“Palestinian filmmaker Ismail Abu Hatab’s death in an Israeli strike on Al-Baqa Café is yet another grim reminder of the unfettered violence facing Gazan journalists, with more than 180 journalists  and media workers killed in the war so far,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “The world must not ignore these deliberate assaults, and the targeting of the popular café must be independently investigated.”

Freelance photographer Majdi Fathi, who was in the area during the attack, told CPJ that an Israeli warplane struck the café around 2:48 p.m. He added that the café was popular gathering place for both journalists and local residents in Gaza due to its internet access.

The blast killed Abu Hatab, more than 20 other civilians inside, and injured Abusultan, who was struck by shrapnel in the chest and head Fathi said. Her condition is unknown.

Hatab, founder of the Clight TV production company, worked with a range of media outlets and organized photo exhibitions highlighting life in Gaza. On November 2, 2023, he was seriously injured in an Israeli airstrike that targeted his office on the 16th floor of Al-Ghifari Tower in Gaza City.

Hatab’s death adds to a growing toll of at least 185 other killings, the vast majority of those Palestinian, documented by CPJ since the start of the Israel-Gaza war. In addition to those killed, 114 journalists have been reported injured. 

CPJ emailed the Israeli Defense Forces’ North America Media Desk to ask whether the journalists were targeted but did not immediately receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

On Saturday local time, the US announced that it had launched airstrikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran. This marks the first time the US has officially intervened militarily in this round of the Iran-Israel conflict, drawing widespread shock from the international community. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on social media that the move was “a dangerous escalation in a region already on the edge – and a direct threat to international peace and security.” China’s Foreign Ministry also strongly condemned the US attacks on Iran. US action, which seriously violates the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law, not only heightens tensions in the Middle East but also risks triggering a wider crisis.

Attacking nuclear facilities is extremely dangerous. Due to their unique nature, damage to such sites could lead to severe nuclear leaks, potentially resulting in humanitarian disasters and posing grave risks to regional safety. The tragic past lessons of the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear accidents already showed that the consequences of nuclear leaks don’t pose a threat to a single country – they impact neighboring nations and the global security environment.

By using “bunker-buster” bombs to “accomplish what Israel could not,” the US has deliberately escalated the level of weaponry used, pouring fuel on the flames of war and pushing the Iran-Israel conflict closer toward an uncontrollable state.

What the US bombs have impacted is the foundation of the international security order. By attacking nuclear facilities under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Washington has set a dangerous precedent. This action, in essence, bypasses both the UN Security Council and the IAEA framework, attempting to unilaterally “resolve” the Iranian nuclear issue through force. This is a serious violation of the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law, as well as a rejection of the principled position of the international community, including China and the European Union, which has dealt with the Iranian nuclear issue through multilateral negotiations for many years. Washington’s boast of close cooperation with Israel “as a team” confirms its nature of dragging its ally against international morality and multilateralism.

For Iran, the strike is a blatant provocation. After responding that it “reserves all options to defend its sovereignty, interests and people,” Tehran on Sunday launched the powerful Kheibar Shekan missile targeting Israel for the first time. According to media reports, Ismail Kowsari, a member of the National Security Commission of the Parliament in Iran, said the country’s parliament voted to approve the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council is expected to weigh in and make a final decision on the matter. Iran is located in the choke point of the Strait of Hormuz, which around one-fifth of the world’s total oil and gas consumption transits through. Once this channel is blocked by the war, international oil prices are bound to fluctuate dramatically, while global shipping security and economic stability will face serious challenges.

The US military’s “direct involvement” has further complicated and destabilized the Middle East situation, drawing more countries and innocent civilians into the conflict and forcing them to face a loss. Even the Associated Press called the airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities a “perilous decision,” while the New York Times warned that US military action against Iran would “bring risks at every turn.” What is also receiving a lot of attention is that due to US strike on Iran, Yemen’s Houthis announced it would resume attacks on US ships in the Red Sea. The region is already entangled in a complex web of sectarian divisions, proxy wars and external interventions. The facts show that US involvement is causing the Iran-Israel conflict to spill over. Within just one day, international investors rushed to sell off risk assets, and discussions of a “sixth Middle East war” surged across media platforms, reflecting the global community’s growing anxiety over the region’s spiraling instability.

China has consistently opposed the threat and abuse of using force. It advocates resolving crises through political and diplomatic means. In a recent phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward a “four-point proposal” regarding the Middle East situation: promoting a cease-fire and ending the hostilities is an urgent priority; ensuring the safety of civilians is of paramount importance; opening dialogue and negotiation is the fundamental way forward; and efforts by the international community to promote peace are indispensable. This proposal reflects China’s long-standing and farsighted security vision. History in the Middle East has repeatedly shown that external military intervention never brings peace – it only deepens regional hatred and trauma. The false logic behind US coercion by force runs counter to peace. Hopefully, the parties involved, especially Israel, will implement an immediate cease-fire, ensure the safety of civilians and open dialogue and negotiation to restore peace and stability in the region.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Global Times.

“These are not isolated incidents, but systematic attacks by Israel on the media. This disturbing and deliberate pattern must end,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “The killing of journalists in a hospital courtyard on the holy day of Yawm Al-Arafah — preceding Eid al-Adha — underscores the relentless dangers facing the media in Gaza.”

The drone strike on Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital courtyard killed correspondent Suleiman Hajjaj and camera operator Ismail Baddah of Palestine Today TV, a channel affiliated with the Islamic Jihad militant group, and Samir al-Rifai, an administrator for the local, privately owned Shams News Agency.

The Israel Defense Forces said on Telegram that they had “precisely struck an Islamic Jihad terrorist who was operating in a command and control center in the yard of the Al-Ahli Hospital.”

Palestine Today TV described the killings as a “double war crime” for “direct targeting” its journalists and a hospital, both protected under international law.

Palestine Today TV correspondent Emad Daloul was also injured, as well as three journalists with Qatari-funded Al-Araby TV: reporter Islam Badr and camera operators Imam Badr and Ahmed Qulaja.

“The strike happened at around 10:20 a.m. with a single missile fired by an Israeli drone directly at a group of journalists who were sitting in the courtyard, working on their laptops,” Islam Badr, who started filming minutes after his right leg was hit, told CPJ.

“Qulaja was critically injured by shrapnel,” added Islam Badr, brother to Imam Badr.

Al-Mayadeen TV journalist Akram Daloul, a relative of injured Emad Daloul, told CPJ that the correspondent’s condition was serious because he had previously undergone a kidney transplant.

CPJ emailed the Israel Defense Forces’ North America Media Desk to ask if the military was aware of the presence of journalists in the area and if they were deliberately targeted but did not immediately receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“Turkish authorities in Ankara must take the threats made against journalist İsmail Arı and his relatives seriously and take decisive steps to better ensure their safety,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “The authorities should swiftly and comprehensively investigate the threats and hold those responsible to account, so all journalists in Turkey can safely do their jobs.”

Arı, based in the capital Ankara, said in a post on X that he filed a criminal complaint on May 16 notifying authorities that he was insulted, threatened and sent a list of his relatives via messaging app by an unknown foreign number earlier in the day, and at least one of his relatives was threatened in a phone call, according to the complaint reviewed CPJ.

Arı told CPJ via messaging app on Monday that the police provided a “caution protection” number for him to call and report incidents for 90 days. The journalist also contacted the Interior Ministry about the matter but did not receive a reply as of Monday evening.

Arı was previously targeted with death threats in late 2023 in connection with his reporting on an Islamist group in southern Turkey.

CPJ’s emailed request for comment to Turkey’s Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, did not receive a reply. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

In the early hours of May 2, the quiet of night was shattered aboard the Conscience, a civilian vessel anchored in international waters, 17 kilometers off the coast of Malta. Aboard were 18 crew members and passengers, jolted from sleep by the sound of two explosions. Flames and smoke filled the air. The ship had just been struck—by what the crew members say were drone attacks.

The very day of the attack, more passengers from 21 countries were waiting in Malta to be ferried out to join the Conscience. Among those slated to join the ship were world-renowned environmentalist Greta Thunberg, retired U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright, and longtime CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry.

The Conscience is part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, a network of international activists that has been challenging Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza since 2008.

The group alleges that the attack came from Israel—an allegation bolstered by a CNN investigation. According to CNN, flight-tracking data from ADS-B Exchange showed that an Israeli Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft departed from Israel early Thursday afternoon and flew at low altitude over eastern Malta for an extended period. While the Hercules did not land, its path brought it in proximity to the area where the Conscience was later attacked. The plane returned to Israel approximately seven hours later. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to comment on the flight data.

The ship suffered significant damage, but fortunately, no one was hurt. That was not the case when the Freedom Flotilla was attacked in 2010. This May 2 attack comes just weeks before the 15th anniversary of the infamous raid on the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish ship that led a previous flotilla to Gaza in 2010. On May 31 of that year, Israeli naval commandos stormed the ship in international waters, killing ten people and injuring dozens. The Mavi Marmara had been carrying over 500 activists and humanitarian supplies. That attack drew condemnation from around the world and calls for an international investigation—calls that Israel dismissed.

One of this year’s flotilla organizers, Ismail Behesti, is the son of a man killed in the 2010 raid. In videos circulating after the recent strike, Behesti is seen walking through the damaged interior of the Conscience, his voice resolute as he condemns what he believes was another Israeli act of aggression against civilians on a humanitarian mission.

“People are asking how Israel can get away with attacking a civilian ship in international waters,” said Tighe Barry, speaking from the port in Malta. “But since October 8, 2024, Israel has shown complete disregard for international law—from bombing civilian neighborhoods to using starvation as a weapon by blocking food from entering Gaza. This is just one more example of its impunity.”

“Where is the outrage?” Barry continued. “The U.S. condemns the Houthis for stopping ships carrying weapons to Israel—and bombs Yemen mercilessly for it. But will they condemn Israel for attacking a peaceful ship on a humanitarian mission to Gaza?”

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition and activist groups such as CODEPINK are calling on governments and international bodies to speak out and take action.

The Conscience was carrying no weapons. It posed no threat. Its only crime was daring to challenge a brutal siege and slaughter that the UN itself has condemned as illegal and inhumane. That’s the real threat Israel fears—not the ship itself, but the global solidarity it represents.

So, will the world speak up about Israel’s latest outrage? Or will this, too, be quietly buried beneath the waves?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin.

The government, controlled by Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), launched a crackdown against CHP-controlled Istanbul municipalities, including two district municipality mayors and dozens of other politicians and municipality personnel, citing accusations of corruption. But authorities have since arrested thousands of protesters and have moved aggressively to tamp down media coverage of the demonstrations.

Authorities have raided the homes of at least nine journalists, detaining them along with at least four other journalists arrested while covering the protests, while hurting numerous others. Media regulators have also imposed suspensions and fines on pro-opposition broadcasters and threatened to cancel the licenses of TV channels covering the protests.

While many of the journalists arrested in the initial sweep have been released, press freedom advocates are concerned that authorities are deliberately targeting them to suppress coverage, as the government has done during times of civil unrest or protests in recent decades.

Since March 19, CPJ has documented the following press freedom violations:

Detentions

• On March 19, police detained freelance reporter and TV commentator İsmail Saymaz at his house in Istanbul. Saymaz, who has worked for pro-opposition outlets such as Halk TV and Sözcü, was put under house arrest pending investigation on March 21 for “assisting an attempt to overthrow the government” based on his interviews from years ago.
• On March 23, police detained Zişan Gür, a reporter for the leftist news website Sendika, from the field in Istanbul. He was released on March 27.
• On March 24, police detained five photojournalists who had covered the protests during raids on their homes in Istanbul: Yasin Akgül of Agence France-Presse (AFP), Ali Onur Tosun of NOW Haber, as well as freelancers Bülent Kılıç, Zeynep Kuray, and Hayri Tunç. An Istanbul court arrested the five for “violating the law on gatherings and demonstrations” on March 25, but they were released the following day. Prosecutors had argued that they were actually protesters, citing select police camera shots of them as evidence.
• On March 24, police detained freelance photojournalist Murat Kocabaş at his house in in the western city of Izmir. He was released on March 27.
• On March 25, police detained freelancer Yağız Barut as he was covering the protests in Izmir. He was released on March 27.
• On March 27, authorities arrested Kaj Joakim Medin, a Swedish reporter for newspaper Dagens ETC who was traveling to Istanbul to follow the protests, upon his arrival at the Istanbul airport. He was accused of insulting Erdoğan and of being a member of a terrorist organization, in relation to a 2023 investigation.
• On March 28, police detained Nisa Sude Demirel, a reporter with the leftist daily Evrensel, and Elif Bayburt, a reporter with leftist outlet ETHA, at their houses for covering the Istanbul protests. They were both released the following day.

Turkey has a history of imprisoning journalists, having been ranked among the top 10 worst jailers of journalists from 2012 to 2023, and the recent drop in number of journalists behind bars may be misleading as an indicator on its own.

Deportation

• On March 27, Istanbul police detained BBC correspondent Mark Lowen and deported him on a flight to London for covering the protests.

Injuries

• From March 21 to 23, at least 14 journalists were injured after being beaten or shot with rubber bullets by Istanbul police, while one reporter was assaulted by the protesters, according to the local media freedom group MLSA. Police also damaged journalists’ equipment.

Censorship

• Ebubekir Şahin, the government-appointed chair of the media regulator RTÜK, has threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of Turkish TV channels covering the protests and opposition rallies.
• On March 27, RTÜK imposed heavy penalties on multiple pro-opposition TV channels, though the sanctions didn’t immediately go into effect since they can be challenged in court. Sözcü TV would have to stop broadcasting for 10 days if its appeal is rejected.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

On March 19, police took Saymaz, a freelance journalist and TV commentator who formerly worked for pro-opposition critical outlets such as Halk TV and Sözcü, into custody in a raid on his home in Istanbul. A court placed him under house arrest on March 21 on the charge of “assisting an attempt to overthrow the government” during the 2013 nationwide protests.

“İsmail Saymaz is among the most well-known journalists in Turkey. Putting him under house arrest for attempting to overthrow the government 12 years ago can only be seen as an absurd attempt to prevent him from reporting,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Turkish media should be able to provide reporting and commentary without fear of judicial retaliation.

Authorities’ plans in 2023 to redevelop Istanbul’s Gezi Park, triggered civil unrest across Turkey, which led to several people being killed and thousands injured during protests.

