On Freedom of the Press

DISCLAIMER: I am not a religious scholar. The following are ONLY my opinions.

I am Tariq. For those of us who live in the West, the media is constantly
extolling the virtues of a free press. They assure us that "those other
countries", usually meaning Muslim countries, hate our freedoms. This
mainstream press bombards us with newstory after newstory about the "horrors"
of Sharia law, the plight of women in Saudi Arabia, and so forth. Yet, as a society the West is blind to its own hypocrisy. The media is constantly spewing forth the propoganda of the Bush Administration or even deeming something not news worthy, especially if it paints Muslims in a positive light. That is why you'll never see a news report about why Hamas rose to such influence in Palestinian society. No, it wasn't only the help they got from the Iranians. They won the support of the people by providing services that the Palestinian people were denied by the Israelis and Fatah. In other words, they EARNED it. Neither will you ever see a report on the actual number of Iraqi casualties because the American government does not want its citizens to fully comprehend the disaster the invasion really caused. And you'll never ever again see the photographs of coffins of American soldiers who were killed in this never-ending war.

The truth of the matter on freedom of the press, especially in the US and
Israel is that IT IS A LIE. The media is constantly manipulating the public and it in turn is manipulated by those that control it- the wealthy establishment. All throughout the West their media routinely refuses to print or broadcast
matters that strike a sensitive nerve in that society. Some "news"
organizations are nothing more than a lie and rumor mill designed to undermine
the public's ability to seperate truth from fiction and propoganda. Fox News,
which is owned by the Australian-born liar Rupert Murdoch, is the best example of how media in America is just as virulent as it was in the old Soviet Union.

Let me give you an example. How many of you remember Alexander Litvinenko? Litvinenko was the former Russian KGB officer who was poisoned with Plutonium in London. His murder remains a mystery. But what was not reported in the mainstream US press (at least to my knowledge) is that on his deathbed Litvinenko converted to Islam. Why? There have always been rumors that Litvinenko had connections with Chechen rebels and I would have thought that the American press would've jumped on the chance to turn this into terrorism rhetoric. Why didn't they? Because the thought of Islam gaining adherents is dangerous to America. Islam is the fastest growing religion in America and indeed across the world. So the mention that anyone would convert to Islam worries the neocon tyrannists. But no where does the thought of Islam's meteoric rise terrify more than Israel. Their fate lies with America, and I'll have more to say on that in another post.

Another example is in order. If you go to the english version of Wikipedia,
do a search on "Israel". The entire article does nothing more than extol
the virtues of Israeli war accomplishments. It glosses over the suffering of the Palestinians after 1948. It makes no mention of the tactics that the Zionists (Irgun) used during the British Mandate of Palestine, tactics very similar to the ones Israel and the West now condemn Hamas of using. And here was something in the article that represents how propoganda is practiced in the West (at the time I read it online):

"On October 6, 1973, Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, the
Egyptian and Syrian armies launched a surprise attack against Israel. The war
ended on October 26 with Israel successfully repelling Egyptian and Syrian
forces but suffering great losses."

What the article fails to mention is that the ONLY reason the Israelis were
able to mount a successful defense was because the United States conducted a massive airlift to resupply them during the the Yom Kippur War. Because the oil producing countries threatened to cut off oil supplies to Europe, the US was barred from launching that campaign from their European bases, except one. The Portuguese allowed the US the use of Lajes Field in the Azores as a staging ground. Don't bother editing the Israeli article on Wikipedia to insert that fact. Your account will be deleted.

But to continue, one day, I came across an article on the Internet about a woman being attacked on a bus in Jerusalem. At first I thought it was yet another
"Muslims Hate Our Freedom" article, but as I read the article it brought a smile to my face. It is another example of an incident you will never see reported on Fox News. But it was this section which caught my eye:

"Throughout the encounter, Shear says the bus driver "did nothing." The other
passengers, she says, blamed her for not moving to the back of the bus and
called her a "stupid American with no sechel [common sense.] People blamed me
for not knowing my place and not going to the back of the bus where I belong."

And yet those same people are not beneath taking that stupid American's tax
money to shore up their Zionist country. Because things have a tendency to
disappear off the Internet, I offer the article in its entirety. The story
came from the February 5th 2008 online edition of Haaretz.com. It was written by Daphna Berman. The original story link was located at http://haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=801449&contrassID=19

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A woman who reported a vicious attack by an ad-hoc "modesty patrol" on a
Jerusalem bus last month is now lining up support for her case and may be
included in a petition to the High Court of Justice over the legality of
sex-segregated buses.

Miriam Shear says she was traveling to pray at the Western Wall in
Jerusalem's Old City early on November 24 when a group of ultra-Orthodox
(Haredi) men attacked her for refusing to move to the back of the Egged No. 2
bus. She is now in touch with several legal advocacy and women's
organizations, and at the same time, waiting for the police to apprehend her
attackers.

In her first interview since the incident, Shear says that on the bus three
weeks ago, she was slapped, kicked, punched and pushed by a group of men who
demanded that she sit in the back of the bus with the other women. The bus
driver, in response to a media inquiry, denied that violence was used against
her, but Shear's account has been substantiated by an unrelated eyewitness on
the bus who confirmed that she sustained an unprovoked "severe beating".

