Isra’a Salhab is a young Palestinian journalist based in occupied East Jerusalem. Given the difficult accessibility between Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank Salhab has been devoting time and efforts to covering and investigating the systematic Israeli campaign of ethnic cleansing and harassment against the occupied Arab town.
Among other things Salhab has uncovered insidious Israeli plans to expel thousands of Arab families from the captive city for the purpose of settling Jewish immigrants and other fanatical Israeli Jews.
Israel considers Judaizing East Jerusalem a paramount task and one of its top national strategies.
Last week the domestic Israeli security agency the Shin Beth arrested Salhab apparently in connection with her work. She was subjected to severe and rigorous questioning which here family said was fraught with not a small amount of psychological torture.
Salhab had been the target of heavy harassment by the Israeli security apparatus ever since she embarked on her job.
She may have underestimated the hardships associated with investigative journalism especially under a sinister racist regime which also claims to be the only true democracy in the Middle East.
Normally Israel concocts frivolous charges against Palestinian journalists and others deemed “hostile” and “unsympathetic.”
This is how Israel dealt with Samer Allawi al-Jazeera’s Palestinian correspondent in Afghanistan . Allawi was arrested by the Shin Beth a few months ago on charges of contacting a hostile organization an allusion to Hamas. Allawi who denied the charges was subjected to all sorts of physical and psychological pressure in order to force him to confess to the totally false charges.
Eventually the 45-year-old journalist was acquitted.
I have no doubt that Salhab the young female journalist from East Jerusalem is totally innocent. But why would Israel detain a journalist who has done nothing wrong?
The answer is clear especially for those who are aware of Israel’s fascist tactics used against political opponents especially Palestinians.
