Jamil Hammad

Jammil Hammad visited us at Shiloh when we were newcomers. I'll never forget is funny, high-pitched laugh. He came with Ricki Rosen, the photographer, and a TIME magazine editor. My wife always tells the story of how they tried to take a picture of her holding my rifle and she steadfatstly refused saying she never holds a rifle and therefore, such a picture would be staged and unethical.

Anyway, Jamil is in hot water with CAMERA which informs us that on March 5th, Time Magazine published "No Room for Civility at the Checkpoint," by Jamil Hamad. Hamad writes that checkpoints are "humiliating," "collective punishment," that they encourage Palestinians to vote for terrorist groups, that they are " 'an invitation for the terrorists to try another way' ", and finally, that they are useless since he personally has never seen a bomber caught at the checkpoint he often goes through.

But what really caught my eye was this, which I confess, I never knew:-

Hamad confessed to hiring kidnapper of his boss. Victim never found.

This isn't the first time that Hamad has made himself the subject of news stories. In 1975, Hamad confessed to hiring Yasser Karaki to kidnap Hamad's boss, Yusef Nasr, editor of the Al Fajr newspaper. (Jerusalem Post, April 28, 1975) Nasr reportedly had been about to fire Hamad from his deputy editor position. (Jerusalem Post, March 14). Nasr has never been heard from again and his body has never been found. The Post confirmed that Hamad had testified in court as a state witness and hence was not charged. (Jerusalem Post, June 13, 1975)

It's odd that Time magazine would employ someone who confessed to arranging and paying for the kidnapping of his own boss (presumed also to be a murder victim).

Is Hamad's boss perhaps afraid to challenge him, afraid to say no to outrageously biased reporting, lest he too suddenly disappear?