It’s been over a month since the Goldstone Report was published on September 15, 2009. I’ve written about this topic in the Huffington Post, and since then a myriad of reactions and repercussions to the release of the report have occurred. We’ve learned for example that there was a conspiracy by the Palestinian Authority to prevent the report from being submitted to the UN, and that the Israeli government was preparing itself to fight war crimes trials. Just today, an article in Haaretz addressed this very thing:

“The prospect that Israeli officials could face war crimes trials abroad led the political-security cabinet on Tuesday to form a committee to deal with the international legal consequences of the Goldstone Commission's report on the Gaza war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who promised a lengthy battle to "delegitimize" the findings of the United Nations commission, also instructed government officials to draft proposals for changing international laws of war.”

The coverage of the story has been all over the place – starting in Israel, where the lead investigator Richard Goldstone has been accused of anti-Semitism and of being out to get Israel, even though Mr. Goldstone is a South African Jew. Arab media has been celebrating the report and neglecting to mention that Hamas was also held accountable.

Last Friday, Al Jazeera’s Listening Post aired a report exploring the 575-page hot potato-  causing controversy with the Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority and the global media. I was invited to contribute my two cents…the saga continues.

It is not the first time Palestinians have called for the resignation of Mahmoud Abbas. When Hamas swept to victory in the Palestinian Parliamentary Elections in January 2006, angry mobs from the defeated Fatah party staged rallies in the Gaza Strip, calling for his resignation. Many gathered outside the parliament in Gaza City, setting fire to government cars and firing shots into the air.

Today, the anger is more subtle, but more poignant. Palestinians from all wakes of life have been stunned and disappointed by Abbas, who withdrew Palestinian support for a vote in the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva to have the Goldstone report sent to the U.N. General Assembly for possible action, the first of many steps towards possibly establishing war crimes tribunals to investigate Israel's alleged war crimes in Gaza.

Just a few days before Abbas suspended action on the Goldstone report, a poll showed the Palestinian president with a 55 percent approval rating compared to 32 percent for Gaza's Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. A new poll has not been conducted yet, but one thing is certain, Abbas today will be lucky to receive double digits. Across the board, Palestinians have been calling for his resignation.

"He is a traitor. He sold the land [to the Israelis] ... now he sold our blood," says Abed M. from Qalandia Refugee Camp just outside of Ramallah.

Abed's sentiments are not unique. Posters which first appeared in Gaza showing Mahmoud Abbas with a black X across his face and the words, "To the trash heap of history, you traitor, Mahmoud Abbas," have made their way to West Bank and even to East Jerusalem.

A few days ago, Gaza professors threw shoes at his defaced image and Hamas has called Abbas' decision "a betrayal of the blood of the martyrs."

Meanwhile, rumors have been spreading like wildfire in the West Bank and Gaza. A news segment aired on al-Aqsa TV, a Hamas-controlled satellite station broadcasting out of Gaza, featured a guest analyst who claimed that Israel threatened to release a video tape showing Palestinian leaders urging Israel to be tougher on Hamas during the Gaza offensive unless the PA backed down over the Goldstone report. Another story circulating on the Palestinian street is about Abbas' children and their investments with Israeli partners. The Israeli government has reportedly threatened the PA that it would refuse to license a new Palestinian mobile phone company, partially owned by one of Abbas' sons, if the PA pushed for the adoption of the Goldstone Report in Geneva.

On Wednesday one senior Palestinian Authority figure, Yasser Abed Rabbo, conceded the move was a "mistake."

"A mistake?" fired back former Knesset member Azmi Bishara on Al Jazeera TV. "A mistake is when I press the wrong floor on the elevator."

Just an hour after the Goldstone debacle erupted, when I called a colleague of mine (who shall remain anonymous) working in Ramallah as a stringer for a foreign news agency to ask him whether this issue will have a lasting damage on the Palestinian Authority, he quickly corrected me and said, "You mean the Vichy Government of Palestine."

Article first published in Huffington Post.

Five years ago when I was working on the documentary Occupied Minds, I got a real taste of what it’s like being a reporter working in a war zone. My crew and I had just finished shooting a segment in the devastated area of Rafah and were heading back to Gaza City, when suddenly, traffic came to a screeching halt.

Two Israeli tanks had blocked off the road while a huge armored Caterpillar bulldozer tore through an orange orchard removing trees and shrubs that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said were being used to provide cover to terrorists. The temperature was over 90 degrees and felt as if it were over 100 degrees in our rented van, which did not have working air conditioning. So, gasping for air, we decided to step outside.

No sooner had we walked a couple of feet outside the van than one of the tanks, without warning, started to fire towards us, literally drawing a line in the sand with bullets just a few feet ahead of us. A bullhorn then ordered us to go back inside the van, which incidentally had the words Press & TV tapped on its side and roof in large red letters. But this did not stop the tank from firing. All I could think that day was what if the machinegun operator had miscalculated? I later learned that our camera man was missing a finger because he had been shot through his camera a year earlier by an Israeli sniper.

This past Friday, Jacky Rowland was reporting from the West Bank village of Bil'in, explaining to viewers about the separation fence and the weekly protests that take place there, when Israeli troops began firing tear gas at the protesters and then directly at her.

The video below shows Rowland, wearing a helmet, exclaiming "We're under attack!" as a tear gas grenade flies past her.
She continues reporting, telling viewers that the Israeli soldiers are "obviously trying to take us off the air."

