Israeli authorities extend detention of Palestinian sports journalist over alleged Hamas support in TV interview/node/2592656/media
Israeli authorities extend detention of Palestinian sports journalist over alleged Hamas support in TV interview
A longtime sports commentator, Hasanein was also dismissed from his role as an announcer for Bnei Sakhnin F.C., one of Israel’s most successful Arab clubs. (X/File)
Israeli authorities extend detention of Palestinian sports journalist over alleged Hamas support in TV interview
Saeed Hasanein was detained after appearing on Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV
His lawyers say court ruling is politically motivated and part of broader crackdown on critics
Updated 06 March 2025
Arab News
LONDON: Israeli authorities on Tuesday extended the detention of Palestinian sports journalist and announcer Saeed Hasanein, who was accused of expressing support for Hamas during a televised interview in February.
Hasanein has been in custody for about a week and faces charges from Israeli police, including “incitement,” “supporting terrorism” and “communicating with a foreign agent.”
The Magistrate’s Court in Acre ruled to extend his detention until Sunday — the third extension in the case — after prosecutors alleged that Hasanein appeared on Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV.
“He who only thinks about joining the occupation army must think a million times where he is going and how he is selling his conscience, his moral compass and his religion on this immoral path,” Hasanein said in an interview obtained and aired by Israel’s Channel 14.
During the interview, he added that the way Hamas treated female hostages in Gaza “proves conclusively who is the barbarian and who is the humane one” in the Israel-Hamas war.
A longtime sports commentator, Hasanein was also dismissed from his role as an announcer for Bnei Sakhnin F.C., one of Israel’s most successful Arab clubs.
Following the court’s ruling, Hasanein’s lawyer, Alaa Mahajneh, denounced the case as politically motivated, describing his client’s detention as part of a broader crackdown on Palestinian activists and voices critical of the war.
“It is ultimately up to the police whether to press charges, but we are being realistic,” Mahajneh said, adding that members of Hasanein's family were also interrogated by Israeli police.
“Given the Israeli media’s incitement and how the case has become a public issue, an indictment is possible. Right now, our focus is on ending the detention, as arrests should be based on legal grounds, not punishment or sending political messages to the Arab community.”
The extension of Hasanein’s detention comes amid increasing restrictions on Palestinian public expression. Recently, Israeli authorities raided a bookstore in East Jerusalem, detaining two of its owners on suspicion of “violating public order.”
The booksellers were released after five days, following mounting pressure from rights groups and international figures. They accused Israeli authorities of attempting to suppress Palestinian culture and “creating a climate of fear” for local residents.
Israeli military creating ChatGPT-like AI tool targeting Palestinians, says investigation
Tool being built by Israeli army’s secretive cyber warfare unit
Updated 30 min 6 sec ago
Arab News
DUBAI: Israel’s military is developing an advanced artificial intelligence tool, similar to ChatGPT, by training it on Arabic conversations obtained through the surveillance of Palestinians living under occupation.
These are the findings of a joint investigation by The Guardian, Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine, and Hebrew-language outlet Local Call.
The tool is being built by the Israeli army’s secretive cyber warfare Unit 8200. The division is programming the AI tool to understand colloquial Arabic by feeding it vast amounts of phone calls and text messages between Palestinians, obtained through surveillance.
Three Israeli security sources with knowledge of the matter confirmed the existence of the AI tool to the outlets conducting the investigation.
The model was still undergoing training last year and it is unclear if it has been deployed and to what end. However, sources said that the tool’s ability to rapidly process large quantities of surveillance material in order to “answer questions” about specific individuals would be a huge benefit to the Israeli army.
During the investigation, several sources highlighted that Unit 8200 had used smaller-scale machine learning models in recent years.
One source said: “AI amplifies power; it’s not just about preventing shooting attacks. I can track human rights activists, monitor Palestinian construction in Area C (of the West Bank). I have more tools to know what every person in the West Bank is doing. When you hold so much data, you can direct it toward any purpose you choose.”
