Israel Kills Italian Journalist

i just like to point out that i am seeing more about is Israel's attacks on the Palestinian state. just this morning i saw things on both ABC and CBS. it was pretty non-biased as well. so now if we can get people to pay attection to what is going on...

The killing of this Italian journalist will not get five percent of the mainstream coverage that the killing of Pearl received. Already, it is not on top of the news and tomorrow is will have been forgotten. We have been told nothing about this journalist’s religion, or his family. There will be no interviews with the wife or with colleagues and no damning speeches by politicians

This new terrorist murder does not advance the American or Israeli war propaganda. Therefore, the war profiteers, who largely controls what we are allowed to see and hear will kill this story.

Bush and all American politicians are scared of the racist, right-wing Israeli lobby, and of the Jewish owned media to criticize any Israeli military terrorism.

In the past 17 months, 1164 Palestinians and 348 Israelis have been killed. Yet, not a single politician has the guts to even question the $3,000,000,000 of taxpayer bucks given to fund Israeli’s murderous and inhumane occupation.

Too many American buy into the Sharon politics, that he should be left alone to bulldoze and kill Palestinians. He is now achieving his goal of ethnic cleansing and only a forcible imposition of peace by the U.S. can stop the slaughter of Palestinian freedom fighters by one of the most powerful, renegade, nuclear powers in the world.

Peace

Journalist Killed by Israeli Troops

By COLLEEN BARRY
Associated Press Writer

March 13, 2002, 11:47 AM EST


JERUSALEM -- An Italian photographer was killed by machine gun fire from an Israeli tank in Ramallah early Wednesday, Palestinian hospital officials and witnesses said. A French photographer was injured by shrapnel and an Egyptian journalist was shot at, also in the West Bank town.

The Israeli army expressed regret over the death of Raffaele Ciriello, 42, but said its investigation had not yet determined the source of the gunfire.

Ciriello was the first foreign journalist killed since Israeli-Palestinian fighting broke out in September 2000. A free-lance photographer, he got his journalist credentials for this assignment from the Italian daily Corriere della Sera -- the employer of Maria Grazia Cutuli, a reporter killed with three other journalists in an ambush in Afghanistan in November.

The French photographer, known to colleagues only by his first name, Hubert, was hit by shrapnel while working with colleagues near Manara Square, not far from where Ciriello was killed an hour earlier. The journalists saw a Palestinian gunman firing down a street, when suddenly a bomb went off near the gunman, sending shrapnel flying, said Benjamin Lalizou, a French photographer who was there.

Palestinian gunmen often plant small bombs in the streets intended for Israeli tanks.

In the third incident in Ramallah, 35-year-old Egyptian TV correspondent Tareq Abdel Jaber said Israeli soldiers fired at least five shots at his car, clearly marked with big TV signs. Jaber said one bullet struck him in the right side, but was stopped by a flak jacket.

Reporters without Borders say 40 journalists have been wounded by gunfire since fighting began 18 months ago.

Ciriello "had this great passion for photography which he turned into a job," said Marco Del Corona, a deputy news editor at Corriere della Sera, saying the photographer's pictures were of "great quality." Ciriello had arrived for his latest assignment just a few days ago, he said.

Ciriello had worked on many dangerous stories, taking pictures in Afghanistan, Bosnia and the Palestinian territories, colleagues and friends said. He was married and had an infant daughter, they said. Ciriello's Web site says he started covering war zones in 1992 and often worked with Cutuli, the woman who was killed in Afghanistan.

Fellow journalist Amedeo Ricucci said he and Ciriello were following Palestinian gunmen through the center of Ramallah at about 9:30 a.m. when an Israeli tank appeared from around the corner. He said soldiers on the tank fired a machine gun from about 150 yards without warning, striking Ciriello in the stomach.

Doctors said he was hit six times in the abdomen. Ricucci and another colleague, both of whom work for Italian television Rai Uno, were not hurt.

"Suddenly a tank appeared from a corner and it opened fire," Ricucci said. "There was no fighting in the area."

In an interview with Rai TV, Ricucci said in hindsight it appeared the Palestinian gunmen they saw earlier were signaling the arrival of the Israelis. He also added that after the burst of machine gunfire from the tank, he saw another armed Palestinian had come out from behind the corner.

An Israeli army spokesman, Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz, said it was not clear who killed the Italian photographer. "There has been cross fire for several days," Rafowicz said.

The environment in Ramallah for journalists has grown increasingly tense since Israeli forces took over the West Bank's commercial and administrative center early Tuesday, enforcing a curfew.

