IDF Snipers - how they cope with intimate kills

A recent study about snipers in Israel has shown that snipers are much less likely than other soldiers to dehumanise their enemy,  the BBC's Stephanie Hegarty reports.

Part of the reason for this may be that snipers can see their targets with great clarity and sometimes must observe them for hours or even days.
"It's killing that is very distant but also very personal," says anthropologist Neta Bar. "I would even say intimate."

She studied attitudes to killing among 30 Israeli snipers who served in the Palestinian territories from 2000 to 2003, to examine whether killing is unnatural or traumatic for human beings.
She chose snipers in particular because, unlike pilots or tank drivers who shoot at big targets like buildings, the sniper picks off individual people.
What she found was that while many Israeli soldiers would refer to Palestinian militants as "terrorists", snipers generally referred to them as human beings.

There were about 20 gunmen escorting a convoy and one of them was unlucky enough to get in the sight of my scope. The distance was about 300m, almost nothing for a sniper.
A few seconds later I saw him lying motionless.
In the heat of the moment my only thought was to shoot more and more. I saw the figures rushing in panic and trying to hide.

We killed all of them, except three or four who were wounded and captured. Afterwards I blamed myself for not being cool-headed enough. I thought that if I had been calmer, I would have killed more enemies.

"The Hebrew word for human being is Son of Adam and this was the word they used by far more than any other when they talked about the people that they killed," she says.

Snipers almost never referred to the men they killed as targets, or used animal or machine metaphors. Some interviewees even said that their victims were legitimate warriors.

"Here is someone whose friends love him and I am sure he is a good person because he does this out of ideology," said one sniper who watched through his scope as a family mourned the man he had just shot. "But we from our side have prevented the killing of innocents, so we are not sorry about it."

          This justification - which was supported by friends, family and wider Israeli society -
          could be one reason why the snipers didn't report any trauma after killing, she suggests.

"Being prepared for all those things that might crack their conviction, actually enabled them to kill without suffering too much."

She also noted that the snipers she studied were rational and intelligent young men.
In most military forces, snipers are subject to rigorous testing and training and are chosen for aptitude. In the UK, they complete a three-month training course, with a pass rate of only one-in-four.

Core Issue: When did the Dead Sea Die?

Geo-scientists are drilling for knowledge and located a pebble beach hundreds of meters beneath the Dead Sea. The BBC reports on its significance from a conference on the West Coast of America:

The Dead Sea is an extraordinary place. The surface of the inland waterway sits at the lowest land point on the planet, more than 400m below sea level...Lake dry-down happened 120,000 years ago without any human intervention.

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Avigdor Lieberman pans Hamas in toilet interview

Avigdorable! Israel's outspoken foreign minister has chosen a novel way of making a point in a radio interview - apparently flushing his toilet live on the air. The guy knows how to put the 'Ew' in interview....and there was no indication that he bothered to wash his hands afterwards.

Avigdor Lieberman was referring to the Palestinian Islamist group, Hamas, at the time.

Lieberman, who leads the right-wing Israel Our Home Party, is no stranger to controversy. He frequently upsets Israel's Arab minority and liberal groups with his blunt manner of speaking.

Now his critics say the former nightclub bouncer has sunk to new depths, by apparently flushing his toilet in a live radio interview.

Mr Lieberman's distinctly undiplomatic intervention came during a discussion about the Islamist group Hamas.

It may have been an odd way for the foreign minister to get his point across, but his methods aren't harming him in the opinion polls.

Although he is facing allegations of corruption, support for Mr Lieberman's ultra-nationalist party is growing and he is unlikely to care what his opponents think about his antics on the toilet.

Hear an excerpt of the Avigdor Lieberman interview, in Hebrew, courtesy Reshet Bet radio. Hat tip to Wyre Davies of BBC News, Jerusalem, for this guest post.

Impartiality in the Middle East?

This valedictory broadcast from Tim Franks, a Jewish BBC correspondent based in Jerusalem for the past several years, ponders how to maintain professional impartiality and deal with the expectations of co-religionists while reporting from one of the hottest and holiest places on the planet.

Click here to listen and read the script.

Genetic study sheds light on Jewish diaspora

Scientists have shed light on Jewish history with an in-depth genetic study, the BBC reports today. Research shows that most contemporary Jews descended from ancient residents of the Levant

The researchers analysed genetic samples from 14 Jewish communities across the world and compared them with those from 69 non-Jewish populations.

Their study, published in Nature, revealed that most Jewish populations were "genetically closer" to each other than to their non-Jewish neighbours.

