By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, May 24 2024 – Fears for the safety of journalists in Slovakia are growing in the wake of an assassination attempt on the country’s prime minister, which some politicians are blaming in part on local independent media.

Relations between some media and members of the governing coalition, led by Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Smer party, have become increasingly tense since the government came to power in October last year.

And immediately after Fico was shot and seriously injured on May 15, as he greeted members of the public after a government meeting, senior members of coalition parties linked the attack to critical coverage of Fico and accused outlets of spreading hate against him.

The 71-year-old man who shot the prime minister is thought to have had a political motive for his attack.

Since then, there have been calls from some other politicians and heads of media organizations to stop trying to apportion blame for the attack on any group so as to defuse tensions in society.

But senior figures from governing coalition parties have continued to attack the media for what they see as their role in fomenting anger towards the government and provoking the tragedy.

Journalists in Slovakia, and press freedom watchdogs, worry this is increasing the risk reporters could also become targets of a violent attack.

“Journalists are in no way responsible for this, and blaming them is only fueling the fires and increasing the likelihood of another violent incident,” Oliver Money-Kyrle, Head of European Advocacy and Programmes at the International Press Institute (IPI), told IPS.

For many years, Fico and his Smer party, who have been in power for much of the last 18 years in Slovakia, have publicly attacked individual media, and specific journalists in some cases, for their critical reporting of the various governments he has led.

When Jan Kuciak, a reporter investigating alleged corruption by people close to Fico’s government, and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova, were murdered in 2018, critics said Fico’s rhetoric towards journalists had contributed to creating an atmosphere in society in which those behind the killings believed they could act with impunity.

Fico was forced to step down as PM not long after the murders, following massive public protests against his government.

But since returning to power, he and other members of the ruling coalition have repeatedly attacked journalists they see as critical of the government and his party has refused to communicate with certain newspapers and broadcasters.

The government has also pushed through legislation that media freedom organizations and members of the European Commission have warned could severely restrict independent media and press freedom.

Some journalists at major news outlets have been regularly receiving death threats and facing horrific online harassment for years, but others have said they have become increasingly worried for their safety in recent months, and that those concerns have been exacerbated now in the wake of Fico’s shooting.

Many believe that years of aggressive, derogatory rhetoric against them has made them a target for hate among some parts of a society with widespread distrust of media—a recent survey showed only 37 percent of Slovaks trust the media.

Since the assassination attempt, some newsrooms have taken extra security measures and the government has said it will also be providing extra protection for groups which could be facing an elevated safety risk, including media.

While this has been welcomed by media rights organizations, they have said politicians must take the lead in reducing tensions in society and lessening immediate safety risks for journalists.

“The way to de-escalate the situation is that political hate speech against media must stop,” Pavol Szalai, head of the EU/Balkans desk at RSF at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told IPS.

In the immediate hours after the shooting, some ministers appeared to be pushing to calm the situation.  At a press conference, Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok appealed “to the public, to journalists, and to all politicians to stop spreading hatred”.

Meanwhile, dozens of editors from print and broadcast media issued a joint statement publicly condemning the attack on the prime minister and calling for politicians and media to come together to calm tensions.

However, even days after the shooting, senior government figures continued to attack specific media or play down the seriousness  of comments made by colleagues just after the shooting, including  labelling media as “disgusting pigs”.

The Slovak government did not respond to questions on journalists’ safety from IPS.

But beyond putting journalists at increased risk, it is feared that the assassination attempt may also worsen what research has shown is significantly worsening media freedom in the country.

The government recently approved legislation – which is expected to be passed in parliament within weeks that will see the country’s public broadcaster, RTVS, completely overhauled and, critics say, effectively under control of the government.

Ominously, the leader of the governing coalition Slovak National Party (SNS), Andrej Danko, warned after Fico was shot that there would “be changes to the media” now.

And on May 19, speaking on the TA3 private news channel, he said he was planning to propose legislation that would set new regulations governing journalistic ethics, relations between journalists and politicians, and what politicians would be obliged to “put up with” from journalists.

Beata Balogova, Editor in Chief of the Sme daily newspaper, one of the news outlets in the country regularly criticized by government politicians, told international media that the government could now introduce “brutal measures against the media.”

Local journalists say any repressive measures would make an already difficult job even harder.

“I haven’t thought about how things could get more difficult for us to do our work in the future because it’s already very hard. It’s so difficult to gather news with political parties refusing to speak to us. [More restrictions] certainly wouldn’t make things easier,” Michaela Terenzani, an editor at Sme, told IPS.

She added, though, that it was difficult to predict what would happen in the coming days and weeks.

“At the moment, we are all just getting over the shock and trying to get on with our work as best we can. This is a major moment in Slovakia’s history and we will have to see what happens with relations between the media and politicians. Everyone is calling for calm, and I hope that is what we get,” she said.

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By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, May 24 2024 – It is ironic how Prime Minister Netanyahu, who vehemently opposed the establishment of a Palestinian state, made it all but irreversible because of his misguided policies and extreme ideological bent.

The way he conducted the Gaza war has not only sealed the prospect of a Palestinian state but his political demise

The recent recognition of a Palestinian state by Spain, Ireland, and Norway is the latest blow to Netanyahu’s horribly misguided policy toward the Palestinians, which he pursued throughout his political career to prevent them from ever establishing their own state under his watch, as he stated time and gain.