An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson declined to respond to The Guardian’s question about the new AI tool, but said the military “deploys various intelligence methods to identify and thwart terrorist activity by hostile organizations in the Middle East.”
Unit 8200’s previous AI tools, such as The Gospel and Lavender, were among those used during the war on Hamas. These tools played a key role in identifying potential targets for strikes and bombardments.
Moreover, for nearly a decade, the unit has used AI to analyze the communications it intercepts and stores, sort information into categories, learn to recognize patterns and make predictions.
When ChatGPT’s large language model was made available to the public in November 2022, the Israeli army set up a dedicated intelligence team to explore how generative AI could be adapted for military purposes, according to former intelligence officer Chaked Roger Joseph Sayedoff.
However, ChatGPT’s parent company OpenAI rejected Unit 8200’s request for direct access to its LLM and refused to allow its integration into the unit’s system.
Sayedoff highlighted another problem: existing language models could only process standard Arabic, not spoken Arabic in different dialects, resulting in Unit 8200 needing to develop its own program.
One source said: “There are no transcripts of calls or WhatsApp conversations on the internet. It doesn’t exist in the quantity needed to train such a model.”
Unit 8200 started recruiting experts from private tech companies in October 2023 as reservists. Ori Goshen, co-CEO and co-founder of the Israeli tech company AI21 Labs, confirmed that his employees participated in the project during their reserve duty.
The challenge for Unit 8200 was to “collect all the (spoken Arabic) text the unit has ever had and put it into a centralized place,” a source said, adding that the model’s training data eventually consisted of about 100 billion words.
Another source familiar with the project said the communications analyzed and fed to the training model included conversations in Lebanese and Palestinian dialects.
Goshen explained the benefits of LLMs for intelligence agencies but added that “these are probabilistic models — you give them a prompt or a question, and they generate something that looks like magic, but often the answer makes no sense.”
Zach Campbell, a senior surveillance researcher at Human Rights Watch, called such AI tools “guessing machines.”
He said: “Ultimately, these guesses can end up being used to incriminate people.”
Campbell and Nadim Nashif, director and founder of the Palestinian digital rights and advocacy group 7amleh, also raised concerns about the collection of data and its use in training the AI tool.
Campbell said: “We are talking about highly personal information, taken from people who are not suspected of any crime, to train a tool that could later help establish suspicion.”
Nashif said: “Palestinians have become subjects in Israel’s laboratory to develop these techniques and weaponize AI, all for the purpose of maintaining (an) apartheid and occupation regime where these technologies are being used to dominate a people, to control their lives.
“This is a grave and continuous violation of Palestinian digital rights, which are human rights.”
IDF launches Turkish-language social media accounts
Move comes amid rising tensions between Israel and Turkiye sparking speculation about the former’s motive
Updated 06 March 2025
Arab News
DUBAI: The Israeli army has created new Turkish-language accounts on social media platforms X and Telegram.
Israeli military official Arye Sharuz Shalicar acted as the spokesperson of the account on X welcoming Turkish users.
Israil Savunma Kuvvetleri’nin resmi X hesabına hoş geldiniz! Bu platform, ISK ile ilgili gelişmeler hakkında güvenilir ve anlık güncellemeler sağlamak amacıyla kullanılacaktır. pic.twitter.com/EknF0c6xno
The account on X has drawn criticism and speculation about Israel’s motives and Shalicar’s history as a gang member in Germany.
Media reports suggest that the decision to open Turkish-language accounts comes after Turkiye’s emergence as a key player in the region, particularly in Syria.
“Israel has identified Turkiye as becoming a stronger player in the region, following the fall of the Assad regime in Syria,” said a report by The Times of Israel.
In January, the Nagel Committee, formed by the Israeli government, said that the country must prepare for a potential war with Turkiye.
It released a report saying that “the threat from Syria could evolve into something even more dangerous than the Iranian threat” and that Turkish-backed forces could act as proxies further threatening Israel’s “security,” according to Israeli media reports.
Following Israel’s attacks in southwestern Syria, Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a statement on Monday.
