One Palestinian journalist's meditation on being forced to pay for Haaretz, the only paper he can rely on, but one that also espouses a nationalist ideology he cannot accept. 'I'm fated to be a reluctant reader -- and a reluctant citizen.' By Hakim Bishara It’s morning and I desperately need the news. Where I live, one needs to know what awful things to expect outdoors before leaving the house. I often think of those people who have a favorite newspaper of choice. They develop an easy kinship to the paper: “Have you seen my newspaper?”, they ask around the house;…

Examples of racism are abundant in the Israeli press. Both individual journalists and the media outlets that publish them must be taken to task for stereotyping Palestinians, and in some cases, inciting violence against them. By I’lam: Media Center for Arab Palestinians in Israel It is not altogether true that free expression is under threat in Israel. Sure, one may have been led into believing so, what with the passing in 2011 of the “Nakba Law,” penalizing commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba, and the “Anti-Boycott Law,” restricting anyone calling for a boycott of Israeli institutions, including in the occupied Palestinian…

The Israeli blogger 'Eishton' has been questioned by civilian and military police in an attempt to make him reveal a whistleblower who supplied him with unclassified military documents. His interrogation has attracted media attention to the anonymous blogger and his writing. Eishton (a combination of the Hebrew words for "newspaper' and "man") was interrogated by police in an attempt to push him into giving up a source within the army or the Ministry of Defense, who helped him in his unique in-depth three-part research on army casualties. Following the interrogation, Eishton published a warning on his blog, stating that he…

How the 'newspaper of the nation' reported on a Border Policewoman's killing of a Palestinian teenager who was found to have been carrying a toy gun.  Yedioth Aharonoth's coverage of Wednesday's killing of a Palestinian teenager in Hebron tells you pretty much everything you need to know about how Israeli brainwashing works. And Yedioth, the country's most widely-read, influential newspaper, is considered relatively liberal, which it is in the sense that it often criticizes Netanyahu and the right, but when the story is Israel vs. the Arabs, particularly the Israeli army vs. the Arabs, then Yedioth, the "newspaper of the…

Protest theater, media strikes, Palestinian demonstrations, and more: Activestills images tell the stories of the week.  

Palestinian protests against the cost of living and PA leadership grew in size and intensity, as weekly demonstrations continued and threats of demolition and settler violence remain a fact of life under occupation. Israelis also took to the streets over media and social justice issues. Activestills images tell the stories of the week.

Israel's 3rd largest daily is expected to merge with Makor Rishon, a conservative paper especially popular among settlements, and edited by Netanyahu's former chief of staff. The Hebrew media is reporting today (Friday) that Maariv, the 3rd largest daily paper in Israel, will be sold to Shlomo Ben-Zvi, the publisher of the rightwing broadsheet Makor Rishon. Maariv has been losing money for a decade. The paper's financial troubles got worse after the introduction of Sheldon Adelson's Israel Hayom – a daily paper distributed for free at considerable loss. Maariv was recently under immediately threat of shutting down. Employees were notified this week…

An uprising within the Israeli establishment is preventing an insane war from being started. In how many other countries could such a thing happen? This is a proud moment for Israel's democracy. People don't realize what a miracle is taking place in this country. A revolt by the Israeli military/intelligence establishment and Israel's best reporters, helped along by President Shimon Peres and ultimately enabled by the Obama administration, is stopping an insane war from being launched by Israel's two ideologically insane political leaders, a war they've been planning for years. The eight-member inner cabinet, or "octet," which in recent weeks has been reported to be split evenly between pro-war and anti-war ministers, has now tilted…

Despite the way it has been depicted in popular Israeli newspapers, the election of the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate for president was less a vote for Islamism than a vote against dictatorship. Since the glory of the Tahrir revolt last January and February, things in Egypt have seemed to go downhill. The young secular idealists who started the protests were displaced by Islamists as leaders of the new Egypt starting the day after Mubarak resigned. Mob violence, including gang rapes, started happening in Tahrir. Bloody soccer riots, burning of Coptic churches, and a parliamentary election in which a more  radical Islamist party finished second to the Muslim Brotherhood - the news from Egypt has not…

The Israeli media once again fails to show the impact of Israeli military strikes in the Gaza Strip. I personally think it's insane that on the Haaretz website there is not a single headline or article that even refers to what the Israeli military is wreaking on Gaza, where 23 have been killed in the last four days and over a hundred injured from fighter jets and gunships, according to Ma'an. The closest you get is coverage of the homemade projectiles fired out of Gaza in which no people were killed. Some "light" injuries were reported though. A woman and…

At first it was only Gaza. Now – it's the West Bank. Bit by bit, without our noticing, the Israeli media has stopped reporting on the occupation. It's been two weeks now that I've been wanting to write this post. I wanted to write two Fridays ago, when it became apparent that two more West Bank villages – A-Diq and Qadum – successfully joined the cycle of popular resistance. Villages like Bil'in, Ma'asara, Ni'lin, Beit Umar and Nabi Saleh have already become known for their persistence in weekly demonstrations against the Wall and the settlements, but these two villages are…

The whole world knows the Mossad was likely behind the latest killing of an Iranian atomic scientist; the Iranians are swearing revenge, and nobody in Israel sounds bothered. Vibrant democracy, huh? Not one peep has been heard from any Israeli journalist or politician or public figure of any kind against this latest assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, which everyone on earth understands was probably carried out by the Mossad. (The only other possible suspect, the U.S., denounced the killing as "provocative and dangerous." On the previous day, Israeli military chief Benny Gantz told the Knesset that 2012 would see more of these "events that happen…