الاحتلال الاسرائيلي يعدم الصحافيين الفلسطينيين وسط تعتيم إعلامي
التاريخ: 
13/10/2024
المؤلف: 

On Oct. 12, 2024, Israel committed another massacre in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza. The few reports about the incursion came from Arab channels or social media posts. The clearest messages available were posts by remaining journalists like Anas al-Sharif and Hossam Shbat saying their goodbyes in case they’re martyred. Jabalia is being turned into an extermination camp, where Israeli soldiers, once again, committed atrocities against Palestinian residents and displaced families who have been living a genocide for a year, starving, with no access to medical care. The media blackout — because Israel has killed journalists and barred foreign reporters from entering the Strip, and U.S. media deliberately and repeatedly chooses to ignore — made it difficult to learn anything about the strikes and the ground incursion.

On Oct. 12, 2023, Palestine Square published a news brief outlining Israel’s assault on journalists, and the long history of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) deliberately bombing media offices and assassinating Palestinian journalists. When the brief was published, one year ago, nine journalists had been assassinated by the Israeli Occupation. Today, 176 have been martyred in Gaza, at least five in Lebanon, and one in Syria. Israeli officers have also called journalists, harassing them and threatening their families if they did not stop reporting. 

To put this in perspective, the global death toll for journalists in 2022 was 67, which was considered deadly by the CPJ compared to the previous year. The toll has tripled in Gaza alone this last year. 

The most recent carnage was televised. Al Jazeera’s lens filmed the moment an Israeli sniper shot Fadi al-Wahidi, 25, in the neck. He lay still on the pavement, alive, but paralyzed for life. The sniper then shot Al-Aqsa TV cameraman Mohammed al-Tanani, killing him. Tamer Labad, a reporter for the same channel, was also shot and is in critical condition. An IOF drone, a quadcopter, also targeted the journalists. All three journalists were in Jabalia, in the north of Gaza, reporting on foot, details of the Israeli invasion of the refugee camp. 

In recent days, Israel once again ordered those who remained in the north to “evacuate” to the south via so-called “safe routes.” But Palestinians attempting to follow the evacuation order came under heavy fire by Israeli soldiers, resulting in deaths and injuries. Since last October, Israel has killed Palestinians as they fled to the so-called safe zones, walking through humanitarian corridors-turned-graveyards, holding white flags. 

On Oct. 7 (of this year), another Al Jazeera journalist, Ali Al-Attar, was critically injured by a piece of shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike on the tents of Palestinian refugees displaced near Deir al-Balah. Al-Attar is currently in a coma, but like other critically injured journalists, cannot receive adequate medical treatment due to the destruction of Gaza’s health care infrastructure by the Israeli military. Palestinian journalists have launched a campaign calling on the international community to facilitate an immediate evacuation of the Al Jazeera cameraman in an attempt to save his life. A similar campaign for al-Wahidi was also launched as his health deteriorated. 

On Oct. 9, Al Jazeera issued a statement, following the targeted attacks on Al Attar and Al Wahidi. The news agency — whose offices in Ramallah were shut down by the IOF in September, and whose journalists have been targeted and assassinated by the Israelis for decades — called on the international community to take “immediate action to ensure the safety of journalists and civilians in Gaza, and hold the Israeli Occupation Forces accountable for their repeated crimes against journalists.”

These targeted attacks on journalists follow the killing of 19-year-old journalist Hassan Hamad in Jabalia, North Gaza on Oct. 6. Days before Israel killed him, he received threatening texts and calls from an Israeli officer demanding he stop documenting what was happening in Gaza or he and his family would be targeted. His aunt, Itaf, has refused to evacuate, hoping to retrieve her nephew's scattered remains and give him a dignified burial that so many Palestinians in Gaza have been denied. 

This is a pattern, not an anomaly — the IOF targets, maims, assassinates, kills, threatens, decapitates, and silences Palestinian journalists. On July 31, Ismail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi, were targeted and killed by an IOF drone strike while reporting on the impact of Ismail Haniyeh’s assassination by Israel in Iran. The two journalists were outside of Haniyeh’s family home in Al Shati refugee camp and were following evacuation orders when they were targeted and assassinated. al-Ghoul and al-Rifi were just 27 years old. The Israeli airstrike decapitated both al-Ghoul and al-Rifi. 

The Zionist entity uses the categorization of “terrorists” to justify and carry out all kinds of atrocities, including the killing of journalists. Such claims go completely unchallenged in Western media reports. The 176 journalists in blue helmets and press vests armed with cameras, microphones, and notepads, do not pose any danger to the Israeli and American tanks, soldiers, warplanes, and 2,000-pound bombs, except, perhaps, the danger of exposing the truth. 

