Friday, August 15, 2014

Hamas Spox: We Deported Foreign Journalists for Filming Missile Launches


Hamas spokeswoman Isra Al-Mudallal, head of foreign relations in the Hamas Information Ministry, describing to Mayadeen TV how foreign journalists were deported for filming rocket launch sites. Photo: MEMRI / Screenshot.


MEMRI, The Middle East Media Research Institute, on Friday published a translation of her Skype interview. The matter-of-fact confirmation by Al-Mudallal provided the context to the many reports from Gaza of Hamas intimidating journalists, forcing retractions, omissions and censoring impromptu reporting via social media. This week, Israel’s Foreign Press Association also condemned Hamas’s policies towards the press.
    Al-Mudallal said journalists came into Gaza through the Beit Hanoun Crossing, also known as the Erez Crossing. Most were freelancers or from news agencies. Fewer journalists entered Gaza during this war than in the previous rounds, in 2008 and 2012, she said.
    The coverage by foreign journalists in the Gaza Strip “was insignificant compared to their coverage within” Israel, Al-Mudallal said. “Moreover, the journalists who entered Gaza were fixated on the notion of peace and on the Israeli narrative,” she claimed.
   “So when they were conducting interviewers, or when they went on location to report, they would focus on filming the places from where missiles were launched. Thus, they were collaborating with the occupation. These journalists were deported from the Gaza Strip.”
“The security agencies would go and have a chat with these people,” she said. “They would give them some time to change their message, one way or another.
“Some of the journalists who entered the Gaza Strip were under security surveillance,” the spokeswoman said. “Even under these difficult circumstances, we managed to reach them, and tell them that what they were doing was anything but professional journalism, and that it was immoral.”

Iraq: We’re fleeing because jihadists told us – Convert to Islam or we slaughter you



They are camped on classroom floors and amid the concrete shells of unfinished buildings.
They are wholly reliant on the generosity of local people, their lives reduced to no more than the clothes on their backs.
They are the survivors of an ancient religious minority which many in the West had never even heard of until about a week ago.
The plight of Iraq’s Yazidis has triggered air drops and talk of humanitarian intervention by Britain and America.
And although US Special Forces now reckon the numbers still trapped on Mount Sinjar are  fewer than previously thought,  the stories of those who have escaped are horrific.
Nofa Barakat walked for 15 miles carrying Ayman, her two-month-old son, in searing heat. She explained to me that when her own breast milk ran out she kept him alive by having a mountain goat suckle him instead.
I found her towards the end of her journey, crossing the bridge from Syria into Iraq over the River Habur. Thousands like her escaped by walking down the north face  of Sinjar into Syria, escorted by Kurdish fighters. The Syria-Iraq frontier is now such a blurred  line on the map that if they keep walking they can cross back into Iraq further north.
“I saw two mothers bury their children,” Nofa told me. “I was  not able to produce my own milk because there was no food or water. We came here because the terrorists said, ‘Either you convert to Islam or we slaughter you’.”
Camped in the same school  was Ido Suleyman, who told me jihadists had shot dead his wife and two sons as the family fled. He was clinging to Araz, his only child to escape. “We don’t want Iraq and Iraq doesn’t want us,” he said. “We want to go to Europe. We can’t live in a Muslim country any more.”
I was told the father of a girl called Nesma had been beheaded and her mother killed.

Read More HERE