18TheSeaman271202

Wafa Amar, a journalist from Jordan, has been working for Reuters in Israel for the past six years. In September, her work visa expired. Since then, Amar has been worried about possible deportation, like any foreign worker illegally residing in Israel. NBC cameraman Jeff Riggins is in a similar situation. Neither of the two is working now, as they await some word from Danny Seaman, director of the Government Press Office (GPO). But Seaman is not in any hurry to help them. If it were up to him, Amar and Riggins could leave the country tomorrow, once and for all.

"I won't deny it. I'm not a hypocrite," Seaman says about Amar, who is married to a journalist from Ramallah and a mother of three. "Just on the basis of the information that I have about her conduct up to now, I'd prefer it if she were in Jordan."

What was Amar's great sin? A year ago, Seaman arranged a meeting in Jerusalem between then defense minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and the Arab journalists in Israel. Before the event, the journalists were subjected to a body search, which many of them found to be overly invasive. Amar was offended and, after consulting with her boss, Reuters' Israel bureau chief, Tim Heritage, she decided to pass on the meeting. She explained her reasons to Seaman and left. Seaman did not forgive her. When her visa expired in the fall, it gave him an opportunity to settle the score with her. He refused to renew the visa, asserting that Amar was not a journalist, but a provocateur working as a spy in the Jordanian embassy.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muashar, a personal friend of Amar's, made his wrath about this known to the Foreign Ministry, and the Jordanian embassy in Israel also complained - to no avail, so far.

Bureau chief Heritage gives this polite explanation of what his bosses in London think of the affair: "I don't think that the way they treat the foreign press here helps Israel's image," he says.

Heritage: "Reuters vehemently denies this. It is absolutely untrue. All of our journalists are very professional and this is simply incorrect. Life has become very hard for us here. We are often prevented from covering events in a balanced manner."

Seaman is unswerving in his view: "Some serious questions arose about her professional work, the lies that she writes and the riots that she organizes. Pardon me - but if that's her work, then she ought to return to Jordan and do it there. Why should I automatically approve her visa? Besides, she's already been working for four years beyond the legally allotted time. But I told Reuters and the Jordanian embassy that I'm approving her [visa] for six months, on probation. If she proves to me that she's genuinely a journalist, then she can stay, no problem."

One could easily be tempted to see all this as a clever conspiracy on the part of the relevant Israeli ministries that, as quietly as possible, want to keep the foreign press away. Yet, it is possible that there is no plot afoot, but rather a combination of zealousness and too much authority concentrated in the hands of an overly patriotic government functionary, who enjoys doing everyone else's dirty work. Whatever the case, the outcome is the same for the directors of the major media outlets in Europe and the United States, and their representatives in Israel. As they perceive it, in the past year, a junior government official has decided to take the Israeli public relations effort in hand and to show the foreign press, who don't have many nice things to say about us, who's the boss.

In the past two years, top journalists from all over the world have been sent to Israel, and from here to all the other countries in the region. This year, approximately 6,000 foreign journalists passed through Israel and the flow will only increase as a war in Iraq grows more imminent. There are 350 foreign press bureaus in the country, employing 800 reporters and about 2,000 workers in ancillary fields. The GPO is meant to serve a variety of purposes: issuing press credentials that allow entry to official events; organizing meetings with politicians and those who shape public opinion; dealing with bureaucratic matters and problems such as the approval of work permits; and handling various types of problems that require intervention.

Several types of foreign journalists work in Israel. Some come here from time to time on special assignment. Others live here for many years - some with an Israeli spouse and an Israeli passport. Then there are the Israeli and Palestinian journalists who are defined as "foreign" because they work for foreign press organizations. Each group has different needs and, until recently, the GPO did its best to assist all of them. But the situation seems to have changed when Seaman assumed his post in 2000.

