The Ordeal of Mohammed Omer

By Dr Kenneth Ring | Axis of Logic, July 24, 2008, 19:41

We are used to hearing about the hazards, often fatal, of being a journalist these days. Everyone is familiar with accounts of courageous Russian journalists who have been assassinated and, of course, with stories of war correspondents who have been killed or gravely wounded in the course of reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan. But what about the dangers of just being a Palestinian journalist who is simply trying to return to his own hometown in Gaza after being abroad?

Consider the case of a twenty-four-year-old reporter named Mohammed Omer.

Some background first: For the past six years Mohammed has been covering and reporting on the situation in Gaza and has published his articles in various periodicals in Europe, for the InterPress Service News Agency and The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. His articles have received much recognition and several awards, including, most recently, the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, which was presented to Mohammed in a special ceremony in London in June, 2008 – about which more in a moment.

Mohammed and his family, like many Palestinians, have suffered greatly because of the circumstances under which they live in Gaza. He himself was nearly killed by a bulldozer in the course of photographing the demolition of a neighbor’s house and one of his brothers did lose his life as a teenager as a result of being shot by Israel Defense Forces on his way home from school. Another brother was shot in the leg, which had to be amputated. Mohammed’s father has spent eleven years in Israeli prisons where torture, as is well known, is common. And in March, 2003, Mohammed returned to his home after school to find that it had been demolished by an Israeli bulldozer. All his family’s possessions – books, photographs, his own notebooks, everything – were obliterated, and he and his family suddenly found themselves homeless.

This is not an unusual family story for people living in Gaza; on the contrary, one hears accounts like this all the time from the lips of Palestinians.

Fast-forward to June 2008. Mohammed has recently received word that he is to be a co-recipient of the Martha Gellhorn Prize. For this, he must get to London. But it is not easy for any Gazan to leave the prison that Gaza has become under the unrelenting Israeli siege. Only after strenuous diplomatic efforts by Dutch officials and a prize-winning Australian journalist living in England over several weeks was it possible for Mohammed to leave Gaza to receive his award. While in Europe, Mohammed spoke in Sweden, the Netherlands and Greece about his work, in addition to giving a very moving acceptance speech in London during the ceremonies for the Gellhorn Prize.

The return to Gaza was, however, fraught with difficulties. According to various reports in the press, as soon as Mohammed arrived in Amman, the Dutch diplomats who had facilitated his trip informed him that the Israelis did not want him to return. But he was finally allowed to enter Israel via the Allenby Bridge on the morning of June 26^th, after further negotiations by his Dutch sponsors.

That’s when the trouble began.

According to all the accounts I have read in the press, including several interviews with Mohammed himself, he was interrogated there, strip-searched, and brutalized by agents of the Shin Bet for several hours. Mohammed says that his interrogators made fun of him saying, “Oh, so it’s you who won the journalism award,” and repeatedly asked him where he had hidden his prize money. After that, he was continually threatened at gunpoint, forced to remove all his clothes, and then beaten and kicked for more than ten minutes until he lost consciousness. He awoke to find himself being dragged around the room by his feet, his head banging on the floor. Then a Shin Bet officer pressed his boot upon Mohammed’s neck while another painfully jabbed fingers into his face. At this point, Mr. Omer says, “I thought I was dying. I remained in a state of unconsciousness for up to 90 minutes until a medical doctor who was carrying an M-16 performed an electrocardiogram on me.”

This bare summary of Mohammed’s ordeal hardly gives more than an overall impression of his treatment, and the rank and wanton humiliation inflicted on him, seemingly motivated only by malice. Reading Mohammed’s own testimony, one can’t help being reminded of the unchecked and unmonitored torture that was visited upon Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. To illustrate this, I will present some excerpts from a recent interview between Mohammed and Amy Goodman on her Democracy Now! program.

Continued . . .