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by Bassam Tawil • August 12, 2017
at 5:00 am
- They
said they did not know what "sensitive information"
Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) were trying
to hide.
- Today,
it is safe to say that the situation of the freedom of the
media under the PA and Hamas is not much different than that
under Bashar Assad's Syria or even North Korea.
- Palestinian
journalists' hateful obsession with Israel brings them no
dividends. Rather, such venomous bias diverts attention from
the true challenges and threats they face from the PA and
Hamas. By expending their efforts in this twisted fashion, the
journalists aid and abet their leaders in building dictatorial
regimes that suppress public freedoms.
The
presence of Israeli reporters in Ramallah last week, to cover the
visit of Jordan's King Abdullah II, enraged several Palestinian
journalists, who took to social media to condemn the Palestinian
Authority leadership that gave them permission to cover the visit.
(Image source: Palestinian President's Office)
As part of its overarching effort to silence
critics, President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority (PA) has
resumed its war against Palestinian journalists who refuse toe the
line or are suspected of being insufficiently loyal to their
leaders in Ramallah.
But this is nothing new: Abbas and his team have
long been notoriously intolerant of news stories that reflect
negatively on them in particular and on Palestinians in general.
In the past few days, PA security forces arrested
six Palestinian journalists from Bethlehem, Nablus and Hebron. The
journalists -- Mamdouh Hamamreh, Qutaiba Kassem, Tarek Abu Zeid,
Amer Abu Arafeh, Thaer Al-Fakhouri and Ahmed Al-Halaykeh -- are
suspected of "leaking sensitive information to hostile
parties."
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