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Why Israel is still afraid of Mordechai Vanunu

Jonathan Cook 28 June 2004


He was the last breakfast companion I was expecting. Separated from me by a rack of toast and a handful of marmalade sachets was Mordechai Vanunu, the man who 18 years ago revealed that Israel had amassed a secret stockpile of nuclear weapons. Breakfast at the St George’s pilgrim guest house in East Jerusalem is usually a sedate affair, but on this occasion both he and I were skating unintentionally but dangerously close to arrest by Israel’s security services. Occasional EI contributor Jonathan Cook explains why Israel — and the US and UK — remains afraid of Vanunu. 

Deep-rooted corruption in Palestine

Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah 23 June 2004


In February, press reports that cement imported from Egypt through Palestinian companies and ready-made concrete manufactured in the Palestinian village of Abu Dis were being used to build Israeli settlements and the apartheid wall provoked outrage among Palestinians. A commission of inquiry has now reported finding “compelling evidence and documents adequate for indicting those involved.” But Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah say that corruption within the Palestinian Authority has deep roots. 

New Book: Bad News from Israel

22 June 2004


The study suggests that television news on the Israel/Palestinian conflict confuses viewers and substantially features Israeli government views. Israelis are quoted and speak in interviews over twice as much as Palestinians and there are major differences in the language used to describe the two sides. This operates in favours of the Israelis and influences how viewers understand the conflict. The study focused on BBC One and ITV News from the start of the current Palestinian intifada, the Glasgow researchers examined around 200 news programmes and interviewed and questioned over 800 people. The study is unique in that for the first time it brought senior broadcasters together with ordinary viewers to work in research groups, analysing how the news informs people and how it could be improved. 

RSF condemns violent attacks on Palestinian journalists

21 June 2004


In a 21 June 2004 letter to Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, RSF protested a string of violent attacks by the Israeli Army against Palestinian journalists in the Nablus region of the West Bank between 10 and 15 June. “The methods the Israeli Army uses to hamper the international media from covering its clashes with Palestinians over the construction of its security fence are unacceptable. It is evident that during its operations, the Israeli Army systematically obstructs the work of Palestinian journalists”, RSF said. 

View on the Sea

Toine van Teeffelen Bethlehem, Palestine 21 June 2004


Mary is called by a student from Gaza who since three years is unable to complete his final year at Bethlehem University due to the impossibility to travel out of Gaza. Her heart beat leaps after hearing the familiar voice of the student she knew so well. He tells her: “But we are better off than you, at least we have the sea here!” In Bethlehem the American actor Richard Gere watches some performances from Suzy’s students who had made some good drama plays based on their recently published Intifada diaries. Gere also visits a group of young children making drawings of the sea. The teacher tells Gere that the sand and the shells stuck on the drawings are really from the sea at Tel Aviv, a sea which the children cannot visit. 

Review: "Death in Gaza"

Victor Kattan 1 July 2004


The 77-minute HBO/Channel 4 production Death in Gaza is a story about the last moments of the life of award-winning British cameraman James Miller, 1968-2003. Miller travelled to the occupied Palestinian territories to make a film on children and was fatally shot by an Israeli soldier when filming in Rafah. The film’s commentator, Saira Shah, is an award-winning journalist of Afghan-Scottish decent. Miller and Shah had collaborated on other award-winning documentaries such as Beneath the Veil and Unholy War (Channel 4 / CNN), both filmed in Afghanistan. 

Palestinian-American stand-up comedians Maysoon Zayid and Dean Obeidallah to perform at refugee benefit in Beirut

23 June 2004


Lebanese Families in Solidarity with Palestinian Families with the cooperation of the Palestinian Cultural Club at AUB invites you to a night of stand up comedy featuring Maysoon Zayid and Dean Obeidallah. The two Arab-American stand up comedians will be performing for the first time in Beirut in support of the “family to family program” which supports 130 Palestinian families under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. Proceeds from this event will go to benefit the displaced families in Rafah, whose homes have been destroyed. 

Palestinian refugees in Iraq still waiting to be moved

21 June 2004


They may be the world’s longest-suffering refugees, but the Palestinian families sitting in the sweltering heat of the dusty football field at Haifa Sports Club in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Sunday had no idea that it was World Refugee Day. “I hope this occasion of World Refugee Day can serve as a bridge for us to help us go home,” Huda Naif Sahaa, 43, told IRIN. “I’ve never heard of this World Refugee Day, but I want to know more about it if it helps us.” Some 35 families are still living in tents at the sports club. Already, 140 families have been relocated, according to the office of UNHCR. The refugee agency is assisting 450 Palestinian families in Baghdad by subsidising rents, providing medical care and other relief items. 

The story TV news won't tell

Tim Llewellyn 20 June 2004


Since the Palestinians began their armed uprising against Israel’s military occupation three years and eight months ago, British television and radio’s reporting of it has been, in the main, dishonest - in concept, approach and execution. In my judgment as a journalist and Middle East specialist, the broadcasters’ language favours the occupying soldiers over the occupied Arabs, depicting the latter, essentially, as alien tribes threatening the survival of Israel, rather than vice versa. The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians is shown, most especially on mainstream bulletins, as a battle between two ‘forces’, possessed equally of right and wrong and responsibility. It is the tyranny of spurious equivalence. That 37 years of military occupation, the violation of the Palestinians’ human, political and civil rights and the continuing theft of their land might have triggered this crisis is a concept either lost or underplayed. 

Interview: "Writers on the Borders" director Samir Abdallah

Maureen Clare Murphy 21 June 2004


“People who have been [to the West Bank and Gaza Strip] always say it’s very difficult … to speak about it” to others who haven’t been there, says French director Samir Abdallah, creator of the film Writers on the Borders: A Journey to Palestine(s). Abdallah adds that his film “brings some proposal to this question of how to speak about it and show what’s happening in Palestine and … [informs how to] not only be a storyteller but an actor, in an active position” in striving for justice for the Palestinians. EI’s Maureen Clare Murphy caught up with Abdallah who was in Chicago for the North American premier of Writers on the Borders.