Saymaz’s lawyer said the journalist was questioned while in custody about his journalistic activity, contacts, and social media activity while reporting on the Gezi protests, including his communication with some of those convicted on charges of organizing the unrest, such as businessman Osman Kavala, lawyer Can Atalay, film producer Çiğdem Mater, and architect Mücella Yapıcı

Saymaz won an award for his reporting on the death of 19-year-old protester Ali Ismail Korkmaz in Gezi Park.

CPJ’s email to Istanbul’s chief prosecutor requesting comment did not receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“The aggressive treatment meted out to journalists by Erbil security forces while covering a peaceful protest is deeply concerning,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna, in New York. “We urge Iraqi Kurdistan authorities not to target journalists during protests, which has been a recurring issue.”

Kurdistan has been in a financial crisis since the federal government began cutting funding to the region after it started exporting oil independently in 2014. In 2024, the Federal Supreme Court ordered Baghdad to pay Kurdistan’s civil servants directly but ongoing disagreements between the two governments mean their salaries continue to be delayed and unpaid.

Since the end of Kurdistan’s civil war in 1998, the semi-autonomous region has been divided between the dominant Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Erbil and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Sulaymaniyah. While the KDP has discouraged the teachers’ protests, the PUK has sometimes supported them, including through affiliated media outlets.

At the February 9 protest, a crowd of teachers from Sulaymaniyah tried to reach Erbil, the capital, and were stopped at Degala checkpoint, where CPJ recorded the following attacks:

• Pro-opposition New Generation Movement NRT TV camera operator Ali Abdulhadi and reporter Shiraz Abdullah were stopped from filming by about seven armed security officers, known in Kurdish as Asayish, according to a video posted by the outlet.

“One of them chambered a round [into his gun]. I tried to leave but one of them attempted to strike me with the butt of a rifle, hitting only my finger. Another grabbed my camera and took it,” Abdulhadi told CPJ.

• Diplomatic’s reporter Zhilya Ali collapsed from teargas, a video posted by the privately owned digital outlet showed.

“There are still wounds on my face from when I fell,” she told CPJ, adding that she was taken to hospital and given oxygen.

• An ambulance took pro-PUK digital outlet Zhyan Media’s reporter Mardin Mohammed and camera operator Mohammed Mariwan to a hospital in Koya after they were teargassed.

“I couldn’t see anything and was struggling to breathe. My cameraman and I lost consciousness for three hours,” Mariwan told CPJ.

• Pro-PUK satellite channel Kurdsat News reporters Gaylan Sabir and Amir Mohammed and camera operators Sirwan Sadiq and Hemn Mohammed were teargassed and their equipment was confiscated, the outlet said.

• Privately owned Westga News said five staff — reporters Omer Ahmed, Shahin Fuad, and Amir Hassan, and camera operators Zanyar Mariwan and Ahmed Shakhawan — were attacked and teargassed. Ahmed told CPJ that a security officer grabbed a camera while they were broadcasting, while Fuad said another camera, microphone, and a livestreaming encoder were also taken and not returned.

• Pro-PUK Slemani News Network reporter Kochar Hamza was carried to safety by protesters after she collapsed due to tear gas, a video by the digital outlet showed. She told CPJ that she and her camera operator Sivar Baban were treated at hospitals twice.

“My face is still swollen, and I feel dizzy,” she told CPJ.

• A team from Payam TV, a pro-opposition Kurdistan Justice Group satellite channel, required treatment for teargas exposure.

“We were placed on oxygen and prescribed medication,” reporter Ramyar Osman told CPJ, adding that camera operator Sayed Yasser was hit in the knee by a rubber bullet.

• Madah Jamal, a reporter with the pro-opposition Kurdistan Islamic Union Speda TV satellite channel, told CPJ that he was also teargassed.

• Pro-PUK digital outlet Xendan’s reporter Shahen Wahab told CPJ that she and camera operator Garmian Omar suffered asthma attacks due to the teargas.

• Pro-PUK satellite channel Gali Kurdistan’s reporter Karwan Nazim told CPJ that he had to stop reporting because he couldn’t breathe and asked his office to send additional staff.

“I had an allergic reaction and my face turned red. I had to go to the hospital,” he said.

Raided and arrested

Abdulwahab Ahmed, head of the Erbil office of the pro-opposition Gorran Movement KNN TV, told CPJ that two unplated vehicles carrying Asayish officers followed KNN TV’s vehicle to the office at around 1:30 p.m., after reporters Pasha Sangar and Mohammed KakaAhmed and camera operator Halmat Ismail made a live broadcast showing the deployment of additional security forces by the United Nations compound, which was the protesters’ intended destination.

“They identified themselves as Asayish forces, forcibly took our mobile phones, and accused us of recording videos. They checked our social media accounts,” Sangar told CPJ.

KakaAhmed told CPJ, “They found a video I had taken near the U.N. compound on my phone, deleted it, and then returned our devices.”

In another incident that evening, Asayish forces arrested pro-PUK digital outlet Politic Press’s reporter Taman Rawandzi and camera operator Nabi Malik Faisal while they were live broadcasting about the protest and took them to Zerin station for several hours of questioning.

“They asked us to unlock our phones but we refused. Then they took our phones and connected them to a computer,” Rawandzi told CPJ, adding that his phone was now operating slowly and he intended to replace it.

“They told us not to cover such protests,” he said.

CPJ phoned Erbil’s Asayish spokesperson Ardalan Fatih but he declined to comment.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Journalists have been paying the highest price – with their lives – to provide the world some insight into the horrors that have been taking place in Gaza during this prolonged war, which has decimated a generation of Palestinian reporters and newsrooms,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg in New York. “We call on Egyptian, Palestinian, and Israeli authorities to immediately allow foreign journalists into Gaza, and on the international community to independently investigate the deliberate targeting of journalists that has been widely documented since October 2023.”

Since October 7, 2023, CPJ has documented at least 165 journalists and media workers killed, 49 journalists injured, two journalists missing, 75 journalists arrested, and multiple other violations of press freedom in Gaza and the neighboring region. 

To date, CPJ has determined that at least 11 journalists and two media workers were directly targeted by Israeli forces, which CPJ classifies as murder. A deliberate attack on civilians constitutes a war crime under international law. 

CPJ’s data shows that eight journalists were murdered in Gaza — Ayman Al Gedi, Fadi Hassouna, Faisal Abu Al Qumsan, Hamza Al Dahdouh, Ismail Al Ghoul, Mohammed Al-Ladaa, Mustafa Thuraya and Rami Al Refee — and threein Lebanon — Ghassan Najjar, Issam Abdallah, and Wissam Kassem. In addition, CPJ has classified two media workers as murdered: Mohammed Reda in Lebanon and Ibrahim Sheikh Ali in Gaza. 

CPJ is investigating about 20 other cases where there is evidence of deliberate targeting of journalists, their homes, and media outlets in Gaza during the war. 

When approached for comment by CPJ about the deliberate targeting of journalists, the Israel Defense Forces said that some were members of militant groups but provided either questionable or no evidence for those alleged links. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Israel has stepped up systematic attack on journalists and media infrastructure since the start of its northern Gaza campaign. Israeli strikes killed at least five journalists in October and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began a smear campaign against six Al Jazeera journalists reporting on the north. There are now almost no professional journalists left in the north to document what several international institutions have described as an ethnic cleansing campaign. Israel has not allowed international media independent access to Gaza in the 13 months since the war began.

Getting information about the impact of the war on journalists – and therefore a clear picture of the impact of the war itself – was already challenging when CPJ issued a report in May on the challenges of verification. Journalists interviewed by CPJ in late October and early November told CPJ that the continued attacks on the media – along with the food shortages, continual displacement, and communications blackouts experienced by all Gazans – placed severe constraints on coverage of the impact of Israel’s northern Gaza military offensive. The offensive began on October 5 by targeting the town of Jabalia and its refugee camp before spreading to all of northern Gaza in what the Israeli military said was a bid to stop militant Hamas fighters from regrouping.

 “Israel is accused of adopting a ‘starve or leave’ policy to force Palestinians out of northern Gaza. It seems clear that the systematic attacks on the media and campaign to discredit those few journalists who remain is a deliberate tactic to prevent the world from seeing what Israel is doing there,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna, in New York. “Reporters are crucial in bearing witness during a war, without them, the world won’t be able to write history.”

Reports from the area say that the IDF burned schools, attacked hospitals and medical staff, and detained and abused men. Scores of people have been killed, tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee, and families separated as the attack continues.

The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres; Jordan’s foreign secretary; and the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem are among those describing the assault as an “ethnic cleansing,” with the U.N. Human Rights Office fearing it could lead to the potential destruction of the Palestinian population. 

A news void is one of the direct impacts of this campaign, potentially leaving possible war crimes with no evidence or documentation.

CPJ documented the following threats to journalists and press freedom in northern Gaza during the recent weeks:

Journalists killed in strikes

CPJ confirmed at least five killings of journalists in Jabalia and Gaza City since October 6: 

• An Israeli drone missile killed AlHassan Hamad, an 18-year-old Palestinian freelance photographer who worked with several media outlets during the war, shortly after he finished a video report in Jabalia on October 6. 

• An Israeli drone strike killed Mohammed Al-Tanani, a 26-year-old Palestinian camera operator for the Hamas-owned Al-Aqsa TV, while his TV crew was reporting on Israeli forces operations in the Jabalia refugee camp on October 9. The strike also injured TV correspondent Tamer Lubbad. Both were wearing “Press” vests and helmets at the time.

• Three Palestinian journalists — Nadia Emad Al Sayed, Saed Radwan, and Haneen Baroud — were killed alongside eight others in an Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City on October 27. The bombs hit one of the classrooms they had turned into a makeshift newsroom. 

“The situation is catastrophic and beyond description,” a camera operator for the privately owned Al-Ghad TV, Abed AlKarim Al-Zwaidi, told CPJ. “We do not know what our fate will be in light of these circumstances.” 

The IDF responded on October 31 to CPJ’s email requesting comment on these killings, repeating previous statements it could not fully address questions if sufficient details about individuals were not provided. The statement reiterated previous comments that it “directs its strikes only towards military targets and military operatives, and does not target civilian objects and civilians, including media organizations and journalists.”

CPJ is also investigating reports that two other journalists were killed during this time in northern Gaza. 

Starvation and aid blocks

Israel, accused of blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza since the start of the war, has throttled food and humanitarian aid from entering northern Gaza since October 1 and ordered all residents to evacuate, making it all but impossible for journalists to keep working, several members of the media told CPJ.       

Al-Zwaidi – one of the journalists who described Israel’s actions as ethnic cleansing – told CPJ that journalists, like most civilians in northern Gaza, “have not had food or anything clean to drink for more than 20 days.” He said most journalists are “trying to eat the minimum amount of food that keeps them alive,” and they drink what is “semi-wastewater, full of germs.” 

The IDF’s October 31 response to CPJ’s request for comment said that more than 392 aid trucks, mainly carrying food, had entered northern Gaza in recent weeks, and supplies were available in warehouses scattered throughout the northern region.

The IDF also cited October 28 and 30 announcements by COGAT (Coordinator of the Government Activities in the Territories), the Israeli unit responsible for the coordination and facilitation of humanitarian initiatives, that it had facilitated patient and staff evacuations and delivered supplies at the Kamal Adwan hospital. One of the area’s last functioning medical facilities, Kamal Adwan, has been repeatedly attacked by Israel, which claims it has been used by Hamas.

Tor Wennesland, the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, told the U.N. Security Council on October 29 that northern Gaza had received virtually no humanitarian assistance since the start of October. The U.S. envoy to the U.N. warned that Israel must improve its flow of aid or face cuts to American military assistance.

Journalists arrested, detained

• Israeli military forces arrested Nidal Elian, editor-in-chief at the satellite channel Al-Quds Today, on October 22 in Beit Lahia. 

His wife told CPJ that Israeli military forces issued an order through a drone’s loudspeaker for residents to evacuate the area because the IDF was going to destroy it and to go to a school near the Kamal Adwan hospital. When they arrived, Israeli soldiers separated the men from the women and detained Elian. Elian’s whereabouts remain unknown.

• The IDF also detained Al-Ghad TV’s Al-Zwaidi for several hours on October 25. 

After around four hours of bombing and firing on the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia,  Al-Zwaidi told CPJ that Israeli forces ordered everyone in the hospital to go into the yard and remove their clothes down to their underwear. The journalist said their hands were tied tightly and they were forced to march to a nearby Israeli army barrack, with soldiers and tanks following them. 

Al-Zwaidi told CPJ that the soldiers pressed the muzzles of their guns to the detainees’ heads and ordered them to kneel with their heads on the ground for more than five hours in the sun. He said the soldiers beat him twice before releasing him.  

The IDF responded on October 31 to CPJ’s email requesting comment on these detentions, saying that the IDF detains individuals suspected of terrorist activity and releases anyone found not to be involved. The IDF added that detained individuals are “treated in accordance with international law.” 

Coverage constraints

Journalists who spoke to CPJ said there are very few reporters left to document atrocities in northern Gaza. Those who remain have to struggle with communication and internet shutdowns that limit their ability to report the news.

“There is a frightening difficulty in [obtaining] media coverage inside Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip,” Al-Zwaidi told CPJ. Journalists are trying to continue to circumvent the shutdowns by using e-sims, but the need to find areas of higher elevation to get a signal increases their risk of targeting by Israeli forces.

“I face death at every moment in my attempts to provide media coverage and keep the northern Gaza Strip in the spotlight,” Al-Zwaidi said. 

The IDF has also prevented reporters from approaching sites that have been bombed or attacked, further suppressing documentation of alleged crimes, Osama Al Ashi, a camera operator with China’s state-run CCTV television and freelance documentary producer, told CPJ. 

Equipment shortages, low morale

In addition to shortages of vital equipment such as cameras and protective helmets and vests, the morale of journalists still in northern Gaza is dropping as “they feel ignored by the rest of the world,” Al Jazeera correspondent Mohammed Quraiqi told CPJ. 

“The lack of interest and assistance directed to journalists locally and internationally allows their continuous targeting and killing,” Quraiqi told CPJ. “Unfortunately, no one stands with journalists, neither in the northern nor the southern Gaza Strip, from official, regional, or international bodies, to provide them with the necessary support.”

Northern Gaza “has become one of the most difficult and dangerous environments for journalistic work in the world,” Al Ashi told CPJ. 

