Yesterday we published “A Jewish reporter in Gaza responds to Jane Eisner,” Dan Cohen’s response to a piece by Forward editor Eisner called “Why the Forward Sent a Brave Reporter to Gaza,” in which she described the decision to send their Middle East correspondent, Naomi Zeveloff, to Gaza for a three day reporting trip. Larry Cohler-Esses, an assistant managing editor at the newspaper, had this response:
I think Dan Cohen is missing some important points:
1) Naomi is Jewish and a female, which is often a different experience.
2) Dan Cohen goes in as a pro-Palestinian individual free-lance journalist who is Jewish. Naomi goes in representing an explicitly Jewish, pro-Zionist news organization. That is something with very different implications from POV of potential security issues.
3) Hamas is currently in the midst of an intense conflict w/ militants who declare their loyalty to the Islamic State.
4) Some reporters have, in fact, been kidnapped in Gaza and have remained in captivity for months, sometimes in very scary circumstances.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_of_Alan_Johnston
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4623164,00.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/2-fox-news-reporters-kidnapped-in-gaza/
This is a risk Dan Cohen can evaluate on his own as an individual. The calculations for a pro-Zionist publication w/ significant resources that might be of interest to a group that declares its fealty to IS and presumably, IS’s tactics of kidnap and ransom, are totally, profoundly different.
Meanwhile, it’s a shame the conversation has been diverted to this from Naomi’s actual story, which is what counts.
Larry Cohler-Esses
Assistant managing editor, News
The Forward
Editor’s addendum: One thing that was evidently not clear to all readers: Dan is in Gaza in part on assignment/at the behest of our site, Mondoweiss.net.