They Shoot Journalists, Don't They?

It seems some of the major media networks have engaged in yet another left wing, anti-Israel conspiracy by sending the Prime Minister of Israel a letter of outrage about the inability of journalists to enter the Gaza Strip for at least the past 2 weeks. The letter was penned by higher ups in AFP, BBC, NY Times, CNN, CBC, Reuters and AP - we have to give them props for making the effort, since experience has shown that criticizing Israel only intensifies Israeli intransigence. According to this story, "Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for Israel`s Defense Ministry, said journalists would be allowed in only once Gaza militants stopped shooting and said Gaza was being adequately covered by reporters already there." [italics mine] Although there have been cases of journalists caught in factional Palestinian battles in Gaza, particularly when things seriously feel apart a year and a half ago, it's more than disingenuous to put the blame for journalists' lack of security on the Palestinians. The record since 2001 definitely confirms that, as the Committee to Protect Journalists lists "military officials" as the source of fire in every case. IDF doublespeaker Dror went on to say: `Where Gaza is concerned, our image will always be bad... When journalists go in it works against us, and when they don`t go in it works against us.` Oh, poor babies, just can't win for trying, can you?

Here are some snippets from the CPJ's 2007 report on Israel and the Occupied Territories:

One of the more troubling incidents came in early July during an incursion in the eastern part of the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Israeli tank soldiers shot Imad Ghanem, a cameraman for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, and then shot him twice more in the legs after he had fallen to the ground, journalists at the scene told CPJ. Sameer al-Bouji, a cameraman for the Pal-Media news agency, filmed the incident, which was broadcast on Al-Jazeera. The footage showed Ghanem dressed in black clothes similar to those worn by Hamas gunmen. An eyewitness, who requested anonymity, told CPJ that some armed residents of the camp were in the vicinity when Ghanem was shot, but the clip indicates that they were not firing at that moment. Both of Ghanem’s legs were amputated.

An Israeli army spokesman who reviewed the footage said the incident was being investigated, but it was unclear who shot the cameraman, The New York Times reported. An Israeli military source quoted by international news organizations, including the Times and Reuters, said that Israel does not recognize cameramen working for the Hamas-affiliated channel as journalists.

On several occasions, journalists said, Israeli forces and border police intimidated, harassed, and obstructed them by firing tear gas and stun grenades. In mid-February, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas at several cameramen and photojournalists covering clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian stone-throwers near the West Bank city of Hebron, according to the AP’s Nasser Shiyoukhi and other journalists at the scene. Shiyoukhi told CPJ he was overcome by the gas and that colleagues brought him to a hospital in Hebron.

One has to take particular note of the Israeli position that Palestinians working for Palestinian media outlets are not real journalists. This is an offshoot of their belief that Palestinians are not real people, but only a kind of sub-human figment of the anti-zionists' collective conscious imagination. Gaza is the largest ghetto in the world today, nothing Israel is doing there is legal under international law and they simply don't want people to see the extent of the suffering, especially when the UN is coming down hard on them (again, with seemingly little success). Woe is us, who just can't kill these vermin fast enough! i've been getting a stream of emails about fishermen being gassed and arrested at sea, once again for the mere fact that they are Palestinian: the ultimate crime in the Jabotinsky Handbook for Unrestrained Retribution. Can't have "real journalists" reporting on that, it's certainly not the kind of thing one wants to have pop up on the president-elect's blackberry now, is it?