The International Press Institute (IPI) has joined calls for urgent action to halt the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Gaza as global news organisations warn that their journalists there are experiencing starvation.

Israel must immediately allow life-saving food aid to reach journalists and other civilians in Gaza, IPI said in a statement today.

“The international community must also put effective pressure on Israel to allow all journalists to enter and exit the territory and to document the ongoing catastrophe,”it said.

• READ MORE: BBC, AFP and other news outlets warn journalists in Gaza at risk of starvation
• ‘We are dying’: Palestinians slam world’s inaction as hunger ravages Gaza
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

In an unprecedented joint statement this week, the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, BBC News, and Reuters — four of the world’s leading news agencies — said their journalists on the ground “are increasingly unable to feed themselves and their families”.

The news outlets added: “Journalists endure many deprivations and hardships in warzones. We are deeply alarmed that the threat of starvation is now one of them.”

Separately, Al Jazeera Media Network said in a statement that journalists on the ground “now find themselves fighting for their own survival” due to mass starvation.

Harrowing accounts
AFP and Al Jazeera journalists shared harrowing accounts of conditions on the ground.

One AFP photographer was quoted as saying, “I no longer have the strength to work for the media. My body is thin and I can’t work anymore.”

Al Jazeera Arabic’s Gaza correspondent said he was “drowning in hunger”.

In an interview with NPR, AFP global news director Phil Chetwynd said that the news agency had been working to evacuate its remaining contributors from Gaza, which requires Israeli permission.

The dramatic warnings come as more than 100 international humanitarian organisations said that mass starvation in Gaza was now threatening the lives of humanitarian aid workers themselves, while the civilian death toll continues to rise.

Gaza under siege — a journalist reports on daily survival   Video: Al Jazeera

Meanwhile, Israel continues to refuse to allow international reporters into Gaza to report and cover the war and humanitarian situation independently, obstructing the free flow of news and limiting coverage of the humanitarian crisis.

The ongoing conflict has taken a devastating toll on journalists and media outlets in Gaza.

Highest media death toll
Since October 2023, at least 186 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza — Al Jazeera puts the figure as at least 230 — the West Bank, Israel, and Lebanon, according to monitoring by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

This is the largest number of journalists to be killed in any armed conflict in this span of time.

Independent investigations such as those conducted by Forbidden Stories have found more than a dozen cases in which journalists were intentionally targeted and killed by the Israeli military — which constitutes a war crime under international law.

IPI has made repeated calls, in conjunction with its partners, urging the international community to take immediate measures to protect journalists and allow unimpeded access to the strip from international media.

Today, IPI has strongly and urgently reiterated these calls, as humanitarian conditions in Gaza rapidly deteriorate and as journalists and other civilians face man-made starvation.

The international community must use all diplomatic means at its disposal to pressure Israel to ensure the safe flow of food aid to journalists and other civilians, said IPI in a statement.

“The response by the international community in this critical moment could be the difference between life and death. There is no more time to lose,” IPI said.

RSF warnings over Gaza
In Paris, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reports that for nearly two years it has warned about the precarious conditions faced by journalists in Gaza — which are deteriorating day by day.

Over the past 20 months in Gaza, more than 200 journalists have been killed by the Israeli army, including at least 46 slain while doing their job,” RSF said today in a statement.

“In addition to bombs, forced displacement, and dire humanitarian conditions, Gaza’s journalists, who are the only ones able to document what is happening in the besieged and closed-off enclave, can no longer find food,” the statement said.

“In response to this catastrophe, RSF reiterates its call to open up Gaza to foreign journalists and lift the blockade, in a joint appeal with over 200 media outlets and organisations from around the world.”

Jamie Wiseman is a journalist of the Vienna-based International Press Institute.

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

The Madleen ship, which had on board climate activist Greta Thunberg and French member of the European Parliament Rima Hassan in addition to the two journalists, Yanis Mhamdi and Omar Faiad, was intercepted and seized by the Israeli forces, after which communication with the crew was completely cut off.

“Israeli authorities must immediately release the humanitarian crew of the Madleen ship, which includes two French journalists, heading to Gaza,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “EU leaders, including French authorities, should pressure Israel to release these journalists and stop all assaults on press freedom and protect journalists.”

The British-flagged yacht, which is operated by the pro-Palestinian Freedom Flotilla Coalition, had aimed to deliver a symbolic amount of aid to Gaza later on Monday and raise international awareness of the humanitarian crisis there.