On Tuesday, Ciriello was among about 40 journalists in a Ramallah hotel that came under Israeli tank fire. No one was injured, and the army said it was returning fire from a gunman on the upper floors of the hotel. Journalists in the hotel at the time said there was no gunman.

The Foreign Press Association expressed shock at Wednesday's incidents and called on both sides in the conflict to ensure journalists' safety and freedom of movement. "Journalists are the primary independent witnesses to this conflict," the association said in a statement. "They are in practically all cases easily identifiable as journalists."

Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press

Read the italian journalist's quote in the article

"In an interview with Rai TV, Ricucci said in hindsight it appeared the Palestinian gunmen they saw earlier were signaling the arrival of the Israelis. He also added that after the burst of machine gunfire from the tank, he saw another armed Palestinian had come out from behind the corner. "

It is sad this guy died, but he was not murdered. He got caught in crossfire while covering a war zone.

I am disgusted that someone would have the nerve to compare this with the PRE-MEDITATED, COLD BLOODED, execution of Daniel Pearl. Pearl's last words before having his throat cut and his head chopped off were "I am Jewish"

Of course, that doesn;t bother the antisemites here whose Jewish owned media conpiracies don;t get challenged. I guess coorelation=causation for the indymedia progressive community. Fascinating.

Lets not forget that Daniel Pearl was probably a Mossad asset, and that his father is an influential Zionist. Amazingly, this part of the story doesnt really appear in corporate media that often. Why?

"a Mossad asset, and that his father is an influential Zionist"

Proof please?

but only when they are Jewish? Both of these newspeople were killed by terrorism. Over 40 newspeople have been shot if this conflict, mostly by Israelis. A human rights group in Israel has asked for an investigation of 700 Palestinian killing with little success. Only 10 were even looked at.

No one has said that the Jewish owned media was involved with a conspiracy. That is not needed. The majority is wealthy, right-wing racist types with blood ties in Israel. The uniform thinking and controls that comes from such a group makes free press a joke. If Arabs and Muslims owned the media that also would be a problem, since they also would be very biased, even with no conspiracy.

AGI) - Milan, March 13 - "It is evident that they want to keep the press away from what is happening. I have been trying for a week to follow the military operations but systematically I cannot manage it, or I have to work very hard." These words, given out yesterday for Radio 24, were the last recorded statement from the photo-reporter, Raffaele Ciriello, killed today in Ramallah. "Most of the time," said Ciriello, "the methods used to keep us away are blockades and bursts of machine-gun fire." Ciriello feared an escalation of the violence. They were dramatic words from the reporter, who spoke from the hotel after he was hit by Israeli bullets: "We were down on the floor for half an hour while it rained bullets in my room and in the rooms of my colleagues," reported Ciriello, "they focused on one room, and fortunately the American TV operator was not there at the time." Ciriello described Ramallah as a "paralysed city". (AGI)

""a Mossad asset, and that his father is an influential Zionist" Proof please?"

Well, that is why he got killed, if you ask his killers. Are we just to assume that whoever killed him is automatically wrong? Are Americans really that stupid? Do you think that Mossad has no assets in journalistic circles? His last words are "I am Jewish"??? Not "I love my wife" or "I live my children" or whatever, but "I am Jewish"???? think about it. And who is Daniel Pearl's father? Find out for yourself. Typical IMC whiner is more like it, who never want to do any more research on their own besides what corporate media already shoved down their throat.

THIS IS FROM THE FUCKING VILLAGE VOICE! NOT EXACTLY "CORPORATE MEDIA", NO?

Do you want to know why radical progressive jews have abandoned you for the cozy confines of academia? Look no further than this thread.

How can one have a rational discussion who is convinced that he/she knows that the Jews (or anyone or anything else, for that matter) are behind anything bad happens in the world?

Fuck you.
----

From the VILLAGE VOICE

Journalist Daniel Pearl Was Killed for Being a Jew

The Chosen One
by Michael Kamber


I believed Daniel Pearl was dead all along.
Weeks before the U.S. government confirmed his death, I thought it unlikely he would return alive. I returned from reporting for the Voice from Pakistan in December, exhausted from being stoned, punched, and chased by Islamic fundamentalists. I was burned out—and burned literally—from being pushed into one too many burning George Bush effigies, weary from having to repeatedly explain that Americans do not hate Muslims, and that "no, it's not true that we enjoy seeing dead Afghan children on TV."

Naturally, in the back of my mind, there was always some hope that this man—a man exactly my age, like myself a journalist—would escape death. Then a friend said, "Well, of course he's Jewish, with a name like Daniel Pearl . . . " And any lingering doubts I had about his fate were erased instantly. Because I returned from Pakistan frustrated from arguing for perhaps the hundredth time that 4000 Jews did not call in sick to work at the World Trade Center on September 11—explaining that Americans do not classify employees by religion, so how would anyone know?—and that "no, the Jews do not run America."

