De Israelische Terreur 104

De stelligheid waarmee Nederlandse commerciele massamedia als het NOS-Journaal over Israel berichten, en over Palestijnse 'strijders' is een aanfluiting van het journalistieke vak. Eddo Rosenthal, hun correspondent ter plaatse durft om onduidelijke redenen al jarenlang niet de Palestijnse gebieden in. Jennifer Loewenstein daarentegen durft wel de geterroriseerde gebieden in.

Democracy Now bericht:

'AMY GOODMAN: We go now to Gaza to speak to Jennifer Loewenstein, a visiting research fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University. She is working on a book about the transformation of the national Palestinian movement. She joins us on the phone right now from Gaza City. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Jennifer.
JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN: Hi. Thanks for having me on.
AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer, you last were in Gaza almost two years ago. How has it changed?
JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN: The situation, it’s very interesting. I mean, it's kind of surreal. I was here in January, and it’s always sort of dreary in the wintertime. And I say that because you walk -- you get into Gaza, and it’s this beautiful bright blue cerulean sky and this flowered foliage, and it’s gorgeous. And then, you look beyond that, at the city itself, and it’s absolutely crumbling, and there is trash in the street and destruction everywhere. I mean, buildings that have been bombed or simply falling apart out of disrepair. There are shops that are virtually empty.
There are power cuts every single day. That was common, but not anywhere near as common as it is now. There are places where people have electricity for two or three hours a day only. That’s significant, particularly because you need to have electricity to pump water to the upper floors of these apartment buildings, and so a lot of people end up with absolutely no water for a number of days at a time.
I’ve been here many times. In fact, I lived here in 2002 for almost half a year. And it's never been normal here. It's never been easy. But in all of the times I’ve returned to the Gaza Strip, I have not ever seen it look this collapsed, this exhausted. You see it not only in the buildings and in the appearance, the grayness and the crumbling appearance, but you also see it in the faces of people. And, you know, the Gazans, in my opinion, in any case, have been a very, very strong people and very defiant and persistent people. And yet, person after person that I’ve talked to this time has expressed real despair, real frustration, the belief that things are not going to get better, that this is not going to change. And it’s very discouraging to hear that and to see people with such hopelessness.
AMY GOODMAN: Jennifer Loewenstein, how did you get into Gaza? How hard is it to be there? You are a visiting research fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University.
JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN: It’s extremely difficult to get into Gaza. I’m sure that the reason is because the Israeli authorities are keenly aware that when people see how it looks here, that it would automatically win sympathy in the outside world. So what’s interesting is that if I trace my ability to get into Gaza back to the year 2001, when I first came, it’s gotten progressively harder and harder and harder to get back in.
In 2004, for example, it took me five days to get a press card from the Israelis, even though I had my own valid press card. But because I was an independent freelance journalist at the time, I was suspicious. And because I wasn’t working for a major Western and, I should say, sympathetic media outlet, I was given a lot of hassle. People from the Beit Agron , a press house in West Jerusalem, even called the Israeli consulate in Chicago, which then called contacts of mine in Madison to find out who I was and whether or not I should be let in. I shouldn’t say “contacts of mine,” but people I know. In that particular situation, I know from one of the rabbis in Madison, who told me sympathetically later on that the executive director of the Madison Jewish Community Center informed the consulate that I was dangerous and should not be allowed in. I was nevertheless given a press card the last two days I was here, so I was able to do something, but it was very little.
Now, it is impossible for freelancers to come in at all. They have prohibitive fees, and basically the only people who can get in from the media are people who are full-time Middle East correspondents for a nationally recognized paper or station, such as the New York Times, the BBC, the London Times. These are the kinds of people who can come in. Other journalists have a great deal of difficulty.'

Lees verder: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/02/1451201