Fadi Elsalameen is a non-resident fellow at The Foreign Policy Institute at The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
He shared something very interesting on Facebook:
You couldn’t make up this stuff even if you tried. But here it goes:Ali Jouma (the guy with Mickey Mouse) is a Palestinian intelligence officer, his wife wanted the parking spot of another person (a young man). The young man naturally refused to give it to her. She threw a fit. Cussed him, and called her husband to the rescue. The husband being an intelligence officer, found out where the young man lives, went with his body guards, beat up the young man, and even chased his mom in a car trying to run her over.
The next day, Majid Faraj, head of PA intelligence asks Ali Jouma to leave the country for few days to escape any backlash.
The whole country is now outraged.
See why PA intel have things under control? No problem is too big for them to solve.
This story was first reported by Faten Elwan a Palestinian journalist working for the US funded alhura TV station. (How about we fund anger management and then crises management classes too?) what a mess!!
This appears at first to be an ordinary story of corruption that one may find in any country. But I think that there is a bigger story here.
The journalist whom he quotes removed her story and replaced it with one that does not include any names. She also apologizes for censoring out some comments to the story, saying that her goal is to help improve the country and not to only complain about corruption. She is a very reluctant whistle-blowing journalist.
Elsalameen says that the whole country is now outraged, but I cannot find this story in the Palestinian media that I monitor, nor by searching for likely keywords in Arabic media.
If the “whole country” is outraged, it is only happening on social media and face to face. The Arab media itself doesn’t want to touch the story, at least not yet. The journalist who broke the story doesn’t seem to want to push it and is defensive about even bringing it up to begin with, and has been apparently frightened by something that happened after she initially named names.
Which means that this is not just a story about corruption, but also a story about how anything that makes the Palestinian Authority look bad is swept under the rug for as long as possible.
No wonder the Arab rumor mill is considered the most reliable source for information by the community. Palestinians literally cannot believe the news in their own media as being accurate or independent.
Yes, the PA is corrupt, and the people know it. But the donors and funders who keep sending over more and more cash, especially from the West, are kept in the dark about it.
The honor/shame mindset exists on a national level.
(h/t Gidon Shaviv)
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