2 Fox News Journalists Kidnapped in Gaza
Aug 14 2:39 PM US/East

GAZA

Palestinian gunmen ambushed a car carrying a Fox News crew in Gaza City on Monday and kidnapped two of the journalists inside, according to witnesses and Fox. "We can confirm that two of our people were taken against their will in Gaza," Fox News said in a statement.

A Fox employee in Gaza, who declined to give his name because he was not authorized to release information about the incident, said the two kidnapped people were reporter Steve Centanni, a U.S. citizen, and a cameraman from New Zealand.

The men, along with a bodyguard, were parked near the headquarters of the Palestinian security services when two trucks filled with gunmen pulled up and boxed them in, according to the employee. The gunmen took the two out of their sports utility vehicle, which was marked "TV," and drove away, he said.

Major militant groups in Gaza denied having any connection to the abduction, and there was no immediate word of any demands made.

Security officials put police across Gaza on alert to find the gunmen and free the journalists, said Interior Ministry spokesman Khaled Abu Hilal.

"This is not acceptable at all," he said.

Several foreigners have been kidnapped in Gaza in recent months with their abductors demanding jobs from the Palestinian Authority or the release of people being held in Palestinian jails. All those kidnapped have been released within hours without harm.

Steve Centanni update: “This one may be a bit different”

posted at 11:58 am on August 15, 2006 by Allahpundit

Kidnapping reporters isn’t the best way to sustain Pallywood, which is why they’re usually pretty quick to let them go. Fox News isn’t known for its indulgence of Palestinian propaganda, though, so Centanni and his cameraman might be in for the long haul: 

“It is not clear who kidnapped them or what their demands are. In the past, kidnappings have gone on with western journalists in that area. Usually the captors demanding some sort of job or trying to make a political statement. But there are concerns this one may be a bit different, considering three Israeli soldiers who were kidnapped triggered this entire Middle East conflict. And there are concerns that these Fox News journalists could be held for a lot longer and that those demands may be much different than they have been in the past.”

New Zealand, where cameraman Olaf Wiig is from, has sent a diplomatic team to Gaza. Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh are planning to meet with Fox News's Jerusalem bureau chief, although it’s not clear yet how much they can do:

An investigator in the case, speaking on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize the investigation, said suspicions were focusing on a renegade group from an established Palestinian militant organization, but he declined to give further details.

WND says it’s the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades: “Sources in the … Brigades told WND ‘independent Palestinian gunmen’ affiliated with their group carried out the kidnapping ‘completely on their own.’” A leader of the group says he thinks they’re being held to make a point about Isro-American “aggression” in Lebanon, but that might very well be his own opportunistic spin.

Another jihadi told WND not to be surprised if other groups are in on it.

 

