Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2006, pages 18, 23

 

Dr. Farid Abu Dheir with his wife, Basmah, and youngest son, Bara’a (Photo Anne Gwynne)

THE LAST TIME I SAW Farid was in the garden of my home in Shari’a Imreij, on a glorious Nablus summer afternoon last year, when he and his wife, Basmah, and their youngest son, Bara’a, spent some very happy hours with us (and where the above photograph was taken). We were intending to work together on some articles about the continuing terror inflicted on Nablus for the past six years, but I was forced to leave two weeks later, after an attack on my house by 100 or so Israeli occupation soldiers (see November 2005 Washington Report, p. 14). It is with outrage and profound grief that I now report Farid’s abduction by the Israelis.

Recently, two Fox News journalists were kidnapped by an unrecognized group in Gaza, held without brutality for two weeks and then released entirely unharmed. The BBC’s Alan Johnston informed his listeners that “the abduction of the Western journalists is one more manifestation of the chronic lawlessness gripping Gaza.” Days after their release, the Western journalists’ story was still being told by the mainstream British and U.S. media.

But who will tell the stories of hundreds of Palestinian journalists who have been abducted, beaten, shot and incarcerated in one of Israel’s “Gulag Archipelago” of torture centers, of which there are some 37 in a country about the size of Wales? Since September 2000, 14 Palestinian journalists have been murdered here in cold blood, with more than 500 wounded and scores being tortured in prison today, as I write. Why does this chronic lawlessness not warrant exposure by reporters worldwide, who seem strangely blind and deaf when it comes to the illegality of the Israeli occupation and its lawless forces. Are Palestinians children of a lesser God?

Every journalist north of Luban al-Sharqiya—indeed, probably in all of occupied Palestine—has suffered one or more of those traumas. Journalists in Nablus count their bullet injuries in double figures, and their prison terms in the plural.

On Aug. 24, Dr. Farid Abu Dheir, professor of journalism at An-Najah National University, and a dear friend of my family, became the latest addition to their number (and, indeed, to the two-score Palestinian professors in Israeli jails), when Israeli occupation troops arbitrarily kidnapped him at one of the 750-plus illegal roadblocks, euphemistically known as “checkpoints,” which paralyze activity and dislocate normal life throughout the length and breadth of this tiny, brave, suffering land.

For what crime was Farid “arrested”? Here, the word is a euphemism for “kidnapped”—but regardless of what Israel calls it, legally it is kidnapping or abduction. This respected academic was on his way to attend a conference in Hebron, carrying the correct “travel permit”—without which no one can proceed beyond the nearest barrier!

It is always extremely difficult, often totally forbidden, for any man under the age of 35 to cross Zionist roadblocks outside his own city. But Dr. Abu Dheir is a solid, middle-aged family man of 42, with four children—the eldest, Ala’a, is 15, Bara’a is 5—a charismatic and capable wife, an important and rewarding job, and a lovely home in a leafy suburb of the ancient and beautiful—but destroyed—city of Nablus. He speaks four languages fluently (quite usual in Palestine), and has lived in several foreign countries—the last being the UK, where he earned his Ph.D. in journalism at the University of Leeds in 1996. Indeed (to paraphrase Gilbert and Sullivan), Dr. Abu Dheir is the “very model of a modern Palestinian.”

But for anyone who is not Jewish, a journey in occupied Palestine, however short in miles, involves hours of delays—especially at the Huwaara “terminal,” now indistinguishable from an international frontier, with five lanes in each direction, extensive buildings, turnstiles and X-ray cubicles through which every person, old and young, sick and well, must pass at gunpoint. Thus all who must travel in and out of Nablus daily for work or study—schoolchildren, pregnant women, sick people—are X-rayed twice a day, six days a week. On their many errands of mercy, Palestine’s extraordinary ambulance drivers can exceed a lifetime’s safe dose of X-rays in one week.

Thus, in order to have any chance of reaching Hebron, some 55 miles away, one must leave Nablus around 4 a.m. so as to clear Huwaara by 7:30—and that is only the first four miles.

After numerous searches and delays at “flying” and permanent barriers, Professor Farid reached the notorious roadblock Palestinians have dubbed the “Container,” near Bethlehem, 15 miles from Hebron, with his ID Card and “travel permit” in order. That, however, meant nothing to the IDF soldier who roughly shackled the academic’s wrists behind his back in the cruel azikonim shackles. The Jerusalem-based Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (<www.stoptorture.org.il/eng>) has described the handcuffs as “disposable shackles, made of flexible but hard plastic [which] can be tightened but not loosened. At the time of arrest and…for many hours following [the occupiers] bind the wrists and ankles of detainees in such shackles, which cause swelling, cuts in the skin and intense pain.” Any complaint about the pain invariably results in a tightening by one or two notches.

Forced to sit at the concrete blocks with other kidnapped civilians for several hours in the burning sun, Dr. Abu Dheir was finally bundled into the back of a Hummer officer-class jeep—a gift of the U.S. government—and abducted to “an unknown destination.”

The following day I spoke with Basmah, who was too shocked to talk much. She did not know why her husband had been kidnapped, and had no information on his whereabouts. A week later I spoke with her again, and she told me that, through her lawyer, she had spoken to the “commander” of the “police” at the terrible torture center of Petakh Tikfah, where Professor Abu Dheir had been taken for “interrogation”—another euphemism, this time for torture. (Petakh Tikfah was the first Jewish colony in Palestine; the name, I’m told, means approximately “the gate of hope.” How things change—Petakh Tikfah now is generally referred to by IDF soldiers as “the place of death,” since so many have died there under torture.)

The commanding officer of this notorious and brutal place told Basmah that her husband will be “interrogated” there for 16 days, then charges will be drawn up.

When she asked why her husband had been “arrested” and taken to this place, the officer said that “there is no reason—this is what we do—but we will find one.”

Little Bara’a weeps for his father and Basmah is very much afraid for her husband. For in contrast to the situation endured by the two Fox journalists, Farid is not being held for a short and finite period, but indefinitely. And he is one of many: a fellow journalist and friend, Sami al-‘Aasi, an outstandingly courageous Nablus TV cameraman, was kidnapped in April 2004. More than two years later, he remains in the al-Naqab desert jail, where he has never been charged with anything.

Furthermore, though the several kidnappings in the desperate prison which is Gaza are neither welcomed nor approved, it is a fact that no foreigner in the hands of Palestinians has ever been harmed, and that all have been quickly released without a hand laid on them. Every Palestinian in Israeli custody, however, has been severely harmed over a protracted period of time, sometimes to the point of death, often to the point of physical or psychological disablement, and frequently to the point of the loss of crushed testicles, a kidney or an eye. And as for release…

Where was the BBC’s “network of correspondents” when Farid was abducted? Did they not know, not care, or choose not to report the kidnapping? Can Fox News explain why, while the release of their employees was receiving saturation coverage, they felt no duty as journalists to report the kidnapping of Prof. Farid Abu Dheir, Ph.D., journalist and academic?

Indeed, will anyone care enough for the Palestinian journalists under daily siege from Israeli terror to do something about these brave men and women, each of whom faces injury, death or kidnapping whenever they leave home? Perhaps some of the “objective” Western news agencies would like to explain the discrepancy in their reporting. Where is the outrage from Reuters, AP, AFP, and EPA when their Palestinian staff photographers and reporters are regularly shot, beaten and kidnapped, even killed? And where are the rest of the world’s journalists?

I listen, but hear nothing at all.

Anne Gwynne is an elected member of the International Federation of Journalists and of the National Union of Journalists (UK).