Before being appointed by Gilad Sher, then prime minister Ehud Barak's bureau chief, to head the GPO, Seaman, 41, worked in the GPO's public relations department and was head of the foreign correspondents' division. Seaman set two goals for himself: The first was to withhold press credentials from Palestinian cameramen employed by the foreign networks (not including Palestinians from East Jerusalem), and the second was to withhold work visas from foreign journalists. Following Seaman's lead, other bureaucrats have been piling on the obstacles for the foreign press.

Two weeks ago, two AP journalists - photographer Nasser Ishtayeh and cameraman Abdel Rahman Khabeisa, both from Nablus - were arrested and detained for five hours. They were filming at An-Najah National University in the city, after receiving word that the IDF had raided the school. Nablus was under curfew and the two, together with another four Palestinian journalists who work for foreign agencies, were interrogated by the army. "They did not have Israeli press credentials," the IDF explained that day, "and therefore, the IDF treated them the same way it treats anyone who violates a curfew in the territories."

The press credentials of all the Palestinian journalists expired on January 1, 2002. Apart from three or four exceptions, Seaman made a sweeping decision not to renew them. Following a wave of protests, Dan Perry, chairman of the local Foreign Press Association and the head of AP in Israel, met with Seaman and with Information Minister Tzipi Livni, and reached a compromise with them. Perry agreed to limit the number of press credentials given to Palestinians working in the territories to just 80. The only problem is that all the people on this list are still waiting to receive their credentials.

Seaman: "The official Palestinian media incites for the murder of Israelis, so why should we give them credentials for the next two years, when I don't know what's going to happen with the territories? We discussed this with our legal adviser and the legal and public-relations implications were discussed in a broader forum with all the relevant officials. The IDF Spokesman, the Foreign Ministry, the coordinator of activities in the territories, the Prime Minister's Office, the Israel Police, the Shin Bet security service and the state attorney were all involved in the discussions (Gideon Meir, deputy director-general of the information division in the Foreign Ministry: `Neither I nor any of my people were involved in any discussion, talk or decision-making concerning the actions of the GPO regarding the foreign media'). The final decision was up to the GPO and we decided not to give them any more Israeli press credentials."

Jean Marc Pilaf, Israel bureau chief for the French television channel TF1, wished to renew the press card of his Palestinian producer in Ramallah, who, since January, has been unable to make it to the office in Jerusalem, but his request was refused. "Seaman said that she was investigated and they determined that she had no ties at all to terrorists, but if they were to let her come, others would want to come, too, so he's not granting credentials to anyone," Pilaf relates.

"I have a cameraman in Hebron, Nagi Da'na, whom I tried to get credentials for. Seaman told me that the guy is clean as far as the Shin Bet is concerned, but he has 2,000 relatives in Hebron and one cousin who's in Hamas, so they wouldn't give him a press card. Two weeks ago, I met with Seaman in his office for close to an hour, but I didn't get anywhere. He was very clear about it. He said right out: `The Palestinians are screwing us, so we'll screw them. We don't want them and we have no reason to give them press credentials.' Nagi has been working for us for many years and there has never been any problem with him. Of course, he identifies with Palestinian suffering, but he is very accurate and a good worker."

Pilaf: "No. He always calls me to get approval for whatever he does. In the beginning, we double-checked his reports, and we found that he was always accurate. He never gave us information that came solely from the Palestinian Authority. He always corroborated his information and whenever he made a mistake, he called right away to acknowledge it and correct it. I trust him."

Seaman doesn't trust anyone. "If the foreign press bureaus here would exercise more oversight of the Palestinians and not trust them to be objective reporters, or if the bureaus were located in the territories," he maintains, "they would have a better understanding of whom they're dealing with and of what I'm talking about. The bureau chiefs come here with a Western media mindset, and the Palestinians whom they employ take the material and know how to manipulate the Western media in order to achieve their objectives as Palestinians."

