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INTERVIEW: Iran’s president. Missing or assassinated?

 

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 She’s a correspondent in Palestine. ‘Their goal is to keep us out of the picture’

 

One hundred and three Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza: Israel is far from being a paradise for critical voices, as shown by the country’s recent downgrading in Reporters without Borders’ press freedom ranking. As for the dominant rhetoric in the European media, it often excludes the Palestinians from the field of politics. How to write about Palestine when you live in Jerusalem? Observations by a French reporter after five years on the site.

 

For over seven months now, journalists reporting the news from Gaza have been unable to enter the strip. The Israeli government won’t let foreign media into the Palestinian enclave which the UN still regards as occupied by Israel, even after the unilateral withdrawal decided in 2005 by the then Premier, Ariel Sharon.

Anyone who has ever been to Gaza has no doubts about the reality of that occupation. You didn’t see Israeli soldiers or colonists at every corner, but Israel controlled the sky. The buzzing of their drones could be heard overhead without a let-up, even spookier by night when they flew low. The Gaza fishermen who ventured outside the perimeter authorised by the army – and which was constantly changing – were shot at by the Israeli coast guard. And farmers were likely to stop a bullet if they got too close to the fence separating Gaza from Israeli territory. Since 9 October, Israel has isolated the enclave from the rest of the world, allowing only a tiny percentage of the humanitarian aid to enter, not nearly enough.

AT EREZ CROSSING: A MINUTE, HUMILIATING BODY SEARCH

Before October 2023, journalists were mong the few people allowed to visit Gaza, under blockade since 2007. Not without difficulty, you had to get an Israeli press card, issued by the government press office, which often called in reporters whose work it did not appreciate for a ‘discussion’ before renewing the coveted card. You also had to get a permit from Hamas.

A story I did too close to the fence separating Gaza from Israel without having asked permission beforehand got me a couple of invitations for coffee in the Gaza Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the Palestinian enclave, we had to always be accompanied by a ‘fixer’, a Gaza journalist who got us into places and let us use his address book..

Going to Gaza was expensive. We would generally spend several days there, for a series of stories. The Erez crossing between Israel and Gaza was only open on weekdays, until 3 PM, and was closed on Jewish holidays. When we journalists came back, we were subjected to a minute and often humiliating body searches: from behind the windows of their high-perched offices, Israeli soldiers gave us orders by intercom. Down below, the checkpoint workers were all Arabs.

The Palestinians were even more ill-treated. Many were ill, since that was one of the rare reasons for obtaining an exit permit via Erez. Thus I once saw with my own eyes an old woman in a wheelchair obliged to pass through a turn style standing up, supported by two checkpoint employees. After passing the checkpoint, our belongings were returned to us in a jumble. Some found broken equipment, others had had cosmetics stolen.

A DISEMBODIED COVERAGE

This is not the first time Israel has bombed Gaza behind closed doors. Since my arrival in Jerusalem in 2018, whenever a military operation lasted more than a few hours, Erez was shut down. But the present shutdown is unprecedented. Seven months. My last visit to Gaza was in June 2023. For once I had a little time. I was doing a story on cultural cooperation and contrary to my previous visits in May 2021 and August 2022, the strip was relatively calm. New restaurants and cafés had opened on the coast road. At the Deira Hotel, male and female students were celebrating their master’s degree overlooking the sea, laughing and dancing to the latest Egyptian hits. In the morning, the lifeguards’ whistles could be heard on the beaches. They sent bunches of little boys in shorts and t-shirts to ride the modest Mediterranean surf. The sea had been clean for a year now, thanks to work on the infrastructure, financed by international donors. My memories offer a stark contrast with the images coming out of Gaza today. Henceforth alone on the ground, Palestinian journalists are doing a yeoman’s job of recording events as minutely as possible in horrendous conditions, sometimes paying with their lives for this essential work.

There is a part of me that cannot conceive of the extent of that devastation. Physical distance makes certain realities intangible. This is their goal: keeping us out of the picture. We are meant not to empathise, not to experience in our flesh the horror of the Israeli massacres in Gaza. In spite of all our efforts, our reports are disembodied. There are events we do not see. For months, we have been bombarded with terrible tales and we just don’t have time to check and document everything. Sometimes the news is authenticated later on when the media machinery has moved on to something else. At other times it is simply not possible in a few minutes, over the phone to deal with certain subjects. What parent is going to tell a woman they don’t know at the other end of the line how they feel after burying their child’s mutilated body. Last month, a Gazin friend who had left the strip told me: ‘What I see in the media doesn’t reflect the tenth of what we have gone through.’

ISRAEL’S BOMBS ARE OFF-SCREEN

This distance creates an imbalance. After 7 October, special correspondents from all over the world rushed to Israel to cover the crimes committed by Hamas and other Palestinian fighters in the kibbutzim. They spent long hours interviewing the survivors, photographing the sites, collecting memories. In Tel Aviv they did live broadcasts non-stop while Palestinian rockets whizzed overhead. Israel’s bombs, even when they annihilate a whole family in just a few seconds, remain mostly off-screen for lack of foreign correspondents on the spot. The smoke and noise of the detonations, the fear that reigns everywhere in the Gaza Strip are far from monopolising Western screens.

But in the Arab world, they certainly are! For these images exist: our Palestinian colleagues are doing an extraordinary job. And many of those images are simply atrocious. They provide much material for our articles. Those journalists are our eyes and ears on the ground, they are the only witnesses to the ongoing massacre. They are immensely brave and should be called upon more often by Western media. Some of these try to discredit their efforts, on the pretext that they are Gazins. They should be vigorously denounced.

https://orientxxi.info/magazine/she-s-a-correspondent-in-palestine-their-goal-is-to-keep-us-out-of-the-picture,7347

 

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WASHINGTON, Sputnik) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that there are allegedly more people dying of malnutrition in the United States than in the Gaza Strip amid the dire humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave.

"The talk is about 23, I think, or 30 cases of [deaths of] malnutrition in a population of 2 million. The United States in 2022 had 20,000 deaths of malnutrition. That's three times more than in Gaza," Netanyahu said in an interview with CNN on Tuesday.

According to Netanyahu, Israel has taken more than 20,000 trucks with 500,000 tons of food and medicine into Gaza since October 7.

On that day, the Palestinian movement Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza, killing more than 1,100 Israelis, both military and civilians, and abducting some 240 others.

 

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240521/netanyahu-says-more-people-die-of-malnutrition-in-us-than-in-gaza-1118572413.html

 

John Mearsheimer Exposes REAL REASON Why US Don't Stop Israel INVASION In Gaza

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCFatHkNM3k

 

 

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