Although he did not name Israel, he said: “Those seeking to benefit from Syria’s instability will not succeed. We will not allow them to divide Syria as they imagine.”
US organization scraps Palestine issue of Journal of Architectural Education, fires executive editor
Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture cites ‘substantial risks’ at personal and editorial levels as reason for its decision
Executive editor McLain Clutter says he was fired for opposing cancellation of the planned issue
Updated 04 March 2025
Arab News
LONDON: The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture has scrapped plans for the fall 2025 edition of its Journal of Architectural Education, which would have focused on Palestine, and dismissed the publication’s interim executive editor.
The decision followed a vote on Feb. 21 by the association’s board of directors, which cited “substantial risks” at both personal and editorial levels, The Architect’s Newspaper reported over the weekend.
“The decision followed an extended series of difficult discussions within the organization about the potential risks from publishing the issue,” the board said.
“The ACSA board decided that the risks from publishing the issue have significantly increased as a result of new actions by the US federal administration, as well as other actions at state levels.
“These substantial risks include personal threats to journal editors, authors and reviewers, as well as to ACSA volunteers and staff. They also include legal and financial risks facing the organization overall.”
The same day, the association dismissed the journal’s interim executive editor, McLain Clutter, who is also an associate professor at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
Clutter, whose position with the journal was supposed to continue until 2026, told The Architect’s Newspaper that he was fired because he refused to support the decision to cancel the issue, and accused the association of being “on the wrong side of history.”
He added: “I am deeply disappointed by the actions of the ACSA Board. This decision represents a blatant violation of the principles of academic freedom, intellectual integrity and ethical scholarship that the organization claims to uphold.”
Founded in 1912, ACSA is an international organization that represents academic architectural programs and faculty, primarily in the US and Canada. It publishes the Journal of Architectural Education, and Technology: Architecture + Design.
Plans for the Fall 2025 issue of the former included a focus on the “ongoing Israeli genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza” and “urgent reflections on this historical moment’s implications for design, research and education in architecture,” according to a call for papers issued last fall.
The editors of the issue — including Palestinian scholar Nora Akawi, an assistant professor at The Cooper Union in New York — criticized the cancellation and Clutter’s dismissal as part of a broader trend of censorship in the US and Europe of topics related to Palestine.
They said they were “dismayed by the decision” but “not surprised,” given that the ACSA had sought to block the plans for the issue even before the call for papers went out in September 2024. They accused the organization of using “new actions by the US presidential administration” as a pretext for its latest actions.
The ACSA said the fall 2025 issue of the publication would proceed with a different theme, and it was “evaluating its options for the journal within a broader framework.”
The spring 2025 issue, titled “Architecture Beyond Extraction,” which explores the relationship between architecture and extractivism and resource use, will be published in the coming weeks as scheduled.
Afghan TV station reopens after closure by Taliban authorities
The Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFJC), a press freedom group, welcomed the reopening but said in a statement it considered the closure “a flagrant violation of free media rights that should not have happened”
Updated 02 March 2025
AFP
KABUL: An Afghan TV station resumed operations Saturday, its leadership said, after being shut down in December by the Taliban morality ministry.
Seals placed on Arezo TV’s doors in Kabul were removed in the presence of the country’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (PVPV), said station head Bassir Abid, who reported that the outlet had “resumed our operations.”
Taliban authorities shut down the TV station on December 4 after the PVPV accused the channel of being supported by exiled media and of betraying Islamic values.
Seven of Arezo TV’s employees were arrested but released later in December, while the media outlet remained shuttered.
The Taliban government has not yet indicated the reason the station was allowed to reopen.
The Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFJC), a press freedom group, welcomed the reopening but said in a statement it considered the closure “a flagrant violation of free media rights that should not have happened.”
The channel, founded in 2006 in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, opened an office in Kabul in 2010 to produce wildlife documentaries and dub Turkish series, according to AFJC.
