Archive for November 21st, 2008
Vanished – How the BBC disappears the news – On Top of Humanitarian Disaster, A News Blackout
Vanished – How the BBC disappears the news
November 20, 2008
This from GazaFriends on the kidnapping of 15 Palestinian fishermen and 3 foreign nationals in international waters by the Israeli navy:
“Darlene Wallach is in a new prison in Ramle, a men’s prison, but she’s in a section reserved for illegal immigrants.
“She wanted to pass on this information, “We were fishing about 7 miles off the shores of Gaza. The Israeli soldiers came on board the three boats via four Zodiacs. The frogmen came up and over each boat. They used a taser on Vik while he was still on the boat, then tried to push him backwards onto a sharp piece of wood. He jumped into the sea to avoid being hurt more than he already was and was in the water for quite a while.
“Then they came for me and forced me into the Zodiac at the point of a gun. They said, “You are in Israeli territory” even though is was obvious that all three boats were in Palestinian territory. They kidnapped me and Andrew and Vik and all of the Palestinian fishermen.”
“Today two women from immigration were there to see Darlene. They were very rude. Until just a few minutes ago, Darlene was refused a change of clothes and a mobile, but, thanks to Lubna and a nice woman at the prison, she now has both.
“The authorities are saying they will refuse to send Darlene to London and want to send her back to the United States. The judge said she would make a decision today so Darlene is waiting to hear the ruling. She still does not have a passport.
“She sounded fine, relieved to finally be able to talk to someone outside Israel. If you know ANY media who would like to interview her, please let me know and I will pass on Darlene’s phone number to them. This story is vitally important to get out to the public.”"
A couple of days ago I posted an earlier piece from GazaFriends on the kidnapping of 15 Palestinian fishermen and three foreign nationals in international waters by the Israeli navy.
I forwarded the GazaFriends press release (and the one above) to Channel 4 News in the (vain) hope that they’d pick up the story but so far to no avail.
You’ll look in vain to find this story in the corporate/state-run media, but then this is the norm when it comes to the actions of Israel unless it’s in response to a Palestinian ‘terrorist’.
In an earlier piece I referred to a BBC Website story on the abuse Palestinians are subjected to by the Israeli Occupation Army (IOA) and the skepticism of the BBC reporter concerning the story (see ‘Finding the words to say it’) and the fact that the reporter, Tim Franks, had commented, “…we have no clue as to when or where this video was shot and it is impossible to know just how frequently such incidents occur”, prompted me to look through another excellent source of news on Palestine, ‘VTJP Palestine/Israel NewsLinks’, an almost daily digest of stories.
Here are just a few headlines from the 19 November issue:
Israeli army stands by while settlers attack in Burin
International Solidarity Movement 11/19/2008Israeli military continues rampage in the Taqou’ village
International Middle East Media Center News 11/19/2008Israeli forces hold dozens of youths in raid south of Bethlehem
Ma’an News Agency 11/19/2008Israeli military detains four residents from Nablus City
International Middle East Media Center News 11/19/200814 Palestinians seized by Israeli forces in West Bank raids
Ma’an News Agency 11/19/2008Another Palestinian family expelled from their home in East Jerusalem
Press release from Luisa Morgantini, Vice-President of the European Parliament, International Solidarity Movement 11/19/2008Five seized at East Jerusalem house demolition protest
Ma’an News Agency 11/19/2008Israeli authorities demolish Sheikh Jarrah protest tent
Ma’an News Agency 11/19/2008IOA demolishes sit-in tent pitched by owners of usurped home
Palestinian Information Center 11/19/2008
The above are just one day’s stories collected by a single individual that illustrate the daily abuses, shootings, arrests and harassment that Palestinian citizens go through on (what’s left of) their land. More ‘officially’ this week’s Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reports the following events over the past seven days:
- IOF killed 4 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
- 6 Palestinians, including a child, were wounded by the IOF gunfire in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
- IOF launched mock air raids against the Gaza Strip.
- IOF conducted 30 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, and one into the Gaza Strip.
- IOF arrested 44 Palestinian civilians, including 2 children, in the West Bank.
- IOF arrested 15 Palestinian fishermen and 3 international solidarity activist while sailing opposite to the Gaza Strip.
- IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT and have isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world.
- The Gaza Strip is suffering from a serious humanitarian crisis.
