Agence France-Presse Collusion? The Dirty Little Secret of Palestinian Journalism - by Bassam Tawil

...The campaign against Al-Quds is in the context of the Palestinians' war against "normalization" with Israel. The goal of the campaign is out-and-out intimidation -- of any Palestinian who wishes to meet with an Israeli. As such, it is a campaign that severely damages peace prospects between Palestinians and Israelis. Such a campaign of intimidation becomes even more dangerous when it is fueled by journalists, some of whom work for major Western media organizations. The Palestinian journalists' "anti-normalization" onslaught shows that they have managed to infiltrate and influence Western news organizations, which almost always submit to the dictates of their Palestinian employees.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
13 March '17..

Palestinian journalists are up in arms. The Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip are arresting and torturing them, and imposing severe restrictions on their work and freedom of expression. But that is not what is upsetting them.

No, the journalists are angry because a Palestinian daily newspaper dared to publish a paid advertisement by the Israeli authorities. The journalists are now demanding that the newspaper, Al-Quds, apologize for running the advertisement by the Israeli Civil Administration in the West Bank.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.

Sorry, but we do not meet with Jews or Israelis

The next time U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visits Ramallah, will he actually violate U.S. law to make sure there are no Jews among his entourage, lest he upset his Palestinian hosts?

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
25 June '13..

"We will approve the meeting on condition there are no Jews."

This is what you are likely to hear these days if you request a meeting with any senior Palestinian Authority official in the West Bank. Palestinian journalists who try to arrange meetings or interviews with Palestinian Authority representatives for Western colleagues have become used to hearing such things almost on a daily basis.

Just last week, for example, a journalist who requested a meeting between Western journalists and a top Palestinian Authority official was told "to make sure there were no Jews or Israelis" among the visitors. The official's aide went on to explain: "We are sorry, but we do not meet with Jews or Israelis."

Another Palestinian journalist who tried to arrange an interview with a Palestinian Authority official for a European colleague was turned down "because the man's name indicates he is a Jew."

In yet another recent incident, a Palestinian Authority ministry instructed its guards to "prevent Jewish reporters" from attending an event in Ramallah.

It is not clear at this stage if the Palestinian Authority leadership is behind the boycott of Jews and Israelis who seek to meet with its representatives. What is clear is that Palestinian Authority officials do not hesitate to state in public that they do not want to meet with any Jew or Israeli.

The Palestinian Authority representatives assume that if you are a Jew, then you must be pro-Israel or anti-Palestinian. The only people with whom they want to meet are those who support the Palestinians and do not ask difficult questions.

Who sees control of the press as a priority in securing power?

...Eid, however, suggests a disturbing metaphor, by way of explanation. Referring to the United Nations General Assembly vote last fall on the resolution to recognize Palestinian statehood, which carried with a resounding 139 votes in favour, Eid’s contempt is palpable: “The UN doesn’t love Palestinians. It just hates Israel more.”

Vivian Bercovici..
Toronto Star..
30 April '13..




Palestinian Facebook pranksters are doing prison time for lampooning Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas online.

At the end of March, a West Bank appeal court upheld a one-year sentence for a man alleged to have defamed Abbas by posting his photo online next to that of a TV villain who had collaborated with French colonial rule.

The Times of Israel reported that the convicted man denied posting the photos. Furthermore, he claimed to have been detained without legal counsel for 20 days and interrogated for 53. Following his lost appeal, Abbas pardoned the man, a small gesture after he’d been churned in the justice system for two years.

The previous month, a 26-year-old PA resident was sentenced to a year in prison for posting a photograph of Abbas kicking a soccer ball with a silly caption: “Real Madrid’s New Striker.”

The charge against him? “Extending [his] tongue” against the king; defamation, more colloquially. “King Abbas,” it seems, invoked a Jordanian law from the early 1960s that was intended, according to David Keyes, executive director of the New York-based NGO Advancing Human Rights, to punish critics of Jordan’s monarchy when it ruled the West Bank.

Apparently, the PA has been making a habit of threatening to sue (and sometimes following through) journalists, Hamas activists and just about anyone who doesn’t agree with them and Abbas. The goal? To intimidate dissenters from expressing their views.

