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Sunday, August 12, 2007

Another Ma'an headline that lies

We noted last week that the Palestinian Arab Ma'an news agency wrote a headline accusing Israel of crimes that even its own article contradicted. Well, they've done it again:

Palestinian women in Israeli jails risk rape, says director of research institute
Gaza – Ma'an – Director of the Prisoners Center for Studies and Research, Rifat Hamdona, said on Saturday that female Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are at risk of rape.

Hamdona said that the Israeli prisons' officers are threatening to rape women during interrogation in order to force them to confess to crimes.

However, Hamdona said that there have been no documented cases of rape in the prisons and expressed doubt that such cases exist. He said that the threat of rape is only used in order to exert pressure on female detainees to obtain a confession.

"Many Palestinians in Israeli jails have died to preserve their dignity and are regularly on hunger strikes, but I have not heard of any case of rape," said Hamdona.
So he is saying that there's a "risk for rape" but admits that it is highly doubtful that any rape would ever occur. The one accusation he has, that Israelis threaten to rape Palestinian Arab women prisoners, is stated with no corroboration whatsoever.

Yet another example of the quality of the best of PalArab journalism.