- IOF troops positioned at military checkpoints in the West Bank arrested 4 Palestinian civilians, including 3 children.
- IOF have continued to construct the Annexation Wall inside the West Bank.
- IOF confiscated 22 donums[1] of agricultural land in the south of Hebron.
- IOF have continued to take measures aiming at the Judaization of Jerusalem.
- IOF demolished 2 houses and confiscated a mobile home in Jerusalem.
- IOF have continued to Judaize Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood for the sake of extremist Jewish groups.
- IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property.
Thus Franks’ statement that “it is impossible to know just how frequently such incidents occur” is to put it bluntly, a lie. There is simply no excuse for a real journalist who is genuinely interested in reporting events in the Occupied Territories, for not availing him or herself of the literally thousands of such incidents that have occurred over the past year.
Family’s eviction draws global outrage
Jonathan Cook, 11/19/2008
The middle-of-the-night eviction last week of an elderly Palestinian couple from their home in East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish settlers is a demonstration of Israeli intent towards a future peace deal with the Palestinians. Mohammed and Fawziya Khurd are now on the street, living in a tent, after Israeli police enforced a court order issued in July to expel them. The couple have been living in the same property in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood since the mid-1950s, when East Jerusalem was under Jordanian control. The United Nations allotted them the land after they were expelled from their homes in territory that was seized by Israel during the 1948 war. Since East Jerusalem’s occupation by Israel in 1967, however, Jewish settler groups have been waging a relentless…
So why does the BBC continue to ignore the reality on the ground? And, when the BBC does stoop to present a story on Israeli treatment of Palestinians, it mangles them as in the following BBC report with an innocuous title:
“Israel police remove protest tent”
It goes on:
“Jewish groups have claimed ownership of the site as part of efforts to settle the Israeli-occupied east of the city,” and then manages to mangle even this, “But this move is not recognised by most of the international community, which regards East Jerusalem as occupied, along with the West Bank, since the 1967 Israeli-Arab war.”
The Devil lives in the details
Not recognized? Israel’s actions are illegal under international law including the continued occupation of Jerusalem following the 1967 war, so it’s not an issue of whether the ‘international community’ recognizes Israel’s actions or not. Note also that the BBC story does not mention that the Kurds had already been evicted from their land in 1948.
A crime is not a crime because the BBC didn’t know when it took place and it’s also not a crime because the BBC doesn’t know how often such crimes occur.
The devil lives in the details when the BBC reports on the actions of the Israeli occupiers. Illegal becomes ‘not recognized’, and the illegal occupation of land gets transformed by the BBC into “efforts to settle the Israeli-occupied east of the city”. By changing a single word, the entire meaning of the event is trivialized thus the BBC, bound by a Charter to cover events in a ‘balanced’ and ‘impartial’ way, gets away with evading, ignoring, distorting and trivializing the daily tragedies of ordinary Palestinians.
Link: www.creative-i.info/?p=2303
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Gaza On Top of Humanitarian Disaster, A News Blackout
By Cherrie Heywood
Israel has imposed a virtual news blackout on the Gaza Strip. For the last ten days no foreign journalists have been able to enter the besieged territory to report on the escalating humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s complete closure of Gaza’s borders for the last two weeks.
Steve Gutkin, the AP bureau chief in Jerusalem and head of Israel’s Foreign Press Association, said that he personally “knows of no foreign journalist that has been allowed into Gaza in the last week.”
Gutkin said that “while Israel has barred foreign press from entering Gaza in the past, the length of the current ban makes it unprecedented.” He added that he has received no “plausible or acceptable” explanation for the ban from the Israeli government.
AP has relied on reports from two of its journalists who were able to enter Gaza days before the closure began and are currently stuck there.
A delegation of European Union parliamentarians was also prevented from entering Gaza to assess the situation on the ground and to hold talks with Hamas leaders. They subsequently broke the naval siege of Gaza by entering the coast’s territorial waters from Cyprus by boat, defying the Israeli navy.
During talks held with Hamas, the EU parliamentarians were able to get a historic commitment from the Islamic organisation to recognise Israel’s right to exist within the internationally recognised 1967 borders. Hamas further offered a long-term ceasefire in return for Israel legitimising Palestinian rights.
Israel also prevented 20 European Union consul-generals from entering Gaza on Thursday. On Sunday Israeli border police prevented 15 trucks loaded with medication from entering the Gaza Strip.
