Mohamed Omer is a young Palestinian journalist who was recently awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for his reporting. He says that on his way back to Gaza via the Allenby Bridge, which connects the West Bank with Jordan, he was detained and brutally treated by Israeli security officials. The Israelis don’t deny detaining him, but they do contest his account of what happened.
In a commentary for The Guardian, the increasingly eccentric John Pilger segues from outrage over Omer’s experience into a generalized attack on Israel. In particular, he claims: “Israel is high in an international league table for its murder of journalists, especially Palestinian journalists, who receive barely a fraction of the kind of coverage given to the BBC’s Alan Johnston.”
(Johnston, you will remember, was the BBC correspondent kidnapped and later released by Islamist gunmen in Gaza).
Never mind that Pilger doesn’t specify this “league table”. Never mind that, clearly, none of the editors at The Guardian thought this was a “fact” that was worth checking. We are talking about Israel, after all.
A pity for Pilger, then, that this is one assertion that really doesn’t stand up. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a well-known NGO that has hardly been friendly towards Israel, does maintain a league table of those countries with records of killing journalists. And by “killed,” they mean those journalists “killed in direct reprisal for his or her work; in crossfire; or while carrying out a dangerous assignment”; in other words, that includes those whom Pilger would consider to have been “murdered.”
Between 1992 and 2008, CPJ recorded a depressing total of 693 journalists killed around the world. The following twenty countries have the worst records:
1. Iraq: 129
2. Algeria: 60
3. Russia: 47
4. Colombia: 40
5. Philippines: 32
6. India: 23
Somalia: 23
8. Pakistan: 20
9. Bosnia: 19
Turkey: 19
11. Afghanistan: 17
12. Rwanda: 16
Sierra Leone: 16
Tajikistan: 16
15. Brazil: 15
16. Sri Lanka: 14
Mexico: 14
18. Bangladesh: 12
19. Angola: 8
Yugoslavia: 8
Can anyone see Israel or the Palestinian territories on here?
It should be noted that there are various other issues with this piece.
The account itself is very much exaggerated when compared to other reports on the same story - with every detail of the event given the worst possible spin, with no attention to the Israeli version of events.
All other pieces on the story confirm that the detention lasted around 4 hours, not the 12 that the Pilger piece would lead the reader to believe.
Furthermore, the source that Pilger uses is no longer a Dutch ambassador - he has not been one since 2003, but is now an anti-Israel activist - the founder of a group called “Stop the Occupation”.
Pilger clearly has no respect for facts or truth and no desire to fairly address the story.
FACTS AND TRUTH
Pilger may fudge details but Ben’s choice of sources is not beyond criticism either. It’s well known that journalism and press photography in Israel and the Territories are hazardous occupations, particularly for Palestinians.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, cited by Ben, that has close ties to conservative US corporations, doubtless has its reasons for excluding Israel from its “league table” but it does so at the expense of truth.
Compare, for example, “Killing the Messenger - Report on the global inquiry by the International News Safety Institute into the protection of journalists”, March 2007, p. 56. Documenting violent deaths of journalists over 10 years it lists “Israel/Occupied Territories” as the location of no fewer than 13 deaths, the same score as for Indonesia and Thailand.
Carl Freeman:
“The Committee to Protect Journalists, cited by Ben, that has close ties to conservative US corporations, doubtless has its reasons for excluding Israel from its “league table” but it does so at the expense of truth.”
Do you have a source for your allegations?
How many Palestinian “journalists” have been killed by Israel and under what circumstances?
You charge is so general that it is useless.
I would also like to know which conservative US corporations (what other kind is there?) the Committee to Protect Journalists has ties to.
Why are anti-US radicals any more worthy of trust than conservatives?
Like most anti Israel antisemites you take a lot for granted.
Carl Freeman is dishonest. I have the report to which he refers on my screen in front of me. In the statistical section (page 16) Israel/Occupied Territories is listed with Nepal with 12 deaths each - 23rd and 24th in the table. On page 56 Israel/Occupied Territories is listed with 13 deaths at number 20 together with Indonesia and Thailand. On page 62 however the number is again 12. No distinction is made between Israel and the Occupied Territories and there is no evidence whatsoever provided in the report for either party to be held chiefly responsible. Thus by defending Pilger’s claims he’s compounding the original lie.
KILLING THE MESSENGERS
Is it the usual practice among Z-Word Blog afficionados to attack correspondents with ad hominem abuse instead of facing unpleasant facts?
In my previous post I provided a source (that Mike Berger located easily) giving the number of journalists killed in Israel/Occupied Territories. Had I quoted figures for journalists killed in Russia and Chechnya would that make me an anti-Russia slavophobe? Why then does Shriber dub me an “anti Israel antisemite”?
