Editor’s Note: Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer recently traveled to Europe where he received an award given to reporters engaged in coverage of dangerous conflicts. However, Omer found the risk of returning to Gaza through Israel a hazard that he had not anticipated.
Below is a commentary expressing the outrage of two of Omer’s colleagues at the radio program, “Flashpoints,” followed by an interview with Omer about his ordeal:
The U.S.-supported occupation violence against Palestine continues unchecked. The failure of major Western politicians and the Big Press to cover the story has given Israel an absolute free hand to prosecute its program of ethnic cleansing.
It is nearly impossible these days to get substantial, unbiased information out on punishing Israeli policies. The few reporters who have chosen to take on the story head-on oftentimes risk their life and their limbs to do their work.
A week ago Thursday, the Israeli occupation violence hit close to home as award-winning reporter and Flashpoints correspondent Mohammed Omer was detained and tortured trying to return back to his home in Gaza through Jordan.
Mohammed Omer was returning home from Europe with great pride, having been distinguished with the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. The prize is given every year with great fanfare to frontline reporters who take great risks to report their stories.
Omer, who is also the recipient of the New America Media's Best Youth Voice Award, was detained on his way back from Europe, trying to cross back home into the Gaza Strip via Jordan and the West Bank.
Omer, knowing the dangers he would face going back to Gaza, had the assistance of the Dutch diplomatic core in the West Bank to escort him back through Israel into the northern Gaza Strip's Erez crossing.
But even this proved to be a worthless effort – at the Allenby crossing between Jordan and the occupied West Bank, Omer was detained, humiliated, interrogated, beaten and tortured, according to Omer, by Israeli Shin Bet agents.
What follows is a Flashpoints interview with Mohammed Omer from his hospital bed in central Gaza, where he was finally transported after he received critical wounds, including fractured ribs and an injured trachea, from the Israeli forces.
The interview was broadcast on Pacifica Radio’s Flashpoints show on Monday, June 30.
Omer is a featured and regular correspondent for Flashpoints and a working colleague at Inter Press Service with Flashpoints Senior Producer Nora Barrows-Friedman, who herself has returned from Gaza and the West Bank.
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