Rehmat’s World | May 11, 2013
On May 13, 2013, Washington-based media museum, Newseum, will honor 84 journalists killed in line of duty in various countries in 2012. The list includes two cameramen, Hussam Salama and Mahmoud Al-Kumi, from Hamas-owned Al-Aqsa TV, who were killed by an Israeli air-strike while driving through Gaza City’s Nasser area inside a car clearly marked “TV” in November 2012.
On May 10, the Zionist embassy in Washington DC demanded that Newseum management remove Hussam Salama and Mahmoud Al-Kumi’s names from the honor list saying they’re members of Gaza-ruling Hamas, which Israel and the US have designated as a terrorist group.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Abraham Cooper, criticized Newseum saying: “Duct Tape on car with the letters TV does not a journalist make. A shameful decision based on a falsehood that besmirches the true heroes of journalism who died while pursuing their mission of seeking and reporting the Truth.”
“What would the legitimate martyred journalists like Daniel Pearl say as their heroism and humanity is debased and degraded?” Cooper asked.
Daniel Pearl, a US-Israeli Jewish citizen and Wall Street Journal reporter was kidnapped and killed in Pakistan allegedly working for Israeli Mossad. The Center itself is named after the so-called the “Father of Holocaust” Simon Weisenthal (1908-2005) who is described by Israeli historian, Tom Segev, as a fame-seeking myth-maker and an Israeli Mossad agent.
The Washington Free Beacon (May 10, 2013), a pro-Israel Jewish website quoted an adviser to a large Washington DC Jewish organization, saying: “They couldn’t have been legitimate journalists killed in the line of duty because they weren’t working for a legitimate media outlet. They were working for a designated terrorist organization that has a propaganda shop.“
On Friday, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Jewish-Israeli advocacy group, said it’s boycotting Newseum. “I will put a call to the CEO of the Newseum first thing tomorrow morning. I’m hoping he’ll tell me there’s been a misunderstanding – or a re-thinking once it became clear that these ‘journalists’ were members of designated terrorist organizations,” Cliff May, the Zionist Jewish president of the FDD, said in an email to BuzzFeed, a Jewish website.
Despite Israeli protest, Jonathan Thomson, spokesman for the Newseum said the two cameramen, who were killed by an Israeli air-strike, would remain on its roll of slain reporters. “Hussam Salama and Mahmoud Al-Kumi were cameramen in a car clearly marked “TV”. The Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers all consider these men journalists killed in the line duty,” said the Newseum spokesperson.
The dedication ceremony will take place at the Journalist Memorial Gallery. The keynote speaker will be Jewish Richard Engel, chief foreign correspondent for NBC News. Last year, while on assignment in Syria – he along with other members of his crew were kidnapped by USrael-funded anti-Assad rebels and held hostage for five days. NBC identified the kidnappers as members of the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, an anti-Assad Wahabi militant group.