenin is being viewed as a “martyr” in the fight against gangs and the symbol of the failing struggle to transform the Palestinian Authority into a viable state. Qadoura Moussa, who died of a heart attack following an assassination attempt that is interpreted as part of the battle in which control of the streets is at stake, helped create the idea that there was a “Jenin model” in which good government would replace the mafia-style corruption and violence that had heretofore characterized Palestinian life.

Moussa’s death is rightly seen as yet another blow to Fayyadism, the term that Times columnist Thomas Friedman attached to the efforts of PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to transform Palestinian society so as to allow for the rise of a rational modern state. But, as the insightful journalist Khaled Abu Toameh wrote just a day earlier on the website of the Gatestone Institute, the truth about the reality of life in Jenin has been apparent for years. The problem is, the foreign and Palestinian press was far too intimidated to report that the illusion of law and order in Jenin was always a lie.

There's more to learn about terrorism via Bin Laden's personal example than most realize

Arnold/Frimet Roth
This Ongoing War
06 May '11



http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2011/05/6-may-11-theres-more-to-learn-about.html

When the Palestinian-Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh addresses the subject of terrorism and the terrorists, readers can generally be assured of common sense insights that they will find elsewhere only rarely.

So much nonsense and double-talk about terrorism has been purveyed by journalists, analysts and politicians, that insight is about the last thing a rational consumer of news and analysis can expect to find.

Abu Toameh published an article called 'Muslim Terror Leaders Send Anyone But Their Own Family Members To Murder "Infidels"' earlier today. Here's how it starts:

Those who say they were surprised that Osama bin Laden had been leading a relatively comfortable life in his mansion in an affluent suburb in Pakistan obviously don't know anything about the leaders of Islamic terror groups. The fact that bin Laden was surrounded by women and children also should not come as a surprise to anyone -- nor should the reports that his men and he used some of the women as "human shields" during the US military raid on his compound..


In this regard, bin Laden was doing what many other Muslim terror operatives used to do in Afghanistan, Iraq and the West Bank and Gaza Strip: These operatives are good at sending anyone but their own family members to murder "infidels," "apostates" and any Arab or Muslim who dares to stand up to them. Bin Laden chose to live a good life surrounded by women, children and couriers who provided him with everything he needed. Like the rest of the terror leaders, bin Laden never sent any of his sons on jihad missions. He always made sure that his wives and sons and daughters stayed safe and happy.

Abu Toameh's general observations are especially true of the Palestinian Arab leadership, and in particular that part of which has driven the terror war against Jews and Israel for the last several generations.

Near the end of the piece he writes:

"This is the nature of the coward Muslim terror leaders; they do not hesitate to hide behind women and children and often choose to live in mansions instead of joining their men in the caves and mountains."

Please read Abu Toameh's entire article. It will take you no more than two minutes.

The people he describes here truly are cowards. So too are the analysts and commentators who, far from the danger and threat, relentlessly rip into Israelis who are conducting an existential war of self-defence against an enemy who see pizza restaurants, school yards and buses as their battlefield.

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Palestinian Authority Threats What Do they Mean?

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
26 October '10

The Palestinian Authority's daily threats are not only harmful to the future of the peace process, but are also radicalizing Palestinians and pushing many of them toward the open arms of Hamas and other extremists.

In recent weeks, Palestinian leaders and spokesmen have been issuing all kinds of threats in light of Israel's refusal to extend a moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank. In the past month alone, Palestinian officials and spokesmen made at least a dozen threats.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is once again threatening to resign if the peace talks fail. He's also been threatening to dismantle the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian negotiators Saeb Erekat and Nabil Sha'ath have been threatening that the Palestinian Authority would unilaterally declare a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.

The two, along with Abbas's chief spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, are also threatening that the Palestinians would seek the United Nations and US recognition of the Palestinian state. Other Palestinian representatives, such as former Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, who is one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, has, for his part, gone on the record to threaten that the Palestinians would once again resort to violence against Israel.

(Read full article)

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'No bad Palestinians, please. We're journalists'

ER
CAMERA/Snapshots
07 October '10
Posted before Shabbat



National Review, in its September 20 edition, has this brief:

“Khaled Abu Toameh is an invaluable Palestinian journalist who writes primarily for the Jerusalem Post .... One of his career-long themes is, ‘The Western media have no interest in reporting what Arab governments to do Arab citizens. They are particularly uninterested in reporting what the Palestinian Authority does to Palestinian citizens. They are interested only in perceived Israeli oppression of Palestinians.”

“His latest example is the arrest of seven university lecturers on the West Bank — who, according to their own accounts, were promptly tortured. The Palestinian Authority warned Palestinian journalists not to report about this case.

