Saudi station drops ‘martyr’

JERUSALEM — The Saudi-owned Al Arabiya satellite station, confronted with terror attacks in Saudi Arabia, has stopped referring to suicide bombers as “martyrs,” provoking anger among Palestinian officials.

Irritation with the network, which has carried several reports critical of the Palestinian cause, is so intense that one of its reporters was pulled from his car and beaten last week.

Yussef al-Qazzaz, a senior official with the Palestinian Broadcasting Corp., directed an angry outburst mainly at local correspondents working for the popular Saudi news channel.

Al Arabiya, concerned about terror attacks in Saudi Arabia, recently ordered its reporters in the Palestinian territories to stop using the word “martyr” to describe Palestinian victims or suicide bombers, and make do with the word “dead” so as not to glorify those who carry out similar acts at home.

Use of this neutral terminology also has spread to other Arab media covering the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

“Most of the correspondents of the Arab TV and radio stations need to be educated politically and culturally about the internal [Palestinian] situation,” Mr. al-Qazzaz said.

Responsibility for such education belonged to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, he said, “but some of its heads also need to be educated.”

A correspondent for Al Arabiya, Seif al-Din Shahin, was beaten last week in the Gaza Strip with rifle butts by men who pulled him from his car.

According to Mr. Shahin, a Palestinian, his attackers cited his critical reporting of a celebration by Fatah, the mainstream Palestinian political organization, in which civilians were wounded by the unrestricted firing of rifles into the air.

Mr. Shahin also had criticized the reported expenditure of $3 million on the celebrations. The reporter said he previously had received death threats from persons identifying themselves with Fatah.

The television channel’s office in the Gaza Strip has been ransacked in the past after critical reports about Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and senior officials of the Palestinian Authority.

Scores of Palestinian journalists staged a demonstration in the Gaza Strip on Monday in support of Mr. Shahin and condemned attacks on freedom of the press, which have included death threats against many of them.

A senior Fatah official in the Gaza Strip, Samir Mashharawi, said his organization was not responsible for the attack on Mr. Shahin and that an investigation had been initiated to find the perpetrators.

On Tuesday, 100 Palestinian journalists met with Mr. Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Poems were recited in his honor and participants were photographed with him.