RINF<\/a>) – Israel is a lawless police state. Military censorship bans or sanitizes material it claims harms national security – true or false.<\/p>\nIt prohibits information the public has a right to know – despite its High Court rulings limiting content suppression to “tangible (or) near certain” instances of public endangerment.<\/p>\n
Official policy is hardline. Fundamental rights are systematically violated. Palestinian protests, demonstrations, marches and gatherings are prohibited.<\/p>\n
Free expression is compromised. Classroom materials are rewritten. Criticism of state policy risks recrimination.<\/p>\n
Nakba denial persists. Academia is affected. Historical revisionism legitimizes horrific crimes too grave to ignore.<\/p>\n
Israel has no constitution or laws guaranteeing free expression, a free press, intellectual freedom and right to challenge government abuse of power, especially on issues mattering most – notably in times of war.<\/p>\n
Journalists challenging official policy are intimidated, assaulted and at times arrested. Palestinian journalists are most vulnerable. So are foreign ones. More on this below.<\/p>\n
The Palestinian Center for Development & Media Freedoms (MADA) “promote(s) and defend(s) media freedoms and freedom of expression.” Free societies can’t exist without them.<\/p>\n
It issues monthly reports on multiple Israeli violations. Journalists are ruthlessly targeted for doing their job – especially during wartime when state authorities want high crimes against peace suppressed.<\/p>\n
Jerusalem Day commemorates Israel’s June 1967 forceful annexation of East Jerusalem and illegal control of the entire city.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, an RT International Arabic crew covered a march through the Old City. They had documents permitting them to do so.<\/p>\n
It didn’t matter. Israeli security force thugs attacked them. According to reporter Dalia Nammari:<\/p>\n
“After a terrible time we had to pass through checkpoints that they erected everywhere along the Old City, they asked us to move away from the Damascus gate point.”<\/p>\n
“They didn’t do it gently. They pushed us and broke our camera.” Other journalists covering the event were treated “brutal(ly).”<\/p>\n
An RT statement said:<\/p>\n
“Representatives of the Israeli army attacked a correspondent and a cameraman of RT Arabic during coverage of Jerusalem Day. Serviceman damaged the camera and forbade to continue the shooting.”<\/p>\n
Nammari and her cameraman Muhammad Aishu were filming a settlers march. They continued reporting using a smart phone.<\/p>\n
They broadcast live via Skype. Security force thugs attacked them again. “They took away my earpiece,” Nammari said. “They are demanding from everyone, even journalists, to evacuate the area.”<\/p>\n
“Even Palestinians who live in the city can’t be present here because of the settlers march.” Thousands participated.<\/p>\n
Racist ones carried posters saying “Jerusalem for Israelis.” Security force thugs attacked protesting Palestinians. Some threw stones in response.<\/p>\n
RT’s crew filmed some of the clashes before being blocked. Human rights worker Sarit Michaelli said Israeli assaults on peaceful demonstrators are commonplace.<\/p>\n
They’re “rare to be filmed, but not rare to happen.” On Saturday, a Palestinian journalist was shot in the eye with a rubber bullet. He was filming a Nakba commemoration.<\/p>\n
Palestinian physician, political activist, former presidential candidate, human right champion and Palestinian National Initiative (PNI) co-founder secretary-general Mustafa Barghouti told RT what happened on Sunday is standard Israeli practice “against journalists and against peaceful nonviolent Palestinian demonstrators.”<\/p>\n
During summer 2014 Operation Protection Edge “the Israeli army killed 18 journalists including an Italian journalist in their attack on the Palestinian people,” he explained.<\/p>\n
“So this violation of the freedom of expression and violation of the right of journalists to cover what happens is a frequent behavior of the Israeli army which respects nobody.”<\/p>\n
Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem is “considered illegal by every international law,” Barghouti added.<\/p>\n
In 2014, Israeli security thugs raided Ramallah offices of several media organizations – including RT’s Arabic channel.<\/p>\n
They “broke down the doors\u2026destroyed some of the equipment and confiscated records,” said RT.<\/p>\n
Police states operate this way – notably Israel and America.<\/p>\n
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.<\/p>\n
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.claritypress.com\/LendmanIII.html<\/p>\n
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Stephen Lendman (RINF) – Israel is a lawless police state. Military censorship bans or sanitizes material it claims harms national security – true or false. It prohibits information the public has a right to know – despite its High Court rulings limiting content suppression to “tangible (or) near certain” instances of public endangerment. Official […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":104780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-151926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}