European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - June 06, 1980, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Dolly Magazine new York ten we / mocha bar amt reporter Raflko Halaby right with cameraman during a disturbance at Ramallal in West Bank. By David k. Shipler new York times Afik Halaby has the hardest Job in israeli journalism lie is an israeli Arab who covers the occupied West Bank the country s most sensitive and emotional Issue for state television. His daily struggle Tor truth placing him be tween he extremes of Arab jewish hatred has become a struggle for a sense of himself a statement of who he is. Openly vilified by the israeli right quietly despised by the palestinian left Halaby travels into the Hills and towns and teeming markets of the West Bank with an unusually Large Crew a cameraman a sound Man a lighting technician and a bodyguard a lanky Security agent who ban ters with the reporter from a hard line political perspective. Occasionally Halaby receives death threats from associates of rabbi Cir Kahane in the Radical Kach movement whose aim is to expel All arabs from Israel and the occupied territories. When he goes Home at night after a controversial report he opens his apartment door in a pulse of fear. Every morning i open the window and look at my car to see if its .," he says. After every report he continues we get phone Calls you arc a Plo sympathizer you arc a traitor we Don t want to Sec Rafik Halaby do away with Rafik Halaby " on the streets some people shake his hand warmly others Call him names hurling the word Arab at him As if it were a curse. Several weeks ago he and other television reporters were branded As terrorists by agriculture minister Ariel Sharon a former general and supporter of extensive jew ish settlement in occupied lands. The effect of the re Mark which came in a heated Exchange Between Sharon and a reporter was chilling. When Arik Sharon says that we Are terrorists and he knows How to fight us Halaby explains using Sharon s nickname he gives the  To terrorists Fror Ruhe other Side meaning israelis to do what they want. The rouble with Halaby s reports is hat they achieve carefully calibrated balance in which both palestinian arabs and israeli officials have their say. This earns him Praise from colleagues and others in Israel s eroding Middle ground of Modera Tion bul it infuriates partisans on each Side. They both spit on me he says. Arabs say i m a traitor and jews Don t want to hear a palestinian voice at this volume even if it s the  Day the curfew was lifted in Hebron More than two weeks after palestinian terrorists killed 6 jews and wounded 16, he was there. The camera moving through the crowded streets swept across the troops and Sand bags an army Camp As he described it then paused to record a variety of Arab views. Two contentions were made that he did not broadcast because he could not substantiate them a group of Arab men asserted that babies had starved to death which his instinct told him was propaganda and they charged that israeli troops had beaten three Arab girls. If i bad seen it and filmed it 1 would have put it on the air Halaby says but through experience i believe 50 percent of what inhabitants say about the  the next Day he was in a desolate refugee Camp near Jericho directing his cameraman with gentle pokes in the ribs As he filmed a Middle class Arab couple banished with their two grown daughters from their ancestral Home near Bethlehem because their 17-year-old son had allegedly stoned a military vehicle. Images of the decaying mud huts among which the elderly parents and their daughters had been deposited with All their furniture were beamed across Israel. We can t sleep Here at night because the dogs come said the Mother on camera there s no water no electricity cooking facilities nothing at All. If he my son threw a Stone let them judge  the boy was in the Hospital after what his father said was a beating by israeli officers an accusation that Halaby declared the military spokesman was not ready to  within 24 hours the government reversed its decision and allowed the banished family and another to return Home. Rafik hat Aby 33 years old is an anomaly in the Middle East an Arab who treasures Israel As he Region s Only democracy As Well As worrying about its corruption As an occupier. I am not objective he says off camera. I Hwy my Point of View. I am an israeli. I want to be More Beautiful More innocent More free of sin. I Don t want them to look at me As a cruel Man a Man whose morals Don t bother him. Only in such a country Only under the Rule of the jews could i be educated the Way i was in the Middle East not in Jordan not  he is a druze a member of a Small sect that is a heretical offshoot of islam. Druzas have not shared the anti israeli attitudes of the moslem or Christian arabs and they Are often caught Between the two groups for jews consider them arabs and arabs frequently do not. His wife and three children live in his Home Village of Dalian cd Carmel near Haifa in Israel proper. There he received his elementary school education before going to a jewish High school in Haifa and the hebrew University in Jerusalem where he earned a master s degree in lie brew language and Judaic studies. After Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 War Halaby worked for mayor Teddy Kollek As the first head of the City government s East Jerusalem office. In 1970 he entered the army As an officer and was stationed on the Northern Border combating terrorists which is proof of his loyalty to the slate said Joseph Lapid. Director general of the Israel broadcasting authority. When he started in television in 1974 and began covering Arab affairs and the West Bank there were difficulties. Arab mayors did t want to talk on israeli to zionist to be recalls. Usually he censors himself but he also receives instructions. Last fall for example when the mayor of Nablus Bassam Al Shaka who was maimed this week in a car bombing believed by Many israelis to have been plotted by the extremist jewish Kach group was re leased from an israeli prison Halby As not allowed to show How Happy the throngs of arabs were in welcoming him Home. Nor was he permitted to broadcast an inter View with Shaka. We do not want to interview a Plo sympathizer he quotes a senior editor As saying in reference to the pales Tine liberation organization the guerrilla umbrella group. Yet Lapid of the broadcasting authority who some times criticizes Halaby s work also defends him publicly. He s a devoted journalist who is working very hard under very difficult circumstances even in physical Dan Ger occasionally he said. He s under heavy pressure from All sides but we arc preserving our Independence and fair  despite his cheerful Grin. Halaby is tired and he sometimes thinks of going to work for a foreign news organization or of retreating to his quiet tillage possibly to cover the arabs in Galilee and just he Northern slice of be Wes Bank. What pulls him away from that seductive dream is a sense of danger. What happens on the West Bank can happen in is Rael. If they can beat place curfews arrest they can do it in Israel. And journalism he says is our last Frontier for democracy in Israel. If we lose it Here Well lose it in the Knesset israeli parliament Friday june 6, 1980 the stars and stripes Page 13