Al-Jazeera news producer Najwan Simri Diab told the Post on Wednesday that she was taken aside for a private security exam where a female security guard asked her to remove her bra or she would not be able to enter the event.
“I was left in only a tank top and pants, and they told me that if I didn’t remove my bra, I wouldn’t be able to enter. So I left,” Simri Diab said Wednesday.
The 31-year-old news producer is a native of the Arab village of Judeida in the Western Galilee, a few kilometers outside of Acre. She has worked for Al-Jazeera for eight years, mainly as a producer, though she has also written some articles.
As the holder of a GPO press card, Simri Diab has already undergone extensive background checks, and was attending the event for the sixth year in a row.
Simri Diab said that she and her colleagues from the Qatari news channel “have no problem with security checks; we always go through them. But when it crosses the line and it becomes based on the fact that you’re an Arab and not a journalist like everyone else, we refuse.”
The Shin Bet issued a statement on Wednesday, saying “all those invited to the event were checked in keeping with the accepted security procedures for such an event. Three journalists refused to be checked under those procedures and chose not to take part in the event.”
Embarrasing, yes. Unfortunate, yes. But there are worse instances of treatment of journalists, close-by to the David Citadel Hotel, like this recent one:
The Palestinian Media Forum (PMF) has expressed its concern about the campaign of "arrests and detention of journalists and media professionals" by the Palestinian Authority’s security forces in the West Bank. The campaign is continuing despite repeated requests for the PA in Ramallah to end its alleged violations of media freedom. In a press release the Forum stressed its objection to the arrest of Quds satellite TV correspondent Mamdouh Al-Hamamrah for several hours on 23 December. Mr. Al-Hamamrah was arrested for the second time while he was covering Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem. Quds TV’s programmes and production coordinator in the West Bank, Nawaf Al-Amer, was "summoned" to the Preventive Security headquarters on Christmas Day. Other Palestinian media workers to be detained recently include Akram Al-Natshah and Osama Shahin
Or this one from a year ago:
The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Palestinian Authority (PA) to heed a High Court order and release journalist Tariq Abu Zaid immediately. A four-person special military court in Nablus sentenced Abu Zaid, a correspondent who reported on camera for Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV, to 18 months in prison on February 16 on charges of "undermining the status of the authority, and resisting the public policy of the Palestinian Authority," his lawyer, Bassam Karajeh, told CPJ. Karajeh said authorities have not responded to demands that they explain why the journalist was tried in a military court. Abu Zaid has been held at Al-Junied prison in Nablus since he was first arrested in August 2009.
There's the arrest of a blogger for "blasphemy":
QALQILYA, West Bank — It is hard to imagine that a dingy Internet cafe buzzing with flies in this provincial Palestinian town could have spawned a blogger who has angered the Muslim cyberworld by promoting atheism, composing spoofs of Koranic verses, skewering the lifestyle of the Prophet Muhammad and chatting online using the sarcastic Web name God Almighty.
But many people in Qalqilya seem convinced that this Facebook apostate is none other than a secretive young man who spent seven hours a day in the corner booth of a back-street hole-in-the-wall here. Until recently the man, Waleed Hasayin, in his mid-20s, led a relatively anonymous existence as an unemployed graduate in computer science who helped out a few hours a day at his father’s one-chair barber shop. Several acquaintances described him as an “ordinary guy” who prayed at the mosque on Fridays.
But since the end of October Mr. Hasayin has been detained at the local Palestinian Authority intelligence headquarters, suspected of being the blasphemous blogger who goes by the name Waleed al-Husseini. The case has drawn attention to thorny issues like freedom of expression in the Palestinian Authority, for which insulting religion is considered illegal, and the cultural collision between a conservative society and the Internet.
And there's reported interference in coexistence attempts last March based on professional guild links (Kippah tip: MTotten):
Palestinian journalists who last week met with their Israeli colleagues and an IDF spokesman in Tel Aviv have come under fire from both Hamas and Fatah.
The trip was arranged by the non-profit Israel advocacy group The Israel Project, whose Web site described the group as “an international non-profit organization devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel while promoting security, freedom and peace.”
The journalists met with Maj. Avichai Edri, head of the Arabic-language branch of the IDF Spokesman’s Office.
Three of the journalists — Lana Shaheen, Mueen al-Hilu and Abdel Salam Abu Askar — are from the Gaza Strip, while another two are from the West Bank.
They now face expulsion from the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Journalists Syndicate on charges of promoting normalization with Israel.
[…]
One of the groups, the Democratic Press Association, called on the journalists to “repent” and express publicly apologize for visiting the “Zionist entity and meeting with Zionist reporters.”
And we can go back to 2000:
The year was marked by a familiar pattern of abuses against outspoken journalists and news outlets by PNA security forces. Between May and June, authorities launched a broad clampdown on private radio and television stations in the West Bank, temporarily shutting down five stations without explanation and detaining a number of journalists. In a case emblematic of the PNA's approach to its local critics, security forces detained free-lance journalist Maher al-Alami in Ramallah for 12 days of questioning about articles he had published in an opposition newspaper. Al-Alami, a long-time PNA target, was held without charge and then abruptly released after being forced to sign a statement saying that he would not "harm" PNA officials in the future.
The arrest of al-Alami and the censorship against radio and television stations illustrated the often-capricious behavior of Arafat's security forces. "There is no legal reference," said one Palestinian editor. "Someone at the top can say this one should be arrested or closed and they will close it." More often, however, authorities used more subtle techniques to rein in critics. Security officials invited several journalists for informal chats over a cup of coffee, and then subjected them to verbal abuse, threats, and questions about their published work. Such heavy-handed treatment fostered self-censorship throughout the Palestinian media.
All these stories are quite 'up-front' but they are ignored in the media's collective memory and even when there's a silly mistake, no one recalls the truly bad media situation around Israel.
That's called media bias.
Previous posts: here and also here.
P.S.
My comment at The Lede.
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