(Read full post)

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Why Mahmoud Abbas Cannot Make Peace

Michael J. Totten
Contentions/Commentary
21 September '10

Once in a while, I “meet” someone online, on blogs and in comment sections, who thinks the current round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks might end the conflict, but I don’t think I know anyone in person who lives in the Middle East who believes this. Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh summed up the consensus view a few days ago. “The peace process is going nowhere,” he wrote, “and everyone is just pretending.”

Nations make peace with their enemies, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — also known as Abu Mazen — is not really Israel’s enemy. He’s hardly a friend or an ally, but the Israeli army and Abbas’s security forces have a better and more professional working relationship with each other right now than they ever have. Even Israel’s hard-line foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, doesn’t think of Abbas as the leader of the enemy camp. “I repeat,” he said a few weeks ago, “Abu Mazen will not fight us.”

Israel’s enemy is the Resistance Bloc consisting of Syria, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah. No one from that bloc is participating in peace talks. Even if Abbas signed a treaty with Israel — a most unlikely event while Hamas holds a gun to his head and even he refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state — it would only mean the war between Israel and Abbas was over. But that war is effectively, though perhaps just temporarily, over already. Not much would actually change. The Arab-Israeli conflict would rage on, as would the Islamist-Israeli conflict. Not even the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would end if Abbas signed a treaty. He couldn’t enforce it.

(Read full post)

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Who cares about Hamas's 'reign of terror'?

Stephanie Gutmann
telegraph.co.uk
14 June '10

As President Obama gets ready to send an additional 400 million dollars in aid to “ordinary Palestinians” (most of which will probably end up with a small inner circle of Hamas weapons enthusiasts) it’s worth remembering who is causing the most misery to the people of Gaza.

The Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh has written a blistering essay for the Hudson New York blog headlined, “What About Hamas’s Siege of Gaza?“. He reminds us that while the world bayed about Israel’s naval blockade, “Hamas [has continued] its reign of terror on the local population in general and its critics in particular.”

What is that reign like? Well, here are some snapshots of life in Gaza under Hamas: on June 6, “A senior United Nations official… expressed deep concern at reports that Hamas has broken into the offices of [NGOs] in the Gaza Strip… confiscated materials and equipment, and forced the offices to shut down.”

In late May, masked gunmen raided a UN children’s camp, tearing down tents and burning storage buildings. It’s not known who was behind those masks but earlier what the Irish Times called “a previously unknown militant group, The Free of the Homeland, issued a statement criticising [the UN] for, ‘teaching schoolgirls fitness, dancing and immorality.’” Hamas often uses proxies and has been attempting to impose strict sharia law. In April, as the same Irish Times article points out, Hamas sent “police to break up the Gaza Strip’s first major hip-hop concert [because, it said,] organisers failed to get a permit.”

Toameh was born in the West Bank city of Tulkarm 45 years ago.

(Read full article)

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The Palestinians: The Real Traitors

Khaled Abu Toameh
Hudson New York
25 May '10

The former PLO "ambassador" to Australia, Ali Kazak, believes that an Arab journalist who writes about financial corruption and theft in the Palestinian Authority is a "traitor" who should be murdered the same way as collaborators were killed by the French Resistance.

Related article:Former PLO Ambassador Calls Arab Journalist 'Traitor'

Kazak told the newspaper, The Australian: "Khaled Abu Toameh is a traitor. Traitors were also murdered by the French Resistance, in Europe; this happens everywhere." Asked why he calls the journalist a traitor, the former PLO representative, who lives in Australia, explained: "Palestinians are the victims. He shouldn't write about them, he should write about the crimes of the Israelis."

Kazak's threat does not come as a surprise to those who are familiar with the methods used by Arab dictatorships to silence anyone who dares to demand reforms and transparency. The threat reminds journalists like me how lucky we are that we live in Israel and not under the jurisdiction of the PLO or Hamas.

We are also fortunate that Kazak and his radical supporters are sitting far away in Australia and not in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where they would be lining up journalists and critics against the wall and shooting them like the "traitors who were murdered by the French Resistance."

(Read full article)

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Former PLO Ambassador Calls Arab Journalist 'Traitor'

Abu Toameh: Accused of being a 'traitor' for

reporting on Palestinian corruption and violence

Tamar Sternthal
CAMERA/Snapshot
17 May '10

The Australian reports that Ali Kazak, a former PLO Ambassador to Australia, has labeled Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh a "traitor" for reporting on Palestinian corruption and violence::

Ali Kazak, a former ambassador for the Palestine Liberation Organisation, circulated an email this week accusing Abu Toameh of being an "Israeli propagandist" on the "Israeli payroll" and warning people not to be misled by him.

Kazak told The Australian: "Khaled Abu Toameh is a traitor." These are dangerous words in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Kazak admits that many Palestinians are murdered in the West Bank and Gaza for being traitors.