Faiad, a correspondent with Al Jazeera Mubashar, was photographed waving his hands up while the Israeli forces were boarding the ship.

Mhamdi, a journalist with independent French media outlet Blast and a documentary filmmaker, posted on his X account as the ship was being intercepted, “I am a journalist, and after covering the Freedom Flotilla convoy for a week, my arrest by the Israeli army is imminent. Humanitarian workers and journalists should not be arrested. I call on all my colleagues to mobilize.”

A video of Mhamdi was circulated on social media less than an hour later in which he says, “If you are seeing this, I have been detained by the Israeli forces while performing my role as a journalist.”

Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said all passengers will be transported to the port of Ashdod. The government has not yet clarified what it intends for the seized crew and the journalists who were aboard.

CPJ’s email to the North America media desk for the IDF, inquiring about the situation of the journalists and when they and the crew would be released, didn’t receive an immediate response.

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

In 1979, Sam Neill appeared in an Australian comedy movie about hacks on a Sydney newspaper.

The Journalist was billed as “a saucy, sexy, funny look at a man with a nose for scandal and a weakness for women”.

That would probably not fly these days — but as a rule, movies about Australian journalists are no laughing matter.

• READ MORE: Other reports on Peter Greste’s The First Casualty
• Listen to RNZ Mediawatch

Back in 1982, a young Mel Gibson starred as a foreign correspondent who was dropped into Jakarta during revolutionary chaos in The Year of Living Dangerously. The 1967 events the movie depicted were real enough, but Mel Gibson’s correspondent Guy Hamilton was made up for what was essentially a romantic drama.

There was no romance and a lot more real life 25 years later in Balibo, another movie with Australian journalists in harm’s way during Indonesian upheaval.

Anthony La Paglia had won awards for his performance as Roger East, a journalist killed in what was then East Timor — now Timor-Leste — in December 1975. East was killed while investigating the fate of five other journalists — including New Zealander Guy Cunningham — who was killed during the Indonesian invasion two months earlier.

The Correspondent has a happier ending but is still a tough watch — especially for its subject.

Met in London newsrooms
I first met Peter Greste in newsrooms in London about 30 years ago. He had worked for Reuters, CNN, and the BBC — going on to become a BBC correspondent in Afghanistan.

He later reported from Belgrade, Santiago, and then Nairobi, from where he appeared regularly on RNZ’s Nine to Noon as an African news correspondent. Greste later joined the English-language network of the Doha-based Al Jazeera and became a worldwide story himself while filling in as the correspondent in Cairo.

Greste and two Egyptian colleagues, Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy, were arrested in late 2013 on trumped-up charges of aiding and abetting the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation labeled “terrorist” by the new Egyptian regime of the time.

Six months later he was sentenced to seven years in jail for “falsifying news” and smearing the reputation of Egypt itself. Mohamed was sentenced to 10 years.

Media organisations launched an international campaign for their freedom with the slogan “Journalism is not a crime”. Peter’s own family became familiar faces in the media while working hard for his release too.

Peter Greste was deported to Australia in February 2015. The deal stated he would serve the rest of his sentence there, but the Australian government did not enforce that. Instead, Greste became a professor of media and journalism, currently at Macquarie University in Sydney.

Movie consultant
Among other things, he has also been a consultant on The Correspondent — now in cinemas around New Zealand — with Richard Roxborough cast as Greste himself.

Greste told The Sydney Morning Herald he had to watch it “through his fingers” at first.

“I eventually came to realise it’s not me that’s up there on the screen. It’s the product of a whole bunch of creatives. And the result is … more like a painting rather than a photograph,” Greste told Mediawatch.

“Over the years I’ve written about it, I’ve spoken about it countless times. I’ve built a career on it. But I wasn’t really anticipating the emotional impact of seeing the craziness of my arrest, the confusion of that period, the claustrophobia of the cell, the sheer frustration of the crazy trial and the really discombobulating moment of my release.

“But there is another very difficult story about what happened to a colleague of mine in Somalia, which I haven’t spoken about publicly. Seeing that on screen was actually pretty gut-wrenching.”

In 2005, his BBC colleague Kate Peyton was shot alongside him on their first day in on assignment in Somalia. She died soon after.

“That was probably the toughest day of my entire life far over and above anything I went through in Egypt. But I am glad that they put it in [The Correspondent]. It underlines … the way in which journalism is under attack. What happened to us in Egypt wasn’t a random, isolated incident — but part of a much longer pattern we’re seeing continue to this day.”

