Paul, you wrote: "It also makes me wonder how much truth there is to the allegations of brutality towards the Pals. We hear only one side here." Based upon the article, below, if there REALLY HAD BEEN brutality against the Palestinians, you would have heard about it for weeks!
Buddy Macy
9/9/01 thejewishweek.com
"...Nirenstein sees her colleagues romanticizing the Palestinians as David fighting the Israeli Goliath, as if the underdogs are by definition the good guys. That, she writes in the January issue of Commentary magazine, places the journalists -- whom she characterizes as "iconoclastic, sporty, ironic, virtually all of one mind" -- on the wrong side of the cultural gap between "Western and Eastern civilizations, between democracy and dictatorship, between the Judeo-Christian world and the world of Islam."
Her estimate may be low. Veteran Israeli commentator Ehud Ya'ari judges that "over 95 percent" of the pictures shipped to foreign and Israeli channels are supplied by Palestinian film crews.
In a recent article in the Jerusalem Report, Ya'ari wrote that Palestinians now "have effectively taken control of the reporting on the intifada. The vast majority of information of every type coming out of the area has been filtered through Palestinian eyes, or often, has actually been composed in the first place by Palestinians."
In short, news from Israel is generated by people loyal to and afraid of the Palestinian authorities.
"They simply don't dare film anything that could embarrass the Palestinian Authority," Ya'ari concludes. "So the cameras are angled to show a tainted view of the Israeli army's actions, never focus on the Palestinian gunmen and diligently produce a very specific kind of close-up of the situation on the ground."
Ya'ari himself does not go into Palestinian areas. Abu Toameh, who does, calls Ya'ari's analysis "200 percent correct."
According to the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ), for years the Palestinian Authority has "muzzled local press critics via arbitrary arrests, threats, physical abuse, and the closure of media outlets," thereby frightening most Palestinian journalists into self-censorship.
It's a Mafia situation, says one Palestinian journalist.
"It's a Mafia situation," corroborates a Palestinian journalist, citing journalists being "threatened, beaten and made the targets of death threats, even from high officials such as [West Bank Preventive Security Service commander Jibril] Rajoub and Barghouti. And they do not report it," he adds, either to their employers or to professional organizations, because any complaint would only increase their danger while, if it interfered with their access to officials, putting their jobs at risk."
Thanks. We do hear about it for weeks, it just that everyone on our side denies it's true. I suspect there is some truth to the allegations of brutality against Pals. I'm not trying to draw a general moral equivalence, however.
p.