AFP photographer shot in Jenin

Electronic Intifada

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is concerned by today's shooting by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of Palestinian photographer Saif Dahla in the West Bank city of Jenin.

Two witnesses-Dahla's brother, Reuters photographer Said Dahla and Reuters cameraman Ali Samoudi-told CPJ that there were about half a dozen journalists standing together on the sidewalk of a residential neighborhood in Jenin, covering an Israeli incursion into the city in the early afternoon when the shooting occurred.

Said Dahla and Samoudi said that Saif Dahla, who works for the Agence-France Presse (AFP), was shot when a soldier in a tank about 20 meters (22 yards) away fired a few rounds from a machine gun. One of the bullets, or shrapnel, injured Saif Dahla in his left leg. The journalists said that prior to the incident, Palestinian youths had been throwing stones at the tank, but that when the shooting occurred, the area was quiet. Samoudi said that gunfire exchanges between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen in the city prior to the incident did not occur in the vicinity where the journalists were working.

He must have seen something he wasn't supposed to.

And people there tend to get injured.

You should watch the major U.S. documentary on this topic.

Nooooooooooo. Biased reporting about the Palestinians? Anyone remember Jenin?

Try watching it. Oh, and remember the star of it is now dead, murdered by U.S. forces in Iraq.

That sounds like a bit of hyperbole. Just a bit mind you.

Given rational conclusions based on the available evidence, and previous U.S. army claims.

Propaganda at the worst?

If not, it's quite an act to speak so authoritatively and dismissively about that which you aren't familiar with..

admittedly, the story they put out about the camera looking like a shotgun was a little stretched, though.

was the story that it looked like a shotgun? or a missile launcher?

I think it was a shotgun, but I could be wrong.

On edit: Grenade launcher.

Soldiers thought camera was a grenade launcher: US

In broad daylight, after they obtained permission to be there, and with no firing in the vicinity.

I happen to think the soldiers are lying, and Dana was murdered given those facts.

Especially so since concluding otherwise (i.e. "accident") would mean U.S. soldiers are about as incompetent as can be humanely imagined. I don't think that is the case since most usually manage to avoid gunning down cameramen in the course of general business.

As any press organisation will tell you, the investigation of the shooting was a joke (as to be expected). Hence, no conclusions can be drawn from it and people have to make up their own minds. I've made mine.

and then wonder why they are in danger. Oh, my.

anyone in the near vicinity of an Israeli soldier is in danger of being murdered

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Do you have anything to support such a broad accusation? Are you saying that all IDF troops are murderers? Do you think that any time an Israeli soldier fires his weapon it is murder or attempted murder?

I don't know about you, but I am a military veteran. I never saw combat, but I trained for it. The training was bad enough. The real thing must be very scary. During that training, I could envision shooting first and asking questions later. It's not a good feeling to have about oneself.

By murder, we would mean that the soldier knew that he was firing at a noncombatant and that he knew all along that what he later said he thought to be a grenade launcher was really a camera or what he later said he thought was a grenade or a rock was really a piece of bread.

Perhaps a few of the many, many cases you have characterized as murder really were. The law of averages dictates that you must be right in some of these cases. However, you would have one hell of a time prosecuting such a case if charges were brought. Perhaps you should give the individual the benefit of the doubt.

I have very little patience for the argument made by the GOI and its supporters on this board that these unfortunate deaths are necessary to combat terrorist attacks in Israel when the issue of Israel's security is obfuscated, often deliberately by those trying to make the case, by the presumed right of the GOI to displace Palestinians in order to build Jewish-only settlements accessed by segregated roads beyond Israel's borders. The displacement of the residents of occupied territory for the purpose of settling the land by citizens of the occupying power is an injustice. That would be true whether these deaths were all willful murders or all tragic mistakes.

We can condemn Israel's abuse of her status as a occupying power without making broad accusations against individual soldiers that are questionable at best and seldom provable. It is that abuse of power that calls into question the necessity of these deaths, not strained efforts to ascribe the worst motives to those who pull the trigger.

Anyone in the vicinity of an Israeli soldier is in danger of being murdered.

They murdered peace activists.

They shoot kids in the back.

They murder kids who throw rocks.

They shoot recklessly into crowds.

They murder anyone who gets near their precious Apartheid Wall. (Remember Mahmoud who went looking for songbirds?)

They fire missiles into crowds of civilians.

Yes, indeed, anyone in the near vicinity of an Israeli soldier is very much in danger of being murdered.

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Has anyone heard of this story in the American media? New York Times? Washington Post? CNN?

If you have, post your link here please, thanks.

I asked for the reporter shot down by Israeli forces, and you link to Daniel Pearl?

:crazy:

wrong guys do the killing?

I didn't say one word here about who counts or doesn't count. Please leave the assumptions and insinuations behind, thanks.

What I asked for is an American news story on the photographer shot down by Israeli forces - do you have such a story or not?

In the meantime, why not start a few threads about Pearl.

Why don't you blame Bush for allying the US with that Islamofascist Mussharef in the first place?

Pearl has been dead for what? Two years? Two and a half years?

After the one year aniversary of Corrie's death, expect the Corrie threads to die as quickly as an American peace activist being flattened by an IDF bulldozer.

Don't bet the mortgage.

But at least she wasn't killed by the IDF for being a peace activist.

There is an actual link Lori has to terrorist groups, as opposed to Corrie and who had zero links at all. Not that I'm trying to slam Berenson, of course - just making a point.

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Associated Press

LIMA, Peru - A convicted Peruvian terrorist who last year married Lori Berenson, an American serving a 20-year sentence for aiding leftist rebels, has been granted conjugal visiting rights at her Andean prison, he said Thursday.

Berenson, 34, and Apari, 40, met while both were serving sentences for involvement with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.

Prior to November, Apari had not seen Berenson since October 1998, when she was transferred to a different prison.

Berenson was convicted by a secret military court in 1996 and sentenced to life in prison for being a Tupac Amaru leader and plotting a thwarted attack on Peru's Congress.

My mind has been changed by all the anti-Corrie posters.

Like Rachel Corrie, Berenson should not have put herself in such a dangerous situtation.

She deserves her fate.

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