How Terrorists and Dictators Silence Arab Journalists
by Khaled Abu Toameh • May 19, 2016 at 5:00 am
- That is the sad state of journalism in the Arab world: "If you're not with us, then you must be against us and that is why we need to shut your mouth." A journalist who does not agree to serve as a governmental mouthpiece is denounced as a "traitor."
- Hamas shut the Gaza offices of Al-Arabiya in July 2013, under the pretext that the station broadcasted "incorrect news" about the situation in the Gaza Strip. The closure did not receive much attention from the international community and human rights organizations. Had the office been closed by Israel, there would have been an international outcry, with journalists screaming about Israeli "assaults on freedom of the media."
- Al-Arabiya, like many other Arab TV stations, has a bureau in Israel, and its reporters enjoy more freedom reporting out of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv than they do in the Arab world. Today, the only free and independent Arabic newspapers in the Middle East can be found inside Israel.
Hamas shut the Gaza offices of Al-Arabiya in July 2013, under the pretext that the station had been broadcasting "incorrect news" about the situation in the Gaza Strip. (Image source: JN1 video screenshot)
Thirty-five Arab journalists have been fired since the beginning of April as a result of a campaign of intimidation and terrorism waged against them by Hamas and Hezbollah.
The journalists were working for the Saudi-owned pan-Arab Al-Arabiya television news channel, based in Dubai Media City in the United Arab Emirates. The network was previously rated by the BBC among the top pan-Arab stations.
But life for Al-Arabiya reporters has never been easy. Like most Arab journalists covering the Arab and Islamic countries, they too have long faced threats from various parties and governments.
That is the sad state of journalism in the Arab world: "If you're not with us, then you must be against us and that is why we need to shut your mouth." A journalist who does not agree to serve as a governmental mouthpiece is denounced as a "traitor."
The West Must Say "Je Suis Asia Bibi"
by Giulio Meotti • May 19, 2016 at 4:30 am
- "I will not convert. I believe in my religion and Jesus Christ. And why should I be the one to convert and not you?" — Asia Bibi.
- It is the West's indolence and cupidity that has condemned Asia Bibi to death. No one in Europe has filled the streets to ask for the liberation of this courageous woman, or even to protest Pakistan's anti-Christian laws.
- Even Pope Francis stood silent. The emblem of his reticence is the 12 seconds of face-to-face time the Pope had with Bibi's husband and her daughter in St. Peter's Square. Francis barely touched the two. His predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, publicly called many times for her release.
- The mainline Protestant churches of America, too busy demonizing Israel, also stood silent. Meanwhile, Christianity is being erased from its own cradle.
Asia Bibi and two of her five children, pictured prior to her imprisonment on death row in 2010 for "blasphemy."
The death sentence for Asia Bibi is like Chernobyl's nuclear cloud: it contaminates everything around it. After Asia's arrest, her husband, Masih, and her children went into hiding. They have moved house 15 times in five years. They could not even attend Asia's judicial hearings. It is too dangerous for them. Her husband was forced to quit his job.
Asia's "crime" was to use the same water glass as her Muslim co-workers. She was sentenced to death because she is Christian and she was thirsty. "You defiled our water," the Muslim women told her. "Convert to Islam to redeem yourself from your filthy religion."
Asia took a deep breath and replied: "I will not convert. I believe in my religion and Jesus Christ. And why should I be the one to convert and not you?"
Israel, Gaza and "Proportionality"
by Louis René Beres • May 19, 2016 at 4:00 am
- It appears that several major Palestinian terror groups have begun to prepare for mega-terror attacks on Israel.
- The authoritative rules of war do not equate "proportionality" with how many people die in each side of a conflict. In war, no side is ever required to respond to aggression with only the equivalent measure of force. Rather, the obligations of proportionality require that no side employ any level of force that is greater than what is needed to achieve a legitimate political and operational objective.
- Under pertinent international law, the use of one's own people as "human shields" -- because such firing from populated areas is intended to deter Israeli reprisals, or to elicit injuries to Palestinian civilians -- represents a codified war crime. More specifically, this crime is known as "perfidy." This is plainly an attempt to make the IDF appear murderous when it is compelled to retaliate, but it is simply a Palestinian manipulation of legal responsibility. Under law, those Arab residents who suffer from Israeli retaliations are incurring the consequences of their own government's war crimes.
- International law is not a suicide pact. Instead, it offers a universally binding body of rules and procedures that allows all states to act on behalf of their "inherent right of self-defense."
In its most recent defensive operations, Israel accomplished an impressively high rate of "Iron Dome" interceptions against incoming rockets from Gaza. Still, it would be a mistake to extrapolate from any such relatively limited successes to the vastly more complex hazards of strategic danger from Iran. (Image source: IDF)
Already, calls from various directions have begun to condemn Israel for its recent retaliatory strikes in self-defense at Gaza.[1] The carefully-rehearsed refrain is all-too familiar. Gazan terrorists fire rockets and mortars at Israel; then, the world calls upon the Israel Air Force (IAF) not to respond.
Although Israel is plainly the victim in these ritualistic cycles of Arab terror and required Israeli retaliations, the "civilized world" usually comes to the defense of the victimizers. Inexplicably, in the European Union, and even sometimes with the current U.S. president, the Israeli response is reflexively, without thought, described as "excessive" or "disproportionate."