This recognition is in addition to the overwhelming majority of United Nations General Assembly member states that have recognized Palestinian statehood. In truth, none of the above should come as a surprise, as the writing was on the wall for decades, and it was only a question of time before this inevitability unfolded.

The recent decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant against Netanyahu, charging him with war crimes, was another degrading rebuke of Netanyahu for his ruthlessness in the way he is conducting the Gaza war.

The horrific death and destruction that has been inflicted on Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza as a result of Hamas’ October 2023 attack that resulted in the slaughter of 1,200 Israelis and the ongoing and unprecedented war against Hamas that killed 35,000 Palestinians, and the unspeakable human suffering has created a new paradigm.

The establishment of a Palestinian state, which has been particularly resisted by Netanyahu for the past 16 years, has become front and center in the search for a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide could not have put it clearer when he stated: “The fact that this Israeli government, led by Netanyahu, has been so clear that it has no intention to negotiate with the Palestinian side and has been so accepting and even supportive of new illegal settlements, all that has contributed to the recognition decision. In some sense, it’s a reaction to that.”

The tragic dimension of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that a majority of Israelis bought into Netanyahu’s false argument that a Palestinian state will pose an existential danger to Israel, and hence, the continuing occupation is necessary to prevent the Palestinians from realizing their aspiration for statehood. But what is the alternative to a two-state solution? After 57 years of occupation, even a fool would have concluded that the occupation is not sustainable.

How much more death and destruction must both peoples endure before Netanyahu and his blindly misguided followers come to understand that if it takes a hundred more years and the deaths of a million Palestinians, they will never give up or give in on establishing a state of their own.

What is further baffling is that the multitude of right-wing Israelis keep complaining about Palestinian violence. They ignore the elementary understanding that any people who have been living in servitude for decades under the harshest conditions would rise against the occupier, especially when they have a legitimate right to have their own state, enshrined by the same 1947 UNSC Resolution 194 that granted the Jews the right to establish their independent state.

For 80 percent of all Israelis (those born after 1967), the occupation is a normal state of existence irrespective of the daily suffering and often inhumane mistreatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, to which they have been and continue to be subjected.

On January 10, 2024, I wrote: “Sadly, it took the Israel-Hamas war to awaken both sides to their tragic reality. They must now realize there will be no return to the status quo ante. The circumstances that led to the Israel-Hamas war only reinforced the inescapable requirement for a two-state solution. Simply put, there is no other viable option other than continuing the bloody conflict for decades to come.”

But then, what would it take for Netanyahu and his messianic ministers, especially Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, to wake up and realize that every day that passes without a solution, not only will more Israelis and Palestinians be killed in vain, but the conflict will become ever more intractable.

It will exact a mounting price in blood and treasure from both sides without any prospect of changing the inescapable requirement for a Palestinian state to reach a sustainable, peaceful coexistence.

The hurdles to reaching this noble goal are massive; there is the psychological dimension to the conflict that must be mitigated, territorial claims and counterclaims, the dispute over the administration of the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif), mutual concerns over security, the final status of Jerusalem, and more. But then, regardless of how obdurate these conflicting issues may be, they will become far more daunting and perilous short of peace based on a two-state solution.

US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby recently stated: “The president still believes in the promise and the possibility of a two-state solution. He recognizes that it’s going to take a lot of hard work. It’s going to take a lot of leadership there in the region, particularly on both sides of the issue, and the United States stands firmly committed to eventually seeing that outcome.”

Whereas I applaud President Biden’s position and sentiment regarding the requisite of a Palestinian state, he needs to move the needle further and warn Netanyahu that he can no longer take for granted the US position that the creation of a Palestinian state must emerge from direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

While Biden may choose, for political reasons, not to follow the footsteps of the prime ministers of Spain, Ireland, and Norway by recognizing the Palestinian state, he should, at a minimum, permit the Palestinian Authority to reestablish its mission in DC, and reopen the American consulate in East Jerusalem.

That is, if Biden is truly committed to that outcome, then he must demonstrate that by taking real action on the ground. This is the time when leadership is truly needed, and no head of state worldwide can demonstrate that more at this crucial hour than President Biden to bring closer the two-state solution to reality.

Surely, Biden believes in what Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez stated: “This recognition is not against anyone; it is not against the Israeli people. It is an act in favor of peace, justice and moral consistency.” And I might add, it is a moral imperative on which Israel itself was founded.

It is time for Netanyahu to pay the price for dragging Israel into this perilous morass. But then again, he who has resisted the creation of a Palestinian state with all his might made it now more likely than ever before.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University (NYU). He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

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By IPS Correspondent
THE HAGUE, May 24 2024 – The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offense in Rafah.

“In conformity with obligations under the Genocide Convention, Israel must immediately halt its military offensive and any other action in the Rafah Governorate which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” the court said in it’s revised order, which was passed by 13 votes to 2.

South Africa approached the court on May 10, 2024 for a modification of provisional measures as prescribed by the court.

The court also ordered that Israel must take effective measures to ensure the unimpeded access to the Gaza Strip of any commission of inquiry, fact-finding mission, or other investigative body mandated by competent organs of the United Nations to investigate allegations of genocide.

Israel was also ordered to ensure that humanitarian aid should be “unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance,” and that Israel should maintain open land crossing points, in particular the Rafah crossing.

The full order can be read here.

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