These and other practices were noted in the U.S. State Department annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012, released on April 21. Israel, however, was recognized for supporting “an independent press, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system [which] combined to ensure freedom of speech and of the press.”

The Palestinian Authority - Just like any other dictatorship

This latest restriction serves as a reminder that the Palestinian Authority is not much different from other dictatorships, which assign "minders" so the journalists see and hear only what the dictators want. Representatives of the international media — as well as human rights organizations and groups that claim to defend freedom of the press -- have not protested against the PA's threat to restrict journalists' work and even arrest them. One can only imagine the response had Israel issued a similar ban or threat.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
26 March '13..

It's official: the Palestinian Authority does not want foreign journalists to work in territories under its control in the West Bank unless they receive permission in advance from the Palestinian Ministry of Information. The decision was taken earlier this week by the Palestinian Ministry of Information and the Palestinian Journalist's Syndicate -- a body controlled by Fatah-affiliated journalists.

Foreign journalists who ignore the latest restriction face arrest by Palestinian Authority security forces, said Jihad Qawassmeh, member of the Palestinian Journalist's' Syndicate. He warned that any Palestinian journalist who helps international media representatives enter the Palestinian Authority-controlled territories without permission would face punitive measures. "The Palestinian security forces are entitled to arrest any person who enters the State of Palestine without permission," Qawassmeh added.

The new decision is directed primarily against Israeli journalists who cover Palestinian affairs. Recently, many Palestinian journalists complained that it was unacceptable that their Israeli colleagues were being allowed to operate freely in Palestinian territories while they did not have permission to enter Israel. They also complained that the Israeli Government Press Office was refusing to issue them press credentials.

The Palestinian journalists demanded that the Palestinian Authority impose restrictions on the work of both Israeli and international reporters. The Palestinian journalists' claim that they are not free to work in Israel and are being deprived of Israeli press cards stands in contrast to their calls for boycotting Israel.

The Palestinian Journalist's Syndicate has long been opposed to "normalization" with Israel, and bans its members from holding meetings with Israeli colleagues. Some Palestinian journalists who defied the ban were recently expelled from the syndicate. So while the Palestinian journalists are promoting a boycott of Israel, they are also demanding that the Israeli government issue them with press cards so they can enter Israel. Besides reflecting hypocrisy on the part of these Palestinian journalists, the latest restriction serves as a reminder that the Palestinian Authority is not much different from most Arab dictatorships.

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.

Khaled Abu Toameh - Palestinian Journalists Union Fights Palestinian Journalists

Where Are the Media and So-Called Human Rights Groups?

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
11 May '12..

As journalists worldwide celebrated World Free Press Day on May 3, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate in the West Bank chose to wage a campaign of intimidation against Palestinian reporters who commit the "crime" of meeting with Israeli counterparts.

The decision to punish Palestinian journalists who hold meetings with Israeli colleagues began after a series of joint seminars that were held in Norway, Germany and France. At these seminars, Israeli and Palestinian journalists discussed joint cooperation and ways of promoting freedom of expression.

The syndicate, dominated by Fatah and affiliated with the Palestinian Authority leadership in Ramallah, threatened sanctions against any Palestinian journalist who engages in "normalization" with Israel. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate functions more as a political body than a union that is supposed to defend the rights of its members.

5 Questions on Vote Rigging at Palestinian Journo Union

Honest Reporting/Backspin
11 February '10
Posted before Shabbat

The PA hijacked recent elections held by the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate to ensure key positions for Fatah cronies.

Ramallah journo Hani al-Masri told the Jerusalem Post :

About 300 “journalists” who participated in the election had nothing to do with journalism, he said. “Some of them were members of the Palestinian security forces, while most of the journalists who were registered as members of the syndicate’s generals assembly were actually employees of the Palestinian Authority or political activists,” he added.

The Maan News Agency further adds:

Another scandalous flaw blemishing the new Union is the so-called quota system which means that the union seats are divided among PLO factions in accordance with an anachronistic system dating back to the early 1980s.

Pursuant to this system, Fatah receives the lion’s share of the seats, followed by the PFLP and its former ideological sister, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), followed by a myriad of small factions, most of which have few followers and supporters on the ground.

(Read full post)

.