‘Owed his life’
Greste says he “owes his life” to fellow prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah — an Egyptian activist who is also in the film.

“There’s a bit of artistic licence in the way it was portrayed but . . .  he is easily one of the most intelligent, astute and charismatic humanitarians I’ve ever come across. He was one of the main pro-democracy activists who was behind the Arab Spring revolution in 2011 — a true democrat.

“He also inspired me to write the letters that we smuggled out of prison that described our arrest not as an attack on … what we’d actually come to represent. And that was press freedom.

“That helped frame the campaign that ultimately got me out. So, for both psychological and political reasons, I feel like I owe him my life.

“There was nothing in our reporting that confirmed the allegations against us. So I started to drag up all sorts of demons from the past. I started thinking maybe this is the universe punishing me for sins of the past. I was obviously digging up that particular moment as one of the most extreme and tragic moments. It took a long time for me to get past it.

“He’d been in prison a lot because of his activism, so he understood the psychology of it. He also understood the politics of it in ways that I could never do as a newcomer.”

“Unfortunately, he is still there. He should have been released on September 29th last year. His mother launched a hunger strike in London . . . so I actually joined her on hunger strike earlier this year to try and add pressure.

“If this movie also draws a bit of attention to his case, then I think that’s an important element.”

Another wrinkle
Another wrinkle in the story was the situation of his two Egyptian Al Jazeera colleagues.

Greste was essentially a stranger to them, having only arrived in Egypt shortly before their arrest.

The film shows Greste clashing with Fahmy, who later sued Al Jazeera. Fahmy felt the international pressure to free Greste was making their situation worse by pushing the Egyptian regime into a corner.

“To call it a confrontation is probably a bit of an understatement. We had some really serious arguments and sometimes they got very, very heated. But I want audiences to really understand Fahmy’s worldview in this film.

“He and I had very different understandings of what was going … and how those differences played out.

“I’ve got a hell of a lot of respect for him. He is like a brother to me. That doesn’t mean we always agreed with each other and doesn’t mean we always got on with each other like any siblings, I suppose.”

His colleagues were eventually released on bail shortly after Greste’s deportation in 2015.

Fahmy renounced his Egyptian citizenship and was later deported to Canada, while Mohamed was released on bail and eventually pardoned.

Retrial — all ‘reconvicted’
“After I was released there was a retrial … and we were all reconvicted. They were finally released and pardoned, but the pardon didn’t extend to me.

“I can’t go back because I’m still a convicted ‘terrorist’ and I still have an outstanding prison sentence to serve, which is a little bit weird. Any country that has an extradition treaty with Egypt is a problem. There are a fairly significant number of those across the Middle East and Africa.”

Greste told Mediawatch his conviction was even flagged in transit in Auckland en route from New York to Sydney. He was told he failed a character test.

“I was able to resolve it. I had some friends in Canberra and were able to sort it out, but I was told in no uncertain terms I’m not allowed into New Zealand without getting a visa because of that criminal record.

“If I’m traveling to any country I have to say … I was convicted on terrorism offences. Generally speaking, I can explain it, but it often takes a lot of bureaucratic process to do that.”

Greste’s first account of his time in jail — The First Casualty — was published in 2017. Most of the book was about media freedom around the world, lamenting that the numbers of journalists jailed and killed increased after his release.

Something that Greste also now ponders a lot in his current job as a professor of media and journalism.

Ten years on from that, it is worse again. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says at least 124 journalists and media workers were killed last year, nearly two-thirds of them Palestinians killed by Israel in its war in Gaza.

The book has now been updated and republished as The Correspondent.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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

In 1979, Sam Neill appeared in an Australian comedy movie about hacks on a Sydney newspaper.

The Journalist was billed as “a saucy, sexy, funny look at a man with a nose for scandal and a weakness for women”.

That would probably not fly these days — but as a rule, movies about Australian journalists are no laughing matter.

• READ MORE: Other reports on Peter Greste’s The First Casualty
• Listen to RNZ Mediawatch

Back in 1982, a young Mel Gibson starred as a foreign correspondent who was dropped into Jakarta during revolutionary chaos in The Year of Living Dangerously. The 1967 events the movie depicted were real enough, but Mel Gibson’s correspondent Guy Hamilton was made up for what was essentially a romantic drama.

There was no romance and a lot more real life 25 years later in Balibo, another movie with Australian journalists in harm’s way during Indonesian upheaval.

