THE PEOPLE LEFT ON MANUS HAVE COME TO THIS - HAS ANYONE HEARD ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS?

Inside the camp, the men were desperate but determined.

Sick. Hungry. Trapped. They wanted freedom.

This is Manus Island.

The New York Times sent journalists into a contested detention camp in Papua New Guinea to investigate Australia’s refugee policy, and the resistance rising against it.

By DAMIEN CAVE NOV. 18, 2017

The men packing the boat with rice, cigarettes and medicine had fled war and persecution in their home countries.

Now, at 1 a.m., off the coast of a remote island in Papua New Guinea, they were speeding back to the detention camp they hated.

Why, I asked, would they return to the prisonlike “refugee processing center” where they had been trapped for nearly five years?

“We have brothers to feed,” said Behnam Satah, 31, a Kurdish asylum seeker, as we cruised over moon-silvered waves on a hot November night. “We have brothers who need help.”

Secret supply runs maintain the camp’s solidarity.

Power, food and water were cut off weeks ago.

The asylum seekers have been ​trapped​ for years.

Some holdouts struggle with ​anxiety and ​depression.

More than 1,300 asylum seekers have been dumped on Manus Island since the end of 2012 as part of Australia’s contentious policy to keep migrants from reaching its shores. They were all but forgotten until last month when Australia’s attempt to shut down the center and move the men to facilities near the island’s main town of Lorengau hit resistance.

Hundreds of the men refused to leave.

Many said they were afraid to move closer to town, where some had been attacked and robbed by local residents. But it was more than that. With the attention of the world finally on them, the camp’s detainees had turned their prison into a protest, braving a lack of water, electricity and food to try to jog loose a little compassion from the world.

They had already suffered and understood danger. Fleeing more than a dozen countries, they had risked their lives with human traffickers on ramshackle boats leaving Indonesia. And ever since the compound started filling up in 2013, it has been plagued by illness, suicide and complaints of mistreatment.

But now, by staying there and sneaking in and out by boat, they were risking arrest in a desperate search for self-determination, and to intensify scrutiny of Australia’s migration policy and methods.

And that scrutiny has come.

Veteran United Nations officials said this month they had never seen a wealthy democracy go to such extremes to punish asylum seekers and push them away.

Papua New Guinea officials and local leaders, enraged at how the camp’s closure was handled, have demanded to know why Australia is not doing more to help the men.

Instead, Australia is cutting services — reducing caseworkers and no longer providing medication, officials said, even though approximately 8 in 10 of the men suffer from anxiety disorders, depression and other issues largely caused by detention, according to a 2016 independent study.

“It’s a very drastic reduction,” said Catherine Stubberfield, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency, who recently visited Manus.

Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection did not answer questions about the service cuts. In a statement, it said general health care was still available and “alternative accommodation sites” were “operational” and “suitable.”

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has also doubled down on Australia’s hard-line approach, arguing that offshore detention has been a successful deterrent against illegal trafficking.

But in Papua New Guinea, deterrence increasingly looks like an incentive for cruelty. Officials, Manus residents and outside experts all argue that Australia has a responsibility to those it placed here, to international law, and to its closest neighbor.

“They’ve put the burden on a former colony which does not have the resources for many of the things its own people want, like health care and a social safety net,” said Paige West, a Columbia University anthropologist who has done extensive fieldwork on Manus. “This is a problem created by Australia’s failure to comply with its human rights obligations.”

The camp is a half-hour boat ride from town.

Relations with refugees have been uneasy.

Jobs on Manus are scarce. Rents are rising.

Just south of the equator, the heat is relentless.

The detention center, a warren of barracks and tents, sprawls across a naval base used by American troops in 1944 during World War II. The Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the camp was illegal, calling it a violation of “personal liberty.” The governments of Australia and Papua New Guinea agreed in April to close the site by Oct. 31.

But finding alternatives has been a struggle.

Some of the men at the camp — all of whom were caught at trying to reach Australia by boat — have been granted refugee status and are hoping for relocation to the United States, under a deal brokered by President Obama and initially opposed by President Trump.

