Westerners Killed to Suppress Palestinian Perspective?

By Lasse Jeppesen Schmidt,

In the beginning of this millennium, the growing numbers
of young Westerners who went to the occupied Palestinian
territories to live for a while with the civilian population
were helping the world opinion turn more and more against
Israel's occupation of the Palestinian people. The often
moving first hand accounts of these autonomous, self-
governed freelance reporters and human rights activists
appeared in local papers all over the US and Europe and
swamped the internet, often providing a rare insight into
the life of the occupied civilian population.

When reading these accounts, it made a difference to many
Americans and Europeans that it was one of "their own"
who had experienced the brutality of Israeli occupation
close up and then reported on it. It made the stories credible
in the eyes of many, and paved the way for them to identify
with the Palestinian suffering and understand the
Palestinian perspective for the first time. More and
more ordinary people in the West were aware of the
inhumane nature of the Israeli occupation.

However, the bloody spring of 2003 changed all that.
When Israeli soldiers in five tragic weeks killed
Rachel Corrie and James Miller and critically injured
Brian Avery and Tom Hurndall, presenting the
Palestinian perspective to the world suffered a
hard blow. Telling the alternative story to the official
Israeli one became difficult as the Israeli army
introduced more restrictions to the movements
of internationals across the green line between Israel
and Palestine and, as fewer internationals have had
the courage to travel inside Palestine

Today, five years later, our knowledge of what goes
on inside the West Bank and Gaza and of the devastating
impact to ordinary Palestinians of the Israeli military's
actions is still suffering due to the atrocities of spring,
2003.

Corrie, Avery, Hurndall and James, who all operated
without the permission or consent of the State of Israel,
lived with Palestinian families for a sustained period of time.
Miller and Hurndall were both freelance reporters and
photographers working on stories that would shed a
negative light on the Israeli army's treatment of civilian
Palestinians in Gaza. In addition to freelancing, Hurndall
also volunteered in the same organization as Corrie and
Avery, the International Solidarity Movement, which is
a Palestinian organization attracting internationals to
the West Bank and Gaza to live with civilian Palestinians
and work as human right observers, humanitarian aid
workers and nonviolent activists.

The British reporter Jonathan Cook, who works out
of the Israeli city of Nazareth, wrote in 2006:

"It was a very effective deterrent to other activists --
as well as freelance journalists who might be mistaken
for activists ... in consequence there was a rapid loss of
the Internet diaries of life under occupation and eyewitness
accounts that were creating a fledgling but useful
"alternative journalism" ... Israel has [thereby] ensured
that independent witnesses are now largely absent from
the occupied territories."

A few months after the shooting of Tom Hurndall,
ISM closed down its office in Gaza. Even though the presence
of international witnesses in Gaza was as needed as ever,
it was deemed too great a risk. Furthermore, the increasing
difficulties international civilians experienced getting into
Gaza was discouraging most from even making the attempt.

"... instead "professional" reporters, based in Israel, venture
into these areas only to report after the event... ensuring
that a far narrower range of voices are being heard,"
continued Jonathan Cook.

I, Lasse J. Schmidt, the author of this article, lived in
Jenin on the West Bank for 15 months between February
2003 and August 2005. The first three months, I
volunteered for ISM (and witnessed the shooting of
Brian Avery), the last year I taught English at the
American University. One thing I often discussed with
my ISM colleagues (mostly from Sweden) was how to
get international journalists to drive the short trip from
their offices in Tel Aviv to Jenin. It was a trip of just an
hour or so by car, but also a trip from one reality to another,
from first-world luxury and comfort to poverty, destruction
and military oppression.

During my 15 months living and working in the Jenin area,
I know of only once when foreign reporters came to the city.
That was on the day of the one-year memorial for the Israeli
invasion of the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002. 50-70
Palestinians died over ten days of fighting and 3500
became homeless as Israeli bulldozers demolished an
entire neighborhood in the center of the camp.

The memorials were supposed to last for a whole week, but
the Israeli army declared a week-long curfew on the
morning of the second day and the remaining events
were canceled. But on that first day where ten thousand
or so people marched in the streets of Jenin, international
reporters invaded the city. Sadly, they had gone home
to Israel by nightfall.