Anthony La Paglia had won awards for his performance as Roger East, a journalist killed in what was then East Timor — now Timor-Leste — in December 1975. East was killed while investigating the fate of five other journalists — including New Zealander Guy Cunningham — who was killed during the Indonesian invasion two months earlier.

The Correspondent has a happier ending but is still a tough watch — especially for its subject.

Met in London newsrooms
I first met Peter Greste in newsrooms in London about 30 years ago. He had worked for Reuters, CNN, and the BBC — going on to become a BBC correspondent in Afghanistan.

He later reported from Belgrade, Santiago, and then Nairobi, from where he appeared regularly on RNZ’s Nine to Noon as an African news correspondent. Greste later joined the English-language network of the Doha-based Al Jazeera and became a worldwide story himself while filling in as the correspondent in Cairo.

Greste and two Egyptian colleagues, Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy, were arrested in late 2013 on trumped-up charges of aiding and abetting the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation labeled “terrorist” by the new Egyptian regime of the time.

Six months later he was sentenced to seven years in jail for “falsifying news” and smearing the reputation of Egypt itself. Mohamed was sentenced to 10 years.

Media organisations launched an international campaign for their freedom with the slogan “Journalism is not a crime”. Peter’s own family became familiar faces in the media while working hard for his release too.

Peter Greste was deported to Australia in February 2015. The deal stated he would serve the rest of his sentence there, but the Australian government did not enforce that. Instead, Greste became a professor of media and journalism, currently at Macquarie University in Sydney.

Movie consultant
Among other things, he has also been a consultant on The Correspondent — now in cinemas around New Zealand — with Richard Roxborough cast as Greste himself.

Greste told The Sydney Morning Herald he had to watch it “through his fingers” at first.

“I eventually came to realise it’s not me that’s up there on the screen. It’s the product of a whole bunch of creatives. And the result is … more like a painting rather than a photograph,” Greste told Mediawatch.

“Over the years I’ve written about it, I’ve spoken about it countless times. I’ve built a career on it. But I wasn’t really anticipating the emotional impact of seeing the craziness of my arrest, the confusion of that period, the claustrophobia of the cell, the sheer frustration of the crazy trial and the really discombobulating moment of my release.

“But there is another very difficult story about what happened to a colleague of mine in Somalia, which I haven’t spoken about publicly. Seeing that on screen was actually pretty gut-wrenching.”

In 2005, his BBC colleague Kate Peyton was shot alongside him on their first day in on assignment in Somalia. She died soon after.

“That was probably the toughest day of my entire life far over and above anything I went through in Egypt. But I am glad that they put it in [The Correspondent]. It underlines … the way in which journalism is under attack. What happened to us in Egypt wasn’t a random, isolated incident — but part of a much longer pattern we’re seeing continue to this day.”

‘Owed his life’
Greste says he “owes his life” to fellow prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah — an Egyptian activist who is also in the film.

“There’s a bit of artistic licence in the way it was portrayed but . . .  he is easily one of the most intelligent, astute and charismatic humanitarians I’ve ever come across. He was one of the main pro-democracy activists who was behind the Arab Spring revolution in 2011 — a true democrat.

“He also inspired me to write the letters that we smuggled out of prison that described our arrest not as an attack on … what we’d actually come to represent. And that was press freedom.

“That helped frame the campaign that ultimately got me out. So, for both psychological and political reasons, I feel like I owe him my life.

“There was nothing in our reporting that confirmed the allegations against us. So I started to drag up all sorts of demons from the past. I started thinking maybe this is the universe punishing me for sins of the past. I was obviously digging up that particular moment as one of the most extreme and tragic moments. It took a long time for me to get past it.

“He’d been in prison a lot because of his activism, so he understood the psychology of it. He also understood the politics of it in ways that I could never do as a newcomer.”

“Unfortunately, he is still there. He should have been released on September 29th last year. His mother launched a hunger strike in London . . . so I actually joined her on hunger strike earlier this year to try and add pressure.

“If this movie also draws a bit of attention to his case, then I think that’s an important element.”

Another wrinkle
Another wrinkle in the story was the situation of his two Egyptian Al Jazeera colleagues.

Greste was essentially a stranger to them, having only arrived in Egypt shortly before their arrest.

The film shows Greste clashing with Fahmy, who later sued Al Jazeera. Fahmy felt the international pressure to free Greste was making their situation worse by pushing the Egyptian regime into a corner.

“To call it a confrontation is probably a bit of an understatement. We had some really serious arguments and sometimes they got very, very heated. But I want audiences to really understand Fahmy’s worldview in this film.

