Israel muzzles Palestinian journalists

[Scurrilous]

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DBBDD979-5ECC-4159-B5B2-829320C06920.htm

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"The international press organisation Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) recently lambasted Israel for abusing and harassing Palestinian and foreign journalists covering the Intifada against Israeli occupation.


The Paris-based group did recognise that Israel generally respected the local (Jewish) media freedom of expression, but criticised Israel for violating the international covenant on civil and political rights, including press freedom, especially in the occupied territories.

Since the start of the Israeli armys incursions into Palestinian towns and cities in March 2002, very many journalists have been roughed up, threatened, arrested, banned from moving around, targeted by gunfire, wounded or injured, had their press cards withdrawn or been deported, it said."

[Resistance]

1. related

from earlier this year:

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=7662

Israeli army's attitude : Regret, but no real enquiries and certainly no one punished

Two journalists shot dead in the space of two weeks

On 3 May 2003, World Press Freedom Day, the news agencies reported the death of a British journalist in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip. An acclaimed documentary filmmaker who had received several awards, James Miller, 34, was killed by a shot in the neck.

Two weeks earlier, another cameraman had died in the Palestinian territories. These territories have been reoccupied since spring 2001 by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). He was Nazeh Darwazi, 44, who had been working for two years for the American TV news agency, Associated Press Television News (APTN). He was hit by a shot in the head as he was filming clashes between Palestinians and the IDF in the centre of Nablus in the northern part of the West Bank.

The laxity and the dissimulation in the initial enquiries, the incorrect statements by the IDF and the destruction of evidence is compounded by the concern of senior officers not to cast blame on an army engaged in a "armed conflict short of war," to use the term employed since September 2000. The political desire to defend the IDF's image and the individual soldier wins out over the duty to punish those responsible for serious acts of negligence or abuses. The lack of a real investigation, and even more so, the lack of any judicial, administrative or disciplinary follow-up as regards soldiers responsible for homicides, even unintentional homicides, has resulted in a widespread feeling of impunity. This laissez-faire on the part of the most senior officers nonetheless runs entirely counter to the principles and values of the Israeli army, among which are "purity of arms" and "respect for human life."