Palestinian Authority Kills and Tortures Dissenters—the Media Yawn

Dear Friend of FLAME:

As the Palestinian Authority tightens its iron grip on dissent in the West Bank—and a dissident is brutally murdered while in PA custody—Western media virtually ignore the story. One Palestinian activist accuses the United States government itself of supporting the increased repression.

Ironically, just last February PA president Mahmoud Abbas seemed to have found a new love for freedom of speech. Reversing more than a decade of strangling speech critical of his regime, he decreed a ban on “the detention, arrest, prosecution of, or holding to account, individuals for reasons relating to the freedom of opinion and political affiliation.”

The decree was interpreted as a gesture by Abbas toward democracy as West Bank Palestinians were heading into elections. However, Abbas abruptly cancelled the elections indefinitely last month. He also appears to have cancelled his tolerance of free speech.

Now, in recent weeks, Palestinian Authority security forces have rounded up more than 20 dissenters for their statements on social media or for taking part in demonstrations relating to conflicts in Jerusalem and the Hamas-Israel war, according to the Jerusalem Post.

A Palestinian watchdog group, Lawyers for Justice, reported the detainees were arrested arbitrarily, many were beaten by Palestinian investigators, and some were warned not to hire attorneys from the lawyers group.

Even more outrageous is the murder of Palestinian activist Nizar Banat, 42, just a few days ago. Banat, a Palestinian activist and well-known critic of the Palestinian Authority’s leadership, died after being arrested by the government’s notorious security forces.

Banat’s family members claim he was badly beaten during the raid and arrest. Many human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have accused the Palestinian security forces of routinely arresting and torturing peaceful critics and opponents to crush dissent.

Indeed, Palestinian Authority justice minister and head of the investigation committee into Banat’s death admitted that the dissident was subjected to physical violence and his death was “unnatural.” In other words, he was beaten to death.

Another prominent critic of the Palestinian Authority, Issa Amro, told CNN that he and other dissidents “are afraid of being killed by the lawless Palestinian security forces. It is clear there is a decision to get rid of the opposition and activists at any price.”

Outspoken Palestinian writer Nadia Harhash noted, “It’s interesting and disturbing that the Palestinian Authority’s unprecedented crackdown began immediately after U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s visit to Ramallah last month.” If this is what Blinken means by “empowering” the PA, she continued, “then the US is definitely complicit in the crimes of the Palestinian security forces.”

Banat’s death set off protests by Palestinians across Palestinian Authority-controlled areas. In Ramallah, protesters shouted slogans calling for the removal of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas from office. Palestinian Authority policemen used high levels of violence to disperse the protesters. Clubs, metal rods, teargas and the sexual assault of female protesters have been used to break up the demonstrations and stop reporters from documenting the events, according to the Palestinian journalists’ union.

In response to violations of journalists’ freedom to cover the rallies, the Palestinian journalists’ union submitted a letter of protest to the United Nations, which called on the UN to take “necessary and immediate measures” to protect local journalists.

“The violent response is a clear message that anyone that dares to defy the injustices of the PA, or exercises their right for demanding more just policies, representatives, and practices will be attacked, even killed, with impunity,” Mariam Barghouti, a writer and researcher from Ramallah, said.

Very little of this made the front-page news of international publications. No urgent meetings were held at the United Nations, no demonstrations in Western cities expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people were held, and no calls to boycott or sanction the Palestinian Authority were made on university campuses or in trade unions.

The Palestinian Authority has received billions of dollars in welfare from the United States, as well as Western European and Arab nations. While the Trump administration cut off most U.S. funding to the PA—protesting corruption and anti-American actions—the Biden administration has begun to restore such payments.

The question is why people who claim that Palestinian lives matter are not screaming from the rooftops about these outrages. Prominent Middle East commentator Melanie Phillips wrote that “Palestinian Authority repression doesn’t fit the Western liberal narrative.”

Well-known Palestinian-Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh explains that, “The crackdown was almost entirely ignored by the mainstream media in the West—until the death of Banat.” He writes, “It was ignored because the perpetrators were not Israeli policemen or soldiers. It was ignored because the media could not find a way to blame Israel for the fact that the Palestinian government was harassing, intimidating and torturing Palestinians.

This is largely a result of Western leaders and media ignoring a lack of democracy and illiberal behavior by Palestinians, while focusing instead on events in Israel that can be used to discredit the Jewish state. Likewise, there were no cries of outrage when Abbas—now in the 16th year of his four-year term in office—once again cancelled elections.

Similarly, we read little to no coverage of the incitement and anti-Semitism in the Palestinian educational, religious and media systems. European and American politicians cast a blind eye on the fact that taxpayer dollars fund the Palestinians’ “Pay For Slay” program, which rewards terrorists and murderers of Israelis and Americans.

Such corruption and misdeeds don’t get covered in the media because they do not fit the Western narrative of Palestinians as victims of Israeli power and aggression.

Please make the point to friends, colleagues, family and your elected representatives that this failure to support Palestinians suffering under the yoke of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas diminishes and infantilizes them. It denies Palestinians’ ability to make moral choices or act in their own self-interest. As such, they are accorded no agency—an insulting example of the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”

This lack of concern on the part of those who claim to be pro-Palestinian is evident when no protests arise for these same victims when they are killed and oppressed in Lebanon, Syria and in the Palestinian Authority.

Rather, this disregard for genuine repression turns Palestinians into mere props for critics’ anti-Israel and anti-Semitic obsessions. If the events can’t be blamed on Israel, they are of no interest. Indeed, seemingly for many, Palestinian lives do not in fact matter.

I hope you’ll also take a minute, while you have this material front and center, to forward this message to friends, visit FLAME’s lively Facebook page and review the P.S. immediately below. It describes FLAME’s new hasbarah campaign—which exposes “The Ugly Truth About Hamas” and those who support the terrorist group.

Best regards,

Jim Sinkinson
President, Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME)