Gaza: first casualty
Coverage of events in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli media has rarely transcended propaganda, writes Dimi Reider
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'Any journalist who enters Gaza becomes a fig leaf and front for the Hamas terror organization'
…so says Daniel Seaman of the Israeli government press office.
Writing in the New York Times, Ethan Bronner postulates that this attitude may have its roots in Israel’s 2006 conflict with Hezbollah. Then, domestic and international journalists were given pretty much free reign, and now many in the IDF see this as a contributing factor in the failure of the campaign.
The IDF should, in theory, be allowing some journalists in to Gaza. An agreement was reached with the Foreign Press Association in which six randomly selected foreign reporters would be allowed across the border (as well as two selected by Israel). However, despite the arrangement, no-one has been allowed through. This morning, Israel’s ambassador in London, Ron Prosor, claimed the delay had been due to ‘infighting’ in the FPA, a charge the association strongly denies.
Propaganda and censorship in Gaza
Rachel Shabi in the Guardian points out the role of Israel’s recently-created National Information Directorate in the portrayal of the conflict in Gaza. The Directorate was set up after an inquiry in to the second Lebanon war in 2006, with the aim of co-ordinating the message going out to international media.
But propaganda and censorship could yet backfire. Robert Fisk is critical of the IDF’s barring of foreign journalists from Gaza. When the Israelis did this in 2000, exaggerated claims of a massacre in Jenin emerged, without the possibility of verification by independent reporters.
Index on Censorship Award winners 2007
The Index on Censorship Hugo Young Journalism Award
Kareem Amer is the pseudonym for the Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem Suleiman Amer. His blog writings about secularism and women rights led to his arrest and detention in October 2005, his expulsion form Al-Azhar University in early 2006, and a second arrest in November 2006 that has left him in solitary confinement ever since. On 22 February 2007 he was sentenced to four year’s imprisonment for insulting Islam and President Mubarak and for inciting sedition.
http://www.freekareem.org/
http://karam903.blogspot.com/
The Index on Censorship Whistleblowing Award
Chen Guangcheng is a self-taught lawyer in the Shandong province of China who has been regaled as representative of an emerging group of liberal Chinese intellectuals. He gained international attention for publishing reports on forced abortions and sterilisations. In August 2006 he was sentenced to four years in prison. His appeal was rejected on 12 January 2007.
The Index on Censorship Film Award
Five Days by Yoav Shamir is a documentary about the Israel Defence Forces as they evacuate 8000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza strip in August 2005, to make way for 250,000 Palestinians. The director builds a composite impression of the withdrawal that does justice to the complexity of the issues at stake and the conflicting aims and worldviews of those taking part.
The T.R. Fyvel Book Award
Being Arab by Samir Kassir is a searing analysis of the predicament facing the Arab world considering what he calls the Arab ‘malaise’ – a condition which he believes springs form a crippling sense of impotence. Samir Kassir was a journalist and historian, who was assassinated in Beirut in June 2005.
The Bindmans’ Law and Campaigning Award
When Siphiwe Hlophe from Swaziland discovered she was HIV positive in 1999, she was abandoned by her husband and lost an agricultural economics scholarship. She reacted by co-founding an organisation called Swazis for Positive Living (Swapol) in 2001, which aims to fight gender discrimination related to HIV/Aids and to help other HIV/Aids victims.