NY Times notices Hamas brutality

Now that it’s journalists being beaten, the Times (and the Times-own IHT) is noticing that Hamas is beating Palestinians when they don’t like what they do.

During the first Fatah protest rally at Friday prayers here late last month, a number of Palestinian journalists trying to cover the event were beaten by the Hamas police force. Some journalists were arrested and their cameras seized, prompting complaints from the Gaza branch of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.

The next night, Aug. 26, at about 10 p.m., Hamas police officers entered Sakher Abu El Oun’s courtyard, preparing to arrest him. Abu El Oun, a reporter for Agence France-Presse and head of the union here, telephoned a colleague.

“I called one journalist” who sent out the information “and within minutes, about 70 journalists and some human rights activists came to my house and prevented them from taking me away,” he said. “My kids were crying, it was a very ugly picture.”

The police told him, he said, “that they had instructions to arrest me, I had refused, and I would be responsible” for any consequences.

That’s a pretty scary story. So what does Steve Erlanger, whitewasher extraordinaire, say about it?

Hamas seems confused about how to quash Fatah protests and simultaneously deal with the media. Trying to nurture a reputation for honesty and legal behavior since it conquered Gaza in bloody fighting in June, Hamas leaders promise journalists freedom of action, but the police intimidate the journalists.

“Confused.” As if choosing to violently suppress press freedoms is only one of many options on the “how to deal with the media” menu.

The result is a kind of self-censorship, local journalists say, that goes beyond what they traditionally practiced under Fatah, which also tried to manipulate or own the Palestinian press.

Gee. “Self-censorship.” Think the British journalists’ union that voted to boycott Israel might want to add Gaza to their boycott? But I digress.

Here’s the laff-riot line of the story:

Zahar said, “There have been mistakes, but they are decreasing.” Nounou has been an important mediator between police and journalists and has usually secured their release. “We follow every complaint,” he said. “We respect freedom of expression and even allow Fatah here to hold press conferences and demonstrations, which Hamas cannot in the West Bank.”

Really? That’s why you’re beating journalists, out of respect? But wait, there’s one more laugh to come.

Under Fatah, “the rules were essentially clear,” said another local journalist working for a different news agency. “Don’t attack Yasir Arafat or Muhammad Dahlan or Rashid Abu Shbak,” all prominent Fatah figures.

Gee, for the good old days when you couldn’t report on the corruption and brutality of the Palestinian leadership, but you could report everything else. Amazing. They don’t even see the irony.