Posted on Wed, Aug. 16, 2006
Captive reporter has link to area BROTHER WHO LIVES IN SAN JOSE SAYS KIDNAPPERS SILENT By Leslie Griffy Mercury News Family members of a Bay Area native and Fox News reporter kidnapped in the Gaza Strip are worried, but hopeful his abductors will release him. Steve Centanni, 60, and his cameraman, Olaf Wiig, were driving through the Palestinian territory Monday when unknown gunmen stopped and kidnapped them. Centanni graduated from Los Altos High in 1964 and worked for local radio stations and KRON-TV before joining Fox, said his brother, Ken Centanni, who lives in San Jose. Fox News representatives called Ken Centanni and another brother, Nicholas Centanni, of Los Gatos, early Monday to tell them of their brother's kidnapping. ``We are a little bit nervous right now because we haven't heard anything one way or the other from the kidnappers,' Nicholas Centanni said. ``We talked with' the Fox News ``negotiators last night, but they haven't heard from the kidnappers.' When Steve Centanni left for his first assignment in Israel, Nicholas Centanni said the experienced foreign correspondent was excited. ``He thought this would be a safer place than going to Iraq,' said Nicholas Centanni. Steve Centanni had previously reported from Iraq and Afghanistan. ``This is Steve's passion. This is what he is all about,' Ken Centanni said. ``You can't keep him away from this stuff.' Nicholas Centanni said that Steve's love of travel and desire to tell human stories drives his interest in reporting overseas. ``He is probably hoping his work will do some good to stop this madness,' Nicholas Centanni said. Nicholas Centanni describes his brother, who graduated from San Francisco State University with a bachelor's degree in television and radio in 1977, as a gentle, peaceful man. His family includes seven siblings, who mostly live on the West Coast. Steve Centanni moved to Washington, D.C., when he took the job with Fox News a few years ago. The close-knit clan, which vacationed in Canada together earlier this year, is taking heart from the fact that Fox News representatives and Palestinian leaders are working for their brother's release, Ken Centanni said. ``That's what we are hanging our hats on right now,' Ken Centanni said. Both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh are working to free Centanni and Wiig, according to the Associated Press. Small groups seeking personal favors, such as a job or the release of relatives from jail, have kidnapped foreigners in Gaza in the past. All were released within a few days without being harmed. No group has claimed responsibility for kidnapping Centanni and Wiig. Nicholas Centanni worries that his brother's kidnapping is different, because, he said, two trucks of armed men whisked Steve Centanni and Wiig away. ``This doesn't seem like some small-time criminals,' he said.

 

Wife, Diplomats Press for Journalists’ Release

By John M. Higgins -- Broadcasting & Cable, 8/16/2006 6:43:00 PM

The wife of one of the two Fox News staffers kidnapped in Gaza issued a public plea Wednesday for their release, while diplomats lobbied Palestinian officials.

Anita McNaught, the wife of abducted New Zealand cameraman Olaf Wiig, appeared on Israeli and Palestinian TV to declare that Wiig and Fox News correspondent Steve Centanni “are friends of the Palestinians. They are here telling the Palestinian story for weeks now, when the rest of the world's media has not been here."

New Zealand's ambassador to Israel and Turkey, Jan Henderson, met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza to discuss the incident, hoping to spur the Palestinian Authority military’s search for the journalists. Meanwhile, a U.S. State Department said that "the U.S. government strongly condemns the kidnapping of these individuals and calls for their immediate release” and that consulate officials are working with the Palestinian government.

The silence of the kidnappers is unsettling to Fox and government officials. Typically, kidnappings in Gaza are followed by some claim of credit and demands in exchange for the abductees' release. That’s followed by negotiations and pressure applied to the kidnapping group's leaders, usually some splinter group of controlling political group Hamas.

However, the "typical" pattern was set before rising tensions over Israel's war against Lebanon's Hezbollah. Centanni and Wiig’s kidnappers have been quiet, with several militant groups in Gaza denying any involvement.

Gunmen abducted Centanni and Wiig Monday, using two vehicles to block Fox News’ vehicle -- clearly marked "TV." A masked man put a gun to the head of the crew’s bodyguard, then the kidnappers sped away with the two journalists.

 

A Flabby Response to Palestinian Thuggery

The Palestinian kidnapping of Fox news correspondent Steve Centanni and camerman Olaf Wing is now in its fifth day, and it’s interesting to note the flabby response from both the media and so-called journalism “protection” organizations — which are usually quick to condemn Israel and the U.S. authorities in Iraq.

The usually garrulous Committee to Protect Journalists issued a tepid statement expressing “concern,” and the media generally has kept its distance. The New York Times, typically, buried a tiny reference to the kidnapping in a news roundup two days later. Obviously the Times was hoping that Centanni would be swiftly released, and delayed mentioning the kidnapping in the hope that it could report news of his release at the same time. Mustn’t upset the myth of Palestinian moderation!

Another big problem with the kidnapping, from the standpoint of pro-Palestinian mouthpieces like the Times, is that it is part of a pattern of Palestinian intimidation of journalists, as noted in an excellent FrontPage Magazine article yesterday.