“He and I had very different understandings of what was going … and how those differences played out.

“I’ve got a hell of a lot of respect for him. He is like a brother to me. That doesn’t mean we always agreed with each other and doesn’t mean we always got on with each other like any siblings, I suppose.”

His colleagues were eventually released on bail shortly after Greste’s deportation in 2015.

Fahmy renounced his Egyptian citizenship and was later deported to Canada, while Mohamed was released on bail and eventually pardoned.

Retrial — all ‘reconvicted’
“After I was released there was a retrial … and we were all reconvicted. They were finally released and pardoned, but the pardon didn’t extend to me.

“I can’t go back because I’m still a convicted ‘terrorist’ and I still have an outstanding prison sentence to serve, which is a little bit weird. Any country that has an extradition treaty with Egypt is a problem. There are a fairly significant number of those across the Middle East and Africa.”

Greste told Mediawatch his conviction was even flagged in transit in Auckland en route from New York to Sydney. He was told he failed a character test.

“I was able to resolve it. I had some friends in Canberra and were able to sort it out, but I was told in no uncertain terms I’m not allowed into New Zealand without getting a visa because of that criminal record.

“If I’m traveling to any country I have to say … I was convicted on terrorism offences. Generally speaking, I can explain it, but it often takes a lot of bureaucratic process to do that.”

Greste’s first account of his time in jail — The First Casualty — was published in 2017. Most of the book was about media freedom around the world, lamenting that the numbers of journalists jailed and killed increased after his release.

Something that Greste also now ponders a lot in his current job as a professor of media and journalism.

Ten years on from that, it is worse again. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says at least 124 journalists and media workers were killed last year, nearly two-thirds of them Palestinians killed by Israel in its war in Gaza.

The book has now been updated and republished as The Correspondent.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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

A Dakar court judge charged Zik Fm editor-in-chief Simon Pierre Faye with spreading false news on April 14 and released him under judicial control. On the same day, the Dakar gendarmerie questioned for several hours online broadcaster Source A TV’s journalists Omar Ndiaye and Fatima Coulibaly, and freelance news commentator Abdou Nguer, over their comments on the death of a local official. Nguer’s lawyer told local media that the gendarmes detained the journalist on false news charges related to a TikTok post that does not belong to him. The post called for an autopsy of the official. Ndiaye and Coulibaly were released without charges.

“Senegalese authorities must drop all charges against journalist Simon Pierre Faye, release news commentator Abdou Nguer, and end their judicial harassment of journalists,” said Moussa Ngom, CPJ’s Francophone Africa Representative. “Authorities should instead focus their efforts on advancing promised reforms to decriminalize press offenses.”

Police arrested Faye on April 10 for a post on his outlet’s Facebook page, later deleted, republishing another article on the alleged distrust of President Faye’s leadership.

Responding to a parliamentarian’s question about Faye’s detention, Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko said that “penal policy will now be zero tolerance” for spreading “false news.”

CPJ has documented detentions of Senegalese journalists on false news charges, an offense punishable by one to three years in prison. In his campaign, President Faye promised to replace imprisonment for press offenses with fines. 

Separately, on April 13, police and gendarmes stopped and questioned Al Jazeera Qatar journalist Nicolas Haque and his camera operator, Magali Rochat, upon their arrival in the southern Ziguinchor city, where they sought to report on the return of people displaced by the region’s conflict. The journalists were sent back to Dakar the day after, Haque told CPJ.

CPJ’s email to the government’s information and communications office was not answered.

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

UN President Donald Trump’s idea of mass expulsion of Palestinians in Gaza to Jordan and Egypt has been dismissed by analysts as unaccepable “ethnic cleansing” and rejected by the governments of both neigbouring countries.

Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani, a nonresident research fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs and commentator specialising in Palestinian affairs and the Arab-Israeli conflict, said the US and Israel would “fail” over such a plan.

President Trump’s suggestion had been to “clean out” Gaza and move 1.5 million Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt.

• READ MORE: Trump suggests his plan for Gaza Strip is to ‘clean out the whole thing’
• ‘Day of victory’: Excitement as displaced Palestinians return to north Gaza
• Other Gaza reports

“Even if [President Trump] applies pressure on Jordan and Egypt, I think their leaderships will recognise the price of going along with Trump is going to be much greater than the price of resisting him — in terms of the survival of their leaderships for participating in something like this,” Rabbani told Al Jazeera, referring to Trump’s plan as “ethnic cleansing”.

