Inviting Israeli journalists to Ramallah is a 'big sin' - PJS
PLO’s Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society regularly organizes visits by Israelis to Ramallah to meet officials.
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH Paramedics and journalists during clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian demonstrators protesting against Israeli settlements, near Tubas in the West Bank July 27, 2021. (photo credit: REUTERS/RANEEN SAWAFTA)
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate on Thursday condemned a visit by Israeli journalists to Ramallah as a “big sin.”The Israelis visited Ramallah on Wednesday at the invitation of the PLO’s Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society. The group regularly organizes visits by Israelis to the city for meetings with senior Palestinian officials.The committee is headed by Mohammed al-Madani, a senior official with the ruling Fatah faction of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.During the visit, the journalists met with a number of senior Palestinian officials, including PLO Executive Committee member Ahmed Majdalani.The PJS, which is dominated by Fatah loyalists, represents hundreds of Palestinian journalists in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem. It has in the past called for boycotting Israeli journalists and media outlets and told its members not to meet with Israelis.The PJS and other anti-Israeli groups argue that the purpose of such meetings is to “promote normalization between the Palestinians and Israel.”Senior Fatah official Monir al-Jaghoub said, however, that the meeting came to “present the Israeli press with a picture of the Palestinian reality resulting from the occupation’s [Israel’s] policies of settlement [construction] and ethnic cleansing, specifically in Jerusalem.”The purpose of the meeting, he added, was to get the Israeli public to learn about the “daily suffering of the Palestinians as a result of Israeli the right-wing policies, which will not lead to stability and peace.”Referring to Wednesday’s visit, the PJS denounced it as a “blow to the efforts of Palestinian journalists who seek to expose the occupation’s false narrative.”The PJS claimed that many Israeli journalists are “settlers and military and security personnel.”It accused Israeli journalists of being complicit “in the crimes committed against Palestinian journalists and the media, or covering up and justifying these crimes.”According to the PJS, “these normalization meetings, whatever their justification, are a blow to the achievements of the Palestinian media in spreading the Palestinian narrative.”The syndicate said that holding such meetings at the headquarters of the PLO “at a time when the occupation authorities continue to commit grave crimes and violations against [Palestinian] journalists by preventing them from entering Jerusalem and banning them from working there is a great sin that cannot be tolerated.”The syndicate called on the PLO to halt such meetings and hold those responsible to account.
