Friday, July 04, 2008

Palestinian Journalist Abused, Stripped

By Nora Barrows-Friedman and Dennis Bernstein
July 5, 2008

It is nearly impossible these days to get substantial, unbiased information out on punishing Israeli policies. The few reporters who have chosen to take on the story head-on oftentimes risk their life and their limbs to do their work.

Read on.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The opening line stating that the US supports violence of the type described is not helpful to any part of the process. For openers, it is not relevant to the rest of the story. For closers, it is prejudicial to the entire American people and is intended to result in more violence against the American people. We are already being warred upon by those who are stirred up by this propagandistic approach.

Secondly, if this report is true -- and one never knows about that -- it is of course shameful and regrettable. Were the Palestinians and their Arab, Persian, and Egyptian supporters to actually try to make peace with Israel, these sorts of things would stop. But no, that would not suit the religious leaders who insist on killing Jews on purely religious grounds.

We should never forget that the so-called occupied territories were once Israel. We should also not forget that they are "occupied" today because the above-mentioned religious zealots tried to exterminate Israel and Jews by invading what was left to the Jews as a homeland by the UN.

It is unfortunate that the Palestinians will not commit to civilized processes -- law and order. In their blind hatred they insist, rather, on lobbing explosives into what's left of Israel.

Killing and maiming Jews as a matter of religious and national policy is not the way to peaceful coexistence. Cowardly murder is for the uncivilized Nazi type and is not a sign of a civilized people.

Last but not least, what might have happened to Mr. Omer -- if his allegations amount to fact -- does not compare at all to the deliberate invasion of Israel and the killing and maiming that went on. Nor does it compare to the suicide bombing of innocent Jews or to the rocket attacks against Jews in Israel.

Unknown said...

Mohammed Omer's experience is an extreme embarrassment to the United States which not only subsidizes Israel but apparently is inordinately influenced by the Israeli lobby.

It seems we have much in common with the Israelis: both our governments do unconscionable things in our name and the Press generally gives such governmental abuse a free pass.

One can only wonder why the world's celebrity journalists are not all over Israel's leaders not only for this particular episode which is horrific enough but for the sickening abuse the Israeli military wreaked on the Lebanese not that long ago and the revulsive love fest between Ehud Barak and George Bush, the leading altar boys for the proposition that power tends to corrupt and corrupt absolutely in the hands of a unitary executive.

George Collins
Goffstown, NH