The rebuttals to the Trump idea came as Gaza experienced an historic day with jubilant scenes as tens of thousands of Palestinians crossed the so-called Netzarim Corridor to return home in the north showing their determination to survive under the 15-month onslaught by Israel’s military.

Al Jazeera journalist Tamer al-Misshal said it was a “significant and historic moment” for the Palestinians.

“It’s the first time since 1948 those who have been forced out of their homes and land managed to get back — despite the destruction and despite the genocide,” he said.

He quoted one Palestinian man who returned as saying he would erect a tent on his destroyed home, “which is much better than being forcibly displaced from Gaza”.

Al-Misshal noted Hamas recently said 18 more Israeli captives were alive and would be returned each Saturday in exchange for Palestinian prisoners over the next few weeks.

He said the next main step was to get the Rafah land crossing opened so aid could flow and thousands of badly wounded Palestinians could get medical treatment abroad.

‘Blanket refusal’

Analyst Mouin Rabbani told Al Jazeera about the Trump displacement idea: “This isn’t going to happen because Israel is not going to succeed in ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip after a war, after having failed to do so during a war.”

When former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken went on a tour of Arab states to promote this idea late last year, he had been met with a “blanket refusal”, Rabbani added.

Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was feeling the heat from his coalition partners over the ceasefire deal who view the Israeli leader as succumbing to US demands, the analyst said.

“I think there’s a kind of a mix of personal, political and ideological factors at play,” Rabbani said.

“But ultimately, I think the key relationship to look at here is not that between Netanyahu and his coalition partners, or between Israelis and Palestinians, but between Washington and Israel — because Washington is the one calling the shots, and Israel has no choice but to comply.”

A senior Hamas official, Basem Naim, has described the “return” day as “the most important day in the current history of this conflict”.

He said that Israel was “for the first time” obliged to allow Palestinians to return to their houses after being forced “by the resistance”, in a similar way that it was “forced to release” Palestinian prisoners.

‘Very symbolic day’ in conflict
“This is, I think, a very symbolic day,” he said. “This is a very important day in how to approach this conflict with the Israelis, which language they understand.”

Naim also reaffirmed Hamas’s commitment to the ceasefire agreement and said the group was “ready to do the maximum to give this deal a chance to succeed”.

He also accused Netanyahu and the Israeli government of playing “dirty games” in a bid to “sabotage the deal”.

Jordanian officials have rejected President Trump’s “clean out” Gaza suggestion with
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi saying that all talk about an alternative homeland for the Palestinians was rejected and “we will not accept it”.

He said any attempt to displace Palestinians from their land would not bring security to the region.

The Jordanian House of Representatives said: “The absurdity and denial of Palestinian rights will keep the region on a simmering and boiling plate.”

Jordan would not be an alternative homeland for displacement attempts against “the patient Palestinian people”.

In Cairo, the Foreign Ministry reaffirmed in a statement Egypt’s “continued support for the steadfastness of the Palestinian people on their land.”

It “rejected any infringement on those inalienable rights, whether by settlement or annexation of land, or by the depopulation of that land of its people through displacement, encouraged transfer or the uprooting of Palestinians from their land, whether temporarily or long-term.”

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

The Al Jazeera Network has condemned the arrest of its occupied West Bank correspondent by Palestinian security services as a bid by the Israeli occupation to “block media coverage” of the military attack on Jenin.

Israeli soldiers have killed at least 12 Palestinians in the three-day military assault that has rendered the refugee camp “nearly uninhabitable” and forced displacement of more than 2000 people. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said the Jenin operation was a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and human rights”.

Al Jazeera said in a broadcast statement that the arrest of its occupied West Bank correspondent Muhammad al-Atrash by the Palestinian Authority (PA) could only be explained as “an attempt to block the media coverage of the occupation’s attack in Jenin”.

• READ MORE: International media’s reluctance to show solidarity with Palestinian journalists could backfire
• Bulldozer or Butcher: Netanyahu follows in Sharon footsteps from Jenin to Jabalia: Marwan Bishara
• Killing of five Gaza journalists by Israel strike highlights weak NZ media response
• Other media freedom reports in occupied Palestine

We’re following with concern the arrest of journalist Mohammed Al-Atrash by the Palestinian security forces in connection with his work at Al Jazeera and call for his immediate release./1 pic.twitter.com/M2ZcEoWqJl

— Al-Haq الحق (@alhaq_org) January 23, 2025

“The arbitrary actions of the Palestinian Authority are unfortunately identical to the occupation’s targeting of the Al Jazeera Network,” it said.