He says he doesn't agree with it but: "Traitors were also murdered by the French Resistance, in Europe; this happens everywhere." . . .

(Read full post)

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Journalist says only truth will set Palestine free

Rebecca Weisser
The Australian
15 May '10

But, this year, visiting fresh from the streets of Gaza, Ramallah and Jerusalem is Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab Muslim journalist, who declares: "I'd rather be a second-class citizen in Israel than a first-class citizen in any Arab country."

And some in the diaspora are not happy about his visit. Ali Kazak, a former ambassador for the Palestine Liberation Organisation, circulated an email this week accusing Abu Toameh of being an "Israeli propagandist" on the "Israeli payroll" and warning people not to be misled by him.

Kazak told The Australian: "Khaled Abu Toameh is a traitor." These are dangerous words in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Kazak admits that many Palestinians are murdered in the West Bank and Gaza for being traitors.

He says he doesn't agree with it but: "Traitors were also murdered by the French Resistance, in Europe; this happens everywhere."

Asked why he calls Abu Toameh a traitor, Kazak says: "Palestinians are the victims. He shouldn't write about them, he should write about the crimes of the Israelis."

Kazak admits there is corruption and violence in the West Bank and Gaza. "Of course, Palestinian society isn't perfect. I myself have criticised it," he says. But Kazak objects to Abu Toameh writing about it.

(Read full article)

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The Palestinians Already Have Two States: The Truth According to Khaled Abu Toameh

The Real War is Palestinian vs. Palestinian


Phyllis Chesler
Pajamasmedia.com
15 April '10

The world has gone mad—or at least, the American leadership has now formally joined the Islamist and international madness about “peace in the Middle East.”

President Obama has just claimed that American “vital national security” is linked to finding—or even imposing—peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. South Africa’s revered Archbishop Emeritus, Desmond Tutu, has just praised the recent Berkeley student vote (which the university’s president later vetoed) to divest university money from companies that “profit from the injustice of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land in violation of Palestinian human rights.” Tutu writes that what he witnessed in occupied Palestinian territory reminds him of the conditions he “experienced in South Africa under the racist system of apartheid.”

Tutu—this is really too much! Who exactly gave you a tour of the territories? The usual diabolically skilled propagandists? Did you, perchance, bother to visit Israel? If not, why not?

I strongly recommend that both President Obama and Archbishop Tutu consult with Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab Muslim/Palestinian journalist whom I was privileged to hear speak the other night in Manhattan. Abu Toameh lives in Jerusalem and he really “gets it.” He is a charming, urbane man, who speaks English perfectly; I assume he speaks Arabic and Hebrew just as well.

(Read full article)

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Clip and Save: Senior Fatah Official: IDF deployment prevents us from exercising our right to launch armed attacks against Israel

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
05 April '10

[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:

Hat's off to Khaled Abu Toameh for providing the readers of The Jerusalem Post with what is probably the most stunning and significant report relating to the Palestinians this year.

Too bad the folks at the Post who wrote the headline that goes with the story seemed to miss the point.

Here we have none other than "moderate" senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath explaining that the "moderate" Palestinian Authority's "moderate" security forces have every right to launch an attack today against Israel (using, among other things, their American weapons) but that they can't because the deployment of IDF makes this unworkable.

Yes.

That's what he says.

Follow his words: "... he stressed that this does not mean that the Palestinians don't have the right to launch an armed intifada "against an armed occupation and an armed settlement on Palestinian lands...obviously, we have the right"

What's stopping the "moderate" PA from trying to slaughter Israelis?

Because it is not a nice thing to do to murder Israelis?

No.

Its because "According to Shaath, the option of an armed intifada under the current circumstances, where Israel "fully occupies the West Bank and is besieging the Gaza Strip, is impossible."

So we have some interesting policy question:

#1. President Obama is pushing PM Netanyahu to pull back the IDF from various locations in the West Bank as a gesture to the same "moderate" PA that is complaining that it would like to launch armed attacks against Israel but can't because the deployment of IDF forces makes it impossible.

#2. Would these redeployments make the "armed intifada" possible?]

==========================================================

Fatah: We want a peaceful intifada
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH The Jerusalem Post
02/04/2010 02:32
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=172299

The new "popular intifada" that Fatah is planning in the West Bank won't be an armed one, Nabil Shaath, a senior Fatah official, said on Thursday.

Shaath's clarification came a day after he and some of his colleagues in Fatah called on Palestinians to escalate the "popular resistance" in protest against the settlements, the West Bank security barrier and the decision to build new homes in east Jerusalem.

"Apparently the Palestinian leaderships in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are in control of the situation to make sure that the intifada is not transformed into an armed confrontation," Shaath explained. "This was not the case during the second intifada."

