Israeli forces have raided the West Bank offices of Palestine Today television and arrest-ed its manager over allegations of inciting violence, Israel's Shin Bet internal security agency said on Friday. The overnight operation targeting the station's Ramallah offices was the latest attempt to silence Palestinian broadcasters Israel believes are fuelling a five-month wave of violence.The Shin Bet charged that the channel "broadcasts on behalf of the Islamic Jihad" group and said it had closed it in a joint operation with the army."The channel served the Islamic Jihad as a central means to incite the West Bank population, calling for terror attacks against Israel and its citizens. Incitement was broad-cast on the television station as well as the Internet," it said in a state-ment.Israeli forces arrested Palestine Today manager, Farooq Aliat, 34, of Bir Zeit, north of Ramallah, "an Islamic Jihad operative who had been imprisoned in Israel for his activities", it added.
Cameraman Mohammed Amr and technician Shabib Shabib were also arrested, the Palestinian Journalists Union said.An army spokeswoman said tech-nical equipment and transmitters were confiscated from the Ramallah offices, which were ordered shut.The channel, which has offices in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, continued to broadcast to the West Bank via its Lebanese transmitters, it said.Islamic Jihad denounced the Israeli aggression against the nationalist media of the resistance, calling the raid another episode in the long saga of oppression by the occupation.
Palestinian TV station airs in Gaza after IDF shutters West Bank HQ
[IsraelTimes] Islamic Jihad
...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
holds solidarity rally in Strip for Paleostine al-Yawm, says ‘occupation will never silence us’