Chippewa Herald-Telegram · 2 May 1984

CP-1984-047

Israeli military censor puts short halt on major paper with rarely-used clause

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Transcribed from the clipping

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following story was submitted to the Israeli military censor. No changes were made. TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel's military censor, using broad powers left from when Palestine was under British control, ordered a major Israeli newspaper to shut down this week for four days. It was a rare display of the full force of the state's censorship authority.

Not since the 1950s had an Israeli newspaper been shut down because of a censorship violation. But frequently in recent days the blue pencil has been taken to press copy, both in Israeli publications and news dispatches by foreign correspondents.

At a foreign press association luncheon this week, Defense Minster Moshe Arens acknowledged the “considerable inconvenience” of having to submit sensitive stories for approval prior to publication. But he defended the need for censorship in light of Israel's perpetual state of war with neighboring Arab states.

“I think it is something that is distasteful to Israelis...But I think there is a general understanding and consensus in Israel that it is essential with the severe dangers Israel is facing,” Arens said. HAARETZ, AN independent daily owned by the same family as the closed tabloid Hadashot, suggested that the decision was political and the censorship excessively severe.

“The government's use, via the chief censor, of archaic emergency measures to shut down the Hadashot newspaper's printing presses is a sorry and dangerous chapter in the annals of government-press relations in Israel,” Haaretz said in an editorial.

The latest tensions between the press and the censor resulted from a controversy surrounding the deaths of Arab terrorists who hijacked a commuter bus April 12. Previous clashes came during Israel's invasion of Lebanon and an exchange of Israeli and Palestinian prisoners last November.

The army said two of the hijackers were killed when the bus was stormed by Israeli troops and that two others died of wounds en route to a hospital.

The official version of events was challenged, however, after photographs that the Israeli censors had banned came to light and showed at least one of the hijackers alive and apparently uninjured in the custody of Israeli security men after the bus was stormed.

Israeli newspapers and magazines, reporting on the growing controversy, appeared with large blocks of white space on their pages where the censor had deleted news and photos. Significant material was also deleted from the dispatches of The Associated Press and other foreign news organizations.

The government did not act, however, until the tabloid Hadashot broke ranks with other Israeli newspapers and published a story that Arens had appointed a respected Israeli general, Meir Zorea, to head an investigation into the deaths of the hijackers.

How this transcription was made

The paper is taken from Maria's slide label, not from a masthead: no masthead or folio appears on the clipping. It is the only clipping on that slide and the only label, so the mapping is unambiguous. Masthead not readable on the scan. The label on the slide read: UNCONFIRMED — Maria's label says Chippewa Herald Telegram; no masthead or folio appears on this scan

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