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;…

In my third post about publishing--or, rather, not publishing--my book about migrant workers and African refugees in Israel, I examine the role of violence in the media and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And then there was a ray of light. In the wake of the May 2012 race riot in Tel Aviv, the mainstream media was suddenly paying attention to African refugees in the Jewish state. My agent called to say that we might be able to ride the wave of violence to sell my book about migrants in Israel. There’s something wrong with an industry that only sits up and takes…

+972 Magazine and Israel Social TV are happy to announce the beginning of a new partnership in which Social TV's grassroots, independent video reporting and content will be published and presented in English on +972 Magazine. Like +972, Social TV is an independent media organization working to promote social change, human rights, social justice and equality as well as to mobilize its viewers toward activism. Social TV was established in 2006 out of the belief that objective and diverse media is crucial for a healthy democracy in Israel. It seeks to report on social injustices and human right violations, and…

Tuesday's Haaretz editorial calls on Arab citizens to vote in the Israeli elections, despite the feelings of failure and disappointment they may have toward the Israeli parliament. The piece (accurately) states that voting numbers are relatively low among Palestinian citizens of Israel, resulting in a Kensset representation that is roughly half of their share in the populations. Quote: Therefore, the Arab public has no better alternative than the civic struggle, which demands patience. Despair and abstention are the worst enemies of such a struggle, and they are luxuries that Israel’s citizens can’t afford. Massive Arab turnout in this election would…

Members of the Palestinian Union of Journalists and their supporters gathered in Ramallah's Al-Manara Square on Sunday to demonstrate against an Israeli attack on two media buildings in Gaza.   Ramallah, West Bank - Dozens of Palestinians in the West Bank - territorially separated from the Gaza Strip - protested in the territory's administrative center Ramallah on Sunday, accusing Israel of directly targeting journalists in an attempt to stifle the flow of information out of Gaza. Media NGOs, including Reporters Without Borders, have condemned the strike, which wounded six Palestinian journalists and damaged the equipment of foreign media covering the…

A female Bahraini officer has been acquitted by a court in Manama on charges of torturing a local journalist working for a French TV and radio station. As the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) notes, reporter Nazeeha Saeed claimed: ...during her 13-hour detention, al-Moussa and the other officers blindfolded her, beat her repeatedly with a hose, pulled her hair, slapped her in the face, dunked her head in a toilet, kicked her, and forced her to sign papers she was not allowed to read. The journalist, who was later examined by a doctor, submitted several medical reports to the court…

Haaretz's journalists decided this afternoon to cancel the printing of the newspaper tomorrow, for both the Hebrew and the English editions. The internet sites of Haaretz Group (Haaretz.co.il, Haaretz.com and TheMarker.com) have not been updated since the early afternoon. UPDATE: The sites will go back to work at midnight local time.  Workers at Haaretz are protesting massive layoffs that are to be implemented right after the Jewish holidays. The journalists recently unionized, and held a two-hour protest several weeks ago. Since then, negotiations between the union and the paper's publisher, Amos Schocken, have failed. This afternoon, a strike was announced, effective immediately.…

Two of the three leading veteran papers in Israel are in deep trouble: Several hundreds workers of the Maariv daily – the 3rd largest in Israel – held a protest this afternoon, occasionally blocking traffic on one of Tel Aviv's busiest highways. Maariv was reported to have been sold by its owner, business tycoon Nochi Dankner, to rightwing publisher Shlomo Ben-Zvi. It was made public yesterday that the 2,000 people working at the paper will be fired, and only several hundred may be re-hired under the new ownership. The newly formed union of Maariv workers has also discovered that there aren't…

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…

(Tlatest update on the role of the Information Ministry can be found here) I'm somewhat of a fool for excruciatingly bad Hasbara videos, but this one surely takes the cake: From this video, we learn "Israel" is massively paranoid, even somewhat hysterical, believing edited second-hand evidence from biased sources (IDF spokesman's video from the flotilla), suspicious of people trying to help her and storming out of treatment - so far so true. Apart from making rather poorly judged use of the experience of real women with real trauma, the July 1st video is also ridiculously sexist; beginning with the cheap…