Ironies unbound

A few blog posts ago I referred to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel for everyone but Jews. I did a full sweep of their site looking for any press releases issued concerning the treatment of reporter Chezki Ezra. Not one word of ink was spared for his case but there was a siginificant amount of space used for taking up the plight of the beleaguered Hilles clan of Gaza who seeking asylum from Hamas.

So because I know ACRI will not take up his case, and therefore, Ha’aretz won’t cover it, many of you should be asking what happened to Chezki Ezra? Arutz Sheva reports.

A correspondent for Israel National News' Hebrew-language news, Chezki Ezra, was beaten, detained and questioned by police on Monday night after filming a policeman hitting a young protestor near the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Ezra's camera was smashed. He was later released, with apologies. MKs and legal rights organizations consider the incident another serious attack on freedom of the media.

The demonstration was broken up and Ezra and three others found themselves detained by police. After a police interrogation, the IsraelNN reporter's irreparably damaged camera was returned to him and he was released. The officer who attacked Ezra offered his apologies, but no explanations.

In other news, the Jerusalem Post reports the leftist extremist charge that Israeli security forces are deliberately keeping them from the West Bank.

Left-wing groups held an emergency meeting in Jerusalem on Tuesday afternoon to plan an offensive against recent moves by security forces to curtail their West Bank activities. in a circle in the basement office of Peace Now, they complained that in a growing number of instances security forces had stopped them from either helping Palestinians in the West Bank or entering settlement areas such as Hebron, the South Hebron Hill and the area around the settlement of Yitzhar.

Security forces are kicking them out of the area, the activists complained, precisely at a time when they are most needed because violence between settlers and Palestinians is rising. "We have to organize now," said MK Yossi Beilin (Meretz) who called the meeting. He suggested that as a first step representatives from the groups should meet with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter.

"We see that what is happening in the field is more serious than it was before," said Beilin, in reference both to settler violence against Palestinians and to the security forces's treatment of activists. Beilin said that rather than recognize the ways in which the Left- wing groups were acting to help the situation, the security forces were treating them as if it was their presence which was causing the violence in the West Bank.

Gee, imagine that. Isn’t ironic how Palestinians are doing their utmost to enter into Israel one way or another while the Jews are plotting strategy to get into the West Bank.