Seaman attributes significant power to the Palestinian journalists working for the foreign press, and is not at all swayed by the fact that they are employed by the large and experienced international media outlets. "I know that they coordinate things between them. The reporter is given a certain assignment and then he picks up the phone and calls his friend from another network and says: `I'm not getting that ... Make sure you don't get it either, so my boss doesn't give me a hard time.' They set the line-up. They determine which subjects will be covered that day and what they're going to film."

For Seaman, the real viper's nest is Habira Studios in Jerusalem, where many of the foreign networks and press agencies are based. That's where all the machinations are concocted, according to reports from reliable sources in the elevator.

"They don't realize that there are Arabic-speaking Israelis and other Israelis roaming around there. Joe [Yosef] Barel [director of the Israel Broadcasting Authority] was there one day and said that when he was going up in the elevator, he overheard several Arabs coordinating their stories. We've also obtained inside information from one of the Palestinian workers - our `collaborator' - about coordinated stories, about threats and cooperation, both willful and coerced, in terms of false reports."

A month ago, the annual meeting with the prime minister, sponsored by the Editors' Committee, was held at Beit Sokolov in Tel Aviv. During the session, the prime minister was asked why foreign journalists in Israel are being treated with growing hostility. Sharon raised an eyebrow and replied: "And I thought that you were enjoying yourselves here. There is beautiful music here, the science is the most advanced in the world, you can go on trips and see beautiful landscapes in the Galilee or the Negev."

Foreign journalists would be enjoying themselves more if anything had budged since the Knesset Security and Foreign Affairs Committee convened in November at the behest of MK Tzali Reshef and heard testimony about the troubles encountered by the foreign press. The committee passed the ball to the High Court, where a number of petitions, including one from Reuters and one from the French network Agence-France Press (AFP), demanding the restoration of their Palestinian journalists' press credentials, are awaiting a hearing. Three weeks ago, a petition submitted by Gilad Sher (the very same one who appointed Seaman) on behalf of CBS and reporter Khaled Zajari from Anata against the GPO and Seaman was rejected on the basis of "security reasons."

Gabi Silon, manager of CBS's operations in Israel, finds it hard to understand the logic behind this. "They're going to decide who works for us? Then he'll work without a press card. We're looking for ways to overcome this problem. It's not entirely clear what they want from the foreign press, if there even is a `they.' Professionally speaking, I trust Khaled completely. He had excellent references and had a press card for years."

"We're not naive," says a veteran Israeli producer. "You can make a case against almost any Arab. A very high percentage of people in the territories support Hamas, but they're not militants themselves. It's just that now, the tendency is not to issue them press credentials. There's been a decision to try to keep out the foreign press and the Palestinians. But whoever thinks he can stop Reuters from showing pictures from Nablus this way doesn't understand journalism and is stuck in a 1960s' mentality."

Sher also filed a petition against Seaman and the GPO on behalf of Awad Awad, who has worked as a photographer with AFP for 12 years. Awad held Israeli press credentials for nine years, but his request to renew them has been denied since the beginning of the year. The hearing on his petition had been scheduled for this Wednesday, but the State Attorney's Office has already sent an official letter indicating that a happy ending could be in store.

Says Sher: "Eran Lerman of the State Attorney's Office informed us that if Awad declares that he has no ties to hostile elements, the state will not have any objection to granting him a press card for 2003."

"He is implementing a punitive policy in coordination with all the government ministries. The attempt to place unnecessary limits on the foreign networks' freedom of expression, particularly those that have never been suspected of misleading, and some of which are clearly pro-Israel, is a move that is doomed to failure both on the legal level and in terms of public relations - especially in such a period as we're in now.

"The GPO is getting actively involved in general policy, which, in the long run, will not do any good for Israel's reputation around the world, even if we're basking in American support at the moment. The head of the GPO ought to exercise his judgment not only concerning the narrow realm of present government policy: He should help foreign journalists do their jobs, even if the result aren't always complimentary about Israel's actions."

In April, during Operation Defensive Shield, three journalists were arrested and held in administrative detention. They were released several months later without a case ever being opened against them and without being given any explanation of why they were arrested. One of these journalists was Husam Abu Alan, who worked for France's AFP for six years.