On May 11 2003, only nine days after the shooting of
British filmmaker James Miller, the Israeli army introduced
a waiver to be signed by all internationals seeking access to
Gaza. By signing it, reporters, aid workers and even UN
personnel write off any right to hold the Israeli army responsible
if shot or injured, no matter the circumstances. Until the
disengagement of Gaza, the waiver also stated that they were
forbidden to enter the "closed military zones" along the
Egyptian border in Rafah. This is the place where Rachel
Corrie, Tom Hurndall and James Miller were killed and
where Israeli military bulldozers systematically had been
violating the rights of civilian Palestinians for years by
demolishing their homes. In addition, visitors to Gaza had
to declare that they have no association with the
International Solidarity Movement.

Today, to get into Gaza as a reporter, you need a special
press card issued by the Israeli government. All other press
cards are of no use without being backed up by the official
Israeli card. To get this card, you have to be accredited with
a news organization recognized by the Israeli government.

Despite being officially disengaged from Gaza, it is still the
Israeli army who solely decides who gets access to the strip
and who does not. Gaza is completely closed off from the
outside world by a tall electric fence or concrete wall on
three sides except for a few border crossings, and all -
fence, wall and crossings - is controlled by Israeli soldiers.
Even the border to Egypt is de facto controlled by the Israeli
army. On the fourth side is the Mediterranean Sea, which is
controlled by the Israeli navy. No Palestinian boats - not
even small fishing boats - are allowed to go more than
three miles of the shoreline.

"These conditions severely limit the freedom of freelance
reporters and photographers to find stories that the main
media organisations have overlooked ... The effect of the
waiver is to impose a large financial burden on freelance
journalists ... either they protect themselves ... at a huge
personal cost ... or they risk injury for which no one can
be held accountable and made to pay. Even if it can be
proven that an Israeli soldier took a malicious shot of the
kind that in the past killed filmmaker James Miller and
UN official Iain Hook and destroyed most of face of activist
Brian Avery, freelance journalists and their families will
not be entitled to a penny of compensation," wrote
Jonathan Cook.

It will not be long before the situation concerning the West
Bank is similar to the one for Gaza. At the moment, Israel
has built approximately a 500 km Separation Wall around
the West Bank. When the last 300 km of wall are built,
which at the current pace of construction will take 3-4 year,
that area will be just as effectively sealed of as Gaza is today.
Then, who gets in and out of the West Bank, and who gets to
report on the news there, will be entirely up to the Israeli
army.

Left to tell the stories differing from the official Israeli
perspective are the Palestinians, and who would be better
at it, one could interject. They, of course, know better than
anyone the price paid by civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
due to the Israeli military actions. While that is true, it is
also a fact that Palestinians are not considered as credible
witnesses by the outside world as are their own people.
Who would you believe the most? Jacob, a Jewish American
who grew up in your neighborhood, or Ahmad, who speaks
a heavily accented English, is Muslim and grew up in
Gaza City?

There are hundreds of highly regarded Palestinian
photographers and reporters working in Jenin, Nablus,
Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron, Gaza City and Rafah. Many
work for respected news organizations such as Reuters,
Associated Press (AP) and Agence France-Presse (AFP).
But their stories and photographs are rarely presented in
the western media in general and in the US Media in
particular.

"Israeli public relations strategies ... exercise a powerful
influence over how news from the region is reported ...
the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza remains
hidden in the news media, and Israeli colonization of the
occupied territories appears to be a defensive move rather
than an offensive one ... U.S. journalists, for reasons ranging
from intimidation to a lack of thorough investigation, have
become complicit in carrying out Israel's PR campaign,"
writes the official summary for the , a documentary film by
Bathsheba Ratzkoff, an Israeli citizen and Jew now living
in the U.S.

As the five-year anniversaries of the deaths of Rachel
Corrie, Tom Hurndall and James Miller and the near-
death of Brian Avery are coming this spring, ask yourself
why these four internationals ended up being victims of
Israeli soldiers. No ISM activist has been severely injured
or killed before or after the bloody spring of 2003. Was it
in fact a calculated attempt to deter the growing independent
and alternative voices reporting to the outside world on the
Palestinian perspective?

More resources

Facts and Dates on the Bloody Spring of 2003:
http://lasseschmidt.blogspot.com/

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