Mike Berger prefers to simply write me off as dishonest and a liar although I’ve invented nothing.
Regarding the links to US corporations of the Committee to Protect Journalists, see its funding sources: http://www.cpj.org/development/donors.html
I’m no specialist in journalists’ security but a recent news item that caught my eye (but not Ben’s apparently) was the following: “Gaza Journalists Demand Israel Answer Over Killing” http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L16204410.htm
Note that I’m providing information only and not stooping to personal denigration.
While this de-bunking of Pilger’s essentially anti-Semitic tirade is gratifying, it obscures the true problem:
The world is trying to force the Israelis to treat with kid gloves a nation (Palestine/Arab) in existential war with it.
As many Asian nations have learnt, the only way to deal with Islam’s hegemonic instincts is ruthlessly.
In this instance, the Gazans, via Hamas, have declared existential war against Israel (and to a certaine xtent against the Jews). They have no right to flowers, medical treatment, or visas in response.
Israel should long ago have declared outright war against Hamas and clamped an absolute, FOUR-sided siege upon Gaza, allowing neither persons nor goods in or out, until the replacement of the Hamas regime.
And world opinion (e.g., Pilger’s) be damned.
Carl, I challenge you to identify a single instance of “ad hominem abuse” in shriber’s response to your comment. He challenged you to provide evidence of Palestinian journalists killed by Israel, and the circumstances surrounding any such incidents, so that Israeli culpability could clearly be demonstrated. You singularly failed to do so, instead brandishing your “ad hominem” comment.
As Mr Berger also observed, you have entirely failed to demonstrate that the deaths in question were due to Israeli actions, as opposed to those of Hamas, the PA + sundry other Arab mafias.
With all due respect, this is a significant distinction, which has evidently been entirely lost on both you and Mr Pilger.
My understanding is that the overwhelming majority of Arab media workers in Gaza and the “Occupied Territories” (a legal misnomer) that have been threatened and/or killed were victims of organized violence both orchestrated and practiced by Arab groups such as Hamas & the PA.
In fact, numerous Arab journalists themselves have said so, on multiple occasions. A simple Google search with terms such as “protect Palestinian journalists” is enough to verify this.
In contrast, no credible source has ever demonstrated a violent campaign against journalists ever having been conducted by the IDF or any other Israeli organization.
I politely suggest that Israel cannot be held responsible for Hamas & PA treatment of journalists, and moreover that the only “unpleasant fact” revealed by your comments is your intellectually and morally bankrupt eagerness to invent Israeli culpability for Arab crimes.
Actually, there’s a word for that.
With great distaste,
NONE SO BLIND AS THOSE WHO WILL NOT SEE
There’s a distinct lack of communication here. People respond to my postings without regard to what I write.
The issue was whether or not journalists had been killed in Israel and the Occupied Territories. I provided the figure of 13 deaths and indicated the source. I then offered a press reference to the killing of a Reuters cameraman and eight other civilians, including children. It was ignored.
Next I’m asked to provide evidence of Israeli culpability. So, concerning culpability, here’s another case: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/976739.html
It recounts the “unpleasant fact” that British cameraman James Miller was fatally shot by the IDF in Gaza while holding a white flag. Initially the IDF claimed he had been killed by Palestinians. Five years later Israel agreed to pay compensation to his family.
For good measure, yet another link: http://www.newseum.org/scripts/Journalist/Detail.asp?PhotoID=1616
It offers a brief biography of the late Nazeh Darwazeh: “A Palestinian freelance cameraman working for The Associated Press, he was shot and killed April 19 [2003] by Israeli troops in the West Bank town of Nablus while filming clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians. He was 43, married and had five children.”
Before believing simply what you wish to believe, and before calling someone who points out your error a liar or an anti-Semite, please do your homework.
Actually, Freeman, you have shown nothing, except that you cannot refute the CPJ figures.
CHRONIC MYOPIA
Actually, Philo-Semite, there are no CPJ figures for Israel and the Territories, which is the whole point of Ben’s final sentence - implying that as there are no CPJ figures there have been no killings.
I provided alternative figures for deaths of media personnel but these were rejected.
So I offered documented case histories of three cameramen (and eight other civilians) killed by the IDF.
If you consider such deaths to be “nothing”, discussion with you is pointless.
I see Freeman is a congenital liar.
The absence CPJ figures in the first 20 countries indicate not absence of information of I-P, but that CPJ considers there to be less than 8 journalists killed deliberately in reprisal for reporting. (Ben made that point.)
Du Yisa is right - you’re an anti-Semite who doesn’t let facts get in the way of your hatreds.