EU commissioner for external relations and European neighbourhood policy, Bentita Ferrero-Waldner, has expressed strong reservations. “I am profoundly concerned about the consequences for the Gazan population of the complete closure of all Gaza crossings for deliveries of fuel and basic humanitarian assistance,” Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement Friday.
Karen AbuZayd, head of the UN Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA) which cares for Palestinian refugees, added that it was unusual for Israel not to let basic food and medicines in. “This has alarmed us more than usual because it’s never been quite so long and so bad, and there has never been so much negative response on what we need,” she said.
Israel closed the borders following a barrage of rockets fired by Palestinian resistance fighters at Israeli towns bordering the Gaza Strip.
The tit-for-tat violence began on Nov. 4 when the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) launched a cross-border raid into Gaza, breaking a shaky five-month ceasefire with Hamas. The purpose was ostensibly to destroy a tunnel built by Palestinians allegedly to smuggle captured Israeli soldiers.
More than 20 Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids. Two Israelis were lightly injured in the subsequent rocket attacks.
The timing of Israel’s breach of the ceasefire is curious in that hundreds of these smuggling tunnels have existed ever since Hamas took over the strip in June last year. They have been used to smuggle everyday necessities as well as arms because the territory is hermetically sealed by Israel.
John Ging, director of UNRWA in Gaza, who has lived there for the past three years, questioned the alleged security reasoning behind the closure. Since the ceasefire went into place this summer, Ging said, fewer supplies have passed through the crossing than in the beginning of 2006, when the western Negev in Israel suffered incessant rocket fire from Gaza.
At that time the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is supported by Israel and the international community, was ruling Gaza in a unity government with Hamas.
“Last week we were unable to feed 60,000 of Gaza’s neediest refugees due to our warehouses running out of food. UNRWA supplies half of Gaza’s population of 1.5 million people with emergency rations, and 20,000 people are fed per day when there are adequate supplies,” Ging told IPS.
Seventy percent of Gaza experienced electricity blackouts after Israel prevented deliveries of diesel fuel, forcing Gaza’s main power plant to close down.
“The Israelis were only allowing 2.2 to 2.5 million litres of fuel in per week prior to the closure, which was the minimum required to operate the power plant. The plant has a capacity for 20 million litres and this would last two months under normal circumstances and tide over emergency periods. But this has all run out,” Ging said.
Kan’an Ubeid, deputy chief of the Palestinian Energy Authority, said at a press conference in Gaza that in addition to the shutdown of the diesel-fuelled power plant, the electric network bringing in power from Israel collapsed due to increased pressure on the system.
Gazans also ran out of cooking gas while Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU) was forced to pump tonnes of untreated sewage into the ocean due to fuel shortages and the lack of spare parts for equipment in need of repairs and new parts.
Much of this will flow back into Gaza’s underground water table, and the threat of contaminated drinking water spreading diseases has increased.
Meanwhile, the emergency and ambulance services director-general, Mu’awiyya Hassanein, says Gaza’s health ministry is short of more than 300 types of necessary medication.
Sammy Hassan, a spokesman from Gaza city’s main Shifa hospital said only urgent surgery was being carried out. “We have delayed all non-urgent surgery as our small generator has stopped working, as we can’t import a vital spare part.
“We are down to 30,000 litres of fuel left to run the larger generator which is used when electricity is cut. Under the current circumstances with no electricity we require 10,000 litres per day,” Hassan told IPS.
Philip Luther, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East programme, said that Israel’s latest tightening of the blockade had “made an already dire humanitarian situation markedly worse. This is nothing short of collective punishment on Gaza’s civilian population, and it must stop immediately.”
Following international pressure and protests from the EU, Israel allowed 30 trucks of humanitarian aid to enter the strip Monday. “It will last a matter of days,” said UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness. “But then what?”
Oxfam’s spokesman in Jerusalem Michael Bailey, who coordinates a number of humanitarian projects in Gaza, said this response was entirely inadequate.
“Thirty trucks of aid after a closure of 10 days is insufficient. What we need is a complete revision of the embargo on Gaza. Dialogue with the relevant political leaders is the only way forward,” Bailey told IPS.
“Both Israel and Gaza’s other neighbours need to put the human rights and essential needs of Gazans above all considerations if there is to be a way out of this quagmire.”
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44745
