Israel's Free Press Shackled by Reporters Without Borders

Even when Israel does well, its praise is stunted.

Take for example the latest assessement by Reporters Without Borders. For its 2006 Annual Report on Israel, RWB initially praised Israel in the first line and a half, saying "The Israeli media were once again in 2005 the only ones in the region that had genuine freedom to speak out." Wow! . . . not many international organizations, private or governmental, go on record with such praise for the Jewish State.

But when you read the next 21 lines, you see that after getting the initial good feelings out of the way, RWB proceeds to bash Israel for its apparent treatment of reporters in the Palestinian territories. RWB states how Awad Rajoub, a Palestinian journalist, was arrested in November 2006 by Israel. Israel claims that Rajoub, a cousin of Palestinian Authority (PA) official Jibril Rajoub, possessed particular information that the security services required.

RWB also cites how (i) Nabil al-Mazzawi, an Al-Jazeera cameraman on the West Bank, was beaten on by Israeli soldiers after he filmed a demonstration against the wall separating Israel and the Palestinian territories; (ii) Majdi al-Arabid, cameraman for the Israeli Channel 10 TV station, was woundedby gunfire as he filmed Israeli troops entering Beit Hanoun, north of Gaza and (iii) French journalist Houda Ibrahim, of the radio station RMC Moyen-Orient, who had been sent by the French government to train Palestinian journalists, was refused entry to the West Bank from Jordan on 3 July.

I am in no position to determine whether Israel was right or wrong in these situations, whether it was Israeli army (or Palestinian terrorist) bullets that hit al-Arabid, whether there were security concerns around Rajoub's situation or whether Ibrahim was rightfully refused entry. RWB does not expand on this either.

What I will say is that I wished RWB, instead of parsing out blame for these four seperate instances, rather focused on the open and free press within Israel. Please tell us more about the "genuine freedom" of press in Israel. What form did it take, what were some of the daring exposes written, what scandals and abuses of power were unearthed?

When the rest of the reports concerning Middle East countries include descriptions such as "the media is totally controlled by the regime" (Lybia), "the country is one the world’s harshest towards press freedom" (Saudi Arabia) or "violence against journalists increased in 2005" (Palestinian territories), it would be nice to see RWB focus on how Israel positively affects the world's open press.

One line of niceties is not enough.