“The feeling of fear and anxiety [occurs] all the time. I fear for my family, and I fear being among them; it is a very difficult feeling,” Al Ashi told CPJ. “But I am convinced that my presence as a journalist in the northern Gaza Strip to convey the image is very important. Otherwise, Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip would be isolated from the entire outside world.”

The difficulties for journalists in northern Gaza “is greater than any description,” Basel Khaireddine, a northern Gaza correspondent for the Iranian state-run broadcaster Al-Alam TV, told CPJ. 

“There is a constant deliberate targeting of journalists, not only because they are journalists and transmit the news, but also because the occupation targets all residents,” Khaireddine told CPJ. “Everyone is within its range of fire, and it does not differentiate between a woman, a man, or a child. It also does not differentiate between a journalist and others, even though journalists are civilians.

Restricting medical care

Amid the destruction of Northern Gaza’s medical facilities and detention of medical staff, as of November 8. Israel had not approved the emergency medical evacuation of Al Jazeera camera operators Fadi Al Wahidi and Ali Al Attar for treatment outside the Gaza Strip. Al Wahidi was severely wounded by a gunshot wound in Jabalia on October 9; Al-Attar sustained serious injuries from shrapnel from an October 7 Israeli airstrike.  

 CPJ has joined other rights organizations in urging Israel to authorize their evacuation and treatment. 

The IDF responded on October 31 to CPJ’s email requesting comment on these injured journalists on October 31 by referring CPJ to COGAT. CPJ’s November 1 email to COGAT asking whether the journalists would be allowed to receive medical care outside the Strip did not receive a response by CPJ’s requested November 4 deadline.

Terror allegations against journalists

On October 23, the IDF accused six Palestinian journalists working with Al Jazeera in Gaza of being members of the militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, raising fears that they could be targeted for killing by Israeli forces.  

The journalists are Anas al-Sharif, Talal Aruki, Ismail Farid, Alaa Salama, Ashraf Saraj, and Hossam Shabat.

Salama, Al Jazeera Mubasher’s correspondent in southern Gaza and a journalist for 18 years, told CPJ he denied these “false allegations” against him, adding that he worries that “the Israeli army is creating justifications to…target journalists, especially [as] the Palestinian media has played a major role in refuting the Israeli narrative.”

Saraj, Al Jazeera Mubasher’s correspondent in central and southern Gaza and a journalist for six years, told CPJ he has felt increasingly in danger since the accusations were made. 

“Since the first day of the war, I have continued my journalistic work, and I have proof of that because the screen belies any allegations,” Saraj told CPJ. “Today, I feel like I am waiting for death and the moment when my martyrdom is announced.”

Shabat, Al Jazeera Mubasher’s correspondent in northern Gaza, told CPJ that anxiety and fear would not deter them from continuing their coverage.

“We convey the truth on Al Jazeera Mubasher, and we move within the areas classified by Israel as safe,” Shabat said. “We are citizens, and we convey their voices. Our only crime is that we convey the image and the truth and do not belong to the Hamas movement.” 

Al Jazeera has rejected the allegations against the journalists and CPJ has condemned Israel’s claims that they are members of militant groups, noting that Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven statements without producing credible evidence.  

The IDF said in its October 31 response to CPJ that it had no further comment on the six journalists beyond what was published on October 23.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

“Even before the start of the Israel-Gaza war, CPJ had documented Israel’s pattern of accusing journalists of being terrorists without producing credible evidence to substantiate their claims,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna. “Smear campaigns endanger journalists and erode public trust in the media. Israel must end this practice and allow independent international investigations into the journalists’ killings.”

Since the war began on October 7, 2023, Israel has used questionable and sometimes contradictory evidence to label at least three journalists killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as members or suspected members of militant organizations. Before the war, CPJ’s 2023 “Deadly Pattern” report also detailed examples of five unsubstantiated claims of terrorism or militant activity against journalists killed by Israeli forces between 2004 and 2018. 

Those labeled by Israel include:

• Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al Ghoul, killed along with freelance camera operator Rami Al Refee near Gaza City by an Israeli drone strike on July 31, 2024. The IDF alleges that Al Ghoul was an engineer in the Hamas Gaza Brigade and a member of Hamas’s Nukhba special forces who had taken part in the deadly Hamas October 7 raid that started the Israel-Gaza war. The Israel Defense Forces published a document—which they said was a record of Hamas’ military activity from 2021 discovered on a Hamas computer—as proof of their accusations.  

Al Jazeera has refuted all accusations against Al Ghoul. The outlet questioned the authenticity of the IDF-produced document, which contained contradictory information showing that  Al Ghoul, born in 1997, received a Hamas military ranking in 2007—when he would have been 10 years old. The document also indicated that Al Ghoul joined Hamas’ military wing in 2014, at the age of 17.

Al Jazeera also pointed out that the IDF released Al Ghoul after detaining him during the army’s March 18, 2024, raid on Al-Shifa hospital, which Al Jazeera said disproved the IDF’s “false claim of his affiliation with any organization.” The IDF did not respond to a Washington Post question about why it cleared Al Ghoul for release at that time. 

The IDF statement did not address the killing of Al Refee, and its North America Desk has not responded to CPJ’s request for comment on Al Refee and why they released Al Ghoul after the Al-Shifa raid. 

On August 6, U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression Irene Khan denounced Israel’s “deliberate targeting” of the two journalists and urged the International Criminal Court to move swiftly to prosecute the killings of journalists in Gaza as a war crime. “The Israeli military seems to be making accusations without any substantive evidence as a licence to kill journalists, which is in total contravention of international humanitarian law,” said Khan.

• Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Al Dahdouh and freelancer Mustafa Thuraya, killed in an Israeli strike on January 7, 2024. Israel alleged that they were terrorists operating a drone “posing a threat” to IDF soldiers. A Washington Post analysis of their drone footage from that day found “no indications that either man was operating as anything other than a journalist that day.” The available footage shows that the journalists did not film any IDF troops, aircraft, or military equipment, nor were there any indications of IDF troops in the vicinity of the area they filmed. 

The Washington Post investigation also noted that both journalists passed through Israeli checkpoints on their way to the south early in the war and that Dahdouh had been approved to leave Gaza—“a rare privilege unlikely to have been granted to a known militant.”

• Yaser Murtaja, a photojournalist for Gaza-based media production company Ain Media killed by Israeli fire in 2018, was labeled by then-Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman as “a member of the military arm of Hamas who holds a rank parallel to that of captain, who was active in Hamas for many years”—a claim repeated on Twitter, now called X, by two spokespeople for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. However, Liberman never provided evidence, and The Washington Post reported that Murtaja had been vetted by the U.S. government to receive a U.S. Agency for International Development grant to support Ain Media.

• Hussam Salama and Mahmoud al-Kumi, camera operators for Al-Aqsa TV killed in 2012, were said by Israel to be “Hamas operatives.” A Human Rights Watch investigation found no proof that the two were militants, noting that Hamas did not publish their names in its list of fighters killed. After CPJ called for evidence to justify the attack, the spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., responded two months later with a letter accusing Al-Aqsa TV of “glorifying death and advocating violence and murder.”

• Hamid Shihab, a driver for the Gaza-based press agency Media 24, was transporting weapons in a car marked “TV” when he was killed in an IDF airstrike in 2014. The IDF provided no evidence that Shihab was a member of Hamas, saying that “in light of the military use made of the vehicle for the purposes of transporting weaponry, the marking of the vehicle did not alter the lawfulness of the strike.” 

• Mohamed Abu Halima, a student journalist for a radio station at Nablus’ An-Najah National University, was fatally shot by Israeli forces in 2004. Israel said he had opened fire on Israeli forces, but Abu Halima’s producer said that he was on the phone with the journalist moments before he was shot, and Abu Halima had been simply describing the scene around him. 

In the current war, CPJ has documented the killings of 113 journalists and media workers as of August 14, 2024. A total of 111—109 Palestinians and two Lebanese journalists—have been killed by Israeli forces, while two Israeli journalists were killed by Hamas in their October 7 raid into Israel.

CPJ calls for independent access to Gaza, investigations, an end to smears

CPJ has repeatedly called on Israel to end its ban on international journalists traveling independently into Gaza—an obstruction that hinders reporting on the war and investigations into the killing of Palestinian journalists.

CPJ now also calls on Israel to:

• Immediately stop its long-standing practice of labeling journalists as terrorists or engaging in militant activity, without providing sufficient and reliable evidence to support these claims, as a means of justifying its targeted killing and wider mistreatment of journalists and media workers. 

• Retract claims if it cannot substantiate accusations that journalists were involved in terrorist/militant activities.

CPJ also calls on the international community to condemn Israel’s smear campaign against journalists and to ensure that allegations of war crimes or international human rights abuses committed against journalists are investigated in accordance with internationally accepted practices, such as the Minnesota Protocol. The protocol establishes that under international law, the duty to investigate a potentially unlawful death entails an obligation that the investigation be prompt; effective and thorough; independent and impartial; and transparent. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Each week now comes with some measure of sabotage, mutilation and disruption to prospects of peace.  In his July 24 address to the US Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined his crude Manichean vision in routine barking fashion.  In doing so, his intention, as Noa Landau pithily put it, was not to end the war in Gaza so much as prolong it.

For Netanyahu, the strained chords of civilisational rhetoric are never far away.  He would like other powers to muck in, battling the fiends he calls an “axis of terror”.  Impediments to the Jewish state’s war efforts had to be rejected.  To impose them would see other countries of similar kidney shackled.  “If Israel’s hands are tied, America is next.  I’ll tell you what else is next: the ability of all democracies to fight terrorism will be imperilled.”

Room was reserved to attack the International Criminal Court, whose chief prosecutor has sought warrants of arrest against himself and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and the presidents of notable US universities.  As for protesting students, they had chosen to “stand with evil.  They stand with Hamas.  They stand with rapists and murderers.”  With daring outrage, he blotted out any notion that Palestinian civilians were being butchered, despite a death toll in the densely populated strip hovering near 40,000.  Indeed, civilian deaths had been “practically none,” with Israel scrupulous in “getting civilians out of harm’s way, something people said we could never do”.

With this blood crusted Weltanschauung, acts of destabilising mayhem are automatic.  Showing an utter contempt for Israeli hostages, let alone any humanity for the Palestinians they regard with expansive condescension, the Netanyahu government thought it wise to carry out two assassinations: that of Hamas’ political chief and chief negotiator Ismail Haniyeh, and Hezbollah’s top military chief Fuad Shukr, both killed within twenty-four hours in Beirut and Tehran respectively.

The response to the assassinations in Israel was one of relish – at least for those of the Itamar Ben-Gvir school of thought.  As David Issacharoff, writing in Haaretz, described it, “Israel has become a Matryoshka doll of pyromaniacs.”  From his skewed vantage point as National Security Minister, assassinations are staple food for the state.  The killing of Hezbollah’s second in command, ostensibly for his alleged role in an attack on a Druze village in the Golan Heights, drew the gleeful response that “Every god has his day”.

Despite certain Israeli media reports claiming an order from Netanyahu that ministers were to stay silent over Haniyeh’s killing, the enthusiasts were voluble in rapture.  Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, also of Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, expressed his glee on social media, claiming that “this is the right way to clean the world of this filth.”  There were to be “No more imaginary ‘peace’/surrender agreements, no more mercy for these sons of death.”

Other cabinet ministers also joined the gloating chorus.  “Careful What You Wish For,” wrote Minister for the Diaspora Amichai Chikli over a video of Haniyeh in a conference hall while people chanted “Death to Israel.”  Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi resorted to biblical verse: “So may all your enemies perish, O Lord.”

Despite no official confirmation of Israel’s role in the killing of the senior Hamas official, the Government Press Office posted, if only briefly, an image of Haniyeh which left no room for nuance: “Eliminated: Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas highest-ranking leader, was killed in a precise strike in Tehran, Iran.”

The richly violent musings of Ben-Gvir and his circle of sanctified terror have even proven indigestible for some members of the war cabinet.  Defence Minister Gallant, not immune from the urge to dehumanise the residents of Gaza, accused his national security counterpart of being a “pyromaniac”.  On the X platform, he declared his opposition against “any negotiations to bring him into the war cabinet – it would allow him to implement his plans.”  The same Gallant, however, was also in celebratory mood about the assassinations.

Even outside the war cabinet, the views of Ben-Gvir, not to mention his overall influence, travel with toxic rapture.  In the background, incandescently inspiring, is Rabbi Dov Lior, a figure of glowing nationalist fury. It was he who incited members of the Jewish Underground to conduct various terrorist attacks in the 1980s against Palestinians.  (The same group also unsuccessfully plotted to blow up the Dome on the Rock.)

This, as former UK diplomat Alastair Crooke observes, is the State of Judea doing battle against the State of Israel.  He quotes Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, who sees such bloody eschatology as resting on a fundamental concept: “Jewish supremacy” or “Mein Kampf in reverse”.  For Rabbi Lior, the next big war cannot come soon enough, one, he anticipates, that is bound to feature Gog and Magog.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

In post-World War II, except for assassins from Israel, have military and intelligence agencies assassinated political leaders of another nation? Have any of these assassinations occurred in a nation that is not the native nation of the assassinated? Two come to mind.

On March 1, 2020, the Trump government assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, and, on November 28, 1971, four Black September gunmen killed Wasfi Tal, Prime Minister of Jordan, in the lobby of the Sheraton Cairo Hotel in Egypt? U.S. special forces dispatched Osama bin-Laden in Pakistan, but bin-Laden was not a leader of a country. Established nations have a silent agreement of not assassinating another nation’s leaders and consider it an ugly behavior.

There have been assassinations during military coups, in which the United States participated in the takeovers, several attempts to kill Fidel Castro by U.S. agencies, assassinations of dissidents on foreign soil by Russian, Turkish, and Iranian intelligence, and unproven charges of American complicity in assassinations of foreign leaders. Israel’s widespread physical and character assassinations of foreign leaders and civilians are unique; the numbers are staggering, and the world’s inattention to the numbers is chilling.

Foreign civilians murdered by Israel in foreign nations

Israel’s murders of innocents, who are doing daily tasks to earn bread and assist their countries, are mafia style “hits,” criminal activities to protect criminal activities. They are performed as routine matters, with no regard to the lives of others, as if those who are not Israelis are insignificant human beings.

