For those enlightened beings amongst my readers who avoid reading the news, I am currently under police investigation, on suspicion of violating the Law to Prevent Infiltration. Yes, this is about my trips to Lebanon.
Two other journalists are also being “probed” – Yedioth Aharanoth‘s Ron Ben-Yishai, who reported from Syria in September, and Tsur Shezaf, a freelance journalist who recently wrote about his trip to Lebanon in an Israeli travel magazine called A Different Journey.
The investigation, which is being conducted by the International and Serious Crimes Unit (ISCU) of the Israel Police, raises many questions, such as:
- Why single out me, Ron and Tsur , when at least a dozen Israeli journalists have traveled to enemy countries over the past six months alone – not to mention the tens of thousands of Israelis with foreign passports who have for years traveled to enemy countries for business, family visits and tourism, with the full knowledge of the authorities?;
- Why did the ISCU interrogate Tsur over an article he wrote about a trip he made to Lebanon four years ago, while Channel 2′s Itai Anghel has not been questioned over his far more recent trip to Iraq?;
- Who initiated this investigation, and why?
In my response to the investigation, which will be published on Friday in Haaretz newspaper, I raise these questions and more. I respond to those who claim that I endangered State security because I risked being abducted by Hezbollah, which would force Israel to swap political prisoners for my release. I also explain why my case cannot be compared to the infamous Elhanan Tennenbaum incident.
I have quite a lot more to say, but will wait until after the Haaretz piece is published.
Meanwhile, here are links to bring you up to speed. I’ll update them if something new pops up.
Mainstream media (English):
I was interviewed for the Jerusalem Post, which also published a legal analysis of the investigation.
Sara Miller interviewed me for Haaretz’s English edition online, here.
The Ynet piece is here.
Made it onto an Australian news site.
And Lebanon’s Daily Star, of course.
The International Middle East Media Center (Palestinian).
Al Arabiya.
Oh, and Iran’s PressTV practically has me in jail already.
Ray Hanania wrote an interesting piece for American Muslim.
The International Federation of Journalists is taking up the matter with the National Federation of Israeli Journalists.
This is actually an old piece, but it’s worth a look: the Lebanon Daily Star’s Michael Young weighs in on the reaction to me and Rinat reporting from Lebanon in a piece published by Executive Business Magazine.
Josh Mitnick touches on issues related to freedom of the press in this piece for the New York Jewish Week.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Arabic media:
Exiled Syrian dissident journalist Nizar Nayouf wrote a piece for Syria Truth.
Blogs posts:
The Committee to Protect Bloggers (Curt Hopkins)
Nizo – “May it pass” (it will).
Israel Matsav (by Carl)
Journalist Larisa Alexandrovna
Jewlicious
Israellycool
Harry’s Place.
Liza of SomethingSomething
Rabbi Landsberg
Oleh Girl
Orthodox Anarchist
Brian Ulrich
iFocos
The Rabid Smurf (Lebanese blog)
There’s plenty more in the Hebrew blogosphere and mainstream media, but I’ll let Hebrew speakers do their own googling. Except for this one piece that was published in Yedioth Aharonoth last Friday, which I translated:
The police discovered a security threat: journalists who reported from enemy states
Three journalists who reported from Syria and Lebanon – including Ron Ben-Yishai of Yedioth Aharonoth – were investigated on suspicion of damaging state security
By Itzik Saban/Yedioth Aharonoth
December 7, 2007
The police investigated a journalist because they believed erroneously that he had recently traveled to Lebanon. The journalist Tsur Shezaf, who authors a column titled “A Border Incident” for the travel magazine A Different Voyage, recently wrote about the trips he made to Lebanon in 1977 and 2003. The police investigators read it – and without checking rushed to interrogate him and accuse him of damaging state security.
Officer Roni Ritman of the International and Serious Crimes Unit of the Israel Police (ISCU) decided recently to waste the time of two superintendents of the ISCU with an investigation of journalists who, he claimed, had damaged state security by reporting from Lebanon and Syria. The police regard this as a serious offense punishable by up to four years in prison. “They interrogated me for five hours as if they had caught a terrorist. They insisted on asking from where to where I travelled and if I did so on a donkey or by taxi,” recounted one of the journalists.
The other two journalists who were interrogated last month are Yedioth Aharonoth reporter Ron Ben-Yishai and Lisa Goldman, who reported for Channel 10 and additional publications. Ben-Yishai was interrogated after he visited Syria and wrote about his impressions of Deir el Zor, following the IAF bombing of an area nearby. For some odd reason, nobody at the ISCU took an interest in Ben-Yishai after his visit to the dahiyeh in south Beirut after the Second Lebanon War.
Police sources hinted yesterday that there is a link between the ongoing investigation of former MK Azmi Bishara and the investigation of the three journalists. Several weeks after Ben-Yishai travelled to Lebanon in 2006, Bishara travelled to Lebanon, exchanged hugs with Nasrallah and gave a speech in Bint Jbeil. Later he travelled to Syria and met with Hamas leaders. In an interview he gave to an Israeli newspaper, Bishara asked, “Why are you harassing me? Look, Ron Ben-Yishai travelled to Lebanon too. Are you harassing me because I am an Arab and he is a Jew?”
The police stated that they take a grave view of Israeli citizens who travel to enemy countries – even if they do so using their foreign passports.
***
For me, the most hilarious aspect of this whole story is that it has united a virulently anti-Israel blogger and a virulently anti-Arab blogger – although I don’t think they know about one another’s existence. They would probably say that they are vastly different people, but in fact they have a lot in common:
1. They both really, really hate me – one because I am a right-wing Zionist lick spittle, and the other because I am a dangerous, seditious leftist who panders to the Arabs and endangers the security of the state;
2. They both think that my Channel 10 report from Lebanon was “fluff” and that I was motivated by “self promotion”.
3. They both focused on a statement I made to Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post, in which I explain that I was unaware of the law forbidding Israelis from entering enemy countries on foreign passports. One thinks that I should have stood up and said I was damned proud of breaking the law, and damn the consequences – let the police come and get me! The other thinks I was being disingenuous and I should have bloody well known that I was breaking the law.
4. Both have serious anger management issues, bullying personalities, a strong sense of self righteousness and a gaping hole where their senses of humour should be.
5. Both are convinced that I understand absolutely nothing about the Middle East, whereas they understand everything: Israel is always wrong; or the Arabs are always wrong.
6. They are both American Jews. One lives in the States; and the other immigrated a few years ago, settling in the Gush Etzion area beyond the Green Line.
Funny, huh? Maybe not so much in the ha-ha sense, but more in the weird sense.
Ach, those extremists: they’re all the same.
For the flight from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv, I sat next to two women who appeared to be in their late 60s. One was thin and angular; the other was plump and round. Both wore gabardine elastic-waist trousers, pastel-coloured windbreakers and sensible, rubber-soled shoes. Their fluffy white hair was indifferently cut; the skin on their unadorned faces was pale and papery. They wore small gold crosses on delicate neck chains. As soon as I had settled into my window seat, they introduced themselves.
