Long article from JPost that has a number of interesting insights. I’ve severly EFLed it, so go read the whole thing.
PA security personnel are behind some of the attacks on journalists. Explains a Palestinian editor from Gaza City: "We have every reason to believe that senior PA officials and security commanders are behind most of the recent attacks on journalists. We are victims of a fierce power struggle that is under way between top security and political officials. Any journalist who dares to report on this power struggle or on cases of corruption in the Palestinian Authority is almost immediately targeted." As one Palestinian journalist put it this week, "The attacks on the journalists are the result of a clash between the younger generation of Palestinians, who insist on living in a democracy, and a regime dominated by the older generation, which has endorsed the same tactics as Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad."
I’d normally treat a statement like this with extreme scepticism, but this has a ring of truth to it.
This tyrannical mentality of the older generation of Palestinian leaders is responsible for the fact that the media in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is almost entirely controlled by the PA. Besides the PA-controlled radio and television stations, the three major newspapers - al-Quds, al-Ayyam and al-Hayat al-Jadeeda - are the Palestinian version of the now defunct Pravda newspaper, which for decades served as the official organ of the former Soviet leadership.
Even the 30 or so "private" radio and TV stations that have popped up in different parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have long learned that the key to their survival is in the hands of the PA and its security forces. Some of the stations, such as Shepherds’ TV in Bethlehem, which have dared to air views critical of PA officials, have been shut without delay.
| That's because it's a dictatorship. That's what dictators do. What lemmings do is swarm in the streets and shakes their furry little fists, shouting how they just love their dictators. |
ONE OF the first measures taken by the PA shortly after its establishment in 1994 was to order a crackdown on independent journalists and newspapers. The offices of many journalists, whose loyalty to Arafat and the PA leadership was in doubt, were stormed and shut by the various branches of the security forces. Later that year, Palestinian journalists were once again reminded of the risks facing anyone who dares to upset Arafat or any of his senior aides. Maher Alami, a senior editor at al Quds, was detained for one week in a Jericho jail for not publishing a news story about Arafat on the front page. After his release, Alami said he was never questioned about the issue while in prison and was well treated during his detention. Prior to his release, Jibril Rajoub, then head of the Preventive Security force, told Palestinian journalists that the arrest order was issued by Arafat himself, and that Arafat alone could order the release of the editor. Upon his release, Alami was brought to a meeting with Arafat in Ramallah. According to Alami, Arafat apologized, but expressed his discontent with the way al Quds was dealing with news about him. At one point, Arafat ordered the closure of the al-Jazeera offices in Ramallah after the station broadcast archive footage from Lebanon showing Palestinians beating with shoes on his portraits.
| Dictators are vain, too. I didn't mention that. |
SINCE THEN many of the journalists working with the Arab and Western media have been extremely cautious in their reporting. Those who deviated from the norm had to be reminded of what awaits them. Earlier this year, five Fatah gunmen intercepted the car of Saif al Din Shahin, a correspondent for the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya news channel as he was leaving his Gaza City office. The attackers beat Shahin with clubs and the butts of their rifles, injuring him moderately. His only crime, it transpired, was that he had reported on discontent among Palestinians at paramilitary celebrations by Fatah activists on the 39th anniversary of the faction’s founding. In recent years, such incidents have become almost a normal practice in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
| Emma Goldman must be so proud. It's kind of like government by Big Guido, isn't it? |
Alarmed by the growing criticism of the PA from Palestinian journalists, the West Bank branch of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, whose heads are known as Arafat loyalists, recently organized a show of solidarity with their leader. Scores of journalists, including some employed by international news agencies and TV stations, arrived at Arafat’s office to vow their loyalty. Some delivered emotional speeches in praise of Arafat and his role in "promoting the freedom of the media," while others read flattering poems composed especially for the occasion. Journalists who did not attend the rally said they were "disgusted" by the behavior of their colleagues.
Any resemblance to Iraq under Saadam are purely coincidental.
"It was a shameful scene," said one of them. "What’s particularly disturbing is that none of the journalists who participated in this disgraceful show dared to ask Arafat about the campaign of terror and intimidation against Palestinian journalists." However, there is almost a consensus among Palestinian journalists that their conditions still remain much better than those of their colleagues in Syria, Egypt and other Arab dictatorships. Since the establishment of the PA, more than 150 licenses for publishing newspapers and magazines were issued by the PA Ministry of Information. Another 50 licenses were issued to private radio and TV stations.
A particularly damming statement. |