The media has ignored that aspect of the kidnappings, and instead has even used the kidnappings to give a publicity plug to terrorists, such as in this ludicrous AP story today quoting an Islamic Jihad terorist saying what a terrible thing it is to kidnap people.

It will be interesting to see if the media picks up on the FrontPage Magazine article, and puts the kidnapping in context. Don’t hold your breath.

 

Kidnappings in Gaza

Asharq Alawsat News
Tuesday 22 August 2006
By Kifah Zaboun

Ramallah, Asharq Al-Awsat - While many would disagree about the identity and political affiliation of the kidnappers of Fox News journalist, Steve Centanni, a 60-year-old US citizen, and 36-year-old cameraman Olaf Wiig, from New Zealand, the majority feels that the kidnapping damages the Palestinian struggle.

Despite Wiig’s wife, Anita McNaught, appealing to the kidnappers to release her husband, because “the two men are friends of the Palestinian people”, many Palestinians see Fox News as an extremist rightwing channel that promotes the views of the current US administration, especially during the war in Iraq.

It seems, therefore, that the editorial policy followed by News Corporation-owned broadcaster, is to blame for the kidnapping. Wael Ghaboun, a Fox News employee in the Gaza Strip, rejected this analysis, adding that he had no information about the motivation or identity of the kidnappers. While not denying that journalists working for Fox News have been harassed in the past, Ghaboun said they always endeavored to report the situation as it was on the ground, irrespective of regional politics.

Masked gunmen had ambushed the bulletproof car carrying the Fox News crew in Gaza City on Wednesday 14 August and kidnapped two of the journalists inside, according to witnesses and News Corp.

If the sight of armed men in the Gaza Strip and their questioning of journalists is familiar, as Ghaboun indicated, it is not restricted to armed factions and militias but extends to wealthy families in Gaza, which have resorted to armed militias, in order to settle disputes with the Palestinian Authority.

According to Dr. Hazem Abu Shanab, who teaches media studies at Al Azhar University and heads the Watan Center for Media and Politics in Palestine, kidnappers can be divided into two groups: armed factions, part of larger Palestinian groups, with a specific task to accomplish within a certain timeframe, or prominent families who want to resolve their outstanding problems with the government.

Shanab indicated that, while kidnappings in the Gaza Strip are not yet a widespread phenomenon, such as in Iraq, they are increasing, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that foreign journalists are an easy target whose disappearance creates a media storm and puts pressure on the Palestinian Authority.

He put the blame on the Interior Ministry and said it was not serious in following up and punishing the kidnappers. Like many Palestinians, Shanab said kidnappings harmed the Palestinian cause and might change how journalists view the Palestinian people. (yet another example of 'not missisng an opportunity to miss an opportunity'?)

Ahmad al Daoudi, deputy head of the Journalists’ union in Palestine, told Asharq Al Awsat the Fox News crew might have been kidnapped “by accident” and that any foreigner was the intended target. Refusing to be drawn into a discussion on the identity of the kidnappers, al Dauodi called on them to release their captives. In a press release, the union condemned the latest kidnapping and called on the two men to be released without delay. (And I'm sure they were sincere about that call. Furthermore, I'll betcha NO ONE has a clue whodunit.)

Since September 2004, when an Israeli citizen of Palestinian origin, who works for CNN was kidnapped, a total of 34 foreigners have been seized, including 10 journalists. In August 2005, Mohammed Wodouhi, a French journalist of Algerian origin, spent nine days in captivity, before being released, after a prominent family struck a deal with the Palestinian Authority to release six of its members.

Abu Mujahid, the official spokesman of the Popular Resistance Committees, one of the biggest armed factions (terrorist) in the Gaza Strip, said kidnappers were harming the Palestinian cause and should release the two journalists immediately. He also blamed the security services for the deteriorating security situation.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Rashid Abu Shabak, director general of internal security in the Palestinian territories, said the latest kidnapping differed from its predecessors as no group had claimed responsibility or announced any demands, and the current security situation was complicated by the June kidnapping of an Israeli soldier. Under new directives from the Palestinian leadership, any kidnapping will be dealt with seriously, he told Asharq Al Awsat.