September 11, 1962, Heinz Krug, a West German rocket scientist working for Egypt’s missile program, was abducted and his body never found. From Operation Damocles:

The Mossad set up a sting involving a former SS officer and war hero named Otto Skorzeny who Krug was led to believe would help keep him and the other scientists safe. Instead, Skorzeny killed Krug and a team of Israeli agents poured acid on his body and buried his remains in the forest outside Munich. The leader of the Mossad team was Yitzhak Shamir, the head of the special operations unit and later prime minister.

In November, 1962, two parcel bombs arrived at the office of the missile project’s director, Wolfgang Pilz, maiming his secretary and killing five Egyptian workers.

In February 1963, another scientist, Hans Kleinwachter, escaped an ambush in Switzerland. That April, two Mossad agents in Basel threatened to kill the project manager Paul Goerke and his daughter. A pistol was fired at a West German professor who was researching electronics for Egypt in the town of Lörrach.

Note the use of a famous Nazi, Otto Skorzeny, in one of the escapades.

June 13, 1980, Yehia El-Mashad, Egyptian nuclear scientist was murdered in his room at the Méridien Hotel in Paris.

September 1981, José Alberto Albano do Amarante, a Brazilian Air Force lieutenant colonel, was  assassinated by the Israeli intelligence service to prevent Brazil from becoming a nuclear nation.

July 14, 1989,  Said S. Bedair, Egyptian scientist in microwave engineering and a colonel in the Egyptian army fell to his death from the balcony of his brother’s apartment in Alexandria, Egypt. His veins were found cut and a gas leak was detected in the apartment. Egyptians claim that the Mossad assassinated him in a way that appeared a suicide.

March 20, 1990,  Gerald Bull, Canadian engineer and designer of the Project Babylon “supergun” for Saddam Hussein’s government, was shot at the door to his apartment in Brussels, Belgium. Attributed to Mossad by several sources.

Murdered Iranian Scientists and family members

Mossad has been accused of assassinating Masoud Alimohammadi, Ardeshir Hosseinpour, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad, and Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan; scientists involved in the Iranian nuclear and missile programs. In some of the attacks other innocent civilians were killed. Israel is also suspected of being behind the attempted assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Fereydoon Abbasi. Meir Dagan, who served as Director of Mossad from 2002 until 2009, while not taking credit for the assassinations, praised them in an interview with a journalist, saying “the removal of important brains” from the Iranian nuclear project had achieved so-called “white defections”, frightening other Iranian nuclear scientists into requesting that they be transferred to civilian projects.

November 12, 2011,  General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the main architect of the Iranian missile system and the founder of Iran’s deterrent power ballistic missile, was assassinated in Tehran.

April 21, 2018, Fadi Mohammad al-Batsh, a Palestinian engineer, was shot dead by two men on a motorcycle in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

August 5, 2018, Aziz Asbar, Syrian scientist responsible for long-range rockets and chemical weapons programs, was killed by a car bomb in Masyaf, Syria.

November 27, 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, senior official in the nuclear program of Iran, was killed by a remotely operated gun in a truck smuggled into Iran.

March 19, 2023,  Ali Ramzi Al-Aswad, Palestinian Islamic Jihad engineer, was killed in the Damascus outskirts. Islamic Jihad accused Israel of the murder.

Killing innocent civilians because they perform activities that assist Israel’s adversaries is not confined to weapons manufacture. Anyone in Gaza who helps Gazans to survive the Israeli onslaught is also in the crosshairs.

Data from the U.N.’s Crisis Coordination Centre In Gaza, released by Dropsite News, shows that, by the end of June, 2024 , Israel’s assault on Gaza killed 195 United Nations staff members and at least 172 dependents of the staff.

The killing of seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen alarmed the world. It was not an “isolated mistake.” NBC News reports,

But while the Israel Defense Forces investigation suggests this was an isolated “grave mistake,” the mounting toll faced by aid agencies throughout the war points instead to what they say are systemic failings in the IDF’s approach to protecting humanitarian workers in the Gaza Strip. According to the United Nations, a total of 224 humanitarian aid workers have been killed since the start of the war.

Murder of Palestinian and Hezbollah leaders

Israel seems to delight in killing leaders and family members of those opposing Israel, while knowing the deceased leader will be replaced by another leader. Violating the sovereignty of other nations by blooding their soils does not bother the Israelis. They always excuse the killings by claiming the leader had given orders for a violent action against Israelis, without noting that the violent action succeeded several Israeli violent actions against the Palestinians and Israel could terminate the extrajudicial killings by granting the Palestinians their deserved freedom. The Israelis are special people; they are allowed to murder whomever, wherever, and whenever.

April 16, 1988, Abu Jihad, second-in-command to Yassir Arafat, was shot dead in front of his family by Israeli commandos in Tunis.

February 16, 1992, Abbas al-Musawi , Secretary-General of Hezbollah, was killed by Israeli Apache helicopters that fired missiles at the 3 vehicle motorcade of al-Musawi in southern Lebanon, killing him, his wife, his five-year-old son, and four others.

March 22, 2004,  Ahmed Yassin, the frail and nearly blind paraplegic co-founder of Hamas, two bodyguards, and seven bystanders were killed by Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache-fired Hellfire missiles. Seventeen bystanders were wounded.

April 17, 2004, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, successor to Ahmed Yassin. was killed by helicopter-fired missiles, along with his son and bodyguard. Several bystanders were injured.

July 31, 2024, Ismail Haniyeh, political leader of Hamas, was killed by a bomb in Tehran. Eighty innocent members of Haniyeh’s close and extended family had already been systematically killed by Israel.

Haniyeh’s murder reminded me of the failed attempt to kill Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’ previous political leader. I met Khaled Mashaal in Damascus, Syria, where he went after his recovery. My notes on that meeting.

Not kosher was a clandestine trip to meet a “minor” Hamas official, who turned out to be Khalid Meshaal, official political leader of Hamas, exiled in Damascus. The world became more aware of Meshaal when Israel’s Mossad tried to assassinate him in Amman. Jordan’s King Abdullah forced Israel to immediately supply an antidote to the poison given to Meshaal by threatening to publicly hang the Mossad agents who tried to kill the Hamas leader.

Meshaal does not fill the western media description of a wild eyed fanatic. On the contrary, he is a friendly, deliberate, and well-spoken person who makes sense to the many who subscribe to similar positions. He said that Israel does not want peace and both negotiating parties aren’t strong enough to market their results to their peoples. Meshaal doesn’t delineate Hamas’ positions, but defers to a Palestinian position that accepts 1967 borders and an Arab position that has accepted the two-state solution. Since 2002, Bush has repeatedly spoken of support for a two-state solution, but where is it? The Hamas leader expects the region to be more explosive. Nevertheless, if the PA feels the Palestinian rights have been fulfilled, Hamas will welcome that. He has proposed a Hudna (truce), and if Israel responds positively, Hamas will not be an obstacle to peace. If the Right of Return is the only remaining problem, Hamas will compromise, and accept the will of the people. He claims Hamas does not encourage militancy, does not desire a theocratic state, is a national liberation movement, and will let the Palestinian people decide its own government.

The February 1986 assassination of Sven Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden from 1969 to 1976 and 1982 to 1986, has never been solved. Swedish prosecutor Krister Petersson claimed “there was ‘reasonable evidence’ that the assailant was Stig Engstrom, a graphic designer at an insurance company, who killed himself in 2000, at the age of 66, and could not rule out the possibility that Mr. Engstrom had acted as part of a larger conspiracy.” Olof Palme, who had credibility and many admirers, was a severe critic of Israel, at a time when no Western leader voiced arguments against Israel. Could Mossad have been involved in his killing?

Systematic Murder of Journalists

Journalists are well identified and, in battles that have no battleground and are person to person, there is little possibility of a journalist becoming a casualty unless deliberately targeted. The only reason to deliberately target a journalist is to prevent the presentation of the truth.

As of August 6, 2024, the Committee to protect Journalists (CPJ) “preliminary investigations showed at least 113 journalists and media workers were among the more than 40,000 killed since the war began, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.” A previous report, in May 2024, “found that Israeli soldiers had killed at least 20 journalists in the last 22 years and none had ever been charged or held accountable.”

The most well-known murder of a journalist was the May 11, 2022 deliberate targeting of Shireen Abu Akleh, “a prominent Palestinian-American journalist who worked as a reporter for 25 years for Al Jazeera while wearing a blue press vest and covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.” The Biden administration insisted “on ‘full and transparent accounting’ of death of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.” Despite not receiving any accounting, Biden has done nothing to punish Israel.

Write “bad” stories about the Mafia and the Mafia retaliates, and apparently without concern ─ proof that Mafia Israel controls the American government.

Revenge attacks on Adversaries

Anyone who harmed an Israeli can expect to be hunted down and receive retribution. Hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese Hezbollah have been found guilty without trial, and they and innocent others of mistaken identity have been blasted from the Earth. Three things wrong with the bold strikes.

(1)    They do not prevent the deaths of Israel’s citizens and soldiers; they only retaliate for the deaths. Why were the Israelis killed; their murders revenged the killings and extreme harm done to individual Palestinians and the Palestinian community.

(2)    Since day one of the Zionist invasion, the Israel population has been guilty of theft of Palestinian lands, wanton killings of Palestinians, destruction of their communities, oppression, ethnic cleansing, and interferences in their daily life. The Palestinians have a valid reason for their attacks. No Israeli is innocent. Israel’s retaliations are not revenge; they are a way of telling the Palestinians, “If you counter our thefts and oppression of your community we will strike you harder.

(3)    Hamas and Hezbollah have warned Israel to halt all attacks on the Palestinian community. Israel ignores the threats and willingly provokes Hamas and Hezbollah into counterattacks.

Character Assassinations

No officials in the world’s governments speak in the vicious and demeaning manner of other officials as do Israeli officials; dehumanizing Palestinians and defaming antagonists.

Every decision by United Nations (UN) agencies and Human Rights organizations that contradicts Israel’s polices is met with derision by Israeli officials. As an example, when the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly called for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas, Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan said the UN no longer held “even one ounce of legitimacy or relevance.”

Speaking at a conference in Israel, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “Nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.”

Israel’s former justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, posted on Facebook:

Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.

Stereotypes and prejudice in conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish society, Bar-Tal, D., & Teichman, Y. (2005), Cambridge University Press, P.359 reports that “10% of the drawings in a sample of children asked to sketch a typical Arab depicted them as animals. Extensive evidence that Israeli children, when asked about Arabs, spoke of them in terms of pigs and other animals (as well as “barbarians,” “Nazis,” and murderers).”

A worldwide contingent of Israel supporters defame Israel’s critics with false charges of anti-Semitism and media attacks that ruin reputations, cause employment difficulties, and isolate individuals.

The Canary Mission, documents people and groups that it falsely accuses of promoting hatred of the USA, Israel, and Jews on North American college campuses. This bigoted organization also posts its Jewish Friends of Anti-Semites
ADL, an organization concerned with false stereotypes, publishes its Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in America.
AMCHA, joins the forces of Israel supporters that make a mockery of the word anti-Semite, with its list of more than 200 anti-Israel Middle East Studies professors, many of whom are Jews.

Israel is a Criminal Enterprise

Middle East commentators ponder the reasons for Israel’s policy of targeted assassinations. Do they halt aggressive activities that counter Israel? Are they meant to intimidate people so they become fearful of engaging in actions that upset Israel or led to the belief that death is an act of mercy? Do they serve “as a mechanism to galvanize its own society rather than genuinely altering the political or military stance of its adversaries,” mentioned by Abdaljawad Omar in an article, “The real reason Israel is assassinating Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, and why it won’t stop the resistance?” It’s all part of a pattern, the pattern of a criminal enterprise and not the pattern of an established nation.

Nations are formed from a community of people who share a common land, language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and history for centuries. If it were otherwise, why has Israel’s thrust been to give its Jews the scaffolding of a new nation by giving them a common language, culture, descent, and history, which reject how they previously lived? No established state has governments, leaders, and people who express themselves in the despicable manner and commit extrajudicial crimes in the violent manner as does Israel. The gathering of violent people, their engagement in continuous battle to gain territory and resources, and strong arm those who interfere with their thievery and dictatorial control are the efforts of a criminal enterprise.

Misinterpretation of the governing nature and violent behavior of Israel has led to a faulty approach to resolving the Middle East crisis. There are no two-state, no one-state, no confederation, and no federal solutions to the crisis. There is only a “no state,” a criminal enterprise that pleads for an international police force to defeat the criminals and prevent additional murderous catastrophes.

This is not a sarcastic and fanciful gaze at world politics. Engage Israelis in negotiations and find you are negotiating how much you are willing to be robbed. Those who honestly sought and still seek a reasonable compromise and solution of the crisis by negotiations have not factored into their arguments the true nature of the Zionist criminal mission and its criminal constituents;  a criminality that is international, extending to money laundering, ecstasy trade, prostitution, arms trade, and harboring criminals, including sex criminals fleeing the law. Israel does what it wants, when it wants, and where it wants, not functioning as a normal state but as a criminal enterprise.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Israel’s assassination of the head of Hamas’ political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, on yesterday is part of Tel Aviv’s overall desperate search for a wider conflict. It is a criminal act that reeks of desperation.

Almost immediately after the start of the Gaza war on October 7, Israel hoped to use the genocide in the Strip as an opportunity to achieve its long-term goal of a regional war — one that would rope in Washington as well as Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.

Despite unconditional support for its genocide in Gaza, and various conflicts throughout the region, the United States refrained from entering a direct war against Iran and others.

• READ MORE: Israeli military claims killing Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

Although defeating Iran is an American strategic objective, the US lacks the will and tools to pursue it now.

After 10 months of a failed war on Gaza and a military stalemate against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel is, once more, accelerating its push for a wider conflict. This time around, however, Israel is engaging in a high-stakes game — the most dangerous of its previous gambles.

The current gamble involved the targeting of a top Hezbollah leader by bombing a residential building in Beirut on Tuesday — and, of course, the assassination of Palestine’s most visible, let alone popular political leader.

Successful Haniyeh diplomacy
Haniyeh, has succeeded in forging and strengthening ties with Russia, China, and other countries beyond the US-Western political domain.

Israel chose the place and timing of killing Haniyeh carefully. The Palestinian leader was killed in the Iranian capital, shortly after he attended the inauguration of Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian.

The Israeli message was a compound one, to Iran’s new administration — that of Israel’s readiness to escalate further — and to Hamas, that Israel has no intentions to end the war or to reach a negotiated ceasefire.

The latter point is perhaps the most urgent. For months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done everything in his power to impede all diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the war.

