-Caveat Lector-
>From http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=292008
}}}>Begin
05 May 2002 05:56 GMT+1
Home > News > World > Middle East
Embattled Israel clamps down on dissent
Middle East � A hardening mood allows authorities to restrict news and stifle critics �
even the army's heroine has been silenced
By Phil Reeves in Jerusalem
05 May 2002
Israel is becoming increasingly intolerant of dissent as war, and the perception that
it
is under collective threat, hardens attitudes.
New rules have been issued for journalists working on the state-controlled Voice of
Israel radio station. Israel's army are now referred to as "our forces"; its Arabic
division has reportedly issued orders that Palestinians are not to be referred to as
"assassinated", but "killed", and that the armed forces do not "take over" cities, they
"enter" them.
The once vibrant and diverse Israeli media has become markedly more nationalistic
and less willing to broadcast criticism. Ishai Menuchin, chairman of Yesh Gvul � an
organisation representing Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied
territories � says that he can barely attract any news coverage. Issues that used to
command acres of space � such as the fact that the number of Israeli "refuseniks" in
prison rose to 68 last month � now barely merit a few paragraphs, he says.
Aides to Yossi Beilin, the former Israeli justice minister and peace negotiator, say
requests for interviews with the politician, renowned for his liberal views, have
shrivelled to nothing after Ariel Sharon launched a massive military offensive in the
West Bank in the aftermath of the Passover suicide bombing. When academics at
Ben-Gurion University discovered that Mr Beilin was to deliver a lecture there, 43 of
them signed a petition trying to get it stopped. (They failed.)
The latest, and most unlikely, target is the septuagenarian Yaffa Yarkoni, Israel's
"singer of the wars". A national heroine, the khaki-clad chanteuse whose patriotic
songs once carried Israel forces into battle caused shock and anger when she
recently castigated Israel's army, comparing its conduct in Jenin with the Nazis.
"When I saw the Palestinians with their hands tied behind their backs, I said, 'It is
like
what they did to us in the Holocaust,'" she told Army Radio. "We are a people who
have been through the Holocaust. How are we capable of doing these things?"
It was as if Vera Lynn had appeared on the BBC and denounced the conduct of
British troops in Northern Ireland. Reprisals swiftly followed. A ceremony where she
was to receive a lifetime award was cancelled. Israeli youth organi- sations declared
they would boycott her songs. She was denounced by ministers, and told by one
town � Kfar Yona � that she would no longer be welcome to perform at its Memorial
Day event.
Israel has long taken pride in its freedom of expression. It cites this, correctly, as
an
example in which Israeli society is vastly superior to the repressive Arab nations, and
especially to the Palestinians, where critics of Yasser Arafat have been jailed and
beaten up in the past. But the hardening mood has expanded the scope of the Israeli
armed forces to restrict and distort information without creating a domestic outcry.
Five months ago, the Israeli military was savaged by the local media when it tried to
deny demolishing 60 homes in Rafah, southern Gaza. Since then, the army's
dismissal of evidence that soldiers committed multiple atrocities in the Jenin refugee
camp have passed with little questioning.
End<{{{
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