"To this day, we don't know anything," says Christian Chaise, the news agency's director. "He wasn't interrogated once the whole time. The most shocking thing was that Danny Seaman spread rumors about him at a press conference at the President's Residence in July."

Seaman: "They asked me and I didn't want it to seem like we were holding him for no good reason, just because he was a journalist, so I said, `Pardon me, but we have a reason for keeping him in prison.' I can't allow Israel to be condemned for arresting journalists, when that's not why they were arrested."

"The Shin Bet decided to release him and not to try him so as not to expose intelligence sources. From this, the idea got around that he was completely innocent and that we were holding him in prison for no reason - and I'm supposed to keep quiet and not divulge the information that I have? It's not easy. I take my job very seriously. I don't sleep at night because of it."

Chaise isn't upset to hear about Seaman's insomnia. He has enough of his own. "We're working in a very difficult climate here. Some of the obstacles thrown at us have no logical explanation - at least not as far as we can see. This is the 21st century. These kinds of methods aren't used anymore. We're not the enemy. There's a lot of paranoia here on this issue. But we'll manage. It will cost more money, it will be more dangerous, we'll waste more time on complaints and telephone calls and attempts to get people released from detention, but we'll still get the material. So what do you gain from all this?"

The obstacles placed in the way of foreign journalists are many and varied. Charles Anderlin of the France 2 television channel, who has lived in Israel for years, says that not only is Seaman using the army's help (in delaying journalists at checkpoints, for example) to thwart the foreign press, he is also resorting to other, civilian tactics. "The policy is to thin the ranks of the foreign press as much as possible. We've been threatened with income tax. Danny Seaman announced that he gave a list of the foreign reporters to the income tax authorities and that whoever didn't pay would be taken care of. Meanwhile, the army treats us like a nuisance. Making us wait three hours at a checkpoint is not a policy that's considerate of the foreign press."

Seaman has indeed given lists of names to the tax authorities. "I think it was the Association of Israeli Photographers that informed them that there were a lot of under-the-table payments going on," he says in his defense. "First, I gave them the list of Reuters, BBC and CNN. They are big offices. This will keep the income-tax authorities busy for quite awhile, I hope, and then they'll see that there's nothing and they'll leave them all alone."

Anderlin: "It's not a feeling, I know that it's so. Danny Seaman takes pride in the fact that he was able to get rid of a certain reporter whom he felt wasn't sufficiently sympathetic. As soon as you air reports about the catastrophic situation of Palestinian society, about the poverty and the suffering there, there are a lot of people here who don't like it. They want to get the story of the territories off the air. They try to frighten us. One day, I came to the Qalandiyah checkpoint and was told that I couldn't pass through because it was `a closed military area.' So I said, `Fine, show me the order.' Then the soldier said to me: `There is no order, but you'll get a bullet in the head.'

"I told the French cameramen to keep filming. Then a bottle was thrown at us and they said, `You'll get a bullet in the camera' and pointed their guns. I said to the cameraman: `Let's go,' and when we turned around, a volley of gunfire passed between us, from 20 meters away. We weren't hit. I didn't broadcast it all to France. I just showed the edgy soldier at the checkpoint."

Captain Sharon Feingold of the IDF Spokesman's Office says the incident was not investigated because Anderlin did not file a complaint. In the past two years, there have been approximately 40 incidents of gunfire directed at journalists in the territories. Only a small number of these incidents have been investigated.

Jean Marc Pilaf succeeded Bertrand Aguirre as TF1's bureau chief here after the latter was hit in May 2001 by gunfire from an Israeli border guard. Fortunately for Aguirre, the bullet lodged in his flak jacket. But the bullet was so completely burned that the army was unable to conduct an investigation to determine who the shooter was.

