In a show of solidarity, press photographers boycotted yesterday’s joint press conference of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his visiting French counterpart, Manuel Valls.
They were protesting the behavior of Netanyahu’s security detail, who demanded that pool photographer Atef Safadi take off his pants before entering the venue. The Ramallah-based Safadi, who works for European Press Photo Agency, left rather than comply.
Furthermore, foreign news agency refused to even use photos distributed by the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO).
The Foreign Press Association denounced Safadi’s treatment.
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I’m not prepared to say there’s a pattern of deliberate misbehavior — hundreds of reporters cross Israeli borders and attend media events without any problems. And these problems could happen anywhere. Turkish reporters who were manhandled in Washington by President Tayyip Recep Erdogan’s guards will relate.
But the disgraceful treatment of reporters like Simri Diab, Sara Hussein, and an Al-Jazeera cameraman by the prime minister’s overzealous guards suggests something’s amiss. Other incidents at the Erez border crossing with Gaza involving Israeli security and Kevin Flower of CNN and Lynsey Addario of the New York Times further fuels my skepticism.
Have security personnel and the political figures they answer to learned nothing?
The relationship between the media and any government is a two-way street. The journalists need access while the news-makers need exposure.
One hand washes the other, until they don’t. That’s why I don’t see anything wrong with the photographers boycotting the press conference.
There will be no foreign media photos of the meeting between the French and Israeli Prime Ministers, photojournalist refuses to disrobe !
— Foreign Press Assoc. (@FPAIsPal) May 23, 2016
Security’s a bit of a wild card because there has to be a degree of trust to maintain the relationship. Journalists don’t get credentials from the Government Press Office without some degree of vetting. That’s standard procedure everywhere. (If you want to get press credentials for this summer’s Democratic and Republican party conventions, buck up. The Secret Service’s doing the background checks.)
A strip-search would have been called for if there was a specific intelligence warning, but that hasn’t been the case with Safadi or the above-mentioned reporters.
Veteran journalists with government-issued press credentials attending media events with government-issued invitations don’t deserve this.
Featured image: CC BY-ND Juno Namkoong Lee;
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