But nearly 200 of the 843 men still stuck on Manus (women and children were sent to the island of Nauru) have not had their asylum claims fully processed, or their claims have been rejected, leaving them effectively stuck on the island.

For now, all of the detainees are expected to move to three smaller facilities, near Lorengau, a few miles from the camp.

Lorengau is not a big place. It is a close-knit rural town with a few thousand people, a single supermarket, a rusty playground and electricity that comes and goes.

The new detention facilities are set apart from main roads and are closely guarded — we were turned away when a photographer and I tried to visit. But detainees can come and go. And photos, taken by the men, show that none of the facilities were fully operational more than a week after the move was supposed to happen.

At one of the new facilities, West Lorengau Haus, the electricity and water had not been turned on when representatives of the United Nations refugee agency visited days after the main camp had officially closed.

“It’s still a construction site — you can’t just move refugees into that space,” said Ms. Stubberfield, the spokeswoman.

The two other sites also had problems: One had intermittent running water, and the other, the East Lorengau Transit Center, lacked caseworkers.

Kepo Pomat, who owns the land that facility occupies, said he had issued the authorities an ultimatum: If his company did not receive the caseworker employment contracts, he would kick the refugees off his property.

Part of the problem is that the governments of Australia and Papua New Guinea are at odds over who is responsible for the men. Australia says Papua New Guinea is in charge of providing for them. Papua New Guinea says it is willing to house the refugees, but it is Australia’s responsibility to pay for them and pursue ways for them to leave.

“We’ve been urging that the Australians keep up their responsibility,” said Duncan Joseph, a community leader and the island’s Red Cross representative. “The fact that they’ve withdrawn and drastically scaled back services doesn’t change that for us, morally and legally, they are responsible for these men.”

Many of the detainees who have moved to the new sites reported crowded dormitories and delays with getting food. Some did not receive the weekly stipend of $30 for medicine and incidentals they were promised upon arrival.

Mohyadin Omar, 27, a lawyer with a soft demeanor who fled Somalia in 2013, said the move to the transit center had made him consider returning to Mogadishu. He is a certified refugee who lost his entire family to war. He fears he will be killed back home, but he may go anyway.

“I’m tortured four years here,” he said. “I’m done.”

Behrouz Boochani writes about the camp’s struggle​s​.

But others suffer silently.

Morteza Arefifar recently tried to commit suicide.

Joinul Islam was attacked with a machete.

Back inside the main detention camp, conditions deteriorated quickly after the Australians officially left on Oct. 31, cutting off the electricity and water before departing.

In the equatorial heat, the men who were sick got sicker. Asthmatics needed inhalers. Diabetics needed insulin.

Mr. Satah, the leader of the supply operation, seemed relieved when our boat pushed ashore. The navy guards and police meant to keep everything out of the camp either did not see us or chose not to intervene. Mr. Satah, a fast-talking former English teacher, smiled he led a dozen men carrying food and medicine toward a container inside the compound.

“O.K. Brothers, thank you very much — love you, love you,” he said, echoing their expressions of appreciation.

Though it was after 2 a.m., many of the men were eager to guide me through the camp, where most had lived for more than four years, in many cases without ever leaving.

They showed off the well they had dug for water, and the protest signs they posted on Twitter using cracked cellphones, cherished like fine crystal.

Some of the men who stayed at the camp appeared mentally stronger than those who had relocated.

They made clear they want to be resettled in a third country, neither Australia nor Papua New Guinea. In the meantime, they were surviving. They were defying the authorities. Thanks in part to money from supportive Australians and local boat pilots risking arrest, they had cigarettes, a stash of booze, and a measure of what they have most craved: agency and autonomy.

“There are many things that brought us to the point where we’ve said we will never go,” Mr. Satah said when he was still in Lorengau gathering supplies. “But remember, we didn’t come here by choice.”

Behrouz Boochani, another Iranian Kurd who has become well-known for writing from the camp, put it more simply in a resistance manifesto: “All the conversations are driven by one thing, and one thing only, and that is freedom,” he wrote. “Only freedom.”