"They told us that it was impossible to identify the shooter because the bullet burned up and disintegrated," Pilaf says with a bemused expression. "His camera was not pointed in the shooter's direction at that moment, but there were other cameramen there who filmed the Border Police position there and they all indicated who the shooter was, but apparently, they couldn't rely on the video. So the case was closed and Aguirre left Israel."

Captain Feingold confirms that an investigation could not be completed because of the bullet's disintegration. "One cannot ignore the reality in the field," she says. "When the fighting is being done among a civilian population and there are terrorists who do not wear uniforms, but are planted within the population, there's a very big risk for journalists. From a distance, a camera can look like a rocket launcher. In such an environment, soldiers and journalists are both at risk."

A reporter whom Seaman was pleased to see depart Israel is Suzanne Goldenberg. She worked for the British newspaper The Guardian and after several years in Israel was promoted and transferred to Washington. It's not clear why Seaman feels he can take credit for her transfer from Israel, as well as the transfers to more senior posts of three other journalists whom he felt were hostile to Israel. Two months ago, Seaman's unseemly boasting earned a derisive reply in a Guardian editorial: "If Mr. Seaman truly believes that his evident hostility toward Suzanne Goldenberg was a factor in her recent move to a new role in Washington, he is utterly deluded. That he should wish to boast of his imagined triumph of news management displays a surprising naivety from someone in such a sensitive and important role."

NBC cameraman Jeff Riggins has lived in Herzliya with his girlfriend and his dogs for six and a half years. In September, he took his daughter and girlfriend on vacation to Egypt. At the border, the Egyptians issued him a 30-day tourist visa. When his name was entered on the Interior Ministry's computer upon his return to Israel, the clerk asked him to return to Egyptian territory and informed him that he could not enter Israel. His girlfriend and daughter returned to Herzliya and Riggins remained in Egypt for three more days. After a flurry of phone calls were made, he was given a special 30-day visa to enter Israel - so he could pack up and leave for good.

"I'm a journalist with a video camera, just like a reporter who uses a computer or a pen or still photography," says Riggins. "But they want to throw people out of here forcefully and no one cares. They say they're upholding the letter of the law. I've been here long enough to know that in Israel, no law is written in stone aside from the Ten Commandments."

Riggins' work visa expired six months ago, says Martin Fletcher, Riggins' boss and the NBC bureau chief in Israel. "A month before his visa was due to expire, we tried to renew it at the Interior Ministry, and were told that he needs a work permit from the Employment Service. We submitted a request to the Employment Service, but we're still waiting for something to move there. It's crazy. He's one of the best cameramen that NBC has anywhere in the world. I've worked with him for 20 years. No one can do what he does."

Behind this story lies an alliance between Danny Seaman and the Israeli Association of Film and Television Workers, headed by Eyal Meluban, who is fiercely opposed to the employment of Palestinian cameramen by foreign news agencies. The association is concerned about the livelihood of its Israeli members, and Seaman simply would prefer for Palestinians not to receive press credentials. This alliance has also enabled Seaman to find a loophole in the law and to nullify press credentials for technical reasons: In October of this year, he informed the Foreign Press Association in Israel that, in accordance with the law, from now on, a video cameraman (as opposed to a stills photographer) will be classified as a technician and, as such, will require a work visa that is granted by the Interior Ministry after receiving approval from the Employment Service.

"It's true that I represent the interests of the foreign media," says Seaman, "but I am very sensitive to the plight of the Israelis and I wanted to help them. The Employment Service should follow the procedure that we set and grant the permits, because if there are no permits, they'll all have to leave the country. The [Israeli] association is constantly trying to persuade me to throw them all out of the country."

Martin Fletcher feels that he has been unwillingly thrust into a Kafkaesque world. The situation has been made to seem, he says, "as if Palestinians were taking jobs away from Israelis. That's ridiculous. At NBC, everyone is Israeli apart from the reporter and the producer. The only technical person we have who isn't Israeli is Jeff. Everyone I've talked to in the government said that it made no sense, but we're still having to roam the hallways.

