Khalid Amayreh Explained

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 state the reason for his arrest was his statements about the collaborationist nature of the PA during the 2008–2009 Gaza War.[3] 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] [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

External links

Notes and References

  1. Sherine Bahaa, With friends like these, Al-Aahram Weekly
  2. http://www.phrmg.org/monitor1997/may97-8.htm Freedom of the Press, Publications, and Speech in the PA, May 1997
  3. Sherine Bahaa, Web site: Details on the Arrest of Khalid Amayreh . 2008-07-19 . bot: unknown . https://web.archive.org/web/20090204025148/http://palestinethinktank.com/ . February 4, 2009 ., PTT, 25 January 2009.
  4. Khaled Amayreh, My latest episode with PA security, Al Ahram, No. 1080, 12 January 2012.
  5. http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=252914&R=R3 PA forces summon critical Palestinian journalist
  6. http://www.adl.org/main_Arab_World/Financial_Crisis.htm Reaction to the Financial Crisis in the Arab World Anti-Semitic Stereotypes
  7. https://archive.today/20120911235735/http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/10/04/when_will_america_wake_up_from_her_slumb When Will America wake up from her slumber? Israel is destroying America financially
  8. Webman, Esther. “The Challenge of Assessing Arab/Islamic Antisemitism.” Middle Eastern Studies 46, no. 5 (2010): 677–97. Page 690.
  9. Web site: Khalid Amayreh – Castro is right, so is Helen Thomas Sabbah Report . sabbah.biz . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20100628134403/http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2010/06/24/khalid-amayreh-castro-is-right-so-is-helen-thomas/ . 2010-06-28.
  10. http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/comment/46760/paper-wrapped-extremism Paper-wrapped extremism
  11. https://web.archive.org/web/20110513064121/http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/michaelweiss/100087135/amnesty-international-memo-and-the-palestinian-writer-who-calls-jews-kikes/ Amnesty International, MEMO and the Palestinian writer who calls Jews 'kikes'
  12. http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/analysis/49513/amnesty-cant-get-hook Amnesty can't get off this hook
  13. http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/articles/middle-east/2133-netanyahus-lebensraum Netanyahu's lebensraum
  14. http://islamophiliawatch.blogspot.com/2018/03/how-islamists-distort-history.html How Islamists distort history
  15. Web site: 2023-07-16 . Palestinians bid farewell to journalist Khalid Amayreh . 2023-11-26 . Mondoweiss . en-US.