By killing the top Palestinian negotiator, Israel delivered a final and decisive message that Israel remains invested in violence, and in nothing else.

The scale of the Israeli provocations, however, poses a great challenge to the pro-Palestinian camp in the Middle East, namely, how to respond with equally strong messages without granting Israel its wish of embroiling the whole region in a destructive war.

Considering the military capabilities of what is known as the “Axis of Resistance”, Iran, Hezbollah and others are certainly capable of managing this challenge despite the risk factors involved.

Equally important regarding timing: the Israeli dramatic escalation in the region, followed a visit by Netanyahu to Washington, which, aside from many standing ovations at the US Congress, didn’t fundamentally alter the US position, predicated on the unconditional support for Israel without direct US involvement in a regional war.

Coup a real possibility
Additionally, Israel’s recent clashes involving the army, military police, and the supporters of the far right suggest that an actual coup in Israel might be a real possibility. In the words of Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid: Israel is not nearing the abyss, Israel is already in the abyss.

It is, therefore, clear to Netanyahu and his far-right circle that they are operating within an increasingly limited time and margins.

By killing Haniyeh, a political leader who has essentially served the role of a diplomat, Israel demonstrated the extent of its desperation and the limits of its military failure.

Considering the criminal extent to which Israel is willing to go, such desperation could eventually lead to the regional war that Israel has been trying to instigate, even before the Gaza war.

Keeping in mind Washington’s weakness and indecision in the face of Israel’s intransigence, Tel Aviv might achieve its wish of a regional war after all.

Republished from The Palestine Chronicle with permission. The Chronicle is edited by Palestinian journalist and media consultant Ramzy Baroud, author of The Last Earth: A Palestine Story, who visited New Zealand in 2019.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Ismail Haniyeh during a video statement marking the 34th anniversary of the founding of the Hamas movement, December 2021. (Hamas Chief Office)

Hamas announced early Wednesday that Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the Palestinian faction’s political wing, was assassinated in Tehran, where he was present for the inauguration of the new Iranian president.

The assassination, in Iran no less, marks a major escalation that will likely have regional ramifications and came hours after Israel bombed Lebanon on Tuesday evening, killing three civilians, according to Lebanese state media. Israel claimed that it killed a senior Hizballah figure in the strike, but the Lebanese resistance group had not issued a statement on the matter at the time of publication.

Israel killed multiple members representing multiple generations of Haniyeh’s family in Gaza since October. Several leaders of Hamas have been assassinated by Israel before Haniyeh, only to be replaced and for the organization’s capabilities to grow.

In January, Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy head of Hamas’ politburo, was killed in a strike in Beirut along with several other cadres and commanders with the group.

Two weeks ago, Israel claimed to have killed Muhammad Deif, the secretive head of Hamas’ armed wing, in a strike in Gaza that killed at least 90 Palestinians in an area it had unilaterally declared as a humanitarian zone.

Israel continued to wage attacks across Gaza by air, land and sea amid heavy fighting and ground incursions on Tuesday.

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said on Tuesday that 37 people had been killed in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 39,400 since early October.

The actual number of fatalities is likely much higher, with thousands of people missing under the rubble or their bodies not yet recovered from Gaza’s streets.

The Israeli military withdrew from eastern Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza, on Tuesday following an incursion lasting eight days and forcing another wave of mass displacement from the area.

Palestinians returned to Khan Younis to find evidence of what the government media office in Gaza described as “horrific massacres” for which it demanded international accountability.

“Palestinian rescue workers and civilians collected dead bodies from the streets of the abandoned battle zone, bringing corpses wrapped in rugs to morgues in cars and donkey carts,” Reuters reported.

The government media office said that the bodies of 255 people had been recovered and more than 30 others were missing.

During the incursion, the Israeli military fired on 31 homes with their residents inside, as well as more than 300 other homes and residential buildings.

The military also razed the cemetery in Bani Suheila and its surroundings on the eastern outskirts of Khan Younis:

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??? ??? ????? ???? ????? ??? ??? ??????? ???????? ?????? ????? ?????? ??? ??? ?? ??????? ???? ????… pic.twitter.com/8uqmdsbu1V

— EekadFacts | ????? (@EekadFacts) July 30, 2024

Nearly all of Gaza under evacuation orders

Israel meanwhile issued new forced displacement orders in al-Bureij, central Gaza, “launching strikes there in apparent preparation for a new raid,” according to Reuters.

“Medics said an Israeli air strike in nearby al-Nuseirat killed 10 Palestinians as they fled from Bureij on Tuesday, and another strike killed four other Palestinians inside Bureij,” the news agency added.

More than 85 percent of the territory of Gaza is under an Israeli so-called evacuation order, the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) said on Monday.

But there is no safe place for people to go, and no assurance of protection for civilians who choose to stay or are unable to evacuate from designated areas.

Repeated displacement is also making it increasingly difficult for organizations, already contending with Israel’s near-total blockade, to provide aid and services to those who were forced to leave their homes with next to nothing.

Palestinians return to eastern Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, after Israeli forces pulled out on 30 July (Omar Ashtawy APA images)

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said that it was no longer able to restore the functionality of the Gaza European Hospital in Khan Younis after an Israeli evacuation order was issued on 27 July.

The Palestinian Civil Defense warned that overcrowding among displaced people in Gaza, who have insufficient access to water and sanitation, was leading to the proliferation of diseases, including conditions affecting children’s skin.

By early July, the World Health Organization had recorded nearly a million cases of acute respiratory infection, while other illnesses such as diarrhea, acute jaundice and cases of suspected mumps and meningitis, as well as scabies and lice, skin rashes and chicken pox are spreading among the population.

The UN health agency said on Tuesday that it was very likely that polio has infected Palestinians in Gaza after the health ministry in the territory declared a polio epidemic across the coastal enclave on Monday.

Detection of the virus in sewage samples collected in Gaza represents “a setback” against efforts to completely eradicate the disease worldwide, Christian Lindmeier, a World Health Organization official, said on Tuesday.

Al Mezan, a Palestinian human rights group based in Gaza, warned that more than one million children in the territory “are at risk of dying if not vaccinated” for the highly infectious virus.

“To prevent thousands of deaths, the international community must ensure Israel immediately ends its genocide, including the weaponization of water and sanitation facilities,” the rights group added.

According to WHO, the disease mainly affects children under the age of 5 and one in 200 infections “leads to irreversible paralysis.” Five to 10 percent of those paralyzed die “when their breathing muscles become immobilized.”

Collapse of essential systems

With the collapse of Gaza’s solid waste management system, conditions are ripe for the disastrous spread of diseases transmitted through contamination such as polio and hepatitis A – there have been 40,000 diagnosed cases of the latter since October.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has seen a drop in polio vaccination rates in Gaza from 99 percent to 89 percent, according to a UNICEF spokesperson. The director of the World Health Organization announced that it was sending more than a million polio vaccines to Gaza to be administered to children “in the coming weeks,” UN News reported.

The virus, “transmitted by person-to-person spread mainly through the fecal-oral route,” according to WHO, is less frequently transmitted through contaminated water or food.

The “can emerge in areas where poor vaccination coverage allows the weakened form of the orally taken vaccine virus strain to mutate into a stronger version,” UN News added.

The vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 “had been identified at six locations in sewage samples collected last month from Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah – two Gaza cities left in ruins by nearly 10 months of intense Israeli bombardment.”

The spread of disease and epidemics is a predictable result of Israel’s genocidal military campaign, if not the intention.

In yet another case of Israeli soldiers destroying civilian infrastructure for no military purpose, soldiers recently recorded themselves detonating Canada well, the main water facility in Rafah, southern Gaza.

The Tel Aviv daily Haaretz reported on Monday that the facility “was destroyed last week with the approval of the commander of the soldiers … but without the approval of senior officers.”

But blaming lower-ranking soldiers may be an attempt to deter international courts scrutiny of more senior military personnel, while the pattern of behavior on the ground indicates that troops are ordered to destroy essential civilian infrastructure for no military purpose – a war crime.

Destroying water treatment plants is a war crime in its own right. Doing so in full knowledge that it will contribute to the spread of polio is evidence of genocidal intent. https://t.co/38PkBD4043

— Heidi Matthews (@Heidi__Matthews) July 27, 2024

Younis Tirawi, writing for Dropsite News, recounted that Giora Eiland, an adviser to Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant, described in October a strategy to destroy the ability of Palestinians in Gaza to pump and purify water within Gaza.

Monther Shoblak, the head of the water utility in Gaza, told Tirawi that the Canada well facility had remained functional until Israel’s ground invasion of Rafah in early May, as solar panels allowed it to operate despite Israel cutting off the supply of electricity to the territory in October.

Israel destroyed 30 water wells in the south this month alone, and displaced people have been forced to shelter in overcrowded conditions without suitable hygiene infrastructure or access to sufficient clean water, fuel, food and medicine.

The international charity Oxfam said earlier this month that “Israel damaged or destroyed five water and sanitation sites every three days since the start of this war,” reducing the amount of water available in Gaza by 94 percent to a mere 4.74 liters per person – “less than a single toilet flush.”

Israel attacks Beirut

Israel bombed southern Beirut on Tuesday, with its military claiming that it targeted Fuad Shukr, a senior Hizballah commander. Israel said that Shukr was killed but Arabic-language media said his fate remained unknown late Tuesday.

The area around Hizballah’s Shura Council in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of the Lebanese capital was also hit, that country’s state news agency reported.

Lebanon’s health ministry said that a woman and two children were killed, though “the search for more missing persons under the rubble continues.”

The apartment building in south Beirut has been decimated by what is said to be 3 missiles from an IDF drone. The strike that killed Hamas' deputy chairman Saleh al-Arouri in January left the building standing. This was meant to destroy it and take everybody with it. pic.twitter.com/OzSSD2ER3n

— Séamus Malekafzali (@Seamus_Malek) July 30, 2024

The Beirut strike took down a whole residential building, and the scale of destruction may have been intended to reinforce the threats made by Israeli leaders to inflict the same genocidal violence in Lebanon that it has in Gaza.

+The strike in Beirut on Tuesday was an anticipated “retaliation” from Tel Aviv after a projectile killed 12 children at a sports field in Majdal Shams, a city in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights on Saturday. Israel blamed Hizballah but the Lebanese resistance group denied having any connection to the deadly blast.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, accused Hizballah of crossing a red line, though it is highly unlikely that the Lebanese resistance group would have deliberately targeted Majdal Shams.

A building targeted in an Israeli strike in the southern suburb of Beirut, 30 July (Bilal Jawich Xinhua News Agency)

Amal Saad, an expert on Hizballah, said that since 8 October, the group “has refrained from targeting Israeli civilians, much less Syrian Druze.”

“The strong support for the resistance movement among this community, which lives under Israeli occupation, makes it illogical for Hizballah to risk striking in this vicinity,” she added.

Targeting civilians, whether Syrian or Israeli, “wouldn’t be strategically beneficial for Hizballah when it would inevitably lead to all out war – a war which Hizballah has been very keen to avoid as demonstrated by its sub-threshold responses to Israeli strikes on Beirut and on civilians” in Lebanon, according to Saad.

She added the group has been careful to “avoid giving Israel any pretext for waging war” but “it’s entirely expected” that Israel would exploit the tragedy “in order to deflect attention away from its daily massacres of Palestinian children” in Gaza.

Not “a single drop of blood”

Majdal Shams residents chanted “murderer, murderer” at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he attempted to visit the site of the deadly strike on Monday.

After Netanyahu left Majdal Shams, local residents verbally attacked the head of the municipality, who invited Netanyahu to the town. People yelled at him "traitor, dog" and more. https://t.co/RIbUrWnZ7A

— B.M. (@ireallyhateyou) July 29, 2024

Syrians reeling from the unprecedented mass casualty event in Majdal Shams issued a statement rejecting “that a single drop of blood be shed under the name of revenge for our children.”

After the deaths in Majdal Shams, Israeli media reported that Netanyahu canceled the exit of around 150 children from Gaza for medical treatment in the United Arab Emirates “for fear of public backlash,” the human rights group Gisha said.

In response to a petition from human rights groups, Israel’s high court on Sunday ordered the government “to inform it of its progress toward implementing a permanent mechanism for the medical evacuation of sick and injured Gazans,” The Times of Israel [reported]((https://www.timesofisrael.com/high-court-gives-government-7-days-to-come…).

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, announced that “85 sick and severely injured people,” including 35 children, were evacuated from Gaza to Abu Dhabi for specialized care on Tuesday.

“It is the largest medical evacuation since October 2023,” he said, adding that “63 family members and caregivers accompanied the patients.”

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said on Sunday that the ongoing closure of Gaza’s crossings, preventing “the travel of urgent and lifesaving cases,” makes clear “Israel’s commission of genocide against the people of the Gaza Strip.”

“Those who have not been killed by Israel’s war machine are not spared by the complete Israeli siege and closure on Gaza,” the rights group added, “leaving thousands of wounded and sick doomed to certain death.”

Death is all but guaranteed due to Israel’s “deliberate destruction and collapse of the healthcare system and the weakening of its remaining lifesaving resources,” according to PCHR.

Around 14,000 sick and injured patients, most of them children and older people, require care that is not available in Gaza.

PCHR estimates that hundreds of ill people have already died due to lack of access to medical treatment but there are “no statistics available in this regard due to disruptions in official medical monitoring and documentation systems.”

• Article first published in The Electronic Intifada

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Maureen Clare Murphy.

Al Jazeera Arabic journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Rifi have been killed in an Israeli air attack on the Gaza Strip, reports Al Jazeera.

The reporters were killed when their car was hit on Wednesday in the Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City, according to initial information.

They were in the area to report from near the Gaza house of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas who was assassinated in the early hours of Wednesday in Iran’s capital, Tehran, in an attack the group has blamed on Israel.

• READ MORE: Haniyeh killing ‘dangerous escalation’ as fears of Gaza war spillover grow

Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif, reporting from Gaza, was at the hospital where the bodies of his two colleagues were brought.

“Ismail was conveying the suffering of the displaced Palestinians and the suffering of the wounded and the massacres committed by the [Israeli] occupation against the innocent people in Gaza,” he said.

“The feeling — no words can describe what happened.”

Al Jazeera journalist and cameraman killed in Israeli attack on Gaza. Video: Al Jazeera

Ismail and Rami were wearing media vests and there were identifying signs on their car when they were attacked. They had last contacted their news desk 15 minutes before the strike.

