Israeli Reporters Without Borders

It must be frustrating for Israeli reporters to live next to some of the most interesting countries in the region but to be unable to visit. Lebanon and Syria are still technically at war with Israel, and Israelis aren't legally allowed inside the two countries. (Though Israel does invade from time to time.)

But that doesn't mean it's a good idea for Israeli journalists -- many of whom are dual-nationals -- to sneak into hostile countries using non-Israeli passports and publish stories in the Israeli media.

This seems to have become something of a trend. Today, Yedioth Ahronot, one of Israel's largest papers, published an account by one of their correspondents who had visited the site in Syria attacked by the Israeli air force earlier this month. And in June, two Israeli reporters visited Lebanon and filed reports about life in Beirut and south Lebanon.

While it would be great to have more stories in the Israeli press about the complexities of the neighborhood, those published so far haven't produced much that isn't widely available in the international press. At best they have a drive-by "Gee, we're not in Kansas anymore," quality, and at worst they are boring. Ron Ben-Yishai's visit to an agricultural research center in eastern Syria to see if they were making nukes was predictably anti-climactic. "From a distance, we could see some pits that looked like part of a mine or a quarry. But it was hard to identify exactly what was being done there."

The consequence of these fly-by-night reporting trips is that it becomes harder for other foreign journalists to work in these countries. There has been a palpable clampdown on the foreign press in Lebanon ever since the Israeli reporters pulled their stunt. It's a lot more complicated to get access to Hizballah, or to visit southern Lebanon, and the sense of humor failure is such that my TIME colleague Nick Blanford got detained a few weeks ago by Hizballah and the Lebanese authorities on suspicion of being an Israeli spy. It remains to be seen what will happen in Syria, which was a much more difficult press environment than Lebanon even before this.

But there's at least one good reason for Israelis to use their second passports to cross forbidden boundaries: brotherly love. That's what brought 32 year-old Israeli Daniel Sharon to Lebanon. The gay Israeli used his German passport to visit boyfriends in Lebanon until Sunday when he was arrested in Beirut.

Though Sharon -- who converted to Islam and seems to have something of an Arab fetish -- might be a diplomatic headache for the German embassy (which is trying to secure his release), there's a school of thought which holds that gay men -- who face discrimination all over the Middle East -- could be the key to brining peace to the region.

Here's the mission statement from a website called -- ahem -- Mideast Piece:
"Mideast Piece aims to unite people around the world through shared adoration of that most sacred and bronzed of species, the Middle Eastern man. Whether Muslim, Jewish, Christian or Druze, these desert men are more valuable than any Saudi oil well."

"As greater appreciation for the Middle Eastern male develops, we are confident the international community will intervene to preserve and protect this endangered species from destroying itself (and, on occasion, others). There are too many unattractive, pale people on Earth for the world not to make the entire Middle East a natural reserve of hot men, complete with admission fee, monorail, and – of course – petting zoos."

--Andrew Lee Butters/Beirut