Why then have more of the men not tried to pursue a future in Papua New Guinea? After I spent time in Lorengau, it became clear: Even for those who have made a life in Manus, there are real challenges.

Mustafizah Rahman, 25, an asylum seeker from Bangladesh, married a local woman and opened a shop in a red shipping container near the main Lorengau market.

There, he said, he is pursuing his dream “to become a multimillionaire.”

The island’s residents consider him a model of integration. But Mr. Rahman, whose wife is eight months pregnant, remains stateless, he said, without formal residency in Papua New Guinea.

Lorengau has become increasingly crowded with climate change refugees who have moved there from more remote islands, and Mr. Rahman said he was barely getting by after paying for rising rent and food costs.

“Not everyone can do this,” Mr. Rahman said, between customers. “We’re really not accepted in this country. If they bring everyone to town, many people will die.”

Photos in camp point to the past.

Graffiti shows the pain of detention.

And the dead are memorialized.

Another challenge: missing family.

The fear of violence is shared by many of the asylum seekers, who have been targets of attacks in Manus and in other parts of Papua New Guinea, as they have been in other countries. A recent Human Rights Watch report documented a series of cellphones thefts and attacks, some involving machetes.

Kakau Karani, Lorengau’s acting mayor, said that the risks were exaggerated and that in fact, many residents had provided the men with food, lodging and work.

Around 10 children have been born to asylum seekers and local women, the mayor said, adding, “If we weren’t friendly, we would not be making babies here.”

Other residents worry that the men are preying on local women.

Ultimately, both the asylum seekers and the local residents are a mix of potential and risks.

Some of the detainees are resilient and have learned new languages. Others survive with sleeping pills or drink too much — as do some local men.

Australia says offshore detention has reduced trafficking and deaths at sea. Mr. Turnbull has rejected an offer from New Zealand to take 150 of the refugees, arguing it would encourage traffickers.

But for Manus, the effects are evolving and still being tallied. Six detainees have died here. A small number have reached Australia for medical treatment. Hundreds have left, after agreeing to deportation. And 54 refugees from Manus and Nauru have made it to the United States.

When might more follow?

Yassir Hussein, one of the camp’s leaders, said he often contemplated ideals like liberty and justice — and what they mean for migration’s winners and losers.

“We are happy for the lucky ones,” he said. “But why are they lucky? Why are we not lucky?”

Damien Cave is the Australia bureau chief for The New York Times. Sign up for his weekly newsletter and follow him on Twitter: @damiencave.
Produced by CRAIG ALLEN, DAVID FURST, RUSSELL GOLDMAN and ANDREW ROSSBACK

BARGOUTI - WHY WE ARE ON HUNGER STRIKE IN ISRAEL'S PRISONS

Why We Are on Hunger Strike in Israel’s Prisons

By MARWAN BARGHOUTIAPRIL 16, 2017

Photos of prisoners during a demonstration demanding the release of the Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, in Ramallah, West Bank, this month. Credit Issam Rimawi/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images 

HADARIM PRISON, Israel — Having spent the last 15 years in an Israeli prison, I have been both a witness to and a victim of Israel’s illegal system of mass arbitrary arrests and ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners. After exhausting all other options, I decided there was no choice but to resist these abuses by going on a hunger strike.

Some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners have decided to take part in this hunger strike, which begins today, the day we observe here as Prisoners’ Day. Hunger striking is the most peaceful form of resistance available. It inflicts pain solely on those who participate and on their loved ones, in the hopes that their empty stomachs and their sacrifice will help the message resonate beyond the confines of their dark cells.

Decades of experience have proved that Israel’s inhumane system of colonial and military occupation aims to break the spirit of prisoners and the nation to which they belong, by inflicting suffering on their bodies, separating them from their families and communities, using humiliating measures to compel subjugation. In spite of such treatment, we will not surrender to it.

Israel, the occupying power, has violated international law in multiple ways for nearly 70 years, and yet has been granted impunity for its actions. It has committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions against the Palestinian people; the prisoners, including men, women and children, are no exception.

