Patrick Martin is a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 journalist who is the Jerusalem-based Middle East bureau chief for The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...

, a national newspaper.

Martin's first visit to the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

 occurred in 1971, when he motorcycled across the entirety of North Africa

North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...

. For much of the 1980s, he was the Middle East correspondent for the Globe and Mail. He covered the 1982 Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

i invasion of Lebanon

Lebanon

Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

, and the return of Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat

Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini , popularly known as Yasser Arafat or by his kunya Abu Ammar , was a Palestinian leader and a Laureate of the Nobel Prize. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization , President of the Palestinian National Authority...

 to the Gaza Strip

Gaza Strip

thumb|Gaza city skylineThe Gaza Strip lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about long, and between 6 and 12 kilometres wide, with a total area of...

.

Until 2008, he was Comment editor for The Globe and Mail. During this time, Martin appeared regularly on the foreign-affairs panel on TVOntario

TVOntario

TVOntario, often referred to only as TVO , is a publicly funded, educational English-language television station and media organization in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is operated by the Ontario Educational Communications Authority, a Crown corporation owned by the Government of Ontario...

's Studio 2

Studio 2

Studio 2 was a daily current affairs newsmagazine on TVOntario in Ontario, Canada. The show won several Gemini Awards, and was hosted by Steve Paikin and Paula Todd , and first aired in 1994. TVOntario announced the program's termination on June 29, 2006...

and its successor program The Agenda

The Agenda

The Agenda with Steve Paikin is the flagship current affairs program of TVOntario, Ontario’s public broadcaster. The show practises what anchor and senior editor Steve Paikin calls "long-form" journalism. Each hour-long program tackles no more than two topics, and often only one...

 and made frequent reporting trips to Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

 and other conflict zones. In 2008, he returned to the Middle East

Fellow columnist Margaret Wente

Margaret Wente

Margaret Wente is a columnist for Canada's largest national daily newspaper, The Globe and Mail and a director of the Energy Probe Research Foundation. She has received the National Newspaper Award for column-writing twice....

 revealed in a June 20, 2007 column that Martin had been frequently subjected to interrogations while travelling in the U.S. after 9/11, because the name "Patrick Martin" appeared on the American No Fly List

No Fly List

The No Fly List is a list, created and maintained by the United States government's Terrorist Screening Center , of people who are not permitted to board a commercial aircraft for travel in or out of the United States. The list has also been used to divert away from U.S. airspace aircraft not...

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