Israel’s abuse of journalists

09Jul08

Last week Mohammed Omer, a Palestinian journalist living in the Gaza Strip, was tortured by Shin Bet officials as he attempted to return home. He had left Gaza to collect the Martha Gellhorn prize for Journalism in London for his insightful and humane reporting on the effects of the Israeli siege on the impoverished territory. His citation read:

“Every day, he reports from a war zone, where he is also a prisoner. His homeland, Gaza, is surrounded, starved, attacked, forgotten. He is a profoundly humane witness to one of the great injustices of our time. He is the voice of the voiceless.”

It was only through the strenuous efforts of the Dutch embassy that Omer was permitted to leave Gaza to collect his award in the first place. Upon his return, not even the presence of Dutch officials was sufficient to protect him from abuse by Israeli officers outraged at a Palestinian daring to speak out against his masters. After being forced to strip naked at gun-point, Omer was tortured such that several of his ribs were broken and he suffered a complete nervous breakdown. Israel claims that he “lost his balance and fell”.

If you’re a professional apologist for Israel, the incident described above must be terribly inconvenient. How to justify such a clear abuse of human rights? Step forward Lorna Fitzsimons, former Labour MP (she was apparently referred to as a “Blair Babe“) and current CEO of the ‘Britain-Israel Communications and Research Centre‘, an anaemic imitation of AIPAC for the UK. Responding to an excellent article in the Guardian by John Pilger denouncing Israel’s behaviour, she whined:

‘Rather than the picture of a country John Pilger wants to paint (From triumph to torture, July 2), Reporters Sans Frontières [RSF] has rated Israel higher in terms of press freedom than countries such as the US and India. As for journalist safety, there has been one accidental death of a journalist caused by the IDF over the past four years, compared to 151 deaths in Iraq, 17 in Mexico and 13 in Pakistan.’

In fact, as David Wearing has pointed out, RSF’s latest annual report (.pdf) is fully consistent with Pilger’s article, condemning as it does Israel’s ‘violence against media workers in the occupied Palestinian Territories’ and noting that ‘[s]ixteen journalists were injured when troops fired real or rubber bullets or percussion or teargas grenades during 2007′. An RSF press release published on July 1 in response to Israel’s torture of Omer similarly ‘condemned abusive behaviour by Israeli security agents towards Palestinian journalists’. It noted further that RSF,

‘had recorded five incidents of wrongful arrest in the past ten days. One journalist is still being held, while another [Omer] needed hospital treatment after being subjected to brutality and humiliation at an Israeli checkpoint by members of Shin Bet (Israeli internal security service)…

“We urge the Israeli authorities to accept their responsibility for this abuse, because this type of harassment is never punished“‘. [my emph.]

In an attempt to dismiss Omer’s case as a meaningless aberration, Fitzsimons makes two assertions. First, she claims that RSF rates Israel ‘higher in terms of press freedom’ than the U.S. and India. Turning to RSF’s latest Press Freedom Index, we find that while ‘Israel (Israeli territory)’ is ranked at 44, above both the U.S. (rank 48 ) and India (rank 120), ‘Israel (extra-territorial)’, which refers to Israel’s behaviour in the Occupied Territories, ranks a lowly 103. It is true that this is above the ‘United States of America (extra-territorial)’, ranked 111, but then behaving slightly better than this is hardly a great achievement.

Second, Fitzsimons claims that ‘there has been one accidental death of a journalist caused by the IDF over the past four years’. Note that she ends her timeline after “four years” specifically to avoid having to mention James Miller, the British journalist who was ‘murdered‘ by an Israeli soldier in 2003 and whose killer, in keeping with the culture of impunity described by RSF above, has never been brought to justice. In fact, as McClatchy’s Jerusalem correspondent points out,

‘[s]ince 2001, nine journalists have been killed covering this conflict. All of them were killed by the Israeli military.’

