Just when you thought the Jordanian Press Association couldn’t surprise you anymore…guess what?
It did…
â??The Jordanian Press Association has threatened to inflict â??deterrentâ? punishment on member journalists who visit Israel in violation of a previous decision that bars normalization with the Jewish state. â??The JPA council will take deterrent measures against journalists who violate its decision that bans any form of normalization (with Israel),â? the syndicate said in a statement yesterday.
The JPA council was responding to local press reports that 40 Jordanian journalists, who mainly worked for the state-run Radio and Television Corporation, planned to travel to Israel to attend a three-week training course at Haifa University, designed to spread the â??peace cultureâ? in the region.
â??We wonder about the feasibility of such a visit at a time when Israel violates all agreements and practices daily acts of killings, annexation of land, violation of human rights and cracking down on the Palestinian people,â? the syndicate said. It reminded members that both the JPA and the Arab Press Federation â??prohibit all forms of normalization with the Zionist entity.â? [source]â?Â
Isn’t the JPA supposed to be pro-government? Did they miss the part when the government signed a peace treaty with Israel over a decade ago? So basically now the message to jornalists is: don’t talk about Israel, don’t mention Israel, and avoid looking at Israel when it walks down the hall. The next move will be making it mandatory for Jordanian journalists who are travelling abroad not to take any flights that fly over Israel.
We seriously, seriously, seriously, need to revisit the whole abolishing the JPA idea. I think we had something going there.
I always felt the National Agenda COmmittee was very wise in abolishing mandatory membership in the JPA, and I couldn’t understand back then why journalists (read, some journalists) organized a sit-in to protest that!!
The whole issue makes my blood boil!! Perhaps we should be grateful that they have their hands off blogs, next thing you know they’ll impose their ‘deterrant’ punishment on anyone who reads or comments on an Israeli blog!
Do they have power over Israelis reading Jordanian blogs?
Best wishes from Al Quds,
Hanan Cohen
***Love and Peace***
Hanan, Arabs don’t have power over Israelis. You’ve got nothing to worry about 😀
BTW, this isn’t about punishing whoever visits “Israel”, in fact every Arab has the right to visit the land since it was never an Israeli land and it will never be (at least not before Israel abide by all the past agreements and stick to the green line).
This is about the academic boycott of Haifa University. Not only Arabs took that decision but many academic and non-academic unions on top of the is the AUT in Britain.
I think the problem either lies in our media, which often fails to make the effort in clearing up the picture before publishing the news they’ve heared or in the spokespersons and authoritative figures who somtimes have no idea what are they talking about.