Martin Bradbury, editor of The Daily Blog
AUCKLAND (Waatea News.com/Pacific Media Watch): OPINION: It's remarkable. When journalists leave Māori Television, the mainstream New Zealand media are almost gleeful in covering it.
Yet today when Māori TV have had two of their journalists arrested by Israeli authorities, there is barely a whisper?
Māori TV journalist Ruwani Perera and camera operator Jacob Bryant were arrested yesterday on board a peace flotilla trying to break the violent and brutal blockade of Gaza.
In 2010, Israel boarded another peace flotilla and murdered 10 activists.
The cruelty and apartheid nature of the occupation of Gaza by the Israelis is one of the great on-going cultural genocides the modern planet is witnessing.
Māori TV have a long history of covering indigenous issues around the globe, and the vicious nature of the illegal occupation of Palestinians is an issue they should be focusing upon.
'Open air prison'
Gaza is little more than the largest open air prison on Earth and the inhumane manner in which Palestinians are forced to suffer as a people is the very type of story Māori TV has every right to cover.
Trying to ignore the journalistic reasons as to why Maori TV journalists are there and paint them as "trouble makers" merely supports and aids the occupiers.
It doesn't shine light on the ugly truth.
At a time when our Foreign Affairs Minister, Murray McCully, is attempting to search for peace in the Middle East as part of our new role on the Security Council, the least he can do is demand Israel release two of our journalists immediately.
And the least the wider New Zealand media can do is show support for two of their colleagues arrested for doing their job.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Pacific Media Watch
