Westerners Killed to Suppress Palestinian Perspective?
by Lasse Jeppesen Schmidt
Wednesday, March 19, 2008 -- In the beginning of this millennium, the growing numbers of young Westerners who went to the occupied Palestinian territories to live for a while with the civilian population were helping the world opinion turn more and more against Israel's occupation of the Palestinian people. The often moving first hand accounts of these autonomous, self-governed freelance reporters and human rights activists appeared in local papers all over the US and Europe and swamped the internet, often providing a rare insight into the life of the occupied civilian population.
When reading these accounts, it made a difference to many Americans and Europeans that it was one of "their own" who had experienced the brutality of Israeli occupation close up and then reported on it. It made the stories credible in the eyes of many, and paved the way for them to identify with the Palestinian suffering and understand the Palestinian perspective for the first time. More and more ordinary people in the West were aware of the inhumane nature of the Israeli occupation.
However, the bloody spring of 2003 changed all that. When Israeli soldiers in five tragic weeks killed Rachel Corrie and James Miller, and critically injured Brian Avery and Tom Hurndall, presenting the Palestinian perspective to the world suffered a hard blow. Telling the alternative story to the official Israeli one became difficult, as the Israeli army introduced more restrictions to the movements of internationals across the green line between Israel and Palestine, and since then, fewer internationals have had the courage to travel inside Palestine.
Today, five years later, our knowledge of what goes on inside the West Bank and Gaza and of the devastating impact to ordinary Palestinians of the Israeli military's actions is still suffering due to the atrocities of spring, 2003.
Corrie, Avery, Hurndall and James, who all operated without the permission or consent of the State of Israel, lived with Palestinian families for a sustained period of time. Miller and Hurndall were both freelance reporters and photographers working on stories that would shed a negative light on the Israeli army's treatment of civilian Palestinians in Gaza. In addition to freelancing, Hurndall also volunteered in the same organization as Corrie and Avery, the International Solidarity Movement, which is a Palestinian organization attracting internationals to the West Bank and Gaza to live with civilian Palestinians and work as human right observers, humanitarian aid workers and nonviolent activists.
The British reporter Jonathan Cook, who works out of the Israeli city of Nazareth, wrote in 2006:
"It was a very effective deterrent to other activists -- as well as freelance journalists who might be mistaken for activists ... in consequence there was a rapid loss of the Internet diaries of life under occupation and eyewitness accounts that were creating a fledgling but useful "alternative journalism" ... Israel has [thereby] ensured that independent witnesses are now largely absent from the occupied territories."
A few months after the shooting of Tom Hurndall, ISM closed down its office in Gaza. Even though the presence of international witnesses in Gaza was as needed as ever, it was deemed too great a risk. Furthermore, the increasing difficulties international civilians experienced getting into Gaza was discouraging most from even making the attempt.
"... instead "professional" reporters, based in Israel, venture into these areas only to report after the event ... ensuring that a far narrower range of voices are being heard," continued Jonathan Cook.
I, Lasse J. Schmidt, the author of this article, lived in Jenin on the West Bank for 15 months between February 2003 and August 2005. The first three months, I volunteered for ISM (and witnessed the shooting of Brian Avery), the last year I taught English at the American University. One thing I often discussed with my ISM colleagues (mostly from Sweden) was how to get international journalists to drive the short trip from their offices in Tel Aviv to Jenin. It was a trip of just an hour or so by car, but also a trip from one reality to another, from first-world luxury and comfort to poverty, destruction and military oppression.
During my 15 months living and working in the Jenin area, I know of only once when foreign reporters came to the city. That was on the day of the one-year memorial for the Israeli invasion of the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002. 50-70 Palestinians died over ten days of fighting, and 3500 became homeless as Israeli bulldozers demolished an entire neighborhood in the center of the camp.
The memorials were supposed to last for a whole week, but the Israeli army declared a week-long curfew on the morning of the second day, and the remaining events were canceled. But on that first day, where ten thousand or so people marched in the streets of Jenin, international reporters invaded the city. Sadly, they had gone home to Israel by nightfall.