Afghanistan’s media sector has dramatically shrunk under three years of the Taliban government, while international monitors have criticized Kabul’s new rulers for allegedly trampling reporters’ rights.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) says the country’s Taliban authorities closed at least 12 media outlets in 2024.
Government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has previously said there are no restrictions on journalists, as long as they “consider the national interest and Islamic values and avoid spreading rumors.”
In early February, Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities raided well-known women’s radio station Radio Begum in Kabul and suspended its broadcasts.
BBC’s critics say removal of documentary reflects pro-Israel biased coverage since the war’s onset
Academics and media professionals warn that censorship amplifies Palestinian dehumanization
Updated 28 February 2025
Sherouk Zakaria
DUBAI: The BBC’s decision to remove its documentary on Gaza has reignited public debate over the broadcaster’s pro-Israel bias in its coverage of the latest war and sparked concerns over the influence of the pro-Israel lobby on western media’s impartiality.
Last week, the broadcaster faced backlash from pro-Israel advocates, prominent Jewish media figures, and Israeli representatives in the UK government when it emerged that Abdullah Al-Yazouri, the 14-year-old main narrator in the BBC Two documentary, “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone,” was the son of Ayman Al-Yazouri, a deputy agriculture minister who worked for the Hamas-run government.
After withdrawing the documentary from its iPlayer service, the BBC was once again criticized by academics, public figures and TV personalities who argued that the channel should have maintained its journalistic impartiality and independence.
The channel’s critics said the removal of the documentary, which provides the rare perspective of a child on the devastating consequences of the war on Gaza, reflected the BBC’s pro-Israel biased coverage since the war began, further deepening the dehumanization of Palestinians and marginalizing their voices.
“The BBC should not have succumbed to pressure from pro-Israeli groups and the British government, who should not have intervened,” Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab British Understanding, told Arab News.
“What is extraordinary is the vast gap between how this documentary was maliciously depicted as being Hamas propaganda and the reality of the film itself, which is a child’s eye view of life in war-torn Gaza that does not get into politics but is a very human story of how Palestinian children survived day-to-day,” noted Doyle.
Palestinian children play amidst the rubble in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip. (File/AFP)
The documentary, filmed over nine months in the run-up to January’s ceasefire deal, features three children among the main characters navigating their lives amid bombings and vast destruction caused by the war on Gaza.
The boy’s family connection with the Hamas-run government employee drew the interference of UK Secretary of Culture Lisa Nandy, who said she expressed “deep concerns” during a meeting with the BBC’s Director-General Tim Davie and urged the channel to report “what happened and who knew what when.”
After conducting an investigation, the BBC issued an apology on Thursday for “serious flaws” in the making of the documentary.
It said it has “no plans” to broadcast it again in its current form, despite the pleas of 500 media professionals and filmmakers, including Gary Lineker and Juliet Stevenson, for the channel to reinstate the documentary, calling it an “essential piece of journalism” that “amplifies voices so often silenced.”
Warning of “racist assumptions,” they said: “Weaponizing family associations to discredit a child’s testimony is both unethical and dangerous.”
Doyle urged the BBC to review its decision “in a very independent fashion free from external interference.”
He said the broadcaster’s action renders work that “humanizes Palestinians and treats Palestinian children as human beings with rights with aspirations, with hopes, with fears” as “illegitimate.”
It also endorses a dominant narrative that militarizes Palestinians and associates them with armed groups, according to the BBC’s critics.
Loreley Hahn-Herrera, lecturer in global media and digital cultures at SOAS University of London, said condemning the documentary as influenced by Hamas does not consider that anyone who works in the government is not necessarily a member of its armed wing.
Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization in the UK, US and Europe.
“Ayman Al-Yazouri is a mid-level bureaucrat who was educated in the UK. I don’t think it is fair to make children guilty by association, which further feeds into the narrative of linking all Palestinians in Gaza to Hamas and criminalizing Palestinian men and stripping them away from their civilian status,” Hahn-Herrera told Arab News.
The first five minutes of the documentary depict Palestinians condemning Hamas and its late leader Yahya Sinwar as they run away from the bombings.
