Khalid Amayreh

Khalid Amayreh (Arabic: خالد عمايرة; 9 February 1957 – 12 July 2023) was a Palestinian journalist based in Dura, near Hebron.

Conflict with the Palestinian Authority

Amayreh was barred from leaving the West Bank for many years; he was confined to his home village of Dura, near Hebron, by the Israeli military authorities.[1] The Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group issued various reports on the harassment of Amayreh by both Israel and Palestinian authorities.[2]

On 22 January 2009, Amayreh was arrested by the police forces of the Palestinian Authority (PA). He was questioned and imprisoned in a blacked-out room for two days. The PA stated the reason for his arrest was not his reporting about financial corruption in the PA but suspicion of affiliation with Hamas. Others[according to whom?] state the reason for his arrest was his statements about the collaborationist nature of the PA during the 2008–2009 Gaza War.[3][non-primary source needed] He was ultimately released.

A few years later, he was once again harassed on several occasions by the PA, beginning in January 2012. The purpose of the continuous harassment is not totally clear, but it might have something to do with the PA's declared hostility against Hamas and its sympathizers.[4][non-primary source needed] [5]

Views and opinions

In 2008, in an article that was picked up and redistributed widely across various websites and listservs, he stated that:

"It is well known that Israel, through the numerous Zionist lobbies and pressure groups, more or less controls America's politics, media and financial institutions…. But America doesn't lack the brain power to know the facts and find out the truth about the umbilical connection between the Israeli factor and the ravaging financial crisis now facing the US… I am afraid there will be more bad news in this regard if America doesn't reclaim its liberty from the Zionist Robber Barons who have come to tightly control the American financial establishment."[6][7]

Amayreh believes that antisemitism in Arab societies originates in "Israel's murderous oppression of the Palestinian people."[8]

In 2010, Amayreh described Helen Thomas and Fidel Castro as the "elderly targets" of "Zionist supremacists from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles", supporting calls for Jewish "invaders" to return to Poland and their "native homelands".[9]

In March 2011, he wrote that Israelis are "pathological liars and colonialist invaders from Eastern Europe" and that Jerusalem has been "violated and raped by Zionist Jews for many years". He described Zionism as a "genocidal, racist, rapacious, covetous, and of course utterly mendacious… a malignant cancer" and claimed that Israel wishes to erect a "Hebrew empire" encompassing "Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, northern Saudi Arabia, northern Egypt and the islands of Crete and Cyprus".[10][11][12][13]

Amayreh has been accused of distorting the historical record regarding the nature of Arab nationalism.[14]

Death

Amayeh died from a heart attack on 12 July 2023.[15]

Books

  • Journalism and Mass Communication, Theory and Practice (Arabic, 1996)
  • Refutation of Western Myths and Misconceptions About Islam and the Palestinian Question (Arabic, 1988)
  • Living Under the Israeli Occupation (Arabic, 2007)
  • My Story with the Shiites: Major Contradictions in the Shiite Imami Religion (Arabic, 2016; English, 2017)[citation needed]

References

  1. ^ Sherine Bahaa, With friends like these Archived 2014-08-15 at the Wayback Machine, Al-Aahram Weekly], 22–28 January 2009.
  2. ^ Freedom of the Press, Publications, and Speech in the PA, May 1997 Archived 2011-11-29 at the Wayback Machine and Palestinian and Israeli intelligence cooperate to silence journalist, Press release, February 21, 2000 Archived November 29, 2011, at the Wayback Machine , published by Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group.
  3. ^ Sherine Bahaa, "Details on the Arrest of Khalid Amayreh". Archived from the original on 4 February 2009. Retrieved 19 July 2008.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), PTT, 25 January 2009.
  4. ^ Khaled Amayreh, My latest episode with PA security Archived 2012-01-15 at the Wayback Machine, Al Ahram, No. 1080, 12 January 2012.
  5. ^ PA forces summon critical Palestinian journalist by Khaled Abu Toameh, Jerusalem Post, January 10, 2012.
  6. ^ Reaction to the Financial Crisis in the Arab World Anti-Semitic Stereotypes Archived 2012-01-25 at the Wayback Machine, Anti-Defamation League (ADL), November 4, 2008.
  7. ^ When Will America wake up from her slumber? Israel is destroying America financially by Khalid Amayreh .
  8. ^ Webman, Esther. “The Challenge of Assessing Arab/Islamic Antisemitism.” Middle Eastern Studies 46, no. 5 (2010): 677–97. Page 690.
  9. ^ "Khalid Amayreh – Castro is right, so is Helen Thomas | Sabbah Report". sabbah.biz. Archived from the original on 28 June 2010.
  10. ^ Paper-wrapped extremism by Michael Weiss, The Jewish Chronicle, March 17, 2011.
  11. ^ Amnesty International, MEMO and the Palestinian writer who calls Jews 'kikes' by Michael Weiss, The Daily Telegraph, May 10, 2011.
  12. ^ Amnesty can't get off this hook by Richard Millett, The Jewish Chronicle, May 26, 2011.
  13. ^ Netanyahu's lebensraum by Khalid Amayreh, Middle East Monitor (MEMO), Thursday, 10 March 2011.
  14. ^ How Islamists distort history by Zenobia van Dongen, Islamophilia Watch, 25 March 2018
  15. ^ "Palestinians bid farewell to journalist Khalid Amayreh". Mondoweiss. 16 July 2023. Retrieved 26 November 2023.