National Press Club Award Presented to Palestinian Journalist

By Andrea Lorenz

At a National Press Club briefing just hours before Palestinian journalist Taher Shriteh was presented the club's 1993 Freedom of the Press award, Executive Director Dana Bullen of the World Press Freedom Committee told journalists, ''Israelis in the U.S. tried to intimidate the National Press Club's selection committee.''

As it turned out, members of both the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). which nominated Shriteh, and the National Press Club's Freedom of Information Committee, which selected him, were contacted by diplomats from the Israeli Embassy in Washington and Israel's Consulate General in New York. They expressed concern that a Palestinian journalist might be selected for the award.

Who is Taher Shriteh that he should arouse such admiration among American journalists and cause such consternation among Israeli officials? He is a 32-year old Palestinian Reuters correspondent. He also is a stringer (meaning he is paid for articles or reports actually used) for The New York Times, the Associated Press, the Voice of America. BBC, CBS, and the Jerusalem Post. Further, he was the only correspondent working during the first days of the intifada. in December 1987, in Israeli-occupied Gaza, where life is so difficult that Western journalists stay for only brief periods, if they visit at all.

''Taher Shriteh. . . is being recognized for continuing to report on the intifada despite harassment by the Israeli government," the National Press Club's release on Freedom of Information Day stated.

''Shriteh has been incarcerated by Israeli authorities at least twice in the past two years for his work: In 1991, he was jailed for reporting translations of handbills distributed by supporters of the intifada, and in December 1992 he was jailed and nearly deported for reporting an anonymous call from a terrorist group claiming responsibility for the killing of three Israeli soldiers.''

Jon Healey, Chairman of the National Press Club's Freedom of Information Committee, told the Washington Report that in early January 1993 he received a call from a woman who identified herself as an official of the Israeli Embassy's press office. ''Is there a Palestinian who is getting an award?'' she asked.

Because he had not yet received the nominations for the award from the Committee to Protect Journalists, Mr. Healey was understandably taken aback that an Israeli official knew more about the progress of the nominations than did Press Club officials. Healey had heard, moreover, that a colleague on the Press Club "Morning Newsmaker'' committee had received a similar call from an Israeli official.

When Mr. Healey expressed some irritation to his Israeli caller, however, she replied, ''We are not trying to interfere.''

"We felt somebody was trying to interfere in the process," Mr. Healey said, in describing his reaction and that of other committee members. "We thought it was very inappropriate."

At about the same time, Avner Gidron, Research Associate for the Middle East and North Africa department of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization founded in 1981 to monitor and promote freedom of the press, also received a call from an Israeli official.

"They expressed concern,'' Mr. Gidron told the Washington Report. "They wanted to know the reasons why we'd nominated him. They implied they were upset. I clarified the reasons.''

Two days later, the man called Mr. Gidron again. During that call, Gidron said, ''He did begin to convey that there is cause for Israel to be concerned.''

The Israelis apparently had learned that Shriteh was under consideration when he applied for a permit to travel to the U.S. to accept the award in the event that he was chosen. When asked whether CPJ had ever received calls like this before, Gidron replied, "The Israelis usually have a better sense of PR than this.''

At a briefing before he received the award, Taher Shriteh described to Washington reporters how Israeli occupation officials tried to snuff out his career. In the early days of the intifada, an Israeli commander saw him standing with CBS Television correspondent Bob Simon. The commander asked Shriteh, ''Are you a journalist?"

"How Dare You?"

When Shriteh answered yes, the commander responded, "How dare you?" and arrested him on the pretext that he had been telling shopkeepers to close their shops. Soon after, the Israelis raided his home and confiscated his papers, including his contact list. They also smashed his camera.

During the Gulf war, the Israelis arrested him again in his home. This time they threw a burlap sack over his head and took him to the Gaza Central Prison, known by Palestinians and Israelis alike as ''the slaughterhouse." There he spent 38 days in solitary confinement. During the first days he was systematically deprived of sleep and not allowed to use the bathroom. He lost 33 pounds.

He was charged with four crimes: 1) possession of a fax machine; 2) use of a fax machine; 3) publishing a book without a license; and 4) failure to report to the Israelis on Palestinian activists. He was released on $5,000 bond only after pressure was applied by foreign media organizations and Israeli human rights groups.

Shriteh also was among more than 400 Palestinians rounded up by Israeli occupation officials for exile to Lebanon. He described the experience in a meeting with the Washington Report editorial staff.

On the night of Dec. 14, Shabak (the Israeli secret service) officials knocked on his door. He and 14 other men, including three medical doctors, several teachers and engineers, and the head of Gaza's Islamic University, were blindfolded and handcuffed. Several of the men were in their 60s. Shriteh had with him in Washington, DC the blindfold the Israelis used on him and the thin plastic handcuffs that cut into his skin every time he moved.

"On the bus we were ordered not to speak," Shriteh said. "I started thinking, where are we going?" During the trip, one of the men who had a heart condition started groaning. The Israelis refused to stop the bus or let anyone aboard help the gravely ill man, despite the fact that there were three handcuffed doctors on the bus.

The bus stopped after what seemed like several hours. After a long wait, Shriteh was taken off the bus. Then more handcuffs and a second blindfold were applied to him and he was loaded into another vehicle. Soldiers beat him whenever he moved to relieve pressure on his wrists.

After another long drive, Shriteh found himself back at Gaza's Central Prison. There, he was thrown into a windowless one-by-two-meter cell the Palestinians call "the grave." Water leaked onto the floor and there was no blanket. Worst of all, he said, "There was no one to ask why."

Finally, an Israeli guard who recognized him from his previous arrest and interrogations asked him, "What are you doing here? Your friends were sent to Lebanon." This was the first inkling Shriteh had of where he and those with him on the bus had been taken.

Shriteh spent four days in prison. He was interrogated about his contacts and the sub-stringers in each Gaza camp who work for him. He was never charged with any offense and no one would tell him why he had been arrested. When the Israelis released him after pressure from international news organizations, they said he had been arrested by mistake. However, he said, he recognized the men who arrested him as senior Shabak officers. "It was very clear that they wanted to get rid of me," he said.

Mr. Shriteh also described the harassment of other Palestinian journalists. One, Majdi Al Arabid, was told, "If we see you again with a camera, we'll shoot you in the head." Another, ABC news reporter Zakaria Talmas, was shot in the abdomen and paralyzed. Shriteh himself has been shot at on six different occasions. One bullet hit the CBS video camera he was holding, which saved his life.

Asked if he thought the Israeli authorities would treat him differently after he had received the prestigious award from the National Press Club, Shriteh responded, "They will be more careful, but they won't stop." Even after the award was announced in February, he said, the Israelis arrested and interrogated him yet