Western Media Collude in the Political Agitations of Palestinian Journalists

March 14 2017

Last week, controversy broke out among Palestinians over an advertisement by Israel’s civil administration in the West Bank that appeared in Al-Quds, the leading Palestinian daily newspaper. The Palestinian Writers’ Union condemned the publication of the advertisement as “normalization” of relations with the Jewish state, and a group of journalists demonstrated outside the offices of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, which is controlled by Fatah and itself fiercely opposes any hint of normalization. Bassam Tawil comments:

Nasser Abu Baker, the chairman of the syndicate, who also works as a correspondent for Agence France-Press (AFP), lashed out at Al-Quds for publishing the advertisement. . . . Abu Baker, who recently ran in the election for the Fatah Revolutionary Council, is the architect of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate’s campaign to boycott Israeli journalists and media outlets. His political activism constitutes a flagrant violation of the regulations and principles of AFP and a conflict of interests. However, this does not seem to bother his employers at the French news agency, who do not see a problem with one of their employees running in the election for Fatah’s Revolutionary Council. . . .

Last year, . . . the syndicate claimed that Israeli journalists “enter the territories of the occupied State of Palestine [sic] and work there together with the occupation army and under its protection” [and] accused Israeli journalists of being “unprofessional” and serving as a “mouthpiece for the occupation to justify its crimes against the Palestinian people.” . . . By accusing the Israeli journalists of serving as a “mouthpiece” for the Israeli authorities and working “under the protection” of the Israel Defense Forces, Abu Baker and his syndicate are endangering the lives of the Israeli journalists [by] turning them into supposedly legitimate targets. . . . Abu Baker is not the only Palestinian journalist working for an international media outlet who is involved in [this sort of] political activism. . . .

This is the dirty little secret that Western media outlets do not wish to reveal for various reasons. One of them is because they are afraid of losing access to sources in the Palestinian Authority. Another is because these media outlets sympathize with their Palestinian producers and reporters and see them as “victims” of Israel. Yet hell would freeze over before they would employ an Israeli political activist as a reporter or producer.

Read more at Gatestone

More about: Israel & Zionism, Journalism, Media, Palestinians

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023