موجز: إسرائيل تغتال وتعتدي على الصحفيين في غزة

Since the Israeli regime’s military response to “Operation al-Aqsa Flood” by Hamas, at least nine journalists have been killed. According to Roya News, the journalists are: Salam Mema, Ibrahim Lafi, Mohammad Jarghoun, Mohammad al-Salehi, Asaad Shamlakh, Saeed al-Taweel, Mohammad Rezq Sobh, and Hisham al-Nawajha, and most recently, Mohammad Fayez Yousef Abu Matar. Many more are injured or missing.

The slaughter of journalists is taking place during an unprecedented bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces, where a policy of destruction over precision is being carried out. This includes the use of white phosphorus bombs, an illegal chemical weapon first used by the Israeli military against Palestinians in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in 2008–9. Gaza, a densely populated strip of land, has been subject to Israel’s most brutal military tactics. A population of 2.2 million people, over half of whom are children, are subjected to Israel’s murderous policies time and time again, and the sixteen-year blockade has created an unending humanitarian and health crisis, with a shortened life expectancy for the average Palestinian in Gaza because they are prevented from accessing basic needs.

The conditions in Gaza must be understood in order to contextualize the environment in which journalists based in the concentration camp are working in. Currently, Gaza is faced with a power blackout as a result of the current Israeli incursion, which will result in even more preventable deaths of Palestinians due to hospital shutdowns. Furthermore, Israeli forces will be able to work under the cover of darkness since this also means Internet service may not be available and this will prevent journalists from reporting on what is happening on the ground.

The manufactured blackout that Palestinians are facing in Gaza will make it impossible for journalists to report and this will allow the Israeli military to dominate the narrative in the mainstream media as well as hide the realities of the massacre. Israel’s media domination has already been occurring in the last few days as the proliferation of unsubstantiated reporting has gone largely unchecked and without consequence—a reminder that the role of the media and journalists during war time is crucial.

Still, journalists like Mohammed R. Mhawish and Maha Hussaini are finding ways to report in these inhumane conditions, and managing to get first-hand accounts of the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza into the mainstream media. Meanwhile, a few miles north of Gaza, in the city of Ashkelon, journalists are being harassed, attacked, and humiliated by Israeli police and soldiers, for doing their job. Sky News Arabia correspondent, Firas Lutfi, described being assaulted by Israeli police who aimed guns at his head, forced him to strip and remove his clothing, took his team’s phones, damaged their equipment, and then made them leave the area they had been reporting from under police escort.

Israel, enabled by the US and its allies, has been executing and critically injuring journalists indiscriminately. This has allowed the occupation forces to control the mainstream narrative and perpetuate racist and harmful images of Palestinians, rooted in Islamophobic tropes that justifies their subjugation and murder by the apartheid state. The killing of journalists occurs in an Israeli censorship apparatus that spans the globe. From Meta censoring pro-Palestinian activists and people by deleting journalists’ accounts, to various social media platforms taking down content at the behest of Israeli cyber security authorities. It is within this atmosphere that narratives are being pushed into the mainstream media that embolden pro-Israeli demonstrators to shout “death to Arabs” on live streams, a teacher to attack a student in Germany for carrying a Palestinian flag, and talks of banning and criminalizing the Palestinian flag in the UK. It is within this context that Palestinian resistance movements are deliberately misinterpreted and disregarded as legitimate pursuits for justice and self-determination in the face of the ongoing brutal, apartheid, and military occupation of Palestine.

Extrajudicial executions of Palestinian journalists are commonplace under Israeli rule. Palestinian journalists are killed, incarcerated, and forced to report under horrendous conditions, which include media blackouts, where they are among their own family, anticipating being killed as they hear bombs reduce apartment buildings to rubble, burying other families nearby. In May 2022, Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was assassinated by an Israeli soldier while reporting on an Israeli raid of the Jenin refugee camp, where the second intifada began in 2002. To this day, Israel has refused to do a complete investigation of her killing, and even initially blamed Palestinian resistance fighters for her death (another strategy used by the Israeli regime). Abu Akleh holds American citizenship, but even the US government has not done its due diligence in bringing her killer to justice. Furthermore, Israeli forces did not allow mourners to bury her in peace. They attacked Abu Akleh’s funeral procession a few weeks after her murder, highlighting the cruelty of Israeli violence against Palestinians. Even in death, Palestinians are dehumanized and unprotected.

A little over a year after Abu Akleh’s murder, the Committee to Protect Journalists published a report on May 9, 2023, titled: Deadly Pattern: 20 Journalists Died by Israeli Military Fire in 22 Years. No One Has Been Held Accountable. The report examines the extrajudicial killings of journalists by the Israeli regime. Their main findings are:

• The Israeli military discounts evidence and witness claims to push narratives that have been disproven by journalists and researchers;
• Israeli forces fail to respect press insignia and seemingly target journalists who are clearly recognizable by their helmets and vests as members of the press;
• Israeli officials respond by pushing false narratives, journalists are accused of terrorism to deny them protection and justify killing them;
• Israel opens probes into the killings of journalists when there is international pressure because victims are citizens of other countries, but probes often amount to nothing close to justice and Israeli officials clear soldiers of wrongdoing even before an investigation is complete;
• killings and harassment of journalists by Israeli authorities threatens independent reporting because journalists fear for their lives;
• families of murdered journalists have little to no recourse inside the State of Israel and are even forced to pay thousands of dollars in court fees when judges reject their claims for justice.

According to the CPJ, at least 20 journalists have been killed by Israeli soldiers in the past twenty years, but some estimate that the number is much higher. The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedom, also known as MADA, writes that the additional deaths of journalists in Gaza, raises “the number of journalist martyrs since the year 2000 to 53 journalists.”

Even though journalists are meant to be protected and considered civilians, their status marked by their blue vests and helmets, the Israeli regime has repeatedly been investigated for its targeting and killing of journalists. The targeted killings of Palestinian journalists prevent accurate reporting from being shared with the world. In the last year, Palestinian journalists have been increasingly targeted by Israeli authorities.