On May 11, 2003, only nine days after the shooting of British film-maker James Miller, the Israeli army introduced a waiver to be signed by all internationals seeking access to Gaza. By signing it, reporters, aid workers and even UN personnel write off any right to hold the Israeli army responsible if shot or injured, no matter the circumstances. Until the disengagement of Gaza, the waiver also stated that they were forbidden to enter the "closed military zones" along the Egyptian border in Rafah. This is the place where Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall and James Miller were killed, and where Israeli military bulldozers systematically had been violating the rights of civilian Palestinians for years by demolishing their homes. In addition, visitors to Gaza had to declare that they have no association with the International Solidarity Movement.
Today, to get into Gaza as a reporter, you need a special press card issued by the Israeli government. All other press cards are of no use without being backed up by the official Israeli card. To get this card, you have to be accredited with a news organization recognized by the Israeli government.
Despite being officially disengaged from Gaza, it is still the Israeli army who solely decide who gets access to the strip, and who does not. Gaza is completely closed off from the outside world by a tall electric fence or concrete wall on three sides, except for a few border crossings, and all -- fence, wall and crossings -- are controlled by Israeli soldiers. Even the border to Egypt is 'de facto' controlled by the Israeli army. On the fourth side is the Mediterranean Sea, which is controlled by the Israeli navy. No Palestinian boats -- not even small fishing boats -- are allowed to go more than three miles of the shoreline.
"These conditions severely limit the freedom of freelance reporters and photographers to find stories that the main media organizations have overlooked ... The effect of the waiver is to impose a large financial burden on freelance journalists ... either they protect themselves ... at a huge personal cost ... or they risk injury for which no one can be held accountable and made to pay. Even if it can be proven that an Israeli soldier took a malicious shot -- of the kind that in the past killed filmmaker James Miller and UN official Iain Hook and destroyed most of face of activist Brian Avery -- freelance journalists and their families will not be entitled to a penny of compensation," wrote Jonathan Cook.
It will not be long before the situation concerning the West Bank is similar to the one for Gaza. At the moment, Israel has built approximately a 500 km Separation Wall around the West Bank. When the last 300 km of wall are built, which at the current pace of construction will take 3-4 year, that area will be just as effectively sealed of as Gaza is today. Then, who gets in and out of the West Bank, and who gets to report on the news there, will be entirely up to the Israeli army.
Left to tell the stories differing from the official Israeli perspective are the Palestinians, and who would be better at it, one could interject. They, of course, know better than anyone the price paid by civilians in Gaza and the West Bank due to the Israeli military actions. While that is true, it is also a fact that Palestinians are not considered as credible witnesses by the outside world as are their own people. Who would you believe the most? Jacob, a Jewish American who grew up in your neighborhood, or Ahmad, who speaks a heavily accented English, is Muslim and grew up in Gaza City?
There are hundreds of highly regarded Palestinian photographers and reporters working in Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron, Gaza City and Rafah. Many work for respected news organizations such as Reuters, Associated Press (AP) and Agence France-Presse (AFP). But their stories and photographs are rarely presented in the western media in general and in the US Media in particular.
"Israeli public relations strategies ... exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported ... the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the occupied territories appears to be a defensive move rather than an offensive one ... U.S. journalists, for reasons ranging from intimidation to a lack of thorough investigation, have become complicit in carrying out Israel's PR campaign," writes the official summary for Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land, a documentary film by Bathsheba Ratzkoff, an Israeli citizen and Jew now living in the U.S.:
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As the five-year anniversaries of the deaths of Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall and James Miller and the near-death of Brian Avery are coming this spring, ask yourself why these four internationals ended up being victims of Israeli soldiers. No ISM activist has been severely injured or killed before or after the bloody spring of 2003. Was it in fact a calculated attempt to deter the growing independent and alternative voices reporting to the outside world on the Palestinian perspective?
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/664239/westerners_killed_to_suppress_palestinian.html