The Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas blasted a visit by seven Moroccan journalists to Israel as a “crime,” The Jerusalem Post reported Wednesday.
“We condemn the visit of a team of Moroccan media persons to the Israeli entity with the goal of normalizing with it and undertaking a campaign of beautifying its image in the Arab media,” Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for the Islamist group, said according to a report published on the London-based website al-Araby al-Jadeed.
“We consider this a crime against our people, and an offense to the feelings of the Arabs and Muslims and lovers of the Palestinian cause and an encouragement of the Israeli entity in its crimes and violations,” he added.
The seven journalists are currently on a week-long trip to Israel, which was arranged by Israel’s Foreign Ministry “in the hope that they will contribute to more positive coverage of Israel in the Moroccan media,” the Post explained. The visit includes meetings with senior diplomats, politicians, and other high-ranking officials. The group is also supposed to tour the border with the Gaza Strip, where they will receive a briefing from senior military officers on the challenges that Israel faces.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry did not identify the seven individuals other than describing them as being among Morocco’s top journalists. “Although there aren’t official relations, the Foreign Ministry recognizes the importance of Morocco and acts in many ways to present the Israeli reality and the diplomatic challenges that confront us to the Moroccan media personnel in the hope they will explode the many negative myths about Israel presented in Morocco,” it said in a statement.
Hassan Kaabia, a ministry spokesman for the Arabic media, said his colleagues “are very excited that we succeeded in realizing this visit. It follows many months of hard work and comes from the realization that through their visit we can show the reality to the Moroccan public and thereby combat the negative treatment Israel receives in that country.”
Amid the journalists’ visit to Israel, anti-normalization forces in Morocco protested the recent raising of the Israeli flag in Marrakesh, which marked the Jewish state’s participation in the U.N. Global Summit on Climate Change.
In an August interview with Tablet Magazine, Israel’s deputy minister of regional cooperation, Ayoub Kara, said that his government’s relations with with the Arab world “are the best they’ve ever been.” Kara, an Israeli-Druze who serves as an envoy to the Arab world, added that now Israel is “praised by ministers and parliament members from places like Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco.” He noted that many of these contacts are however kept quiet due to a “culture of hypocrisy” surrounding Arab contacts with Israel.
[Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash 90 ]