I was only 15 when I was first imprisoned. I was barely 18 when an Israeli interrogator forced me to spread my legs while I stood naked in the interrogation room, before hitting my genitals. I passed out from the pain, and the resulting fall left an everlasting scar on my forehead. The interrogator mocked me afterward, saying that I would never procreate because people like me give birth only to terrorists and murderers.

A few years later, I was again in an Israeli prison, leading a hunger strike, when my first son was born. Instead of the sweets we usually distribute to celebrate such news, I handed out salt to the other prisoners. When he was barely 18, he in turn was arrested and spent four years in Israeli prisons.

The eldest of my four children is now a man of 31. Yet here I still am, pursuing this struggle for freedom along with thousands of prisoners, millions of Palestinians and the support of so many around the world. What is it with the arrogance of the occupier and the oppressor and their backers that makes them deaf to this simple truth: Our chains will be broken before we are, because it is human nature to heed the call for freedom regardless of the cost.

Israel has built nearly all of its prisons inside Israel rather than in the occupied territory. In doing so, it has unlawfully and forcibly transferred Palestinian civilians into captivity, and has used this situation to restrict family visits and to inflict suffering on prisoners through long transports under cruel conditions. It turned basic rights that should be guaranteed under international law — including some painfully secured through previous hunger strikes — into privileges its prison service decides to grant us or deprive us of.

Palestinian prisoners and detainees have suffered from torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, and medical negligence. Some have been killed while in detention. According to the latest count from the Palestinian Prisoners Club, about 200 Palestinian prisoners have died since 1967 because of such actions. Palestinian prisoners and their families also remain a primary target of Israel’s policy of imposing collective punishment.

Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.

Through our hunger strike, we seek an end to these abuses.

Over the past five decades, according to the human rights group Addameer, more than 800,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned or detained by Israel — equivalent to about 40 percent of the Palestinian territory’s male population. Today, about 6,500 are still imprisoned, among them some who have the dismal distinction of holding world records for the longest periods in detention of political prisoners. There is hardly a single family in Palestine that has not endured the suffering caused by the imprisonment of one or several of its members.

How to account for this unbelievable state of affairs?

Israel has established a dual legal regime, a form of judicial apartheid, that provides virtual impunity for Israelis who commit crimes against Palestinians, while criminalizing Palestinian presence and resistance. Israel’s courts are a charade of justice, clearly instruments of colonial, military occupation. According to the State Department, the conviction rate for Palestinians in the military courts is nearly 90 percent.

Among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians whom Israel has taken captive are children, women, parliamentarians, activists, journalists, human rights defenders, academics, political figures, militants, bystanders, family members of prisoners. And all with one aim: to bury the legitimate aspirations of an entire nation.

Instead, though, Israel’s prisons have become the cradle of a lasting movement for Palestinian self-determination. This new hunger strike will demonstrate once more that the prisoners’ movement is the compass that guides our struggle, the struggle for Freedom and Dignity, the name we have chosen for this new step in our long walk to freedom.

Israel has tried to brand us all as terrorists to legitimize its violations, including mass arbitrary arrests, torture, punitive measures and severe restrictions. As part of Israel’s effort to undermine the Palestinian struggle for freedom, an Israeli court sentenced me to five life sentences and 40 years in prison in a political show trial that was denounced by international observers.

Israel is not the first occupying or colonial power to resort to such expedients. Every national liberation movement in history can recall similar practices. This is why so many people who have fought against oppression, colonialism and apartheid stand with us. The International Campaign to Free Marwan Barghouti and All Palestinian Prisoners that the anti-apartheid icon Ahmed Kathrada and my wife, Fadwa, inaugurated in 2013 from Nelson Mandela’s former cell on Robben Island has enjoyed the support of eight Nobel Peace Prize laureates, 120 governments and hundreds of leaders, parliamentarians, artists and academics around the world.

Their solidarity exposes Israel’s moral and political failure. Rights are not bestowed by an oppressor. Freedom and dignity are universal rights that are inherent in humanity, to be enjoyed by every nation and all human beings. Palestinians will not be an exception. Only ending occupation will end this injustice and mark the birth of peace.

