For Gaza journalists, kidnap is no longer the biggest fear

[oberliner]

What happened last Friday to Abd a-Salem Abu Askar, the head of Abu Dhabi television in the territories, is the nightmare of every journalist in the Gaza Strip.

At about 7:30 P.M. that day, Abu Askar left his house in Gaza City. Some 200 meters away, he ran into a roadblock manned by masked gunmen, who demanded his identification card. Then one radioed: "We've detained Abu Askar." Abu Askar managed to call his office and say that he had been kidnapped; a few minutes later, a van carrying 10 gunmen arrived, removed him from his car, beat him up and took him to an unknown location.

The kidnappers, who said they were from Hamas, interrogated him for two hours about his business, his sources and his income. Meanwhile, his office contacted members of the Gaza Journalists Union, who in turn called senior Hamas officials, including Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Two hours later, the kidnappers were ordered to release Abu Askar.

But since the Hamas-Fatah infighting in Gaza began last week, being kidnapped is no longer the greatest danger facing journalists. On the very first day of the clashes, a reporter for the Hamas-affiliated paper Falastin was shot dead, along with another employee of the paper.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/861868.html

[Shaktimaan]

1. This is really sad.

It sounds like we might be seeing the beginning of a policy shift that encourages targeting journalists based on their newspaper's content. This was planned because someone didn't like Abu Askar's station. Will we start to see individual journalists targeted based on the kind of copy they write? How can a journalist in Palestine write anything remotely critical of anyone in circumstances like this? They can't. So any kind of real journalism industry that Palestine may have been growing themselves will wilt. And foreign journos, whose reporting on Palestine has only helped the Palestinian cause, will either stop coming or (even worse) only operate by the good grace of Hamas.

Palestine has an identity crisis to resolve. Do they want to be like Israel as is Fatah's vision... Secular, open, democratic. Or will they be like Saudi Arabia... religious, closed and despotic. This has nothing to do with Israel or the west. We can try and influence what happens, but they'll choose what they want for themselves in the end no matter what we do or say about it.

I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but I am actually starting to miss Arafat.

[ohio2007]

2. Why are the Gaza Palestinians killing each other? and why can't the journalists

report what is going on ?

There is no such thing as a dumb question

[pelsar]

3. gazas divisions...

gaza is divided up into not just geographic areas with local loyalties (clans in the south, east and north) but religious affiliation (muslim, christian,) ethnicity (bedouin, arab) as well as political. The various identities which also cross over in to several and ones loyalties may change "at sunset" (yes like in the comic books) are also linked to the ever importance "honor" value.

Those loyalties have a far greater value than any democratic value of freedom of the press, free speech etc.

Add to those identities a high rate of unemployment and lots and lots of kids (young kids usually have a poor sense of the value of life) a culture that is very much based on the gun and your not going to get respect for journalists and the ethics of proper journalism.