Fitzsimons’s assertion of ‘one accidental death of a journalist caused by the IDF’ within the past four years is highly misleading – even if it were true, that the IDF goes around torturing and injuring journalists instead of outright killing them is hardly much of an improvement. To give one example, last July a Palestinian cameraman was shot three times in the legs, which subsequently had to be amputated. Following the incident RSF condemned the Israeli military’s ‘repeated attacks on media and journalists‘ as ‘unacceptable… violations of international humanitarian law.’ According to the International Press Institute,

‘[t]he Israeli army poses a serious threat to the safety of journalists working in the Palestine Authority (PA), and has been responsible for violent attacks on journalists and preventing the free flow of news and information in the PA.’

In any case, the claim is not merely misleading but factually false. A quick Google search reveals that Israeli forces have killed more than one journalist in the previous four years – for example, during the 2006 Lebanon war Layal Najib, a freelance photographer for a Lebanese magazine and AFP, was killed by an Israeli missile (a TV technician, classed as a ‘media assistant’ by RSF, was killed the day before – that more weren’t killed was a miracle given that Israel deliberately targeted media workers and infrastructure), while earlier this year Fadel Shana, a 23 year-old Reuters cameraman, died after being shelled by an Israeli tank.

It is the latter killing that Fitzsimons is presumably referring to as an ‘accidental death’. ‘Accidental’? Here’s what the Foreign Press Association had to say:

‘Video footage shot by Fadal himself shows that he was hit by a tank shell … At the time, Fadal was not in an area where any fighters were present. He and his vehicle had clear markings indicating he was a member of the press. He was at least one and a half kilometers [about a mile] from the tank from which the shell that killed him was fired. A full accounting of this occurrence from the IDF is necessary and urgent.’

Here’s Human Rights Watch:

‘Human Rights Watch’s investigations at the site found evidence suggesting that an Israeli tank crew fired recklessly or deliberately at the journalist’s team. “Israeli soldiers did not make sure they were aiming at a military target before firing, and there is evidence suggesting they actually targeted the journalists,” said Joe Stork, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Israel should investigate these deaths and, if crimes were committed, hold to account those responsible.”’ [my emph.]

Amnesty International similarly concluded that Shana ‘appears to have been killed deliberately although he was a civilian taking no part in attacks on Israel’s forces’, while RSF, noting that ‘Israeli soldiers guilty of criminal negligence or deliberately firing at journalists have in the past be[en] exonerated by their superiors’, reported that ’statements of witnesses and the evidence at the scene disturbingly indicate that a serious criminal error was committed by Israeli soldiers’.

Shana was killed by a flechette shell, in which ‘razor-sharp 3.75mm darts [are] released from canisters that explode in mid-air and spray thousands of them in an arc some 300-meters long and 90-meters wide’. If Israel insists on using such weaponry in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, it (and its apologists) can hardly claim the civilian deaths that inevitably result to be “accidental”. Indeed, according to B’Tselem the use of flechette shells in Gaza is ‘illegal’ for precisely this reason.

Incidentally, Israel’s response to criticism over its killing of Shana was, effectively, that it was his own fault for being in a “combat zone”. Shortly after his death the IDF published a ‘clarification’ entitled, ‘Movement of Journalists in Combat Areas – Under Their Own Risk‘, which stated:

‘The IDF wishes to emphasize that it does not take any responsibility for the presence of foreign journalists in operational or combat zones in Judea, Samaria [the Biblical names for the West Bank] and the Gaza Strip. Any journalist who enters these areas is acting under his own will and responsibility. Their will be no coordination of press movement and activity in the areas of IDF operations.’

In short, contrary to Fitzsimons’s poorly-researched apologetics, the ‘picture’ Pilger paints of an Israel where soldiers can humiliate, torture and kill journalists with impunity appears to be fully accurate.

Filed under: Israeli / Palestinian, Lebanon, Media, News and politics, Torture   |  15 Comments
Tags: Fadel Shana, Free Speech, Gaza, Mohammed Omer, occupation, press freedom, siege