“We value the positions and voices that stand in solidarity and defend colleague Muhammad al-Atrash and the freedom of the press.”

The network said the journalist was brought before a court in Hebron after being arrested yesterday while covering the events in Jenin “simply for doing his professional duty as a journalist”.

“We confirm that these practices will not hinder our ongoing professional coverage of the facts unfolding in the West Bank,” Al Jazeera’s statement added.

The Israeli occupation has been targeting Al Jazeera for months in an attempt to gag its reporting.

Calling for al-Atrash’s immediate release, the al-Haq organisation (Protecting and Promoting Human Rights & the Rule of Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory) said in a statement: “Freedom of opinion and expression cannot be guaranteed without ensuring freedom of the press.”

Rage over AJ ban
Earlier this month journalists expressed outrage and confusion about the PA’s decision to shut down the Al Jazeera office in the occupied West Bank after the Israeli government had earlier banned the Al Jazeera broadcasting network’s operation within Israel.

“Shutting down a major outlet like Al Jazeera is a crime against journalism,” said freelance journalist Ikhlas al-Qarnawi.

Also earlier this month, award-winning Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab criticised the Israeli government for targeting journalists and attempting to “cover up” the assassination of five Palestinian journalists last month.

He said a December 26 press statement by the Israeli army attempted to “justify a war crime”.

“It unabashedly admitted that the military incinerated five Palestinian journalists in a clearly marked press vehicle outside al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp, central Gaza Strip,” Kuttab said in an op-ed article.

Many Western publications had quoted the Israeli army statement as if it was an objective position and “not propaganda whitewashing a war crime”, he wrote.

“They failed to clarify to their audiences that attacking journalists, including journalists who may be accused of promoting ‘propaganda’, is a war crime — all journalists are protected under international humanitarian law, regardless of whether armies like their reporting or not.”

Israel not only refuses to recognise any Palestinian media worker as being protected, but it also bars foreign journalists from entering Gaza.

“It has been truly disturbing that the international media has done little to protest this ban,” wrote Kuttab.

“Except for one petition signed by 60 media outlets over the summer, the international media has not followed up consistently on such demands over 15 months.”

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

Journalists gathered at Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital expressed outrage and confusion about the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) decision to shut down Al Jazeera’s office in the occupied West Bank.

“Shutting down a major outlet like Al Jazeera is a crime against journalism,” said freelance journalist Ikhlas al-Qarnawi.

“Al Jazeera coverage has documented Israeli crimes against Palestinians, especially during the ongoing genocide,” the 28-year-old journalist told Al Jazeera at the hospital, the most reliable internet connection in the Strip to file stories from.

• READ MORE: CPJ condemns ban on Al Jazeera – network decries bid to ‘hide the truth’
• Palestinian Authority suspends Al Jazeera operations in the West Bank
• CPJ urges Palestinian Authority to lift ban on Al Jazeera’s operations in West Bank
• Killing of five Gaza journalists by Israel strike highlights weak NZ media response — David Robie, Pacific Media Watch

Yesterday, the PA temporarily suspended Al Jazeera in the occupied West Bank for what they described as broadcasting “inciting material and reports that were deceiving and stirring strife” in the country.

The decision came after Fatah, the Palestinian faction which dominates the PA, banned Al Jazeera from reporting from the governorates of Jenin, Tubas and Qalqilya in the occupied West Bank, citing its coverage of clashes between the Palestinian security forces and Palestinian armed groups in the area.

Al Jazeera criticised the PA ban, saying the move is “in line with the [Israeli] occupation’s actions against its staff”.

‘Obscuring the truth’
Since the beginning of the war, about 150 journalists have been working from the journalists’ tents at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, for 20 local, international and Arab media outlets.

Journalists, including those from Al Jazeera, have been forced to work from hospitals after their headquarters and media offices were destroyed.

PA decision ‘shocking but hardly surprising’.   Video: Al Jazeera

Al-Aqsa TV correspondent Mohammed Issa said from the hospital that the PA’s ban contradicts international laws that guarantee journalistic freedom and could further endanger journalists.

“The PA’s decision obscures the truth and undermines the Palestinian narrative, especially a leading network like Al Jazeera,” Issa said, adding that the ban reinforces Israel’s narrative that “justifies the targeting of Palestinian journalists”.

“All media workers in Gaza reject this decision that silences the largest Arab and global outlet during critical times in years.”

