05 Mar 10 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost, Uncategorized
Paul Martin, the British freelance journalist who was arrested on 14 February whilst attending the trial of Hamas activist Mohammed Abu Muaileq, has had his detention extended by a Hamas military court. Martin, who is accused of helping the former militant and collaborating with the Israeli army, will be held for at least another 15 days.
20 Jan 10 | Comment, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
Jared Malsin, news editor for a Palestinian agency, put on flight to New York reports Dimi Reider
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03 Dec 09 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost, News and features
The brother of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was yesterday detained by police for four hours following an incident in which he allegedly punched a reporter, knocking him unconscious following a basketball game. Yirmi Olmert is a representative of the International Basketball Federation. He was apparently upset over comments journalist Omer Benovich had said on air and written in his articles. He has since been released. Read more here
16 Sep 09 | Uncategorized
Marc Garlasco is a military analyst for Human Rights Watch. He is also the author of The Flak Badges of the Luftwaffe and Heer, a niche interest book on the design of World War 2 German air force regalia. He is also, on internet message boards, flak88 (a reference to a German anti-aircraft gun, and not, as some mistakenly suggested, a Hitlerian code — “88” is often used by neo-Nazis to symbolise “Heil Hitler”), a commenter who has, among other things, called SS uniforms “cool”.
None of this is massively out there: lots of people work for NGOs, many more chat oj the Internet, and western male fascination with the Nazis and wartime Germany is pretty much what keeps the History Channel going.
Garlasco was the author of a 2006 HRW report into Israel’s use of cluster bombs in the Second Lebanon War, and was later critical of Israeli military tactics in Gaza in January 2009.
Some pro-Israel bloggers spotted their target, and in what in the past would have been regarded as a pretty good piece of investigative journalism, dug up Garlasco’s web chatter, and a picture of him wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with an Iron Cross.
After initially defending Garlasco’s extracurricular interests, his employers at HRW have now suspended him on full pay, pending an investigation. But people at HRW already knew of Garlasco’s interests: if he had sought, and been granted permission from his employers before he published his book, then the charge is theirs, not Garlasco’s, to answer. Either way, the situation is damaging to HRW’s ability to speak to, and be heard by, Israel.
The story yet again highlights the simple fact that there really is no privacy on the Internet, but also a much more fundamental question about the divide between the professional and the personal: does an interest in the Hitler era mean that someone cannot comment impartially on modern Israel? Does a curiosity about fascism, indeed, undermine one’s ability to discuss and defend human rights? More broadly, to what extent do personal peccadilloes affect professional practice, and can the two ever be cleanly separated?
