Israel Resource Review |
11th May, 2002 |
Contents:
Peres Centre Investigated by Norway's Foreign Office
Rolleiv Solheim
Correspondent, Norway Post
The Norwegian Foreign Office (UD) has started
investigating the Peres Peace Centre in Israel,
and into the way the centre has used Norwegian
monitary contributions.
It was the Peres Centre that awarded a peace
prize worth US$ 100,000 to Mona Juul and Terje
Roed-Larsen.
The centre has received Norwegian grants worth
NOK 10 million over the last five years. The
centre's main intention was to improve relations
between Israeli and Palestinian youth.
-UD now wants to know if the money was spent for
the intended purpose, says press spokesman
Victor Roenneberg. UD has asked office of the
Auditor General of Norway for assistance in
going through the accounts submitted by the
centre.
UD is of the opinion that Norway's Ambassador to
Israel, Mona Juul, and UN Envoy Terje Roed-Larsen
contravened the Civil Service Act when
they failed to inform the department of the cash
involved in the peace prize awarded by the Peres
Peace Centre in 1999.
The two each received a cheque in the amount of
US$50,000, as part of the prize awarded for
their contribution towards the process which
resulted in the so-called Oslo Accord.
This article ran in the Norway Post on May 7, 2002
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Why are Readers of HaAretz Angry?
Haggai Kraus
Correspondent, Maariv
These are hard times for the Schocken Group and
for Ha'aretz. One week after the publication of a letter from
Irit Linur in which she announced that she was canceling her
subscription to the newspaper -- a letter that sparked a huge
storm -- a new storm has arrived. Army Radio's Amit Segal
reported yesterday that Ha'aretz has experienced a wave of
subscriptions cancellations, and that the paper has provided a
list of special instructions in order to give the newspaper's
sales representatives tools to respond to readers who want to
cancel their subscriptions. The list includes answers to
questions raised by angry subscribers, under the heading, "Key
sentences in response to opposition to a 'left-wing newspaper.'"
The wave of cancellations marks the peak of a trend that began at the
outbreak of the Intifada. Segal also reported that many newspaper stands
in Tel Aviv have refused to sell local papers published by the Schocken
Group after one of them ran pictures of Yigal Amir next to pictures of the
prime minister on the front page.
Many Ha'aretz readers feel that the left-wing line that the paper takes
in its reporting of the events over the past year and a half are not
something that they can come to terms with. In the letter sent to Ha'aretz
to cancel her subscription, Irit Linur describes the problem: "Ha'aretz has
reached a stage at which its anti-Zionism too often becomes stupid, bad
journalism, and even if it is hard for me to decide which of the two
bothers me more, I am sick of both of them. I am tired of reading in every
TV review, whether written by Rogel Alper, Sagui Green, Benny Tzipper, or
Aviv Lavie, that the central problem of all of the news programs, every
broadcast, before and after an attack, is too much patriotism and that the
military reporters are working for the IDF spokesman. I think that they
are wrong and boring, and that their working assumption is dishonest and
estranged from the reality and the place where they live."
As is noted above, the publication of the letter created a wave of
cancellations of subscriptions, and sources at the paper report angry
letters from readers canceling their subscriptions because of "the extreme
pro-Palestinian line" taken by the paper.
This piece ran in Maariv on May 11, 2002
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