 Susan

"We are going to exchange the Muslim female and male prisoners in American jails in return for the prisoners that we have." 

Tension, Violence Running High in Gaza

Isolated economically since Hamas' election and militarily by Israel, Palestinians there, many of them well armed, are turning on one another.

By Ashraf Khalil
Times Staff Writer

August 24, 2006

KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip — It's blazing hot every day; the electricity comes and goes. And when there's no electricity, there's no water. Nobody has any money, but everyone, it seems, has a weapon.

The Israelis left the Gaza Strip last fall. But now they seem to be everywhere at once — on the ground, in the air and even on the other end of the telephone as a voice warning civilians in accented Arabic of impending missile strikes.

There's no way out. The borders are closed for months at a time to all but foreign passport holders and those with political connections.

"We're living in one big prison," said Sulaiman abu Samhadana, whose employees at the Gaza electric company face daily abuse and threats as they cut off power to neighborhoods to stretch the limited supply.

Tensions are rising among the heavily armed residents of Gaza, say doctors, police and mental health professionals here. Men are beating their wives and fighting with their neighbors. Families are living on the generosity of relatives and credit from merchants, both of which are starting to run dry. Youth are turning to petty crime.

In Khan Yunis, a gritty southern Gaza city that features a thriving gunrunning trade, Brig. Gen. Mustafa Wafi's police force struggles to keep up. "People have a lot of weapons, and the slightest things set them off," he said.

Thefts, burglaries and violent neighborhood arguments in Gaza City have risen 70% in recent months, one police officer estimated. Many of the new offenders are teenagers whose families can no longer provide spending money. Their favorite targets: car stereos, generators and especially cellphones.

"It used to be one or two cases a day in our area. Now it's at least four or five," said the officer, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record. "It started once the salaries stopped being paid."

The wave of euphoria that swept Gaza after last fall's Israeli withdrawal and January's landslide electoral victory by the militant group Hamas has dissipated. Hamas' election prompted a U.S.-backed cutoff of aid to the Palestinian government, the area's major employer, with an aim of forcing the Islamist group to soften its stance on Israel.

The Palestinian economy has virtually stopped. Unemployment in Gaza has reached 40%, up from 23% before Hamas' election, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. A May study by the World Bank concluded that estimate might be "too rosy."

Civil servants, including the police, haven't been paid in full for five months. Garbage collectors stopped working early this summer in a salary dispute. Electricity has been rationed since Israeli jets bombed the main power station in late June at the start of an incursion triggered when Palestinian guerrillas crossed the border and captured an Israeli soldier, who is still missing.

Since then, frequent airstrikes and artillery barrages have further frayed the nerves of Gazans. More than 170 Palestinians have been killed, according to the United Nations.

"The mood here changed dramatically" once the Israeli military offensive began, said John Ging, Gaza chief of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Before June, he said, "there was a stoicism. There was an attitude that [economic hardship] was something that had to be accepted."

For many here, their happiest memories of the last year have been the times they managed to get out of Gaza.

Last fall, soon after Israeli troops and settlers completed their withdrawal, residents knocked a hole in the border fence with Egypt. Tens of thousands of Gaza residents poured through, flooding the Egyptian city of El Arish and buying up everything in sight.

Now the strip is virtually sealed. Almost all Gaza residents are barred from entering Israel, and the border crossing with Egypt has been closed for most of the last two months, turning the entire coastal strip into a slow-burning impoverished prison.

The aid cutoff, and Israel's withholding of millions of dollars in customs and tax duties, might have been expected to weaken the Hamas government by driving up civil discontent. But so far, the citizens of Gaza haven't turned on the new government.

Instead, they may be turning on one another.

