BUT…. they are one of the first and few Jewish publications to write sympathetically about the ordeal Mohammed Omer recently endured. It is presented here, taken from Engage…. You will find in the article digs against John Pilger, there again, they are merely fulfilling their mission of finding anti Semitism where there isn’t any…despite that, kudos to them for supporting the call for an investigation into the incident.
Mohammed Omer is a 24-year-old Gazan who recently won an award for journalists who expose propaganda. He responded:
“My ambition was to get the truth out, not as pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli, but as an independent voice and witness, posing questions and challenging international understanding. I wanted to give a voice to the silenced dead and to ordinary people still struggling: students, farmers, teachers, children, patients, refugees…”
There are reports that Omer Mohammed, returning from Holland where he collected the award, was detained for 4 hours at the Israeli border and emerged emotionally and physically battered. The Israeli Foreign Ministry, which facilitated his journey out of Gaza, has pledged to investigate his ordeal. They should do it swiftly and properly. Security doesn’t license humiliation, let alone physical abuse.
There are many reports of capricious and demeaning treatment of Palestinians on Israeli borders. Academic architect Suad Amiry’s account in Sharon and My Mother In Law is one. Another is the experience of Fulbright Scholar Zohair Abu Shaban. Sometimes there are reports of violence. It’s very important to be able to trust the reports and commentary. You have to be able to trust them in order to figure out how to respond. But there’s so much writing about Israel that comes with political baggage you know you have to fact-check – why should you? Why would you? There is so much flagrant and one-sided misreporting about Israel, sometimes with horrific repercussions, that to have unqualified belief in any of it has become practically impossible. The most important example is the myth-making around footage of Mohammed Al-Dura, emblematic for people who push the idea that the Israeli army deliberately kills civilians. Although the IDF initially assumed responsibility, there was no evidence that he was even dead.
Osama Bin Laden cited Mohammed Al-Dura as one of the reasons for the acts of terror on September 11th. Al-Dura was eagerly seized on by anti-Israel campaigners to strengthen their campaigns. His story is probably the single biggest contribution to the myth that Israel deliberately kills children. His picture, crouched against a wall, crying in terror, became ubiquitous. But the TV company which had produced Al-Dura footage brought a libel case against a member of a media watchdog who had called it a hoax, and they lost. It shouldn’t need saying that journalists who want to awake our consciences should behave conscienciously themselves – in fact, people’s human rights may depend on the trust their readers have in them.
John Pilger, who presented Omer Mohammed with his award, takes up his story. He reports Omer’s own account of what happened – and as with so much of what Pilger is interested in, it is important that this is reported – but then he nudges the story down his usual trajectory of total condemnation of Israel, and at that juncture it looks as if he misreports – Ben Cohen fact-checked the Pilger claim that “Israel is high in an international league table for its murder of journalists, especially Palestinian journalists”. Ben looked for the league table that Pilger didn’t bother to source and found that of the Committee to Protect Journalists maintains a list of the worst 20. Neither Israel or the occupied territories is on it. If we can’t trust Pilger on simple assertions he doesn’t bother to source for us, why should we trust him on anything?
The reason this matters is that a young and promising journalist who wants to tell the wider world about the experiences of ordinary Gazans under blockade is in hospital after an ordeal at the Israeli border which urgently needs to be investigated, and every time loud voices like Pilger, or those who abused the image of Mohammed Al-Dura, indulge their hatred of Israel by playing with facts, they lose the authority to bring stories like Omer’s to light.
We hope that the investigation into what happened to Mohammed Omer is thorough, that the people who assaulted him are brought to trial, and that he will regain his health quickly and live out his ambition “to tell the truth from Gaza”, or from wherever he wants to be.
brian said,
July 7, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Mohammed says his concern is to get the truth out. Ironically, thats what he has done! He was tortured for doing just that, and in response, the zionist entity has suffered an another public relations disaster. People need to build on this. PR is the zionists achilles heel.