- A new German owner has purchased Haaretz and a "Putsch
is being carried out among reporting staff," in the most important
and liberal Zionist paper in Israel. According to inside sources, the new
owner has carried out a rough, sittingroom survey that revealed that "the
occupation doesn't sell newspapers" and they are therefore concentrating
on the business world (ie. The Marker).
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- Twilight Zone, Gideon Levy's regular Friday column, has
been scrapped, Amira Hass has been degraded to freelance on half salary,
Meron Rapaport has been fired and Akiva Eldar has lost at least one half
page a week.
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- The paper frequently allowed journalists critical of
the Israeli occupation to publish articles that exposed the reality of
the occupation to the Israeli population and was circulated around the
world. The new editorial direction is disturbing news. Haaretz was one
of the few decent Israeli media outlets and showed that in Israel there
was some respect for freedom of the press and critical discussion. This
is a repeat of the situation when Conrad Black* bought the Jerusalem Post
and hired an Israeli censor to be publisher. The decent journalists all
quit in protest, including Benny Morris back when he still had a moral
conscience.
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- DENIED ENTRY
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- It reflects a more disturbing trend. Norman Finkelstein
was recently denied entry into Israel and the West Bank. Bishop Desmond
Tutu was denied entry into Israel too. Prominent Palestinian journalists
are routinely denied exit visas by the Israelis to leave the Occupied Territories
to go on speaking tours and a group of Palestinians students from Gaza
were also recently denied exit visas to attend American universities after
being granted Fulbright Scholarships from the American Government.
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- It appears that the Israelis are closing down many if
not all of the sources of critical information coming out of Israel. The
hypocracy of it all is that Israel complains that when the British Academic
Union proposes a boycott of Israeli academic institutions as a way to pressure
Israel and to protest Israel's policies toward the Palestinians the Israelis
start to scream that the proposed boycott is a violation of freedom of
speech and a violation of academic freedom.
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- Israeli authorities have been crushing academic freedom
and free speech for Palestinians, and even Israeli critics, for decades.
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- Israel does not want its own population and the rest
of the world to know what it is doing to the Palestinians.
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- Ed Corrigan
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- http://www.ziopedia.org/
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