Editors’ Note: April 17, 2017

This article explained the writer’s prison sentence but neglected to provide sufficient context by stating the offenses of which he was convicted. They were five counts of murder and membership in a terrorist organization. Mr. Barghouti declined to offer a defense at his trial and refused to recognize the Israeli court’s jurisdiction and legitimacy.

red-jos's note: 26 April2017


As usual, the dishonesty and bias of the New York Times is such that they do not bother to tell their readers that Bargouti's trial was rigged and stage-managed and all human and legal rights and democratic processes were ignored by the Israelis for the trial. 

WHY READERS INTERESTED IN BALANCED COVERAGE OF BDS SHOULD AVOID THE NEW YORK TIMES

The following article was published in Mondoweiss on 31 May 2015 and needs to be read by all those who need to understand the New York Times failure to understand the Palestinian disaster created by Israel and the United States:

Why readers interested in balanced coverage of BDS should avoid the New York Times

New York Times headquarters.

On Sunday, May 9th, The New York Times ran a front-page story discussing efforts across various U.S. campuses to divest from Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, echoing pro-Israel students’ claims that such efforts are divisive.  Unfortunately, this piece, co-authored by Jennifer Medina and Tamar Lewin, is the latest in a troubling series of prominent New York Times stories that misrepresent the campus divestment movement and strip it of essential context. The reporters excluded Jewish students involved in the Palestinian rights movement, failed to meaningfully include Palestinian voices, ignored the principles behind divestment and boycott campaigns, and engaged in inappropriate and one-sided questioning of students. We are a part of the movement and we have spoken to the reporters, so we are keenly aware of what has been omitted by The Times in recent coverage.

The headline of the story, “Campus Debates on Israel Drive a Wedge Between Jews and Minorities,” is indicative of a major problem with the framing of this story, which erases all of the Jewish students and activists who support the BDS movement. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters are made up of students from diverse backgrounds, including both Palestinian and Jewish. Likewise, chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a U.S. Jewish organization that supports BDS as “a grassroots tactic for human rights work that has a proven track record,” are springing up across campuses nationwide. JVP is one of the fastest growing Jewish organizations in the country and has more than double Hillel’s following on Facebook and more than three times their following on Twitter; these Jewish voices cannot be ignored or excluded.

It is also worth noting that JVP mission statements often invoke support for Palestinian freedom as being directly correspondent with Jewish tradition. Given all of this, the authors should have specified: if campus debates on Israel and its policies are driving a wedge between students, it is only between those who condone Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and those who do not.

But besides the obvious problems with the article’s overall framing, several students came forward to report clearly inappropriate behavior by the NYT reporters tasked with writing the story.

Photo of UCLA students at Israeli independence day that accompanied piece in NYT on BDS. By Monica Almeida

Reporters repeated anti-Palestinian tropes

When speaking to Palestinian students, New York Times reporters who spoke to SJP members in California repeatedly made comments that indicated stereotypes about Palestinians. In her interview with Safwan Ibrahim, a Palestinian member of UCLA SJP, reporter Jennifer Medina asked only about what the SJP member’s thoughts were on accusations that divestment incites anti-Semitism, rather than asking for any background information on divestment or the principles of the BDS movement. When Ibrahim replied that he didn’t feel comfortable with the line of questioning, Medina asked if she could be re-directed to another source that had no ancestral ties to the region, implying that being Palestinian made him an unreliable source.

This behavior was repeated at UC Berkeley, where student activist Paul Hadweh was interviewed by reporter Ronnie Cohen. For Hadweh, it was clear early on that the article he was interviewing for would be biased.  When Hadweh mentioned that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be quoted in the piece, Cohen encouraged him to continue, saying, “you’re a great spokesperson for the cause. You’re not militant.” Unfortunately, Palestinian students and SJP members are often likened to militants or terrorists.  Such racialized associations are usually levied against SJP activists by various pro-Israel organizations, but it is especially outrageous for them to come from a Times reporter.