It also revealed genetic ties between globally dispersed Jews and non-Jewish populations in the Middle East.

This fits with the idea that most contemporary Jews descended from ancient Hebrew and Israelite residents in the Middle Eastern region known as the Levant. It provides a trace of the Jewish diaspora.

Doron Behar from Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, Israel, led an international team of scientists in the study. He described it as a form of "genetic archaeology".

"It seems that most Jewish populations and therefore most Jewish individuals are closer to each other [at the genetic level], and closer to the Middle Eastern populations, than to their traditional host population in the diaspora," he explained.

There were exceptions to this key finding, though, as Dr Behar explained.

He said that his research revealed that Ethiopian and Indian Jewish communities were genetically closer to their neighbouring non-Jewish populations.

This may be partly because a greater degree of genetic, religious and cultural crossover took place when the Jewish communities in these areas became established.

Novel analytical techniques allowed the scientists to examine the genetic samples they took in unprecedented detail.

Dr Behar says the data from this study could aid future research into the genetic basis of diseases that are more prevalent in the Jewish population.

(map credit to Norman Einstein, creative commons)

Israeli spin vs eyewitnesses: conflicting accounts of the bloody raid on high seas

This map, above, shows where the IDF intercepted the flotilla and the violence unfolded. Even the staid Financial Times has branded the aggression as piracy.

The Israeli censors are not yet allowing release of the names of the activists killed, though there are at least four Turks among them, according to Turkish authorities. In its usual wrap-up propaganda blitz following an aggressive act of "self-defence" which the world sees as disproportionate, the IDF have shown a photo of weapons supposedly found aboard the Turkish ferry. One of the IDF's volunteer cyber trolls already mentioned this in a comment posted on Israelity Bites soon after the photo became available. [That's you, "at the edge"]

The Guardian newspaper interviewed a Turkish survivor who hid with her baby in the toilet of the Turkish passenger ship Mavi Marmara and after the raid was deported to Istanbul, though all her belongings and anything like cell phone or camera which might be used as evidence were first confiscated by the IDF. She said that live bullets were first fired by the Israeli troops. The BBC is highlighting inconsistencies in the version of the raid released to the public by military spokesmen inside Israel, and say that German eyewitnesses cast doubt on the veracity. With no access to hospitalized or imprisoned activists in Israel, reporters are at a disadvantage to learn independently what happened. Aboard the Mavi Marmara was an octogenarian former US Ambassador, whose wife has not been able to reach him yet.

It is worth pointing out that five of nine previous aid flotillas had been allowed into Gaza, under Olmert. The present prime minister Bibi Netanyahu, brother of a celebrated Entebbe raider, plays hardball and must long for the past era when Israel's "surgical" military wizardry was admired around the world. Apparently, another two aid ships are attempting to run the blockade.

Short-range Guided Missiles for Israel - Obama's $200m sop to Likud

An advanced guided missile program, called the Iron Dome (a natural follow-up to Operation Cast Lead?), has passed all tests and will be installed later this year with US military aid. President Obama is pressing congress to come up with the extra funding. These short-range missiles will defend against assaults from Gaza and southern Lebanon, according to a BBC report. A U.S. State Department figures show that direct military aid to Israel was $2.55bn in 2009. This is set to increase to $3.15bn in 2018, which does not indicate much trust in the ongoing Middle East Peace Process. Analysts say Washington may be acting now to ease the recent tensions in its relations with Israel.

Ethiopian Israelis celebrate

Sigd Day pomp in Jerusalem draws Ethiopian leaders in full regalia to the Old City, to celebrate their day of fasting and prayer.
Nearly all of the Ethiopian Beta Israel community, comprising more than 119,300 people, now live in Israel under its Law of Return, which gives Jews and those with Jewish parents or grandparents, and all of their spouses, the right to settle in Israel and obtain citizenship. (Not to be confused with the Right of Return, the Palestinian notion that refugee families who were nudged out by fighting during the creation of the Israeli state should be welcomed back.) The Israeli government has mounted rescue operations, most notably during Operation Moses (1984) and Operation Solomon (1991) when civil war and famine threatened Jewish populations within Ethiopia. Immigration continues. Today 81,000 Ethiopian Israelis were born in Ethiopia, while 38,500 or 32% of the community are native born Israelis. An estimated half live below the poverty line.

