Monday, January 26, 2009

Israeli Government Press Office: Foreign journalists are "spoiled crybabies"

In a comment to the Jerusalem Post on Sunday, Israeli Government Press Office chief Danny Seaman denied that there had been a ban of entry foreign journalists to the Gaza strip during the massacres. Israel had just not opened the border crossings. Semantics, anyone?

Seaman moreover stated that if the foreign journalists really would have wanted to enter the Gaza strip, in violation of the Israeli closure of borders, they could have done so. He also labelled the foreign journalists 'spoiled crybabies'.

The International Federation of Journalists did however note that inside Gaza, Israeli forces targetted press workers and killed two journalists. So the claims of Seaman that journalists could-have-entered-if-they-really-wanted falls quite flat looking at how the Israeli forces acted against journalists.

Seaman is not completly without friends, though. 'Joe the Plumber' was toured around southern Israel by Seaman during the Gaza massacre. 'Joe the Plumber' (or just 'JTP') then agreed with Seaman's position, thinking that "media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting". Friends of media freedom, indeed.

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