Men and children ride in the back of a tricycle cart along the Wadi Gaza bridge along al-Rashid street across between Gaza City and Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip. (File/AFP)
“The documentary shows kids traumatized by war and actively denouncing Hamas. This challenges the ongoing discourse coming from within Israel and its supporters in the West that associates everyone in Gaza with Hamas and, therefore, makes them targeted terrorists,” Hahn-Herrera said.
She added: “Of the very few political statements that were made throughout the documentary, they were all against Hamas.”
More seriously, Hahn-Herrera noted, the BBC succumbing to pro-Israeli pressure interferes with its credibility as the independent institution it claims to be and challenges its notion of autonomy from the government, which it wants the public to believe.
When reached out to by Arab News for comment, a BBC spokesperson pointed to the channel’s Friday statement indicating that an investigation is ongoing.
The BBC, among other Western outlets, has been facing growing accusations of predominantly featuring Israeli spokespeople and allies over Palestinian voices in its Gaza war coverage.
But the debate over the dominance of Israeli narratives in Western media during conflicts with the Palestinians is not new.
A 2011 groundbreaking study by Greg Philo and Mike Berry titled “More Bad News from Israel” showcased how the BBC’s editorial team faced constant pressure and scrutiny when reporting on Israel and Palestine, making it difficult to give a clear account of the Palestinian perspective.
“The pressures of organized public relations, lobbying and systematic criticism together with the privileging of Israeli perspectives by political and public figures, can affect the climate within which journalists operate,” the authors said.
Displaced Palestinians return to war-devastated Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, shortly before ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was implemented. (File/AFP)
In November, The Independent reported that more than 100 BBC employees, in a letter to Davie and CEO Deborah Turness, accused the channel of reproducing and failing to challenge the narratives of Israeli officials that have “systematically dehumanized Palestinians,” while sidelining the Palestinian perspective and failing to contextualize the war within the broader history of 76-year occupation and a tight 18-year Gaza blockade.
Among the concerns noted by staff were “dehumanizing and misleading headlines” that erased Israel’s responsibility, such as “Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help,” given to an article about a 6-year-old girl who was shot by the Israeli military in Gaza in January 2024.
Other concerns included omissions of coverage, such as the failure to live broadcast South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice on Jan. 11 but choosing to live broadcast Israel’s defense the following day.
The Independent’s report was followed a month later by an article titled, “The BBC’s Civil War on Gaza,” published on Drop Site, an investigative news platform, featuring 13 BBC journalists who claimed that their objections over the biased coverage were brushed aside.
The 9,000-word article cited an analysis that revealed a “profound imbalance” in the channel’s way of reporting Palestinian and Israeli deaths, arguing that Israeli victims were more humanized.
It also detailed accounts of bias including the use of stronger terms like “massacre,” “slaughter” or “atrocities” when describing Hamas’ crimes while failing to use the same terms to describe Israel’s crackdown on Gaza that killed over 46,000 people, the majority of whom were women and children.
The BBC, at the time, denied allegations of bias and defended its coverage, insisting it “strives to live up to our responsibility to deliver the most trusted and impartial news.”
A BBC spokesperson said at the time: “We are very clear with our audiences on the limitations put on our reporting — including the lack of access into Gaza and restricted access to parts of Lebanon, and our continued efforts to get reporters into those areas.”
Children play in the rubble of a destroyed building in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip amid the ongoing truce between Israel and Hamas. (File/AFP)
Ample academic research has analyzed coverage of previous Palestine-Israel wars, the majority of which revealed a disproportionate emphasis on Israeli perspectives while downplaying Palestinian suffering.
If anything, Hahn-Herrera said, the BBC’s recent documentary shared a rare perspective with Western audiences that humanized the suffering of Palestinian children.
“It shows that Palestinians even under occupation, even under constant military attacks, want to have a normal life. It demonstrated that despite all the difficulties and the challenges that Palestinians are facing, they are a resourceful population, and they continue to try to live in normalcy as much as possible,” she said.