Falasha Mura people are the descendants of Beta Israel who converted to Christianity. Some are returning to the practices of Judaism by living in Falash Mura communities and observing halakha. Beta Israel spiritual leaders, including Chief Kes Raphael Hadane, urge the acceptance of these Falasha Mura as full-fledged Jews. Israeli society plays a statistical demographic shell game - the goal is to keep the headcount of new immigrants high to counteract the Palestinian birthrate. More than a million Russian economic immigrants, many of whom came of age in a Godless Soviet society and have not inculcated many Jewish traditions, complicate the equation.
Inside Israel, Ethiopians usually rank lower in status than Russians because the melting pot philosphy is tricky amid the in-grown skin-tone snobbery. Ask a Misrahi or Sephardic Jew. Descent goes white, brown, black, and finally Arab.

Hat tip to the Beeb for this photo.

No time like the present: dung- ho gifts from the Galilee to Bethlehem

Under various fake fir trees and Hannukah bushes over the years, Izzy and friends have unwrapped pet rocks, a singing stuffed bass, and fluffy bunny slippers, but it took my fellow blogger Dion over at Checkpoint Jerusalem to unearth the shittiest gift ever to put the X in Xmas. With glee from Galilee, an asinine scoop of donkey dung is encased in plastic and inscribed with a Talmudic verse. This Holy Shit from the Holy Land is peddled for $70 bucks a dump and the plucky Israeli entrepeneur behind it all is doing a brisk trade in Messiah-inspired mess.

Less tongue in cheek is the man and ass retracing the journey of pregnant Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Click here for a video diary of the modern day Nativity trek by Aleem Maqbool, as he leads his donkey over hill and vale and through military checkpoints.

Off the wall: Israeli security barrier rerouted

Israeli authorities have agreed to dismantle and reroute part of the separation barrier near Qalqilya. But will they follow through? BBC reports:

Israel's defense ministry has said it will dismantle a section of the West Bank barrier, improving Palestinians' access to some of their farm land.

The Israeli supreme court ruled in 2006 that the route should be altered, but no alternative path was agreed.

But farmers in Jayyus village say the new proposed route is a "disaster" and still cuts off much of their land.

Israel says the barrier is necessary to prevent attacks from the West Bank, but critics see its route as a land grab.

The defence ministry said on Monday it had told the Supreme Court it would revise the route in the area, near the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya.

In its 2006 ruling, the court criticised the government for taking into consideration expansion plans for the nearby Jewish settlement of Tzufin, rather than just security concerns, in determining the barrier's route.

According to the Council for Peace and Security, an Israeli security think tank that proposed an alternative route similar to the revised route, the cost of dismantling the existing section will be US $14.5m.


It said the defence ministry had previously resisted the proposed changes, citing "inferior" security provision among its reasons.

Correspondents say that while the government's decision to heed the court's ruling is significant, there is no indication that actual work to re-route the barrier is imminent.

Sharif Omar, a farmer from Jayyus village, told the BBC News Website said that the new route would return about 2,600 dunums (260 hectares) of land to the village side of the barrier, but farmers would still have to cross it reach a further 6,000 dunums (600 hectares) and several key wells.
Map

Currently the villagers have to obtain special permits to cross the barrier to reach their land through gates which are only open at certain times of day. Mr Omar said it was unclear whether there would be a gate in the re-routed section.

"Ninety percent of the village population works in agriculture - if we lose our land we will be beggars," he said.

The supreme court must still rule on the alternative route to be used - the villagers want the barrier to follow the Green Line, which marks the boundary that separates Israel from the West Bank.

Israel began building the West Bank barrier in 2002.

It has been widely criticised internationally for looping into Palestinian areas around Israeli settlements, rather than following the Green Line.

The International Court of Justice ruled in 2004 that the barrier is illegal where it cuts into the West Bank and called for it to be pulled down.

60 years on, the Dream of the Jewish State

Some fascinating snippets of history are posted by a thoughtful Tim Franks, on the BBC Jerusalem Diary

"Here, everyone begrudges everyone else," President Shimon Peres is quoted as saying.

So what do Israelis make of their compatriots, and their state? Check out the BBC Today programme's interviews with "five tribes" of the Holy Land: secular, settler, ultra-orthodox, Palestinian (the man in question rejects the label "Israeli Arab"), and a non-Jewish Russian immigrant.The one thing the five share is that they all hold Israeli citizenship.

# Yuli, the secular trainee teacher from Jerusalem: "The moment that people will prefer to deal with their own stuff, and dream their own dreams, rather than the dreams of the big Jewish nation, maybe the situation will get better."