(Read full article)
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BBC and New York Times Omit Coverage of Palestinian Corruption Story

Steve Stotsky
CAMERA Media Analysis
23 February '10

The Jerusalem Post has published a series of articles relaying accusations by the former head of the Palestinian Authority’s anti-corruption department, Fahmi Shabaneh, that close associates of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas engaged in embezzlement, land theft and fraud. According to Post correspondent Khalid Abu Toameh, Shabaneh possesses numerous documents exposing the theft of government money, much of which comes from foreign donations.

These revelations are only part of the story. An equally troubling aspect of this scandal is the accusation by Shabaneh that he offered his information to foreign journalists and they refused it for fear of offending the Palestinian government. According to the Jerusalem Post story on Feb. 11, 2010, Shabaneh claims he

decided to talk to the Post after Palestinian, Arab and foreign media organizations refused to interview him out of fear of being "punished" by the PA. Shabaneh explained further, "Al-Jazeera and other Arab media outlets told me that they are afraid to publish anything that angers the Palestinian Authority."

Unfortunately, the Arab media is not free to publish what they would like, but the same excuse does not apply to Western journalists. The Jerusalem Post report continues,

Shabaneh said that even some foreign journalists based in the country had refused to publish his statements, citing various pretexts, including fear of retribution by the PA.

"Some of the foreign journalists don’t want to hear negative things about Fatah and Abbas," he said. "That’s why they didn’t want to cooperate with me and why I decided to go to the Post."

Even after the story broke on Jan. 29, 2010, there was nearly total silence about Shabaneh’s accusations. A search of major publications indicates the National Post of Canada was the only western print media to cover the story for nearly two weeks after the Jerusalem Post published the revelations.

(Read full article)
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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.

(Read full article)
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More Proof That "Pro-Palestinians" Aren't Really Pro-Palestinian

Proud Zionist
04 February '10
Posted before Shabbat

How does supporting Hamas help the Palestinians? Why does it appear to be only Zionists who try to expose Hamas' corruption, thereby benefitting the moderate Palestinians who don't want to be drawn into Hamas' war games?

In an op-ed in November, Khaled Abu Toameh wrote:

"If anyone is entitled to be called 'pro-Palestinian,' it is those who are publicly campaigning against financial corruption and abuse of human rights by Fatah and Hamas. Those who are trying to change the system from within belong to the real 'pro-Palestinian' camp.
These are the brave people who are standing up to both Fatah and Hamas and calling on them to stop killing each other and start doing something that would improve the living conditions of their constituents...
...The 'pro-Palestinian' activists in the West clearly do not care about reforms and good government in the Palestinian territories. As far as these activists are concerned, delegitimizing Israel and inciting against 'Zionists' are much more important that pushing for an end to financial corruption and violence in Palestinian society."

An incident that recently occurred at Toronto's York University is exactly the problem Toameh is citing.

(Read full post)
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Mandela He Ain't

Media Backspin/Honest Reporting
26 November 09

It finally occured to me why the latest media spin -- that Marwan Barghouti is the Palestinian Nelson Mandela -- rings hollow. It's because nobody asked the Palestinians.

Jerusalem Post columnist Khaled Abu Toameh takes a critial look at the way Barghouti's regarded:

Unlike many in the Western media, Palestinian journalists and writers have rarely - if ever - referred to Barghouti as a "charismatic" leader or as the "Palestinian Nelson Mandela." Cynics and conspiracy theorists in the Palestinian territories go further by arguing that Barghouti is actually part of a US-Israeli scheme aimed at turning him into the next leader of the Palestinians. To back up their argument, they ask simple questions such as: Since when does Israel allow a security prisoner to give media interviews or hold meetings with Israeli, Palestinian, European and American officials in his prison cell?

Undoubtedly, Barghouti is respected by many Palestinians. Yet, this is not because he's the Palestinian Nelson Mandela or Salah Eddin - the Muslim warrior who drove the Crusaders out of Jerusalem - but because he's sitting in Israeli jail.

If the Palestinians themselves don't view Barghouti as a Mandela, why does the MSM keep spinning it that way? The most recent example of this comes from Irish Timescorrespondent Michael Jansen, who writes:

He is seen by many Palestinians as their Nelson Mandela.

Don't tell me how Barghouti's perceived, show me how Barghouti's perceived. Get a fresh man-on-the-street quote from one of the "many Palestinians."

There's always the possibility of judging Barghouti in his own words, since he's Israel'smost-interviewed security prisoner these days. Talking to Corriere Della Sera, he left open the option of violence.

Of course, that doesn't jive with the Western media's rosy perception of Barghouti . . .

Read Toameh's full column.

Related reading: Barghouti Is No Mandela

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