Shear, an American-Israeli woman who currently lives in Canada, says that on
a recent five-week vacation to Israel, she rode the bus daily to the Old City
to pray at sunrise. Though not defined by Egged as a sex-segregated "mehadrin"
bus, women usually sit in the back, while men sit in the front, as a matter of
custom.

Every two or three days, someone would tell me to sit in the back,
sometimes politely and sometimes not," she recalled this week in a telephone
interview. "I was always polite and said 'No. This is not a synagogue. I am
not going to sit in the back".

But Shear, a 50-year-old religious woman, says that on the morning of the
24th, a man got onto the bus and demanded her seat - even though there were a
number of other seats available in the front of the bus.

I said, I'm not moving and he said, 'I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.'
Then he spat in my face and at that point, I was in high adrenaline mode and
called him a son-of-a-bitch, which I am not proud of. Then I spat back. At
that point, he pushed me down and people on the bus were screaming that I was
crazy. Four men surrounded me and slapped my face, punched me in the chest,
pulled at my clothes, beat me, kicked me. My snood [hair covering] came off. I
was fighting back and kicked one of the men in his privates. I will never
forget the look on his face".

Shear says that when she bent down in the aisle to retrieve her hair
covering, "one of the men kicked me in the face. Thank God he missed my eye. I
got up and punched him. I said, 'I want my hair covering back' but he wouldn't
give it to me, so I took his black hat and threw it in the aisle.

'Stupid American'

Throughout the encounter, Shear says the bus driver "did nothing." The other
passengers, she says, blamed her for not moving to the back of the bus and
called her a "stupid American with no sechel [common sense.] People blamed me
for not knowing my place and not going to the back of the bus where I belong.

According to Yehoshua Meyer, the eyewitness to the incident, Shear's account
is entirely accurate. "I saw everything," he said. "Someone got on the bus and
demanded that she go to the back, but she didn't agree. She was badly beaten
and her whole body sustained hits and kicks. She tried to fight back and no
one would help her. I tried to help, but someone was stopping me from getting
up. My phone's battery was dead, so I couldn't call the police. I yelled for
the bus driver to stop. He stopped once, but he didn't do anything. When we
finally got to the Kotel [Western Wall], she was beaten badly and I helped her
go to the police.

Shear says that when she first started riding the No. 2 line, she did not
even know that it was sometimes sex-segregated. She also says that sitting in
the front is simply more comfortable. "I'm a 50-year-old woman and I don't
like to sit in the back. I'm dressed appropriately and I was on a public bus.

It is very dangerous for a group of people to take control over a public
entity and enforce their will without going through due process," she said.
"Even if they [Haredim who want a segregated bus] are a majority - and I don't
think they are - they have options available. They can petition Egged or hire
their own private line. But as long as it's a public bus, I don't care if
there are 500 people telling me where to sit. I can sit wherever I want and so
can anyone else".

Meyer says that throughout the incident, the other passengers blamed Shear
for not sitting in the back. "They'll probably claim that she attacked them
first, but that's totally untrue. She was abused terribly, and I've never seen
anything like it.

Word of Shear's story traveled quickly after she forwarded an e-mail
detailing her experience. She has been contacted by a number of groups,
including Shatil, the New Israel Fund's Empowerment and Training Center for
Social Change; Kolech, a religious women's forum; the Israel Religious Action
Center (IRAC), the legal advocacy arm of the local Reform movement; and the
Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA).

In the coming month, IRAC will be submitting a petition to the High Court of
Justice against the Transportation Ministry over the issue of segregated Egged
buses. IRAC attorney Orly Erez-Likhovski is in touch with Shear and is
considering including her in the petition.

Although the No. 2 Jerusalem bus where the incident occurred is not actually
defined as a mehadrin line, Erez-Likhovski says that Shear's story is further
proof that the issue requires legal clarification. About 30 Egged buses are
designated as mehadrin, mostly on inter-city lines, but they are not marked to
indicate this. "There's no way to identify a mehadrin bus, which in itself is
a problem," she said.

Theoretically, a person can sit wherever they want, even on a mehadrin line,
but we're seeing that people are enforcing [the gender segregation] even on
non-mehadrin lines and that's the part of the danger," she said.

On a mehadrin bus, women enter and exit through the rear door, and the seats
from the rear door back are generally considered the "women's section." A
child is usually sent forward to pay the driver.

The official responses

In a response from Egged, the bus driver denied that Shear was physically
attacked in any way

In a thorough inquiry that we conducted, we found that the bus driver does
not confirm that any violence was used against the complainant," Egged
spokesman Ron Ratner wrote.

According to the driver, once he saw that there was a crowd gathering around
her, he stopped the bus and went to check what was going on. He clarified to
the passengers that the bus was not a mehadrin line and that all passengers on
the line are permitted to sit wherever they want on the bus. After making sure
that the passengers returned to their seats, he continued driving.

The Egged response also noted that their drivers "are not able and are not
authorized to supervise the behavior of the passengers in all situations

Ministry of Transportation spokesperson Avner Ovadia said in response that
the mehadrin lines are "the result of agreements reached between Egged and
Haredi bodies" and are therefore unconnected to the ministry.

A spokesperson for the Jerusalem police said the case is still under
investigation.