‘Papers Are Losing Credibility’ : Palestinian Editors Feel Censor’s Sting

JERUSALEM —  The story that appeared recently in Al Quds, the oldest Arabic-language newspaper in Israel, was much the same as those that appeared in other papers here: an account of a failed attempt by Palestinian guerrillas to infiltrate Israel from Lebanon.

But immediately after Al Quds came out with the story, its editor, Mahmoud abu Zuluf, was summoned before the military censor and told the paper had been banned for 45 days from circulating on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where 90% of its readers are found.

“I was told that I had violated regulations by adding lines to the story after it had been cleared by the censor,” Abu Zuluf said. “It wasn’t true. My story was the same as in every Israeli newspaper and on Israeli radio and television.”

Israeli Media Not Punished

No other Israeli newspaper or news agency was punished, even though all the news media in this country are subject to military censorship.

It was not the first time Al Quds has been prohibited from circulating in the area of its heaviest readership. The paper had just reappeared the previous week after a 30-day ban triggered by publication of a Reuters news agency photo and a story about a demonstration in Gaza.

“We thought there might be trouble over the story,” Abu Zuluf said, “so we simply reprinted the story and the photo from Yediot (Aharonot),” a major Hebrew-language newspaper that often supports Israel’s right-wing political parties.

“It was truly silly,” Abu Zuluf went on. “The picture even appeared in the (International) Herald Tribune.”

Israeli military officials will not discuss these or any other instances of censorship in detail. They say the action was taken in the interests of national security.

The Al Quds incidents are far from unique, and they provide revealing insight into the contradictions of a relatively democratic society that feels compelled to impose anti-democratic methods against nonviolent opposition.

According to an Israeli appeals court judge who was upholding a military court’s order of six months’ administrative detention for a journalist, censorship is necessary because political activities are far more dangerous than violence.

But some Palestinian editors contend that censorship simply drives readers to more extremist outlets for their news.

Administrative detention--imprisonment for three months or six months with the term renewable at the military’s discretion--is a form of punishment often used by the Israeli military. Exactly what is it that Arab newspapers and journalists in East Jerusalem print that so angers the Israeli government?

Not much by comparison with the sharp criticism of government policies, including disclosures of official and military wrongdoing, that appears in the Hebrew press.

Provocative Editorial

One of the most provocative recent items in the Arabic press was an editorial in Al Ittihad. It referred sarcastically to the Israeli government’s order for 10,000 police clubs for use against Palestinian rioters “despite the fact that the government is financially (not to mention politically) bankrupt.”

But it was mild in comparison with the Jerusalem Post’s graphic account of a bloody site in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Israeli soldiers beat Palestinians during recent demonstrations.

Government officials point out that Israeli newspapers must submit their material for censorship and are often told to withhold or modify certain items, but they say these changes almost always deal with strictly military matters.

According to Ibrahim Karaeen, co-owner of the news agency Palestine Press Services and the magazine Al Awdah, the regulations for Arabs operating a newspaper or magazine are so vague and the punishment so severe that few take chances.

“Every journalist has a censor in his head,” Karaeen said.

There are three basic rules for the Palestinian journalists to follow: They cannot support the Palestine Liberation Organization, incite the population or cause public disorder.

Military censors decide whether a story or picture violates any of these rules. In a private conversation, one censor said, “After me, there is only God for an appeal.”

Besides the personal punishment that can be meted out to an individual journalist, the censors can enforce their rules by withdrawing a publication’s license.

Karaeen said that three Jerusalem newspapers and magazines have been shut down by license revocation in the last three years.

“The next harshest penalty is censorship itself,” he said. “Everything must be submitted to the censors.”

Abu Zuluf said he offers the censor everything, “even the crossword, society stories and birth announcements.”

“We were not allowed,” he said, “to print a story that Lebanon has asked the (U.N.) Security Council to condemn Israel, even though it was in all the Israeli papers and on Israeli radio. . . . We expect that 50% is crossed out.”

Karaeen said, “The rest of the world, including all the Palestinians and Arabs who can get the Hebrew and English papers, know more about what is going on here than our own readers.”

“The Israelis are so in control of our press,” another editor said, “that they can manipulate our readership (by means of policies) that make us censor ourselves. Right now, the government wants to build up the idea that the problems of the occupied territories can be solved in conjunction with Jordan, so An Nahar (a pro-Jordanian newspaper) gets a free ride and the rest of us are crushed.”

Israeli officials say these protestations have to be considered within a larger context.

Financed by PLO

“Most of them (the Palestinian publications) are pro-PLO and are financed by the PLO,” said an Interior Ministry official who asked not to be identified by name. Abu Zuluf and Karaeen denied the PLO charge.

Even though there are restrictions, the official went on, “these people are much freer than the press in any Arab state.”

Perhaps so, but according to Abu Zuluf, “during the Jordanian times (the West Bank area was in Jordan’s hands from 1948 to 1967), the biggest penalty we ever got for violating censorship was the banning of one issue. What the Israelis are doing is killing us. We will lose 90% of our circulation.”

The restrictions are having another effect: “Because of censorship, the papers are losing credibility among the readership,” the editor of a weekly magazine in an Israeli city said, “and more and more people are listening to the radio stations.”

At least three anti-Israeli stations broadcasting from beyond the borders have come on the air in recent weeks and, according to several experts, are having considerable impact in the occupied territories.

Perhaps the most influential, because it does not overtly reflect the policies of any particular Arab or Palestinian faction, is the “Voice of Jerusalem.” It broadcasts 10 hours a day, apparently from Syria or southern Lebanon.

One day recently the announcer sent his congratulations to “the blessed children of the stones,” a reference to the young people who attack Israeli soldiers and settlers with rocks.

Later, a person with the voice of a child advised, “The children of the stones say that if you want distance, use a sling; if you want accuracy, use a slingshot.”

“What the Israelis don’t seem to understand,” the magazine editor said, “is that if the regular press is driven out of business or loses its credibility, the people will pay far more attention to the radio.”

And the radio, the editor noted, “is beyond the reach of their censors.”