# Shoshana, the settler from Qedumim: "This is the Middle East: another language, another code. It's not Europe; it's not America… My father, who built this state, always told us that we have to pay a tax, a price, for living here. We have an obligation to pay, as we don't have any other place to go."

# Mohammed, the Palestinian from a village near Nazareth: "The way Israel deals with its Arab minority is the indication of how the world should deal with the Jewish minority. If Israel continues to discriminate against the Arab minority in Israel, it has no moral right to speak against discrimination against Jews around the world."

# Jonathan, the Haredi (ultra-orthodox man) from Jerusalem: "Israel was meant to create a New Jew - the idea that the term Jew was not enough, and we had to create something new, something that was a rejection in many respects of the Jew of the exile. But that New Jew has turned out to be a chimera."

# Mila, the non-Jewish Russian immigrant, now living in Gedera: "I am not a Jew, no. But when I sing songs in class about love for the land of Israel, it's just like in Russia when we would have moments of love for our homeland. Then when I hear the songs and spoke with older Arabs, my heart hurts and I start to cry."

Izzy Bee is still out of the country at the moment, but will touch down at Ben Gurion Airport to embark on the nation's 61st year.

BBC Man Freed in Gaza after 114 Days

Alan Johnston's ordeal ended in the early hours of this morning when he was released unconditionally.

He appeared pale but in reasonable health after 4 months of solitary confinement and was articulate even during a chaotic press conference held at the home of the sacked Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniya. Colleagues in Jerusalem praised Alan, a 45-year-old Scot, as "superman" for his professional calm. Since March, the BBC had urged Hamas not to resort to a military rescue, and the reporter's release followed Hamas's exchange of prisoners with the Army of Islam faction, Jihadists who dooperate with the criminal Dogmush clan. Late Tuesday, Hamas militia on rooftops surrounding the windowless room where Johnston was held engaged in a firefight which killed a civilian in crossfire. Johnston survived captivity unharmed and finally is headed home.

Israelis anxiously await the release of the other Gaza captive, Corporal Gilad Shalit, siezed by the same renegade Jihadist faction more than a year ago, when they tunneled under the border into Israel. Poignantly, today marks the 31st anniversary since the Entebbe raid, a secret mission when Israeli special forces freed hostages held at Entebbe Airport in Idi Amin's Uganda. One Israeli soldier, 45 Ugandan soldiers, six hijackers, and three hostages were ultimately slain during the rescue action; 100 hostages were let go. Haniya, chuffed from the release of Johnston, told the press that "the ball is in Israel's court" and wants to swap prisoners.

IDF takes aim at Gaza while the Strip self-destructs and blood flows

How can cooler heads possibly prevail when the blood-soaked region is on the verge of all-out war?

According to a UN envoy the entire Middle East is set to flare into pitched combat on at least four fronts and get engulfed in war. All the usual suspects, alas. Already in Gaza, the bodycount increases daily, even though analysts say that fighting has yet to peak. The BBC reports today that Hamas are countering an assassination attempt against Prime Minister Ismail Haniya with an assault on Fatah bases. They may try a power grab, fears the weak Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas; so far 19 Gazans have been killed in the past 24 hours. Gunbattles inside Gaza's hospital wards, where rival factions executed the wounded, are a new low point. Elsewhere in the brutalized Gaza Strip, militants have resorted to hurling handcuffed prisoners to their deaths from high rise buildings. Lately, the internecine bloodletting tends to lull as soon as militants rocket Israeli towns in the Negev and provoke a military response from the IDF. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has pledged that airstrikes will continue until the Qassam rocket barrages stop and infiltrators are thwarted. Outrage over a report that Palestinian militants posed as journalists and attempted an attack on Israelis at a checkpoint by using a white jeep labelled with "TV" markings has been met with cynicism. Senior correspondents point out that journalists never are waived through without credentials being scrutinized; it is just as likely that the shot-up jeep was taped up as a TV vehicle after the fact in order to make the point that journos should lie low. Meanwhile, Gaza implodes.
Nasty.

Flicker of hope for BBC's Johnston?

This morning, a videotape of Alan Johnston, the BBC's missing-in-action Gaza correspondent, was posted on an Arab website, al-Ekhlaas. Click here to view it. He said he'd been well fed, treated without violence and then called for the lifting of sanctions against the Palestinian Authority. This tape is the first proof of life, post-kidnap, but there's no indication when it was recorded or whether Johnston, who has been held hostage since March 12th, still is ok. The BBC is cautiously optimistic and continues to work towards his freedom. The Army of Islam (Jaish al-Islam) posted the footage on the internet, according to wire services. They were the same group that released images of Johnston's identity card earlier this month, shortly after a renegade group claimed the captive was dead.