Misdirecting the media and covering up atrocities is a strategy long used by Israel. In 2022, Israel tried to blame their assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh on alleged Palestinian gunmen — who were not in the area. Even when ballistic evidence proved this claim was physically impossible, no one was ever held accountable. 

When the FBI finally opened a probe into the killing of Abu Akleh, the White House staff cowered, claiming they had no idea about the investigation. Repeated pleas by civil society organizations and members of Abu Akleh’s family to Antony Blinken went unheard. Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered in front of the world as Israel lied, the media justified said lies, and the American establishment defended these lies. When the truth was indisputable, enough time had passed for public pressure to wane. Officials resorted to excuses and condolences without acting to hold anyone accountable. 

When the Israeli military raided Al Jazeera’s offices in Ramallah, soldiers were seen tearing down a large banner commemorating Shireen Abu Akleh. Even in death, her story, and the stories she told, were seen as a threat. 

Ismail al-Ghoul’s coverage of the atrocities committed by the IOF at al-Shifa Hospital forced the world to see the Palestinians massacred and maimed by the IOF, who were attacked while seeking refuge in the hospital. In August, the Committee to Protect Journalists denounced Israel’s smear campaign against Palestinian journalists killed by the IOF: the victims were posthumously labeled as “terrorists” — a racist label that gives the Israeli regime carte blanche in Western circles to assassinate journalists with impunity. 

On Jan. 7, Wael Dahdouh’s son, Hamza Dahdouh, was assassinated by the IOF alongside journalist Mustafa Thuraya and their driver, Qusai Salem. They were targeted by an airstrike after reporting on the massacre of the Abu al-Naja family home the day before. The IOF falsely claimed they were targeting a “terrorist” operating an aircraft that threatened Israeli soldiers, even though the men were not even operating their drone — which was being used to capture footage — during the time of the attack. The IOF is now backpedaling on this accusation — made to deceive the public — while still insisting that the group of journalists posed a threat. 

The senior Al Dahdouh — bureau chief for Al Jazeera in Gaza — was targeted by the IOF early into the war on Gaza. Before his son Hamza was assassinated, Al Dahdouh’s wife, two children, and grandchild were killed after Israel targeted his home with an airstrike on Oct. 25. Dahdouh learned about the assassination of his family while reporting live on Al Jazeera. On Jan. 17, Dahdouh evacuated Gaza due to a critical injury sustained by an airstrike in December of 2023. 

That month, the Gaza bureau chief was targeted in an Israeli airstrike along with Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Dakka. Dahdouh was rescued and taken to a hospital to treat his wounds. In the footage, Dahdouh could be heard from a stretcher asking for someone to get to Abu Dakka. Abu Dakka, on the other hand, was trapped. As medics attempted to reach him, they were attacked by the IOF. For hours, Abu Dakka’s colleagues did everything in their power to reach Israeli officials to grant special permission to retrieve Abu Dakka and get him the medical care he desperately needed. By the time permission had been granted, over five hours had passed, and Abu Dakka had bled to death. 

In the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza, videos regularly circulated displaying the destruction of Gaza caused by Israeli airstrikes. But those videos have become sparse. Hamza Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya are just a few of the Palestinian journalists targeted for using drones to capture aerial footage of Gaza. 

Before he evacuated Gaza in January, photojournalist Motaz Azaiza shared a video reporting that he would no longer be able to offer drone shots of the destruction created by Israeli airstrikes — all of the drone operators he worked with had been killed by the Israelis, or their equipment had been destroyed. Drone footage captures the magnitude of Israeli carpet-bombing in a way that a close-up does not. 

On Feb. 15, UNRWA published a photo on their Instagram page taken by photojournalist Abdallah El Hajj. The image showed the sheer devastation of Israel’s relentless bombing campaign in Gaza, five months into the genocide. The entire stretch of coastline was a gray shell of its former self. A few weeks after the photo went viral, El Hajj was targeted in an Israeli airstrike that blew off his legs. 

Israel bombed Gaza for eleven days straight in May 2021. During the bombardment, the IOF targeted the three large towers in Gaza, which housed media offices and residential apartments. Youmna ElSayed, a Palestinian journalist from Gaza, survived the Israeli bombing, running down the stairs of the eleven-story building, while carrying two children trying to evacuate. The airstrikes were consistent with Israel’s pattern of targeting journalists and their media faces at the beginning of any assault. 