During the call, they had reported a strike on a house near to where they were reporting and were told to leave immediately. They did, and were traveling to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital when they were killed.

There was no immediate comment by Israel, which has previously denied targeting journalists in its 10-month war on Gaza, which has killed at least 39,445 people, the vast majority of whom were children and women.

In a statement, Al Jazeera Media Network called the killings a “targeted assassination” by Israeli forces and pledged to “pursue all legal actions to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes”.

“This latest attack on Al Jazeera journalists is part of a systematic targeting campaign against the network’s journalists and their families since October 2023,” the network said.

According to preliminary figures by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 111 journalists and media workers are among those killed since the start of the war on October 7. The Gaza government media office has put the figure at 165 Palestinian journalists killed since the war began.

Mohamed Moawad, Al Jazeera Arabic managing editor, said the Qatar-based network’s journalists were killed on Wednesday as they were “courageously covering the events in northern Gaza”.

Ismail was renowned for his professionalism and dedication, bringing the world’s attention to the suffering and atrocities committed in Gaza, especially at al-Shifa Hospital and the northern neighbourhoods of the besieged enclave.

His wife has been living in a camp for internally displaced people in central Gaza and had not seen her husband for months. He is also survived by a young daughter.

Both Ismail and Rami were born in 1997.

“Without Ismail, the world would not have seen the devastating images of these massacres,” Moawad wrote on X, adding that al-Ghoul “relentlessly covered the events and delivered the reality of Gaza to the world through Al Jazeera”.

“His voice has now been silenced, and there is no longer a need to call out to the world Ismail fulfilled his mission to his people and his homeland,” Moawad said. “Shame on those who have failed the civilians, journalists, and humanity.”

String of journalist killings
The killings on Wednesday bring the total number of Al Jazeera journalists killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war to four.

In December, Al Jazeera Arabic journalist Samer Abudaqa was killed in an Israeli strike in Khan Younis. Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, was also wounded in that attack.

Dadouh’s wife, son, daughter and grandson had been killed in an Israeli air raid on the Nuseirat refugee camp in October.

In January, Dahdouh’s son, Hamza, who was also an Al Jazeera journalist, was killed in an Israeli missile strike in Khan Younis.

Prior to the war, Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by an Israeli soldier as she covered an Israeli raid in Jenin in the occupied West Bank in May 2022. While Israel has acknowledged its soldier likely fatally shot Abu Akleh, it has not pursued any criminal investigation into her death.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza on Wednesday, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reflected on the daily dangers journalists face.

“We do everything [to stay safe]. We wear our press jackets. We wear our helmets. We try not to go anywhere that is not safe. We try to go to places where we can maintain our security,” she said.

“But we have been targeted in normal places where normal citizens are.”

She added: “We’re trying to do everything, but at the same time, we want to report, we want to tell the world what’s going on.”

Jodie Ginsberg, the president of the CPJ, said the killing of al-Ghoul and al-Refee is the latest example of the risks of documenting the war in Gaza, which is the deadliest conflict for journalists the organisation has documented in 30 years.

Ginsberg told Al Jazeera the organisation haD found at least three journalists had been directly targeted by Israeli forces in Gaza since the war began.

She said CPJ was investigating an additional 10 cases, while noting the difficulty of determining the full details without access to Gaza.

“That’s not just a pattern we’ve seen in this conflict, it appears to be part of a broader [Israeli] strategy that aims to stifle the information coming out of Gaza,” Ginsberg said, citing the ban on Al Jazeera from reporting in Israel as part of this trend.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

“CPJ is dismayed by the news that Al Jazeera TV reporter Ismail Al Ghoul and cameraman Rami Al Refee were killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg in New York. “Journalists are civilians and should never be targeted. Israel must explain why two more Al Jazeera journalists have been killed in what appears to be a direct strike.”

Al Ghoul and Al Refee were covering the aftermath of the assassination of the senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, reporting from in front of Haniyeh’s home in Gaza an hour before they were killed. Al Jazeera said in its live coverage that Al Ghoul and Al Refee were leaving the scene after an Israeli order to evacuate the area when they were hit, and that it believes the journalists were deliberately targeted.

Al Ghoul was previously arrested by the IDF at Al Shifaa hospital in northern Gaza. CPJ has documented the killing of at least seven journalists and media workers affiliated with Al Jazeera since the start of the Israel-Gaza war last October. 

CPJ emailed the Israel Defense Forces’ North America Desk for comment on the strike but did not receive an immediate response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Ismail Haniyeh,  a prominent Palestinian political leader and the head of Hamas’ political bureau, has been assassinated today in an Israeli airstrike on Tehran.

Haniyeh was in the Iranian capital for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Both Hamas and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard confirmed his death and announced ongoing investigations into the incident.

• READ MORE: Israel war on Gaza live: Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran
• Other Israeli War on Gaza reports

Commentators have said this assassination and the “reckless Israeli behaviour” of continuously targeting civilians in Gaza would lead to the region slipping into chaos and undermine the chances of peace.

A Palestinian refugee
Ismail Abdel Salam Ahmed Haniyeh was born on 23 January 1962 in the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.

His family originated from the village of Al-Jura, near the city of Asqalan, which was mostly destroyed and completely ethnically cleansed during the Nakba in 1948.

Haniyeh completed his early education in United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools and graduated from Al-Azhar Institute before earning a BA in Arabic literature from the Islamic University of Gaza in 1987.

During his university years, he was active in the Student Union Council and later held various positions at the Islamic University, eventually becoming its dean in 1992.

Following his release from an Israeli prison in 1997, Haniyeh became the head of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin’s office.

Political life
Haniyeh’s political experience included multiple arrests by Israeli authorities during the First Intifada, with charges related to his involvement with the Palestinian Resistance movement Hamas.

He was exiled to southern Lebanon in 1992 but returned to Gaza after the Oslo Accords.

Haniyeh led the “Change and Reform List”, which won the majority in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections, leading to his appointment as the head of the Palestinian government in February 2006.

Despite being dismissed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in June 2007 after the Hamas military wing took control of Gaza, Haniyeh continued to lead the government in Gaza.

He later played a role in national reconciliation efforts, which led to the formation of a unity government in June 2014.

Haniyeh was elected head of the Hamas political bureau in May 2017.

Al-Aqsa flood
On 7 October 2023, the Al-Qassam Brigades, led by Mohammed Deif, launched the Al-Aqsa Flood operation against Israel.

In the genocidal Israel war that has followed in the past nine months, Haniyeh suffered personal losses, including the killings of several family members due to Israeli airstrikes.

Republished from The Palestine Chronicle with permission. The Chronicle is edited by Palestinian journalist and media consultant Ramzy Baroud, author of The Last Earth: A Palestine Story, who visited New Zealand in 2019.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The head of the Hamas political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, says the group is ready to accept an agreement that guarantees a permanent ceasefire.

He says it also wants a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, reconstruction, and an exchange deal, Al Jazeera reports.

Haniyeh said the group’s position was consistent with the foundational principles of the UN-backed ceasefire proposal.

• READ MORE: Israeli army ‘urgently needs’ more soldiers as Gaza killing continues
• Other War on Gaza reports

Haniyeh, speaking in a televised address on Eid day, also said Hamas was ready to accept an agreement that guaranteesd a permanent ceasefire, full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, reconstruction, and an exchange deal.

Palestinians would continue to show resilience, resistance, and commitment to their national struggle, he added in comments after US Secretary of State Blinken criticised Hamas last week for its reply to the ceasefire proposal.

Israel’s government has yet to publicly back the deal, despite US claims that it has accepted it.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to insist that the war would not end before Hamas is defeated.

Wider society ‘boiling over’
In light of Haniyeh’s comments, academic Dr Youcef Bouandel from Qatar University said disunity within Israel’s war cabinet and wider society was “boiling over” and “strengthening the hand” of Hamas in ceasefire negotiations.

Hamas political bureau leader Ismail Haniyeh talks to Al Jazeera.   Video: AJ

Meanwhile, an Israeli political analyst, Akiva Eldar, said Netanyahu was “leading them to the abyss” and Israel was becoming a growing “pariah” state.

Israel’s government was buckling not only from Israeli citizens demonstrating against it, but also from international pressure to end its war on Gaza, said Eldar.

On the world stage, Israel was increasingly becoming a pariah state while at home there were sustained protests calling for Netanyahu’s government to be removed.

“I travelled to Amsterdam and for the first time, I don’t feel comfortable to present my Israeli passport,” Eldar told Al Jazeera.

“The Israelis are not welcome everywhere.”

In light of this growing tension, Eldar predicted the movement against Netanyahu’s government would come from the grassroots.

Former PM Barak calls for ‘1 million Israelis’
Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak called to the Israelis to start protests, demonstrations around the Knesset, or Parliament, and he has calling for 1 million Israelis.

A Palestinian prisoners’ group has said that there are more than 9300 Palestinians remaining in Israeli prisons.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said that among the 9300 people held by Israel were at least 75 women and 250 children.

It has stressed that the total number did not include all the people Israel had detained in Gaza, estimated to be in the thousands.

Israeli prison authorities have announced the detention of 899 Palestinians from the besieged enclave under the classification of an “illegal fighter”, the group said.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Ana Segovia (Mexico), Huapango Torero (‘Huapango Bullfighter’), 2019.

The skin is the largest organ of the human body. It covers our entire surface, at some points only as thin as a piece of paper and at other points about half as thick as a credit card. The skin, which protects us from all manner of germs and other harmful elements, is fragile and unable to defend humans from the dangerous weapons we have made over time. The ancient blunt axe will break the skin with a heavy blow, while a 2000-pound MK-84 ‘dumb bomb’ made by General Dynamics will not only obliterate the skin, but the entire human body.

Despite a 24 May order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Israeli military continues to bomb the southern part of Gaza, particularly the city of Rafah. In blatant disregard of the ICJ’s order, on 27 May Israel struck a tent city in Rafah and murdered forty-five civilians. US President Joe Biden said on 9 March that an Israeli attack on Rafah would be his ‘red line’, but – even after this tent massacre – the Biden administration has insisted that no such line has been violated.

At a press conference on 28 May, communications advisor to the US National Security Agency John Kirby was asked how the US would respond if a strike by the US armed forces killed forty-five civilians and injured two hundred others. Kirby responded: ‘We have conducted airstrikes in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where tragically we caused civilian casualties. We did the same thing’. To defend Israel’s latest massacre, Washington has chosen to make a startling admission. Given that the ICJ has ruled that it is ‘plausible’ that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza, could it be said that the US is guilty of the same in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Ficre Ghebreyesus (Eritrea), Map/Quilt, 1999.

In 2006, the International Criminal Court (ICC) began to assess the possibility of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then, in 2014 and 2017, respectively, opened formal investigations into crimes committed in both countries. However, neither Israel nor the United States are signatories to the 2002 Rome Statute, which established the ICC. Rather than sign the statute, the US Congress passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act – known informally as the ‘Hague Invasion Act’ – which legally authorises the US government to ‘use all means necessary’ to protect its troops from ICC prosecutors. Since Article 98 of the Rome Statute does not require states to turn over wanted personnel to a third party if they have signed an immunity agreement with that party, the US government has encouraged states to sign ‘Article 98 agreements’ to give its troops immunity from prosecution. Still, this did not deter ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda (who held the post from 2012–2021) from studying evidence and issuing a preliminary report in 2016 on war crimes in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan joined the ICC in 2003, giving the ICC and Bensouda jurisdiction to conduct their investigation. Even though it signed an Article 98 agreement with Afghanistan in 2002, the US government fervently attacked the ICC’s investigation and warned Bensouda and her family that they would face personal repercussions if she continued with the investigation. In April 2019, the US revoked Bensouda’s entry visa. Days later, a panel of ICC judges ruled against Bensouda’s request to proceed with a war crimes investigation in Afghanistan, stating that such an investigation would ‘not serve the interests of justice’.

Staff at the ICC were dismayed by the court’s decision and eager to challenge it but could not get support from the justices. In June 2019, Bensouda filed a request to appeal the ICC’s decision not to pursue the investigation into war crimes in Afghanistan. Bensouda’s appeal was joined by various groups from Afghanistan, including the Afghan Victims’ Families Association and the Afghanistan Forensic Science Organisation. In September 2019, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC ruled that the appeal could go forward.

Dawn Okoro (Nigeria), Doing It, 2017.

The US government was enraged. On 11 June 2020, US President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13928, which authorised his government to freeze ICC officials’ assets and ban them and their families from entering the United States. In September 2020, the US imposed sanctions on Bensouda, a national of Gambia, and senior ICC diplomat Phakiso Mochochoko, a national of Lesotho. The American Bar Association condemned these sanctions, but they were not revoked.

The US government eventually repealed the sanctions in April 2021, after Bensouda left her post and was replaced by the British lawyer Karim Khan in February 2021. In September 2021, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said that while his office would continue to investigate war crimes by the Taliban and the Islamic State in Afghanistan, it would ‘deprioritise other aspects of this investigation’. This awkward phrasing simply meant that the ICC would no longer investigate war crimes committed by the United States and its allies from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The ICC had been sufficiently brought to heel.

Alexander Nikolaev, also known as Usto Mumin (Soviet Union), Friendship, Love, Eternity, 1928.

Prosecutor Khan again demonstrated his partial application of justice and fealty to the Global North ruling elites when he rushed into the conflict in Ukraine and began an investigation into war crimes by Russia just four days after its invasion in February 2022. Within a year, Khan would apply for warrants for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, which were issued in March 2023. Specifically, they were charged with colluding to abduct children from Ukrainian orphanages and children’s care homes and take them to Russia, where – it was alleged – these children were ‘given for adoption’. Ukraine, Khan said, ‘is a crime scene’.

Khan would use no such words when it came to Israel’s murderous assault on Palestinians in Gaza. Even after more than 15,000 Palestinian children had been killed (rather than ‘adopted’ from a war zone), Khan failed to pursue warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his military subordinates. When Khan visited Israel in November–December 2023, he warned about ‘excesses’ but suggested that since ‘Israel has trained lawyers who advise commanders’, they could prevent any horrendous violations of international humanitarian law.

Ayoub Emdadian (Iran), The Sapling of Liberty, 1973.