Pre-supposing hidden motives of SJP

When interviewing a non-Palestinian member of SJP, Medina asked whether there was anything the SJP board asked members to “never say publicly.” This line of questioning suggests that the reporters were hoping to find evidence to validate their own prior-held belief that SJP has an underlying agenda that it consciously hides from the public.  Activists engaged in defending Palestinian human rights are accustomed to pro-Israel groups engaging in such fishing expeditions. The fact that the New York Times appeared to be employing this tactic is deeply troubling given its profound impact on the national conversation around these issues.

Once again, students at Berkeley experienced the same treatment. According to Hadweh, midway through the interview, Cohen announced that she was simply going to read verbatim a series of questions that her editor gave her. Among them was the particularly one-sided question, “to what extent is BDS used as a fig leaf for anti-Semitism?” Cohen continued to repeat much of the same language that pro-Israel students and organizations use against SJP, signaling that her only reason for interviewing Hadweh was to validate unfavorable claims made about SJP and BDS.

Questioning whether Jewish members of SJP were sufficiently Jewish

David McCleary, another SJP member from UC Berkeley, reached out to us to discuss his own experiences with reporter Ronnie Cohen, who he claims subjected him to a series of unprofessional and even offensive questions regarding his Jewish identity over the phone and via text message. Cohen asked McCleary if he “looked Jewish,” if he was “Bar Mitzvah’d,” and at one point told him that his name didn’t “sound Jewish.” Cohen also asked if he was “the only Jewish member of SJP,” to which McCleary said that off the top of his head, he could name three other Jewish members of SJP at UC Berkeley. Cohen’s response was to ask if that made him “one of less than a handful of Jews” within the organization. Screen shots between McCleary and Cohen captured some of Cohen’s offensive comments and questions. “These were not the types of questions that a reporter should have been asking,” McCleary told us over the phone.

How the New York Times’ reporting mirrors pro-Israel talking points

By excluding Palestinian voices and framing the story as Jews versus threatening, possibly militant, minorities, the New York Times created a narrative that parallels claims by pro-Israel groups. After the University of California Student Association endorsed divestment, UCLA Hillel’s Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller told the Sacramento Bee that he believed campus politics had been “hijacked” by a group of “oppressed minorities” who were “intent to conquer.” Earlier, Seidler-Feller expressed to the UCLA community that he believed divestment was “a periodic ritual that different minority groups have had to enact in order to legitimate their claim to victimhood.”  He also claimed that divestment was “a sick remnant of the identity politics of the ‘90s.”

An even more direct parallel can be seen in UCLA Rabbi Aaron Lerner’s public thesis on campus divestment politics.  In an open email, Lerner wrote that divestment was “only successful because [the anti-Israel student groups] have partnered with other radical and marginal groups to create coalitions in which each group supports one another’s special interest projects.  For instance, the students who want immigration reform to be one of UCLA’s student government priorities promised the Students for Justice in Palestine that they will vote for BDS as long as when it comes time to vote on their bill, the favor will be returned.”  Lerner summarizes this as a process of “colonizing various student leadership groups.” This was the exact framing used in the Times piece, where it is implied that coalitions formed between students of color are based upon surface-level strategizing rather than genuine solidarity.

Not one incident, but part of a pattern

Following their past coverage of the UCLA Judicial Board interview of potential appointee Rachel Beyda in March, one of the authors of this article, Omar Zahzah, contacted the Times‘ newsroom to let them know that a divestment resolution calling on the UC regents to pull funding from companies that profit from Israel’s occupation had been falsely described in the New York Times article as a “boycott” resolution. The distinction is crucial, as boycotts and divestment represent two entirely different forms of nonviolent political action, but the news team’s response was to say that “given the resolution’s philosophical alignment with the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions movement, we’re confident that this passing reference accurately characterizes the spirit of the resolution.” The response suggests, on the one hand, that the article could accurately capture the “spirit” of a resolution that the reporter in question never seems to have bothered researching or interviewing student activists about. On the other, it suggests that it is irrelevant whether or not reporting on BDS is scrupulously fact-checked. At best, refusing to change misinformation under the assumption that the reading public wouldn’t be able to spot it is careless journalism; at worst, it hints at something more calculating, especially when the publication in question is a reputable news outlet tasked with delivering the objective truth. The fact that the newsroom printed a correction about the number of UCLA Undergraduate Student Council Association members in this very same article, which is also a fact most general readers would not know, makes the refusal even more puzzling.