In a recent interview with Democracy Now, ElSayed made it clear that Israel’s assault on Palestinian journalists ripples into repression for all journalists: 

“We have always spoken for many years about the suppression and oppression and violations and aggression of the Israeli army toward Palestinian journalists,” she said. “But this year or last year, this suppression and oppression and fight against the freedom of the press have not only been against the Palestinian journalists… It has reached and affected all international journalists, as well, because Israel has banned them from entering the Gaza Strip. And no matter how [many] letters they have issued, no matter what kind of pressure they have tried to put on the Israeli government to allow them to enter the Gaza Strip to do their legitimate responsibility and work, they were banned. They were declined. So, that oppression, which we have been speaking about for years, has also affected the international journalists today.”

On Oct. 13, 2023, a group of seven journalists in southern Lebanon were targeted and struck by Israeli tanks. The Israeli strike killed Issam Abdallah, a Lebanese journalist with Reuters while injuring Christina Assi, a photojournalist with AFP who lost her right leg at the kneecap. The group of journalists were wearing helmets and flak jackets identifying them as press. The rest of the team were injured by shrapnel that was lodged into large swathes of their bodies. 

The Zionist onslaught has persisted through internet and media blackouts, suffocating means of communication in the Strip. Israel’s ban on outside media means that Palestinian journalists are the only voices reporting on the realities of this genocide. Without their work, there would be no counternarrative to Israeli grotesque disinformation. During the genocide, Israel cut fuel, food, water, medicine, and other basic necessities of life. When they did allow a few aid trucks through, they committed massacres, killing and running over starving Palestinians. Despite such conditions, Gaza’s journalists found ways to tell the stories of the people and report on the genocide. 

On Dec. 7, 2023, one day after Israel assassinated Dr. Refaat Alareer, journalist Mohammed Mhawish was buried alive in rubble after his family’s home was targeted by an Israeli airstrike. Mhawish chronicled the harrowing ordeal of having the building collapse atop his entire family, the thick dust and blood they were covered in. Their miraculous survival was tainted by the continuous carnage they faced when they were finally pulled out of the rubble. Months later, what still haunts Mhawish is the killing of his friend and teacher, Refaat Alareer, a fierce champion of Palestinian truth tellers. 

Palestinian journalists have also been subjected to detention and torture by the IOF, including instances of sexual violence. In December of 2023, Israeli soldiers rounded up groups of men and boys in Northern Gaza as they sought shelter at a UNRWA school. They were stripped, and then handed rifles to stage a photo-op, manufacturing the IOF’s lie that they had detained “combatants.” The images went viral and the allegations were quickly debunked. Among these men was the journalist Diaa Al-Kahlout, whose brutal torture was witnessed by a released detainee. When other detained Palestinians were interrogated by Israeli soldiers, they asked about Al-Kahlout and his journalistic work. 

In March, Mohammed Saber Arab — a Palestinian journalist and Al Araby correspondent — was detained at Al Shifa Hospital. In June, he recounted harrowing experiences of torture, rape, abuse, humiliation, and killing inflicted on Palestinians by Israeli soldiers being forcibly held in detention camps. Saber Arab was held at Sde Teiman, where the documented gang rape of a Palestinian man by 10 Israeli soldiers in August revealed Israel’s sadistic culture of sexual violence, a key part of the ongoing genocide and long history of rape and ethnic cleansing. 

The assassination of Palestinian journalists occurs in tandem with a mass censorship campaign unleashed by Zionists and their allies across the globe. While Zionist pundits peddle false stories, mainstream media manufactures consent for war crimes.

In June, the International Women’s Media Foundation rescinded the Courage in Journalism Award from Maha Hussaini, a Palestinian journalist in Gaza. Initially celebrated for her brave reporting, the IWMF chose to succumb to Zionist pressures following a digital smear campaign launched against Hussaini. Hussaini found out about the IWMF decision to rescind her award via social media; the foundation did not extend the courtesy of informing her. 

In August, a pro-Israel collective launched a campaign against the Emmys for the nomination of Bisan Owad, a 21-year-old Palestinian journalist and AJ+ correspondent, who has been documenting the genocide from Gaza.

Bisan and AJ+ ultimately won the award… but the hysteria that preceded it revealed that Zionism and its proponents have no limits when it comes to annihilating the truth, and all those who seek it and try to share it with the world. 

مهرجان العودة السينمائي الدولي، مدينة  خان يونس، آب/ أغسطس 2024، صفحة مهرجان العودة الدولي السينمائي على منصة فيسبوك
فاطمة الزهراء سحويل
(نازحون من جباليا شمال غزة، يسيرون عبر طريق صلاح الدين الرئيسي باتجاه مدينة غزة في 23 تشرين الأول/أكتوبر 2024) (تصوير AFP، عبر Getty Images)
يسري الغول
Wild flowers of Palestine. Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum L). 1900 (Photo by: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images). Image altered.
لورا البسط