Thousands of young Palestinian men belong to armed militant groups. The militarization of Gazan society makes it more likely that otherwise harmless scuffles will turn deadly.

In a personal conflict, "they end up using the weapons that they have to defend against the occupation against each other," said Abu Thaer, a spokesman for the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade militia.

There have been at least 20 violent deaths in the last five months in Khan Yunis, more than double the usual rate. Many of those stem from a bloody feud between a pair of heavily armed clans in early spring.

But the most horrifying act of violence people here can recall involved neither guns nor grenades, but a hypodermic needle.

Last month, a Khan Yunis man attempted to kill his four children by injecting air into their veins as they slept. Two of them died. The man, an anesthesia technician and a major in the Palestinian medical corps, was distraught over his family's economic hardships, which had prompted his wife to leave several months earlier.

He spent two weeks on the run before surrendering and is under psychiatric evaluation, Wafi said.

The spiraling stress levels in Gaza have had other effects. The number of weddings dropped 13% in June compared with the previous year, according to court records. Divorces rates have remained stable, but Emad Hamadto, a lawyer specializing in marriage contracts, has seen an increasing number of wives separating from their husbands and then suing to ensure continued support.

Domestic violence is on the rise, doctors and police say. The number of miscarriages rose 25% in June and July, compared with preceding months, said Dr. Jumaa Saqqa, spokesman for Gaza City's Shifa Hospital.

"It's a collection of factors," he said. "Stress, heat, fear, tension, everything."

The violence has reached into the region's hospitals, with at least three major incidents in the last four months.

In May, a 59-year-old man suffering from heart failure was brought into the Khan Yunis hospital's emergency room. When informed of the man's death, his family "went crazy and trashed the emergency room…. Anyone wearing a white coat was beaten," said Dr. Nasser Azaar, the emergency room director.

Three months later, Azaar remains shocked by the fact that several local doctors related to the man participated in the frenzied destruction.

Last month, Interior Minister Said Siyam deployed Hamas' newly formed Executive Force to all Gaza hospitals after a clan feud erupted into gunfire inside the emergency room at Shifa. The clash had begun outside but moved into the medical center when one of the wounded men died and his relatives sought revenge on the wounded from the other family.

But the presence of the Executive Force, mostly hardened Hamas fighters, helped trigger the worst incident of hospital violence so far.

On Aug. 2, members of the force engaged one of Gaza City's most notorious armed clans at Shifa Hospital. According to several accounts, the fight started when at least 30 armed members of the Jundeya family came to visit a sick relative. Executive Force guards demanded that they surrender their weapons before entering, triggering a confrontation.

For two hours, he two forces traded gunfire on the hospital grounds as family elders tried to mediate. There were no deaths, but at least three Executive Force members and an unknown number of Jundeya fighters were injured.

Mediation between family elders and senior Interior Ministry officials has since produced a public truce. But the aggressive behavior of Gaza's clans points to a creeping erosion of public faith in the law, said Hamdi Shaqqura of the Palestine Center of Human Rights. In the absence of a reliable law enforcement or justice system, increasingly desperate Gazans are falling back on family ties for protection and power.

"The rule of law has become the rule of the jungle," he said.

---

 

Good news and a article, Jordan. More news than I've seen on TV so far this morning but it was competing with the Kentucky airplane crash.

What was missing from the article were all the details of the arrest of the kidnappers and their identity but that will probably be coming.

 

At the same time, before the journalists' release, a new video was released, showing Wiig and Centanni dressed in beige Arab-style robes. Wiig, of New Zealand, delivered an anti-Western speech, his face expressionless and his tone halting. The kidnappers claimed both men had converted to Islam.

I can't wait to see that video! Steve Centanni renames himself Khaled.

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas PM, seems to be working this for all the PR it's worth. Still, I am interested in his follow-up on the arrest of these criminals.

BBC says:

Young men. Action. Private beliefs. I love words.

Susan

PS  Here's a good video