Palestinians Condemn Visiting Arab Journalists

The Palestinians, who boycotted the Bahrain economic workshop and condemned those who attended, said on Monday that journalists from neighboring Arab countries who arrived for a visit to Israel should be blacklisted, The Jerusalem Post reported.

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), which is controlled by Fatah, called on the Federation of Arab Journalists and others in the Arab world to “blacklist” the six journalists who came to see the country for themselves as guests of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

The PJS claimed that the Foreign Ministry’s efforts to bring Arab journalists to Israel was a “desperate attempt to undermine the syndicate’s national position and contradicts resolutions of the Federation of Arab Journalists.”

The Ministry said on Sunday that the purpose of the visit was to allow them to “see what Israel is really like,” to tour Yerushalayim, the North and meet with Israeli political leaders, academics and journalistic counterparts.

Members of the small delegation were said to include journalists from Saudi Arabia and Iraq, though the Foreign Ministry did not publicize their names.