Press struggling to report terrorist arrests under 54-year-old censorship Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Press struggling to report terrorist arrests under 54 years of military censorship Well, two weeks after the criminals were arrested trying to kill schoolchildren, details are beginning to leak out from behind the veil of 54 years of continuous military censorship of the press. The laws enacting censorship were established when the regime in question came to power, and have been in effect continuously ever since. They are justified by the government on the grounds that it has been at war with its closest neighbors continuously throughout this period. Yes, you don't often see it mentioned in the press, but there's a regime which grants automatic citizenship based on religious faith, and it's the largest recipient of US foreign aid in the world. This regime has remained in power unchallenged since its establishment in 1948. While power struggles between factions in it are visible, the continuity of its citizenship policy is proof that there is as yet no tolerance for dissent from its fundamentally theocratic nature. And yes, this regime has plenty of censorship. One of the suspects' mammas in this story is protesting her boy's innocence. You'll notice she is not protesting a violation of his Constitutional rights. That is because there are no Constitutional rights granted to citizens here. There is, in fact, not even a Constitution which applies to the benighted citizens of this land. There are, however, laws which apply only to citizens who are not members of the religious faith of the regime. The country? Israel. The terrorists? Settlers, proud provocateurs. In this instance, at least, Sharon was able to restrain them. If only he was inclined to do so with his tank crews - in Jenin, or in Sabra and Shatila. The comparisons with Cuba are fascinating. Cuba probably should have started getting lots of aid immediately, since they have a Constitution and have modified it in a transparent and democratic process several times, most recently in 1992; currently, a group of Cubans ("who us? paid them? with some of the $15 million that USAID is spending on Cuba? No, no, that's grease for gusano palms in Florida, it never actually leaves the States") are trying to make use of the Constitution to change not merely laws but the fundamental economic principles which Cuba operates on. Good luck trying to secure rights for non-Jewish natives under the Israeli... (Whoops, slipped and fumbled for the C word) ...under Israeli law. AP via The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Militants.html Jewish Settlers Nabbed in Bomb Plot By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BAT AYIN, West Bank (AP) -- Four Jewish settlers have been arrested on suspicion they planned to set off a large bomb near an Arab hospital and a school in Jerusalem, police said Friday. The first two men were arrested April 28 after police found in their vehicle a deadly cocktail of flammable materials, gas canisters and explosive charges hooked up to timers. A news blackout was imposed as the investigation continued. The interrogation led to the arrests of two more men, police said. The gag order was partially lifted Friday. Three of those in custody are from the West Bank Jewish settlement of Bat Ayin, home to about 110 religious families, including some American immigrants. The fourth suspect is from the Maon settlement, where a tense standoff between settlers and soldiers in 1999 ended with soldiers removing more than 100 settlers who were holed up in the hilltop farm, known as Havat Maon, to resist a government decision to dismantle the outpost. Police identified the two suspects arrested April 28 as Yarden Morag, 25, and Shlomo Dvir, 27, both of Bat Ayin. Morag and Dvir were stopped by a routine early morning police patrol as they unhitched a trailer from their car, parked between a hospital and a local girls' school, Israel TV's Channel Two reported. When the two refused to explain their presence in a predominantly Arab neighborhood, police searched their vehicle, discovering ingredients for a massive homemade bomb in the trailer. The trailer contained two fuel containers, two large gas canisters and two explosive charges, Channel 2 reported. The device was set to explode at 7:30 a.m. -- as students would have arrived at school. Morag's mother, Dalia, 48, said her son, a seminary student, was innocent and that he and the three other men in custody have not been allowed to see a lawyer. Morag said she only heard of the charges against her son Friday. At three closed-door court hearings, she and other relatives of the suspects were forced to stand across the street from the courtroom, she said. On the night of her son's arrest, 30 policemen and agents from Israel's Shin Bet security service came into her home with dogs and searched through papers, clothing and other items. ``It's strange and frightening,'' she said. She described her son, a father of four children, as a shy man. She said he studied Torah, the Jewish holy book, at a seminary in Jerusalem from 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the week and in his free time wrote music for guitar and piano. Morag said the other two suspects from Bat Ayin and her son knew each other but did not spend much time together. Dvir is an environmental studies teacher at an elementary school and police identified the third Bat Ayin resident as Ofer Gamliel, 43, a furniture maker. The fourth suspect was Yosef Ben Baruch from Maon. On Thursday, Jewish extremists distributed a leaflet in which they claimed responsibility for the killing of eight Palestinians in the past year. The group said the killings were to avenge deadly attacks against Israelis in the past 19 months of fighting. Police said the four settlers arrested in Jerusalem are not connected to the killings of Palestinians in the West Bank. In the 1980s, a group of Jewish extremists bombed the cars of Arab mayors in the West Bank, seriously injuring two of them and an Israeli bomb-disposal expert. Another group had planned to blow up a mosque in Jerusalem's Old City, but the plot was foiled. AP Via The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Censorship-Glance.html Israel Military Censorship Glance By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Here's a look at Israel's military censorship: WHAT IT IS: The Israeli government, through emergency regulations in effect since the 1948 establishment of the state, requires journalists, local and foreign, to submit security-related materials for approval to the military censor's office -- a unit whose commander holds the rank of brigadier general. To receive official press accreditation, foreign correspondents must sign a statement saying that they understand the censorship rules. It says that ``all written material, photographs and recordings dealing with security and defense matters intended for transmission abroad must be presented to the censor's office.'' HOW IT WORKS: The question of whether specific materials require the censor's approval is generally left up to the journalists, although in some cases the decision to censor specific information is made known in various ways. Written articles are generally faxed to the censor's office -- while other materials usually need to be viewed by a censor in person. The article is faxed back either with an ``approved'' stamp or with deletions marked. When a story is censored, AP runs an editor's note stating that it was ``reviewed by a military censor as required by the Israeli government, and deletions were made.'' WHAT IS CENSORED: In recent days the censor has deleted references to the size of the military buildup near the Gaza Strip -- troops and numbers of tanks; the fact of a callup, and the positioning of unspecified numbers of tanks, was not censored. In recent months the censor has also held up for hours publication of combat deaths until the families could be notified -- arguing that the report might have caused unnecessary alarm to the families of all soldiers. The censor also has deleted items involving security-related arrests in cases where there was a gag order, in effect enforcing the court's decision. SANCTIONS: The document signed by foreign correspondents states that should violations occur, ``the censor is permitted to take measures to prevent the transmission of prohibited news items.'' Violators face possible revocation of press credentials and even expulsion; although violations could be considered a criminal offense, no foreign correspondents are known to have been jailed. In addition, a media outlet can be shut down -- as was done temporarily to the Israeli newspaper Hadashot in the 1980s. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytmed-05.15.02-21:31:38-2867