By May 2024, the sheer scale of Israel’s brutality in Gaza finally forced the ICC to take up the issue. The orders from the ICJ, the outrage expressed by numerous governments of the Global South, and the cascading protests in country after country together motivated the ICC to act. On 20 May, Khan held a press conference where he said that he filed applications for the arrest of Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, and Ismail Haniyeh and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his head of military, Yoav Gallant. Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said that the ICC accusations against Netanyahu and Gallant are ‘baseless’ and that Israel will not comply with any ICC warrant. For decades now, Israel – like the United States – has rejected any attempt to apply international humanitarian law to its actions. The ‘rules-based international order’ has always provided immunity for the United States and its close allies, an immunity whose hypocrisy has increasingly been revealed. It is this double-standard that has provoked the collapse of the US-driven world order.

Buried within Khan’s press statement is an interesting fragment: ‘I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate, or improperly influence the officials of this Court must cease immediately’. Eight days later, on 20 May, The Guardian – in collaboration with other periodicals – published an investigation that revealed Israel’s use of ‘intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear, and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court’s inquiries’. Yossi Cohen, the former head of Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, personally harassed and threatened Bensouda (Khan’s predecessor), warning her, ‘You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family’. Furthermore, The Guardian noted that ‘Between 2019 and 2020, the Mossad had been actively seeking compromising information on the prosecutor and took an interest in her family members’. ‘Took an interest’ is a euphemistic way of saying gathered information on her family – including through a sting operation against her husband Philip Bensouda – to blackmail and frighten her. These are clichéd mafia tactics.

Hamed Abdalla (Egypt), Conscience du sol (‘The Consciousness of the Earth’), 1956.

As I followed these stories of the blood and law, I read the poems of Chechnya-born Jazra Khaleed, writing in Greek in Athens. His poem ‘Black Lips’ stopped me in my tracks, the last stanzas powerful and bleak:

Come let me make you human,
you, Your Honor, who wipe guilt from your beard
you, esteemed journalist, who tout death
you, philanthropic lady, who pat children’s heads without bending down
and you who read this poem, licking your finger—
To all of you I offer my body for genuflection
Believe me
one day you will adore me like Christ

But I’m sorry for you sir—
I do not negotiate with chartered accountants of words
with art critics who eat from my hand
You may, if you desire, wash my feet
Don’t take it personally

Why do I need bullets if there are so many words
prepared to die for me?

Which words are slowly dying? Justice, perhaps, or even humanitarianism? So many words are thrown about to assuage the guilty and to confuse the innocent. But these words cannot muffle other words, words that describe horrors and that demand redress.

Words are important. So are people, such as Gustavo Cortiñas, who was arrested by the Argentinian military dictatorship on 15 April 1977, never to be seen again. He became one of the 30,000 people whom the military killed between 1976 and 1983. On April 30, two weeks after Gustavo was arrested, his mother, Nora Cortiñas (or Norita, as she was lovingly known), joined other mothers of the disappeared to protest in front of the government house Casa Rosada, at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, the first in what became a regular feature.

Norita was a co-founder of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which courageously shattered the wall of misleading words that tumbled out of the mouths of the military Junta. Though her son was never found, Norita found her voice looking for him – a voice that was heard at every protest for justice and spoke with great feeling about the pain in the world until the weeks leading up to her death on 31 May. ‘We say no to the annexation of Palestine’, she said in a video message in 2020. ‘We oppose any measure that tends to erase the identity and existence of the Palestinian people’.

Norita leaves us with her precious words:

Many years from now, I would like to be remembered as a woman who gave her all so that we could have a more dignified life… I would like to be remembered with that cry that I always say and that means everything I feel inside me, that means the hope that someday that other possible world will exist. A world for everyone. So, I would like to be remembered with a smile and for shouting loudly: venceremos, venceremos, venceremos! We will win, we will win, we will win!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

On Monday, the provincial directorate of the Taliban-controlled Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in eastern Khost Province summoned and detained Saadat of Naz FM Radio, Masum of Iqra FM Radio, and Tasal of Wolas Ghag, according to the exiled Afghanistan Journalists Center watchdog group, the London-based news broadcaster Afghanistan International, and a person familiar with the case, who spoke with CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisals.

The Taliban authorities questioned the journalists regarding their broadcasting of music and talking to female callers during the holiday of Eid al-Fitr earlier this month, those sources said.

The Taliban outlawed playing and listening to music when they retook control of Afghanistan in August 2021.

Last month, authorities in Khost Province banned women and girls from phoning broadcasters, the Afghan Journalists Center said, adding that female listeners sometimes called in to ask questions on educational programs. Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are banned from high school.

The person familiar with the case told CPJ that the three journalists were transferred to the provincial police command and were due to face trial soon.

“The detention of Afghan journalists Ismail Saadat, Wahidullah Masum, and Ehsanullah Tasal is only the latest example of the Taliban’s ruthless suppression of the press since the group returned to power in 2021,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York “The Taliban must immediately and unconditionally release all detained journalists and allow the media to operate without restrictive measures like bans on women callers.”  

Despite an initial promise to allow press freedom, repression has worsened with multiple cases of censorship, beatings, and arbitrary arrests of journalists, as well as restrictions on female reporters. 

Earlier this month, the Taliban banned two two national broadcasters for allegedly violating “national and Islamic values” and announced a plan to restrict access to Facebook in Afghanistan.

In 2023, the Taliban detained four journalists in Khost Province for allegedly violating the Islamic group’s media policies.

CPJ’s text messages to Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid requesting comment did not receive any response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

On Monday, March 18, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a new offensive on the Al-Shifa hospital complex, arresting scores of Palestinians. An unspecified number of journalists, including Mahmoud Elewa, a freelance correspondent for Al-Jazeera TV, and Mohamad Arab, a freelance journalist with Al-Araby TV, were among those held, according to multiple news reports. CPJ was unable to confirm further details about other journalists arrested in the raid.

Arab and Elewa were among the first to report on the hospital raid and the arrest of Al-Jazeera reporter Ismail Al-Ghoul on Monday. Al-Ghoul was released after about 12 hours in Israeli custody.

Telecommunications blackouts have hindered communication with journalists in the area and the outlets were only able to confirm Arab and Elewa’s arrests on Wednesday.

“The Israel Defense Forces need to be fully transparent about journalists who have been detained and refrain from any attempts to block the work of journalists at Al-Shifa hospital and all of Gaza,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “CPJ is gravely concerned by these arrests and calls on the IDF to immediately release those held  and provide an explanation for their arrests.”

Thousands of Palestinians displaced by the war have sought shelter in the hospital complex and journalists have been working there since the early days of the war.

CPJ’s email to the IDF’s North America Desk inquiring about the journalists’ whereabouts and the reasons for their arrests did not immediately receive a response.

The Israeli Army said it had killed “over 140 terrorists” in ongoing fighting at al-Shifa and arrested 600 people, according to newsreports. Several reports said that the dead included patients, medical staff, and displaced Palestinian civilians. IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said in an operational update from the hospital complex on Wednesday that “…no civilians, doctors, medic teams, none have been hurt. Only the terrorists.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Beirut, March 18, 2024 — The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by reports that Israeli soldiers assaulted Al-Jazeera Arabic reporter Ismail Al-Ghoul, detained him and other journalists at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, and calls for their immediate release.

On Monday, Israel Defense Forces  soldiers assaulted Al-Jazeera Arabic reporter Ismail Al-Ghoul as he reported on a new Israeli offensive on the hospital, and then took Al-Ghoul and other journalists to an undisclosed location, according to Al-Jazeera, and multiple news reports.

The reports said that Israeli forces raided the hospital at dawn, detaining at least 80 people overall. The IDF said it has taken control of Al-Shifa hospital, calling the action an operation to “thwart terrorist activity” following “concrete intelligence” that “senior Hamas terrorists” had “regrouped” inside the hospital.

Thousands of Palestinians displaced by the war have sought shelter in the hospital complex.

The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV said in its live coverage that it has been trying to contact Al-Ghoul without success since the morning, as telecommunications were down in northern Gaza. It reported that Al-Ghoul was assaulted and forced to strip naked before being taken by IDF soldiers to an unknown location.

Al-Jazeera TV talked to other journalists present at Al-Shifa hospital who said they were surrounded by Israeli fire and tanks at the hospital, and that other journalists and media workers were also arrested with Al-Ghoul. CPJ wasn’t immediately able to verify the names and work of these journalists.

Al-Jazeera also said that Israeli soldiers destroyed the broadcast vehicles the journalists were using to report in front of Al-Shifa hospital.

“We’re deeply alarmed and outraged by reports of the assault on Al-Jazeera reporter Ismail Al-Ghoul from Al-Shifa hospital and other journalists while doing their jobs reporting on the Israeli offensive on the hospital,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “The IDF should immediately release Al-Ghoul and other detained Palestinian journalists and take steps to protect the members of the media covering this war.”

Al-Jazeera Media Network called in a statement for “the immediate release of Al-Ghoul and his colleagues,” regarding their arrest as a “new intimidation against journalists to prevent them from reporting on Israeli army crimes in Gaza.”

The last reports by Al-Ghoul were the night and the morning before his arrest, when he reported on the aid that arrived in Gaza City and transmitted a live report from outside Al-Shifa hospital hours before the IDF raid.

Journalists have been working from the vicinity of the hospital since the start of the war, while enduring electricity and telecommunications blackouts.

Since Hamas’ deadly raid on Israel on October 7, CPJ has documented 95 journalists and media workers killed while covering the war, including the killing by Israeli drone strikes of Al-Jazeera’s Samer Abu Daqqa on December 15, Hamza Al Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya on January 7, and a drone attack that seriously injured Al-Jazeera reporter Ismail Abu Omar. CPJ has called for independent investigations into the attacks.  CPJ did not receive a response to its email to the IDF’s North America Desk asking for comment on the reports about the beating and arrests of journalists at the hospital complex.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Al-Jazeera Arabic reporter Ismail Abu Omar and freelance camera operator and photojournalist Ahmed Matar were traveling by motorcycle in Miraj, north of Rafah, while reporting on displaced Palestinians in the area, when an Israeli drone strike hit them, according to media reports. Both journalists were wearing protective vests clearly marked “Press” and carrying their equipment, Al-Jazeera said.

Al-Jazeera said the journalists received emergency surgery at the European Hospital in Rafah. Abu Omar’s right foot and some fingers on his right hand were amputated, his left leg was severely injured, and pieces of shrapnel remained in his head and chest, the channel said. A photograph shared with CPJ via messaging app showed Matar in the hospital with injuries to his face.

“The Israeli drone strike that injured critically Al-Jazeera reporter Ismail Abu Omar and freelance camera operator and photojournalist Ahmed Matar is another horrific example of the high personal price that journalists in Gaza are paying to cover the war so that the world can witness what is happening,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator in Washington D.C. “We are deeply alarmed by this new attack and call for an independent investigation into whether the journalists were targeted, which constitutes a war crime.”

Al-Jazeera said in a statement that it believed the reporters were deliberately targeted, describing the incident as “a full-fledged crime added to Israel’s crimes against journalists, and a new part in the series of the deliberate targeting of Al Jazeera’s journalists and correspondents in Palestine.”

A video posted by Al-Jazeera Arabic, reviewed by CPJ, appeared to show Abu Omar, wearing a blue press vest, lying on the ground soon after the attack with severe leg injuries as people rushed to provide first aid. CPJ also reviewed photographs of the damaged motorcycle that were shared by the Palestinian newspaper Al-Hadath in a messaging app.

On February 9, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to prepare to evacuate Palestinian civilians from Rafah, which borders Egypt and is the last refuge for some 1.4 million displaced people who have fled attacks further north. The United States, United Nations, International Criminal Court, and humanitarians have spoken out against Israel’s planned assault on Rafah.

Since October 7, CPJ has documented 85 journalists and media workers killed while covering the war, including the killing by Israeli drone strikes of Al-Jazeera’s Samer Abu Daqqa on December 15, and of Hamza Al Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya on January 7. CPJ has called for independent investigations into the attacks.

On Monday, the Israeli cabinet approved a law that allows it to close Al-Jazeera in the country, according to news reports, a move that CPJ has previously spoken out against.

CPJ’s email to the North America Desk of the IDF seeking comment did not immediately receive a reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Al-Jazeera Arabic reporter Ismail Abu Omar and freelance camera operator and photojournalist Ahmed Matar were traveling by motorcycle in Miraj, north of Rafah, while reporting on displaced Palestinians in the area, when an Israeli drone strike hit them, according to media reports. Both journalists were wearing protective vests clearly marked “Press” and carrying their equipment, Al-Jazeera said.

Al-Jazeera said the journalists received emergency surgery at the European Hospital in Rafah. Abu Omar’s right foot and some fingers on his right hand were amputated, his left leg was severely injured, and pieces of shrapnel remained in his head and chest, the channel said. A photograph shared with CPJ via messaging app showed Matar in the hospital with injuries to his face.

“The Israeli drone strike that injured critically Al-Jazeera reporter Ismail Abu Omar and freelance camera operator and photojournalist Ahmed Matar is another horrific example of the high personal price that journalists in Gaza are paying to cover the war so that the world can witness what is happening,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator in Washington D.C. “We are deeply alarmed by this new attack and call for an independent investigation into whether the journalists were targeted, which constitutes a war crime.”

Al-Jazeera said in a statement that it believed the reporters were deliberately targeted, describing the incident as “a full-fledged crime added to Israel’s crimes against journalists, and a new part in the series of the deliberate targeting of Al Jazeera’s journalists and correspondents in Palestine.”

A video posted by Al-Jazeera Arabic, reviewed by CPJ, appeared to show Abu Omar, wearing a blue press vest, lying on the ground soon after the attack with severe leg injuries as people rushed to provide first aid. CPJ also reviewed photographs of the damaged motorcycle that were shared by the Palestinian newspaper Al-Hadath in a messaging app.

On February 9, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to prepare to evacuate Palestinian civilians from Rafah, which borders Egypt and is the last refuge for some 1.4 million displaced people who have fled attacks further north. The United States, United Nations, International Criminal Court, and humanitarians have spoken out against Israel’s planned assault on Rafah.

Since October 7, CPJ has documented 85 journalists and media workers killed while covering the war, including the killing by Israeli drone strikes of Al-Jazeera’s Samer Abu Daqqa on December 15, and of Hamza Al Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya on January 7. CPJ has called for independent investigations into the attacks.

On Monday, the Israeli cabinet approved a law that allows it to close Al-Jazeera in the country, according to news reports, a move that CPJ has previously spoken out against.