Earlier, heated words on the risks of reporting in the Middle East and pandering to terrorists were exchanged between Bret Stephens, a Wall Street Journal commentator and former editor of the Jerusalem Post, and Fran Unsworth of the BBC. Hat tip to Tom Gross, media analyst, for highlighting this rift. Stephens' column, which suggested that Johnston tilts toward the pro-Fatah camp and that his employers placed him in jeopardy because they felt the BBC had "political impunity" and special access inside the Gaza strip, raised hackles. It was branded as "scurrilous" and "snide". When Unsworth criticised a lack of sympathy and drew a comparison with the plight of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded in Karachi by Al Qaeda sword-bearers, this was interpreted as a "cheap shot". On all sides, players are getting testy as the days of captivity drag by and the internecine conflict festers (inside Palestine as well as amongst the hacks.) There sure is a lot of BBC-bashing going on by Israelis, particularly after the British Union of Colleges and Universities mooted a boycott of Israel.

Complaints that the kidnapped IDF corporal, Gilad Shalit, whose capture ignited the Second Lebanon War last summer, gets less publicity than Johnston seem beside the point. An armed soldier is trained for the risks of combat and is more prepared for the possibility of becoming a prisoner of war. Reporters increasingly face such violence as lawlessness takes hold. In fact, the same Gaza splinter group, Jaish al-Islam, is believed to be holding both of these men.

Obstacles to Peace

Peace in the Middle East can seem like a mirage in the sand. This week, I read that a London School of Economics professor blames the extended conflict on a basic clash between state security (Israel) and human security (for the walled-in Palestinians). Few scholars can agree on what is meant by the Neo-con buzz-word, an "existential" war. All wars are aimed at wiping out the enemy, no? Degradation extinguishes human dignity as surely as paper covers rock, rock crushes scissors, scissors cut paper. But it is no game. To Arab and Jewish civilians on the front lines, life has become joyless.

In a bumper analysis project, the BBC's website suggests that the origin of this bitter Israeli-Arab combat is four-fold. First comes an fashioned water dispute. How's that for muddying the waters?

Borders in constant flux don't help matters for leaders seeking Condi Rice's elusive political horizon: an imaginary line which recedes the closer you approach it. And Jerusalem, reunited for the past 40 years according to the city fathers, is a perennial stumbling block. Thousands of Palestinian refugees, who languish in squalid camps, are an uncomfortable reminder of people pushed aside and that the "right of return" is unequal. Almost anyone with a Jewish grandparent is welcomed at Ben Gurion airport as a potential Israeli citizen (or citizen-soldier.) Many youth groups provide all-expenses-paid holidays to first workd gap-year students looking for their Hebrew roots in the Holy Land. This must stick in the craw of Palestinian families who are harassed at every checkpoint, hoping to eke out a livelihood in the land of their grandfathers.

Israelity Bites.

Makepeace --if only!--seeks to free hostage

A British Envoy in Jerusalem, Richard Makepeace, is one of those rare people whose surname suits his job perfectly. (It reminds me that there was an actual Doctor Bonebreak in my childhood neighbourhood, but this particular moniker, with its diplomatic impertive, is wonderfully upbeat.)
After Makepeace's recent attempts to find out from the Palestinian leaders the whereabouts of the BBC's missing correspondent, Alan Johnston, who was grabbed at gunpoint from the streets of Gaza on March 12th this year, there has been a minor breakthrough. Al Jazeera network has just received a tape from an obscure guerrilla group which calls itself Jaish al-Islam (the Army of Islam.) They were involved in the capture of an IDF soldier, Guy Shalit, last June, in cahoots with Hamas but are not normally counted among the street factions of Gaza's mean streets. Their tape, under scrutiny by authorities, is said to contain some new evidence, such as a snapshot of Johnston's ID badge. News reports are cautious, and do not point to an irrefutable proof of life. The abductors have demanded $5m ransom, prisoner exchange, and even a plot of land. (Another group even claimed that the 44 year old newscaster was already executed) The tape contained no new information on Johnston's whereabouts, his health or the group's intentions, but Al Jazeera noted that the absence of any threat could be a good sign. A second audio tape sent to al-Jazeera on Wednesday morning,cautioned against attempts to use force in order to free the British reporter.

