Israelis Assault Award-Winning IPS Journalist
Mel Frykberg
GAZA CITY – Mohammed Omer, IPS’s Gaza correspondent and joint winner of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, was strip-searched at gunpoint, assaulted and abused by Israeli security officials at the Allenby border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank on Thursday as he tried to return home to Gaza.
Omer, a resident of Rafah in the south of Gaza, and previous recipient of the New America Media’s Best Youth Voice award several years ago, was returning from London where he had just collected his Gellhorn Prize, and from several European capitals where he had speaking engagements, including a meeting with Greek parliamentarians.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43005

MOHAMMED OMER – Co-Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism
www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/GellhormPrize/omer.asp

ExPress Freedom – More IPS News on Media Rights
www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/expressfreedom/index.asp

Read Recent IPS Stories by Mohammed Omer:

Anything for a Bath, Anything for Fuel
GAZA CITY – The girl, about 16, is wandering about Jebaliya refugee camp, picking up anything she thinks can burn. She cannot find enough bits of wood, so she gathers plastic bags, old notebooks and even a pair of broken plastic sandals.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42866

*****
Kites Rise Above Divisions
GAZA CITY – Mahmoud Abu Teior, 13, knows it’s Abdullah’s kite up in the skies, though he has never seen Abdullah. But that kite rises into the skies from just that place on the Egyptian side of the border across from Gaza. And, Mahmoud knows Abdullah’s voice because they speak sometimes. They have never met, and likely never will, but they are connected through their kites.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42812

*****
The Anniversary Is Over, the Agony Is Not
RAFAH REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza – Holding up an old copper key, Yousef al-Hums settles down to retell the story of his eviction from what was once his home, and now is Israel. Because only the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel is over, the occupation of home of which al-Hums still keeps a key is not.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42413

*****
Flowers, Strawberries, and Missiles
BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza – Just 300 yards from the hidden eyes in the Israeli tank, Ahmed Felfel picks his strawberries. But it isn’t the Israelis in the tank who worry him as much as those others who will not let him sell them.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41753

Holy Land/Unholy War – More IPS News About the Palestine-Israel Conflict
www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/israel_palestina/index.asp

Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS), the world’s leading provider of information on global issues, is backed by a network of journalists in more than 100 countries. Its clients include more than 3,000 media organisations and tens of thousands of civil society groups, academics, and other users.

IPS focuses its news coverage on the events and global processes affecting the economic, social and political development of peoples and nations.

Visit Inter Press Service at www.ipsnews.net