05/15/2021
Israel’s 1984-like Anti-Press Maneuvers
Israel’s rocket attack today in Gaza City that leveled an office building for journalistic organizations is an alarming flashback to when the Indian government ejected all news media out of Punjab ahead of its Operation Blue Star military attack on Darbar Sahib, and a foreshadowing concern for what Israel might not want the world to see.
In June 1984, the central government declared Punjab a “restricted area” and banned news coverage of the Indian Army’s maneuvers and attacks by expelling foreign journalists, restricting local journalists, and cutting phone lines across Punjab. According to Ensaaf, a California-based human rights organization, army forces kept Indian journalists in Chandigarh under house arrest and confined those in Amritsar to a hotel without phone lines, warning them they would be shot if they left the hotel. The Indian government banned reporting on all security operations and the conflict in Punjab. With the state in total communication blackout, what's next was that Indira Gandhi’s army carried out its diabolical attack of gurdwaras across Punjab and committed ghallughara of tens of thousands of Sikh men, women and children, more than 11,000 of whom were in the Darbar Sahib complex for the Guru Arjan’s Shaheedi Gurpurab. The Indian Army’s inexcusable excuse was to root out “militants.”
In Gaza City, today, the Israeli military struck a high-rise building that housed the offices of several media organizations, including the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and the Gaza Center for Media Freedom, which trains local journalists and monitors the freedom of the press, according to the Washington Post. The Israeli military’s inexcusable excuse was that the building also contained “military assets.”
With the attempted news blackout, what's next?