'Blue Suede Jew'

A BBC 2 documentary follows an Israeli Elvis Presley impersonator on his journey from the Holy Land to Graceland, and even Uri Geller, the spoonbender, gets in on the action. It's hilarious, but touching too, to explore this obsession of Gilles (Gil) Elmalih. There's more than just the predictable karaoke warbling of 'In the Ghetto' by a chubby wanna-be with sideburns. The family acknowledges that Elvis has left the building...but now communicates with him via paper messages (scrawled in Hebrew!) which the King somehow tosses from heaven onto the sitting room carpet. Living in the West Bank, family becomes convinced that only the King can restore world peace. His divine messages convince them to shlep to Vegas and Memphis. They are chosen.

Though the 79 minute film was completed in 2006, it screened this week in Britain, and has been picked up online. Click here to watch a clip from the Morgan Matthews documentary. Critics loved it.

As the ultimate ersatz Elvis, Elmalih managed to leave his mark in Israel, too. There is a turn-off on the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway signposted "Elvis", and if you pull over you're bound to get all shook up at a commemorative gas station and a 50s style roadside diner with clientele as odd as the decor. See this article about the Elvis Inn. Frequently, travellers in Israel are overwhelmed in historical reverie, but chicken-fried Americana from the 50s seems definitely anachronistic in this Biblical landscape.

BBC Captive Held Three Weeks

...and counting. The vigil continues for Alan Johnston, the BBC reporter who was abducted at gunpoint exactly three weeks ago in Gaza. Yesterday would have been his last day on the job, before a transfer to another foreign posting following three years on this critical beat.
Apparently the notorious Dogmush clan, the Gazan mercenaries who are believed to be holding Alan for ransom and/or prisoner exchange, has had little contact with the Palestinian government. They may have been subcontracted by other political or criminal factions for the kidnapping. Allegiances are constantly shifting in this brutal strip which is increasingly compared to Somalia. That's why local journalists call for a boycott of coverage for the ineffectual Palestinian leadership and why the BBC and British government are working low-key, behind the scenes, for some sort of resolution.
Note that the Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hamas and Hezbollah last summer are also still captive and believed to be alive. Their families will be eating Seder suppers for the first time without their sons at tonight's Passover celebrations.

PS- times are tough for media in Palestine

A brand new independent English language paper covering the West Bank and Gaza launched in Israel this Sunday, on what seemed to be a rather more upbeat day than usual, the day after the Hamas-Fatah Unity government emerged in Palestine. (Since then, however, Israel has refused to deal with the new government and the Hamas militant wing broke a 4-month truce when its sniper wounded an Israeli civilian near Gaza. A potential suicide bomber said to be from Hamas was detained at the Egyptian frontier the same day.) For each step forward, there are a couple steps backward or sideways. No wonder progress is so slow.

You might say the new Palestine Times is neo-realist by default, because it tacitly recognized Israel when it inked a deal with a major Israeli distribution network.
The Editor-in-chief Othman Haj Mohammed says the goal of his Palestine Times is to show the "real image of Palestinians...stories of failure and success, sad moments and happy moments." Cartoons, commentary, and features are as lively as the news section and help counter the brutality of day to day life. Yet online readers won't be able to click past the site's home page without buying a subscription. (Note that an online British "Palestine Times" has no relation to this new publication.) Old-fashioned print seems to be Otham's anachronistic message of choice, but the newspaper is a welcome breath of fresh air. Blogging is dicey where power shortages are rife, after all. Both the Palestinian and Israeli governments have increasingly curbed press freedom inside the Palestinian Territories. Encouragingly, a South African media group recently launched station RAM-FM, in English. This station broadcasts throughout the Palestinian Territories and Israel, with studios in Jerusalem and Ramallah.
More communication and understanding is urgently needed inside a territory steeped in mixed messages, disinformation and twisted interpretations. Izzy notes with dismay that the BBC Gaza Correspondent, Alan Johnston, who covered the breaking news in the Gaza strip with integrity and even-handedness for 3 years, still is held captive by gunman more than a week after his abduction. It is not clear if the abductors' motive is ransom or notoriety or some hidden message to other militia. Such kidnappings cannot help public relations much, and only reaffirm all the muttered misgiving by neocons and Zionists. It's worth noting that Mahmoud Abbas has been talking to British officials about Johnston's plight. Reassurances about the correspondent's wellbeing have not revealed any clues to where he is being held. British colleagues have been holding vigil for him in Gaza. Any one of them, caught in the wrong place at the right time, could have been a kidnap victim. Gaza is increasingly mercenary and unpredictable, reporters say.