"My father is a Jew, my mother is a Jew, and I am a Jew" are the last words Daniel Pearl uttered, an instant before his throat was slashed, according to government officials who have viewed the videotape of his murder. At least one of his captors has admitted that the kidnappers were specifically looking for a Jewish victim. Curiously, government officials and Pearl's family, as well as his employer, The Wall Street Journal, are downplaying this angle, as if drawing attention to what is clearly an anti-Jewish killing would dishonor Pearl, who was not an observant Jew.

Yet his murderers are identified as members of "a fiercely anti-Semitic Islamic terrorist group called Jaish-e-Mohammed." I can only wonder about what qualifies as "fiercely anti-Semitic" in Pakistan, where anti-Semitism flows as easily as water. For several months following 9-11, the country's newspapers published frequent editorials calling for an investigation into Jewish involvement in the World Trade Center bombing. In interviews conducted while I was there, government officials would occasionally veer off into long diatribes about the Jews; fundamentalist religious leaders, who educate hundreds of thousands of children in the country's madrassas, spoke of little else.

In Islamabad, Syed Ubad Ulah Shah, an elderly mullah responsible for the education of hundreds of youngsters, said, "To me, [the bombing of the World Trade Center] seems the design of the Jewish lobby. The Jewish lobby wants to pit Islam against Christianity." Seeking out more moderate voices, I introduced myself to a religious leader from Pakistan's much persecuted Shia community. He was a gentle, educated man, the keeper of a holy shrine outside the city. After we had spent some time together and I had met his family, he asked me, "So can you explain to me, why is it that America lets the Jews run everything? They run the government, the newspapers, they turn the American people against us. Why do you let the Jews spoil things between us—we could be friends." His sentiments were gentler than most.

In Karachi, the southern port city where Daniel Pearl was kidnapped, I hung out at the dilapidated Karachi Press Club and rode off to cover the anti-war rallies on the backs of mopeds with the local photographers. At one such rally, sponsored by Jamaat-I-Islami, a fundamentalist group, the crowd cheered Osama bin Laden's image and took turns chanting, "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." Word spread that a Westerner was in the crowd and people became agitated; stones and fists flew my way before my hosts pulled me to safety. These were times you wanted to crawl out of your skin, pretend you were someone else. I tried to buy a fake passport that listed my citizenship as Canadian. Journalists routinely lied when asked if they were American. Fixers, guides, and interpreters introduced their American clients as Swiss or French.

To admit to being Jewish in such a climate would have been unthinkable. On occasion, people asked me point-blank if I was Jewish. I denied it, listing instead my polyglot background, not bothering to explain that my father is in fact Jewish, but that by Jewish law, I am not. I wonder what Daniel Pearl said in response to such questions. A rudimentary amount of research on the Internet might have revealed that Daniel Pearl's parents emigrated from Israel; his father's name is Yehuda. Government officials now say that the kidnappers never intended to release him, that he was kidnapped with the express intention of killing him.

The manner in which he was killed—forced to admit to his Jewish identity before having his throat slashed, left to gasp and strangle in his blood, like an animal being sacrificed to the gods—is horrific beyond words. I had wished for Daniel Pearl what I myself would want in such a situation, a quick painless death—a gunshot to the back of the head. They denied him even that.

As is always the case, Pakistan's anti-Semitism exists in a vacuum; with the exception of the tiny elite who had traveled abroad, no one I knew had actually met a Jew—there simply aren't any in Pakistan. Of the country's 140 million inhabitants, 98 percent are Muslim, the remainder Christians and Sikhs. In a country where perhaps three-quarters of the population is illiterate, people take their cues from their religious leaders and politicians. Few understand the difference between Israel's hawks and doves, or the nuances and differences of opinion between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, American Jews and Israeli Jews. In an uneducated population, where groupthink is the norm (often, a dozen people would converge on a reporter after a rally spouting identical positions, right down to the wording), groupthink is assumed in the enemy.

In such a climate, Daniel Pearl's kidnappers stripped him of his humanity; the funny, creative, fiddle-playing husband and father-to-be is lost. It is replaced with the enemy, the other, the Jew.

"Are we just to assume that whoever killed him is automatically wrong?"

No, but neither are we to assume they are right. leftie asked for proof for the allegation that Daniel Pearl was "a Mossad asset, and that his father is an influential Zionist". You did not provide any.

If you have some proof that Pearl was a Mossad asset or that his father is an "influential Zionist", please post it here. Thanks.