"At first, I thought that it was just an odd and baffling Kafkaesque thing of which Jeff was the victim. Now I'm starting to think that they are really trying to control our work. Danny Seaman is interviewed in the papers and all he does is to aggressively push the government policy. He continues to say that if the Employment Service gives Jeff a work permit, he'll arrange a B-1 visa for him. But the Employment Service isn't giving anyone a work permit. They changed the implementation of the law. Jeff was told that, like any foreign worker, the law allows him to stay in Israel for a maximum of five years.

"If they get rid of him, I'll be the next in line. My official status is the same as Jeff's. I also have a B-1 visa that is renewed every year. I've been living here for 20 years and a lot of other senior journalists are in a similar situation. For NBC, it's a very serious matter that they're trying to tell us whom we can work with and whom we cannot work with. Jeff has won many international awards for his work and here they're telling us that the person who's most important to us has to leave the country. The things that Danny Seaman says about the [foreign] press are very hostile and I don't think it helps Israel if the person who is supposed to be responsible for us is hostile to us."

Seaman isn't fazed by the criticism: "When we were nice, they took advantage of us, and our current attempt to set things right makes us enemies of the media. If we endure it now and put things in order, afterward everyone will plainly see what the reality is and it will all work out. When we began with this two years ago, we knew that they'd get angry at us and write nasty things about us. They were doing it before, too. But when we get through this and lay down the foundations - as soon as they realize that there are no more foreign cameramen here, and the association is satisfied and calms down, it will all be different."

The ill wind blowing in the direction of foreign journalists here has reached the airport, too. Heidi Levin, an American photographer with the French news agency Sipapress, has lived and worked in Israel for many years.

"The last time I was at the airport, it was a nightmare," she says. "Last month, I traveled to Jordan. I was invited to the palace to cover a women's conference organized by the International Red Cross. Before the departure, they took the luggage with the camera equipment and examined it for two hours. I barely made the flight. Luckily, I got there three-and-a-half hours early, but I didn't have time to do any duty-free shopping.

"On the way back, after passport control, two security men came up to me and said: `Come with us. This will only take a few minutes.' It took three and a half hours and they never told me why I was detained. I sat in a closed room for three hours. No one spoke to me. I called the GPO but they refused to speak to them. I wasn't even allowed to go to the bathroom. After three hours, they took me to another room and the six girls there opened my suitcase and checked every piece of paper. They opened all my toiletries, the computer, they checked each tampon separately, they broke my Palm Pilot and finally let me go to the bathroom, with a male escort. After three-and-a-half hours they said, `Sorry, it was a mistake,' and they let me go."

Thierry Oberle of Le Figaro came to Israel in August to take over for his colleague Jean-Pierre Ferrier, who was on vacation. When Oberle departed Israel, his laptop computer was taken from him during the security check at the airport and he has not seen it since. Maybe they thought he was a Turkish spy, since he got on a Turkish Airways flight to Istanbul rather than a flight to Paris.

"He went on vacation," says Ferrier. "His wife was waiting for him in Turkey. When he went through security, the examiner told him he'd have to leave the computer because they had to check the hard drive. He showed them his press card from the GPO and tried to argue with them. He told them that the computer wasn't his and that it belonged to the newspaper, but it didn't help."

The computer was supposed to be forwarded to Oberle in Turkey a few days later. When he came to claim it at the airline counter in Istanbul, it was nowhere to be found. Ferrier sent a letter to Gideon Meir at the Foreign Ministry, but received no reply. He did receive a letter from the Israel Airport Authority saying that suspicious beeps had been discovered in the computer as it "traveled" through the X-ray machine and therefore it was taken for further examination.

"That's not what he was told at the airport," says Ferrier. "They told him that they had to check the hard drive. In the letter, they say that I should look for the computer in the lost-and-found department at the Istanbul airport. It's ludicrous. The computer never got lost. It was taken practically by force and never returned to us."