Role of the Media

In early February, Israeli military spokesperson Avi Benayahu announced that more than a hundred Israeli “media warriors” are to be trained to use social media tools to disseminate Israeli propaganda to audiences around the world.

Among some of the latest Palestine Papers revelations are agreements to push the United Nations Human Rights Council to delay a vote on the Goldstone report, the fact-finding probe of alleged war crimes committed during Israel’s winter 2008-09 attacks on the Gaza Strip.

Details on the growing security cooperation between the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, the United States and the United Kingdom were revealed yesterday, the third day of Al Jazeera network’s release of more than 1,600 internal documents and secret correspondence from the last decade of negotiations between the Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority and the United States.

Al Jazeera has released more leaked documents related to several “core issues,” including the Palestinian refugees’ right of return, as part of the Palestine Papers exposé.

The Al Jazeera network has begun to release documents it secretly obtained that expose dramatic concessions made by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority to the Israeli government and US officials.

CAIRO, Egypt (IPS) - More than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables released by online whistle-blower WikiLeaks include statements made behind closed doors that could prove embarrassing for Egypt’s government, say analysts.

The threats of death, maiming and incarceration are perhaps the worst and most direct obstacles to the objective coverage of situations in which human rights violations are committed daily. But by no means do they alone account for problems relating to global coverage of war, politics and human rights in the Middle East today.

A 10-minute video segment originally broadcast in Hebrew on Israel’s Channel 10 threatens to gravely embarrass not only Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but also the US administration of Barack Obama. Jonathan Cook reports.

Within hours of the Gaza-bound aid flotilla being intercepted and besieged in international waters by Israeli commandos, news of the bloody attack had spread across the globe. Rage, condemnation and calls for an international investigation followed. Meanwhile, Israel’s campaign to spin the attack, distort the facts and quell an outraged public was already in full swing. Abraham Greenhouse and Nora Barrows-Friedman analyze for The Electronic Intifada.

An Arab member of the Israeli parliament is demanding that a newspaper be allowed to publish an investigative report that was suppressed days before Israel attacked Gaza in winter 2008. The investigation by Uri Blau, who has been in hiding since December to avoid arrest, concerned Israeli preparations for the impending assault on Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead. Jonathan Cook reports.