CPJ’s email to the North America Desk of the IDF seeking comment did not immediately receive a reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“Turkish authorities should stop turning a blind eye to reporter İsmail Arı’s criminal complaints about the online threats he is facing and take them seriously,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Arı has legitimate worries for his safety and authorities are legally obliged to protect him, and any other members of the media who are in danger, in every way they can.”

Arı, a reporter for the leftist daily BirGün, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on September 19 that he had been receiving death threats but prosecutors had not investigated his complaints.

Arı told CPJ that he had been targeted with online insults and threats since he started reporting on the activities of an Islamist group in southern Turkey after the area was struck by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on February 6, killing tens of thousands.

Arı told CPJ that most of the threats came through X and Instagram. Some messages came from named accounts and some mentioned the Islamist group in their messages, Arı said.

Arı said Istanbul prosecutors had rejected at least 10 complaints that he and his lawyer had filed since February for “insults and threats.” In their rejections, authorities simply said that there were no grounds for investigating insults, and they did not mention the threats, he said.

“They purposefully do not recognize the threat,” he said.

CPJ emailed the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office for comment but did not receive a reply.

Since 1992, 31 journalists and media workers have been killed in Turkey, according to CPJ data.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“I was ready to die,” he told CPJ. “They accused me of being a spy for the Sudanese army, and when they searched my Facebook and found out that I am a freelance journalist who is not working for a specific outlet, they let me go.”  

Battles between RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), former allies who jointly seized power in a 2021 coup, have made headlines around the world. Hundreds of civilians have died, hundreds of thousands have been displaced, and thousands of foreigners have been evacuated. But Sudanese journalists have been hampered in covering the events since fighting broke out April 15 due to tensions over the Sudanese army’s integration of the RSF. The two sides signed a shaky ceasefire in late May, but it has been repeatedly breached. 

According to reporters on the ground and statements by the local trade union, the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate, journalists have been beaten, detained, and interrogated. While the RSF appears to be responsible for most of the incidents, SAF forces also beat BBC correspondent Mohamed Othman last month, the syndicate said. (Othman and the BBC did not return requests for comment; CPJ’s emails requesting comment from the SAF and the RSF were not returned.) 

In general, the fighting has proved disruptive to newsgathering as many journalists, along with other civilians, have been trapped at home or work due to violence on the street. There have also been internet blackouts. 

On May 16, RSF soldiers detained Al-Jazeera journalists Ahmed Fadl and Rashid Gibril at a checkpoint in Khartoum. The journalists were held overnight. The next day, RSF soldiers raided Fadl’s house, where Gibril happened to be at the time, and threatened and beat the journalists and stole their cell phones, money, clothes, and Fadl’s car. On May 18, RSF forces also beat and robbed freelance journalist Eissa Dafaallah while he was filming the aftermath of fighting in the city of Nyala.  

Salem Mahmoud, a correspondent for Saudi broadcaster Al-Arabiya, was delivering a live report on April 29 when an RSF military vehicle parked nearby and interrupted his coverage. Video of the report shows RSF soldiers asking Mahmoud about his work before driving away. 

“Moving between Omdurman and Khartoum to cover the news is very difficult,” Mahmoud told CPJ in a phone interview. “Whenever we go anywhere, we come across a checkpoint where soldiers stop us, ask us who we work for, what we are reporting on. You never feel safe while working. They can arrest you at any moment. And when they do, they can confiscate your equipment before letting you go.” 

News organizations have also been targeted. On April 15, the RSF raided and seized control of the state television headquarters in Omdurman and stopped its broadcast. (The army denied that this happened at the time, according to Reuters.) Fifteen journalists and media workers were trapped inside the building with no food, Sudanese Journalists Syndicate chairman Abdel Moniem Abu Idris told CPJ. One group was released after two weeks and another after three following negotiations with RSF soldiers. As of late May, the broadcast has not resumed and RSF soldiers are still in control of two state television buildings, he said. 

Hala 96, a local independent radio station, shut down due to signal interruptions on April 15, according to the outlet’s social media officer Mohamed Hashem. He told CPJ that the station’s employees believe that RSF forces occupied the building weeks later when a widely circulated video showed armed individuals inside using the office equipment and threatening the military.  

According to the syndicate, closures like these have forced dozens of journalists out of their jobs.

Some journalists have also fled. Freelance journalist Ismail Kushkush was trapped in his apartment in downtown Khartoum for over a week with no electricity. He covered the conflict from inside his apartment, before fleeing to Egypt. 

“We knew that the building was surrounded by RSF soldiers, so we were concerned that they might storm the building and take over our apartments,” he told CPJ. “Personally, I was concerned about them finding out I am a reporter since I heard from one resident in the building who spoke to an RSF soldier that they wanted to make sure that there were no SAF soldiers or reporters in the building. So, when I was leaving the building, I hid my phone in my pants so they don’t find any of the footage I took from my balcony.”  

Abuabkar, the journalist who was shot by RSF forces, is now also in Egypt. 

“Once my wound got better, I went to Cairo temporarily. Even though there isn’t a lot of opportunities for us [journalists] over there, but it is just safer,” he said. “Honestly, if the current clashes continue in Sudan for a much longer time, I think I will have to go anywhere in Europe and try to start a new life from scratch. It is just too dangerous in Sudan right now.” 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program.

“By issuing prison sentences to Mehmet Güleş and İsmail Çoban, Turkish authorities have yet again abused the country’s anti-terror legislation,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Authorities should not contest the journalists’ appeals and should cease their practice of retaliatory prosecutions against members of the media covering Kurdish issues.”

On Tuesday, April 18, local media outlets reported that two courts in eastern Turkey separately found Mehmet Güleş and İsmail Çoban guilty of making propaganda for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey considers a terrorist organization. Both journalists pleaded not guilty.

The Second Elazığ Court of Serious Crimes sentenced Güleş, a reporter for the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya News Agency, to 21 months and 25 days in prison, but then delayed the enforcement of that sentence, reports said. During his trial, authorities’ evidence included news stories Güleş shared on social media by his former employer, the shuttered pro-Kurdish Dicle News Agency.

Separately, the Fifth Diyarbakır Court of Serious Crimes sentenced Çoban, the former responsible news editor for the shuttered Kurdish-language outlet Azadiya Welat, to 18 months and 22 days in prison, and did not delay the execution of that sentence, reports said. During his trial, authorities presented news stories by Azadiya Welat about the PKK as evidence. 

Çoban has been imprisoned since 2018 on other terror-related charges related to his work.

Resul Temur, a lawyer who represents both Güleş and Çoban, told CPJ via messaging app that he believed the journalists were being punished for their work, and said they intend to appeal the verdicts. CPJ emailed the chief prosecutor’s offices of Diyarbakır and Elazığ for comment but did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

On February 25, in Johannesburg, supporters of the opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters and municipal police obstructed and then assaulted Silindelo Masikane, a reporter with the privately owned broadcaster eNCA, according to a local news report, a tweet by the journalist, a statement by the South African National Editors’ Forum, and her editor John Bailey, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.  

Separately, at about 10:30 a.m. on February 28, a former mayor and his bodyguards attacked Gaddafi Zulu, a reporter with the privately owned newspaper Zululand Observer, according to multiple news reports, a SANEF statement, and Zulu, who spoke to CPJ by phone.

“South African authorities must thoroughly investigate the unprovoked assaults on journalists Gaddafi Zulu and Silindelo Masikane, and all those responsible must face the consequences for such outrageous actions,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator, in New York. “Failure to arrest and successfully prosecute the perpetrators will simply encourage open season on journalists covering events of public interest, including by assaulting and filing retaliatory charges against members of the press.”

Masikane and camera operator Thamsanqa Chamane were trying to interview an elected EFF municipal councilor involved in a new crime prevention program when EFF supporters created a human barrier around the party member, shoved Masikane to the ground and, alongside some members of the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police, stepped on her, according to Bailey and those reports on her case.

Masikane was not severely injured. ECA representatives reported the incident to the Johannesburg Metro Police Department on February 27, and they have not heard anything back as of March 9, Bailey told CPJ.

Previously, in March 2021, EFF leader Julius Malema tweeted that no eNCA journalist would be allowed to interview a party member “anywhere globally” and that June party members blocked eNCA from covering an anti-racism protest and harassed and threatened reporter Ayesha Ismail and camera operator Mario Pedro.

CPJ called EFF spokesperson Thambo Sinawo and Johannesburg police spokesperson Justice Hlabisa, and contacted them via messaging app for comment, but did not receive a  replies. 

In Zulu’s case, he was attempting to photograph an official who had been denied entry to the local government offices in the northern KwaZulu-Natal town of Mtubatuba when the former mayor of Mtubatuba, Mandla Zungu, and at least six bodyguards approached Zulu and asked who permitted him to take those photographs. 

“Before I could answer, I was slapped [and] punched in the face, head, and the upper body,” Zulu told CPJ. He pushed one of the attackers and escaped the building, leaving behind his laptop, phone, and notebook. 

While outside, Zulu asked Zungu to return his equipment, and Zungu unsuccessfully tried to drag Zulu back into the building and then threw the journalist’s empty laptop bag at him. 

Zulu reported the assault to police later that day, and his badly damaged laptop and phone, which appeared to have been dropped on the ground, were returned to him with the help of the police, but his notebook was not.

Zungu lodged a counter assault complaint against the journalist the same day, which Zulu called “untrue.” KwaZulu Natal police spokesperson Nqobile Gwala responded to CPJ’s request for comment sent via messaging app saying an investigation was ongoing.

Zulu saw a doctor on March 1 and was treated for bruising to his head.

On March 3, Zulu and Zungu appeared in the Mtubatuba District Court, and the matter was adjourned to March 29 to allow the parties to obtain legal representation. CPJ repeatedly called Zungu and contacted him via messaging app for comment but did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, April 13, security personnel — including police and intelligence officers — arrested a group of at least nine journalists, working for seven local private media outlets and two international outlets, who were covering a fight between inmates and guards at a prison in the region’s capital, Hargeisa, according to multiple media reports and statements by press rights groups. Two of the detained journalists were released after a few hours in custody, according to the press rights groups and a statement by the Human Rights Center, an advocacy group.

Later that day, security personnel raided the Horn Cable TV offices, which was one of the stations that aired breaking news dispatches from the scene of the prison fight, and arrested another six journalists, according to statements made at a news conference by Sakaria Muhumed Ahmed, the chairperson of the Somaliland Journalists Association, a local media industry body; a joint statement by the Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) and the Somali Media Association, Mogadishu-based press rights organizations; and Abdikarim Saed Salah, a Horn Cable TV journalist who spoke to CPJ via messaging app. Abdikarim said that the men who raided the station were police officers.

The detained journalists’ colleagues said that none of them had been produced in court. CPJ was unable to independently verify the whereabouts of the 13 journalists who remain behind bars or what allegations police have leveled against them.

“These sweeping arrests expose the intolerance for independent reporting that has made Somaliland a hostile environment for members of the press,” said CPJ’s sub-Saharan African representative Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities must release all journalists detained for their work, allow them to go back to their jobs without interference, and ensure that security personnel no longer harass or detain journalists for doing their jobs.”

At a news conference, shared online by state media, Justice Minister Saleban Warsame Guled accused journalists of rushing to the scene to “report unconfirmed news.” At that same press conference, Ahmed Awale Yusuf, the head of Somaliland’s Custodial Corps, which is in charge of guarding the prison, vowed to file a case against “those who exaggerated the incident” for “damaging the moral of the soldiers and lying.”  

According to media reports, including by some the journalists’ employers; the statements; and the colleagues who spoke to CPJ, the nine journalists detained near the prison were:

• Naima Abdi Ahmed, founder of Carro Edeg Media
• Hassan Galaydh, a BBC correspondent
• Sagal Mustafe Hassan, a stringer for U.S. Congress-funded Voice of America (VOA)
• Mohamed Abdi Ilig, a reporter and chairperson of MM Somali TV
• Mohamed Jamal Jirde, a cameraperson with MM Somali TV
• Aidarus Mohamed, a reporter and regional bureau chief with the Mogadishu-headquartered Goobjoog Media Group
• Ahmed Nur Samrawi, a Bulsho TV reporter
• Ahmed Said Hassan Shimali, a Horn Cable TV reporter
• Ahmed Mohamud Yusuf, a Saab TV camera operator

Police and intelligence officers at the scene also tried to arrest another journalist, CBA TV reporter and manager Hamza Hirsi Hayd, but he was allowed to go free after the officers argued and failed to agree about whether he should be taken into custody, according to the journalist, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app, and another person familiar with his case who requested anonymity for safety concerns.

Sagal and Naima were released after about three to four hours in custody, according to the same sources, a VOA statement shared with CPJ via email, and Naima, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app. VOA said that authorities did not provide a reason for Sagal’s arrest.

Naima told CPJ she was held at the intelligence headquarters, where officers searched her phone and accused her of undermining national security and recording “sensitive matters.” She said that the officers beat and kicked her, including hitting her in the face. She said she suffered aches all over her body and on one of her hands, that eight of her teeth in “fragile condition,” and that she visited a local dentist who gave her painkillers.

After raiding the Horn Cable TV offices, security personnel arrested reporters Abdijabar Mohamed Hussein, Mohamed Suldan Ahmed, and Khalid Mohamed Aleeli, as well as camera operators Ayanle Abdi Buni, Mustafa Muhumed Abdi, and Abdifatah Mohamud Ismail, according to Abdikarim. Sakaria, at the April 13 press conference, said that security personnel also confiscated two cameras.

During the April 13 press conference, Sakaria said five journalists were held at the Hargeisa Central Police station while the whereabouts of the rest were unclear. The SJS reported that seven of the journalists were held at the intelligence headquarters while the rest were held at the central police station in Hargeisa, a report corroborated by Abdikarim and Abdishakur Dayib Mohamed, director of MM Somali TV, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Bulsho TV director Ali Farah Hardi and Goobjoog Media’s deputy director Abdiaziz Ahmed Gurbiye told CPJ via messaging app that they were unsure where the journalists from their stations are detained.

CPJ’s calls and messages to Somaliland Police Commissioner General Mohamed Adan Saqadhi, Intelligence Chief Mohamed Salebaan Hasan, and Justice Minister Salebaan Warsame Guleed were not answered. CPJ could not immediately find contact information for the prison security head Ahmed Awale Yusuf. CPJ sent queries for comment via Facebook and Twitter to Somaliland’s ministries of justice, information, and foreign affairs but did not receive a response. A query sent via Twitter to the office of the Somaliland president was also unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.