Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Netherlands: Israel refuses to extend visa of critical Dutch journalist

Nothing new here, but it has to be stressed that the majority of Europeans do not trust journalists...  So why should we expect European journalists to report accurately on Israel?

Via JTA:
Citing an administrative technicality, Israeli authorities refused to extend the work visa of the Jerusalem-based reporter of a Dutch daily that is highly critical of the Jewish state.Derk Walters, who has been the main correspondent of the NRC Handelsblad daily in Israel and the Palestinian Authorities since 2014, has exhausted the procedure to have his visa extended and must leave the country in July, the daily reported Tuesday. 
In explaining the refusal, Israel’s Government Press Office told NRC that it had learned that NRC’s editor-in-chief is also its managing director. This claim, which NRC denies, means that NRC does not meet the Government Press Office’s rules for accreditation, Nitzan Chen, the Government Press Office wrote to NRC in September. 
In an article penned by Peter Vandermeersch, editor-in-chief of the daily, and published Tuesday, he claimed the Government Press Office made up a bureaucratic issue to silence Walters’ critical reporting on the Israeli government and security forces. (...) 
In January, the paper refused to correct an assertion in one of Walters’ articles that stated that in 1948 “almost all the Arabs were driven out of Haifa.” Jewish fighters fired several mortar rounds into crowded areas in the port city in April 1948 amid fighting between Arab and Jewish militias for control of it. However, then mayor Shabtai Levi asked local Arabs not to leave, vowing to keep them safe. (...) 
In 2011, one of NRC Handelsblad’s veteran editors, Hans Mol, who had worked in the paper for 23 years before retiring, published a book titled “How Nuance Disappeared From A Quality Paper: NRC Handelbald Takes Up an Anti-Israeli Position.” In it, he accused NRC of pursuing an editorial line on Israel that “does not live up to basic journalistic standards.” 
Rejecting calls to rethink its coverage of Israel following the book’s publication, NRC Handelsblad representatives dismissed the book as coming from a disgruntled former employee.

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