Israel’s hosting of Arab journalists is an “inexcusable and unjustified disgrace,” the Palestinians charged.
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs last week hosted “special guests” from the Arab world in Jerusalem – a delegation of nine Moroccan, Lebanese, Syrian, Kurdish and Yemeni journalists who came in order to “get to know Israel, its history and its society from up close,” the ministry said.
In response, the Palestinian Authority (PA) on Thursday denounced the journalists’ visit and called for their blacklisting.
The PA Ministry of Information called on the Arab Journalists Union to take “punitive and deterring measures” against the visitors and their media outlets, Times of Israel reported.
“Siding with Israel and its terrorism marks a departure from the Arab rank and the decisions of the Council of Arab Ministers of Information,” the PA ministry said, calling the visit an “inexcusable and unjustified disgrace.”
The visit, the statement added, “constitutes a departure from the official and popular Arab position that considers Israel a state of occupation, racism, ethnic cleansing, and extremism.”
Israeli MFA spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon tweeted in response: “Freedom of press Palestinian Authority style.”
“We will keep hosting journalists from all over the world and let them form their own impressions of Israel,” Nahshon pledged.
“We are proud to organize this visit of journalists from Arab countries to Israel, to help open a window on Israel and its people for readers across the Arab world,” MFA Director-General Yuval Rotem stated.
Seeking to expose the truth about the reality in Israel and the region, Israel periodically hosts journalists and opinion shapers from Arab and Muslim countries and enables them to experience the Jewish state in an unbiased and unfiltered fashion.
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