What is the effect? Omitting Palestinian voices, demonizing students of color, erasing Jewish solidarity

The UCLA SJP members who were contacted by Medina and Lewin to provide quotes had been anticipating this article, but were dismayed to see that the Times had ignored their quotes in favor of those from quite a number of pro-Israel individuals at UCLA. This was especially discouraging considering the amount of attention the article gave to UCLA-specific issues. During his interview with Medina, Ibrahim spoke about recent experiences of anti-Palestinian and anti-SJP hatred to which SJP members and Palestinian students were subjected, but the authors of the New York Times piece omitted these comments. Ultimately, the authors saw fit to continue with the usual narrative that BDS promotes isolation and even harassment of Jewish students, while completely ignoring well-documented instances of harassment and intimidation against Palestinian students and students in solidarity with Palestine.

Additionally, in response to the Electronic Intifada’s coverage of this issue, assistant national editor Jennifer Kingson defended the piece by claiming that “the story depicts the range of viewpoints that [the authors] encountered.”  A closer inspection of how these reporters included pro-Palestine quotes indicates how superficial her response is. Whereas pro-Israel Jewish students and commenters were given space to discuss their fears and perspectives on the issue, such humanization was denied to pro-Palestine interviewees.  SJP member Janine Salman was quoted in the piece, but the Times only used her quotes to establish a well known fact: that Zionism and Jewish identity are not the same thing. Salman was never given the space to express her personal opinions. While quoting pro-Palestine students may give the appearance that both sides’ views are included, the only students allowed to express their own emotional connections to this issue were pro-Israel.

In addition to leaving out Palestinian experiences, the New York Times’ approach over the past several months has severely damaged the reputation of students of color who support Palestinian rights. This is highlighted in the Times’ reporting on Molly Horwitz’s interview with the Stanford Students of Color Coalition (SOCC). They not only emphasized Horwitz’s allegations despite the documentation and testimony of nine other students who refuted her claim, but refused to acknowledge in their follow-up coverage that the university Constitutional Council ruled in favor of SOCC and that Horwitz’s claims were refuted by SOCC both on their website and in a New York Times letter to the editor. Undoubtedly, allegations of anti-Semitism and bigotry in general should be taken very seriously, but in this case, unsubstantiated and baseless accusations in prominent national media outlets contributed to smear campaigns against SOCC and forced students of color to compromise their studies and spend time and energy refuting coverage of Horwitz’s false allegations.

These stories impact students’ lives in serious ways, and one-sided, misleading coverage contributes to the stifling of free expression and student organizing on campus.

Finally, the Times’ framing would also leave readers wholly ignorant of the range of Jewish views on this issue. Readers of this piece would have no way of knowing that one in four Jewish-Americans support boycotting settlement products and one in six support broader BDS efforts to pressure Israel to respect Palestinian rights. Reflecting on his interview with the New York Times, McCleary stated, “It really felt like she was trying to force a particular narrative. And when I wouldn’t go along with it, I saw that she just left my interview out of the piece entirely.”

UCLA, UC Berkeley, and Stanford are only three campuses out of many, but these experiences echo those of other students in the Palestinian rights movement across the nation. In the end, it is of course up to the Times to decide how they wish to pursue and run their stories. But the level of partiality displayed even in the very gathering of information suggests that, as far as university divestment resolutions go, readers are better off considering other sources for accurate coverage.

The post originally appeared in the UCLA SJP website. 

About Omar Zahzah, Agatha Palma, and Rahim Kurwa

Omar Zahzah, Agatha Palma, and Rahim Kurwa are members of the University of California, Los Angeles chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
Other posts by Omar Zahzah, Agatha Palma, and Rahim Kurwa.

- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/05/interested-balanced-coverage?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=64a4009f23-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-64a4009f23-316844969#sthash.U81wiEsu.dpuf