More on Bil'in.

Link is proud to be home to two programs, both from Qatar-based channel Al Jazeera English, that have been nominated for International Emmy Awards this year! An Al Jazeera English News Hour segment on the Russia-Georgia war picked up a nomination in the News category for superb on-the-ground journalistic coverage. And Al Jazeera English's Witness documentary series, airing weekly on Link TV, was nominated in the Current Affairs category for the special Return to Nablus. Part of that special, Two Schools in Nablus, aired on Link, and is available to watch online now. International Emmy Award winners will be announced on September 21, 2009, and we'll keep you updated on the results.

If you haven't already, be sure to catch these fantastic, internationally-recognized programs on Link! The Al Jazeera English News Hour has been airing every weekday on Link since June, part of Link's Global News Hour with Mosaic: World News From the Middle East. Daily online news bulletins from AJE are also available online. Al Jazeera English - Witness airs Mondays at 8pm Pacific and Wednesdays at 7pm Eastern, and most episodes are available to watch online.

Congratulations to our partners at Al Jazeera English for their second consecutive International Emmy Award nomination in a row! We'll have our fingers crossed for an AJE awards sweep in September.

Written by John Hamilton

These are dangerous times to be a journalist. According to Reporters Without Borders, 60 journalists were killed in the line of duty last year. 673 others were arrested, more than 900 were assaulted and 29 journalists were kidnapped. Unfortunately, this year isn’t shaping up to be any better.

In the past few weeks, Link TV has highlighted several incidents in which reporters have faced censorship, imprisonment, and even death—all for doing their jobs.

Link TV’s original series Latin Pulse presented the special program, Stories that Kill, looking at the dangers faced by investigative journalists caught in the crossfire of a long-simmering civil war between leftist guerillas and government forces.

The award-winning Democracy Now! covered the case of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two American reporters sentenced by North Korean authorities to twelve years of hard labor after inadvertently crossing into the country from China.

Mosaic: World News from the Middle East brought news that Al Jazeera has been banned from the occupied West Bank by the Palestinian Authority.

Our newest addition to Link’s news lineup, Al Jazeera English World News, reported on the execution-style killing of Natalya Estemirova, a human rights campaigner and independent journalist critical of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Despite the mortal danger that comes with reporting from some of the world’s most dangerous places, Link TV consistently brings you some of the most comprehensive and wide-ranging international news on American television.

So as the brave men and women of the international press corps put their lives on the line to get the story, it’s more important than ever to support the channel that brings their work to a national audience, Link TV, television without borders.

Link's Mosaic and the Mosaic Intelligence Report are on vacation this week, but intrepid Mosaic Producer Jamal Dajani has not been slacking. Dajani has been reporting from Paris on the burqa controversy, where French president Nicolas Sarkozy inflamed his country's Muslim population with recent comments stating that the burqa would "not be welcome" in France.

It wasn't easy, but Dajani was able to interview a French woman dressed in burqa for his latest article in the Huffington Post, and it sounds like Sarkozy isn't winning any friends in France's Muslim communities. You can follow Dajani's interesting updates on this story on Twitter.

For more background, this Al Jazeera English piece gives the "inside story" on the call for a burqa ban in France:

Is this anti-burqa campaign really a question of women's rights? (This, of course, coming from the same man caught opening oogling the female form in these photos. Don't you worry -- Obama's wandering eye has apparently been exonerated, according to this ABC News video analysis.) Can France reconcile its values as a secular nation with its growing Muslim immigrant population? We know what Dajani and Sarkozy think -- what about you?

As you may know, Al Jazeera English World News is airing as part of Link TV's Global News Hour, together with Mosaic: World News From the Middle East. To supplement the daily broadcast, we'll be posting short Al Jazeera English Mobile Bulletins - short video updates about current events - on a regular basis:

Join us for the premiere of Link's new Global News Hour, with Al Jazeera English World News at 10PM Eastern/7PM Pacific, followed by Mosaic: World News From the Middle East at its regular time.

Al Jazeera English World News is broadcast from four strategic centers: Doha, Qatar; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; London, England and Washington, DC. Additionally, the Al Jazeera Network maintains more than 70 bureaus across the world.

Unlike other international channels, the Al Jazeera English broadcast shifts as the world turns, providing the most comprehensive and contextual news coverage. Al Jazeera English’s mission is to provide independent, impartial news for a global audience and to offer a voice to a diversity of perspectives from under-reported regions.

Watch, and share your thoughts with us!

Check out the conclusion of Super 30, a documentary about the Ramamujan Academy in Bihar, India. Bihar is India’s poorest state. Fewer than half its 90 million inhabitants can sign their own name. Yet this extraordinary academy takes a small number of impoverished Bihari children each year and prepares them to seek admission to one of the toughest universities in the world, the Indian Institutes of Technology.

This program premieres TONIGHT at 11PM Eastern/8PM Pacific, and is available to watch online in its entirety here.

What Rep. Ellison has done should be commended. Getting information from different sources is exactly what Link TV is all about. Particularly on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The American public needs to see the world from different perspectives. There are a plethora of news outlets that provide alternative information. Take Al Jazeera English. Watch this Al Jazeera report about Gaza after the recent war. This is an eye opening account of the suffering that continues after the war. You won't find this kind of reporting in the U.S.

I think that the Muslim community inside the Beltway is still wet behind the ears. It will take time, greater organization and political clout before it can have a stronger presence inside the beltway.