U.S. reporter, Palestinian photojournalist die
By The Associated Press
07.16.02
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Two journalists have died in the course of pursuing news stories.
In New York, author and award-winning journalist Robert I. Friedman, whose investigative reporting provoked death threats from the Russian mob, died July 2 at a Manhattan hospital of heart complications resulting from a rare disease. He was 51.
Friedman contracted the illness while reporting seven years ago about female slavery in the slums of Bombay, India.
Friedman built his reputation as a Middle East reporter, covering a variety of topics in the region, but was also known for his work in New York City. While he spent time on staff at The Village Voice and New York magazine, most of Friedman's career was as a free-lance writer.
He wrote a 1990 biography of Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane, titled The False Prophet.
Four years later, while working in Israel, Friedman was assaulted by militant Jewish settlers who claimed his work had tarnished Kahane's reputation. The attack came one day after Friedman appeared on CBS' "60 Minutes" to talk about the Middle East.
That same year, Friedman's book Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement was published. He also earned a Society of Professional Journalists Award for his coverage of the Muslim extremists behind the 1993 World Trade Center attack.
Friedman, whose grandparents had all left Russia for the United States due to religious persecution, was one of the country's foremost experts on the Russian mob's infiltration of America.
Friedman's book Red Mafiya was published in 2000 — but only after he had received death threats, including one from the United States' most powerful Russian mobster, Vyacheslav Ivankov.
Ivankov is serving a 10-year prison sentence for extortion.
In Nablus, West Bank, Palestinian free-lance photographer Imad Abu Zahra, 35, died on July 12 of a gunshot wound. A fellow photographer said the shot came from a machine gun on an Israeli tank in the northern West Bank.
Israel's military said the tank gunner was responding to rifle fire from Palestinians who were also lobbing firebombs and rocks when the tank was disabled after hitting an electricity pole in Jenin on July 11. The Israeli military spokesman said it was not clear if army fire hit anyone, and said it was possible that Palestinian shooting killed the photographer.
Said Dahlah, a colleague working with Abu Zahra on July 11, said the tank fired randomly as it moved up a street around midday, and people ran, barricading themselves in shops and homes. Dahlah, a photographer for the Palestinian news agency Wafa, said he and Abu Zahra were the only people left on the street and were shot at as they photographed the tank ramming into the electricity pole.
A military curfew had been lifted at the time of the shooting, the army said. Israel took control of Jenin and six other Palestinian cities and towns after back-to-back suicide bombings in Jerusalem killed 26 Israelis last month.
Dahlah, who said he was wearing body armor with a fluorescent colored sign that read "Press" in English, was hit in the leg by shrapnel. He ran as the tank fired. Abu Zahra was not wearing a protective vest. Shot in the leg, he fell to the ground.
"When I looked back I saw him bleeding," Dahlah said. "I came back to try to drag him away but the tank fired again. Then I left him and he crawled to a nearby alley. I saw a lot of blood on the ground."
Dahlah said that people returned to the streets to find the two photographers wounded, and only then did they attack the tank with rocks. He didn't know if any shots were fired from the angry crowd, because he left quickly for the hospital with his wounded colleague.
A doctor at Jenin Hospital, Ashraf Tzubah, said a bullet severed Abu Zahra's femoral artery. His heart stopped twice, and doctors were unable to restart it the second time, Tzubah said. The photographer was not married.
Abu Zahra also worked with foreign journalists, helping to arrange interviews, transportation and translations.
He had his own news agency called Al-Nahil and started a weekly newspaper, Jenin, in 1996. The Palestinian Authority closed the newspaper and detained Abu Zahra for a week because the paper was critical of the Palestinian leadership.
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