Wafaa Hajjaj, an independent journalist working with TRT and Sahat, said the ban made her both “sad” and “disappointed”.

“At a time when Israel is deliberately targeting and killing … journalists in Gaza, with our Jazeera colleagues at the forefront, with no international or institutional protection, the PA’s move in the West Bank comes to worsen the situation,” Hajjaj said as she and her team walked into the hospital to interview the wounded.

Israel has killed at least 217 journalists and media workers in Gaza since the beginning of its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.

Four of them were Al Jazeera journalists: Samer Abudaqa, Hamza al-Dahdouh, Ismail al-Ghoul and Ahmed al-Louh.

‘Trust Al Jazeera will persist’
Although frustrated, Hajjaj told Al Jazeera that she was hopeful the PA would drop its ban “as soon as possible”.

“I trust Al Jazeera will persist despite all sanctions, as it has for years.”

Yousef Hassouna, a photojournalist with 22 years of experience, also criticised the shutting of Al Jazeera along with “any other media outlet” targeted by such bans.

“This is a violation against all of us Palestinian journalists,” he said, adding that Al Jazeera was “an essential platform” covering Israel’s war on Gaza.

“Now more than ever, we Palestinian journalists need international support and protection, not limitations or restrictions,” Hassouna said.

‘Critical mistakes’
Ismail al-Thawabtah, spokesperson for the government media bureau in Gaza, said the Palestinian Authority had committed two serious mistakes over the past few weeks.

“The first: the attack on Jenin and the resulting military confrontation with our honourable Palestinian people and the resistance forces, and the second: the closure of the Al Jazeera office,” he said, adding that the move represents “serious violations of freedom of the press”.

Al-Thawabtah said both incidents required the PA to conduct a comprehensive review of policies and positions in line with supreme national interests and respect for the “rights of our Palestinian people and their basic freedoms”.

As for the journalists gathered at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, they were united in their call to end the ban.

“We as journalists are completely against it. I hope that action will be taken to stop this decision immediately.” said the freelance journalist al-Qarnawi, adding that the ban hurts more than just journalists.

“Our Palestinian people are the biggest losers.”

Republished from Al Jazeera under Creative Commons.

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

The New York-based global media watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned a decision by the Palestinian Authority to suspend Al Jazeera’s operations in the West Bank and called for it to be reversed “immediately”.

“Governments resort to censoring news outlets when they have something to hide,” said CPJ chief executive Jodie Ginsberg in a statement.

“The Palestinian Authority should reverse its decision to suspend Al Jazeera’s operations and allow journalists to report freely without fear of reprisal.”

• READ MORE: Palestinian Authority suspends Al Jazeera operations in the West Bank
• CPJ urges Palestinian Authority to lift ban on Al Jazeera’s operations in West Bank
• Killing of five Gaza journalists by Israel strike highlights weak NZ media response — David Robie, Pacific Media Watch

Ginsburg also strongly condemned the PA decision in a separate interview with Al Jazeera, calling for an immediate reversal of the “temporary” ban.

She described the move as “really disturbing”, but said it was not a surprise given the PA’s track record on press freedom.

Listen to Ginsberg’s full comments here.

The Palestinian official news agency WAFA reported yesterday that the PA had suspended Al Jazeera on grounds of “inciting material”.

The ban comes after the authority criticised Al Jazeera’s last week coverage of a standoff between Palestinian security forces and militant fighters in Jenin camp, located in the West Bank, according to reports.

Israel raided Al Jazeera’s Ramallah offices in September and ordered its closure for 45 days, accusing the broadcaster’s West Bank operations of “incitement to and support of terrorism”.

Israel banned Al Jazeera’s Israel operations in May, citing national security concerns.

Palestinian Authority suspends broadcast of Al Jazeera.  Video: Al Jazeera

In a statement, the Al Jazeera network has condemned the PA closure of its offices in the occupied West Bank, calling the move “consistent” with the Israeli occupation’s “practices against its crews”.

The network “considers the Palestinian Authority’s decision an attempt to dissuade it from covering the escalating events taking place in the occupied territories”, the statement said.

It added the move “comes in the wake of an ongoing campaign of incitement and intimidation by parties sponsored by the Palestinian Authority against our journalists”.

The network further called the ban “an attempt to hide the truth about events in the occupied territories”, particularly in Jenin.

Palestinian Authority suspends Al Jazeera operations in the West Bank https://t.co/dHclCfcPXU

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) January 1, 2025

Political pressure ‘from Israel’
Political pressure from Israeli authorities on the PA is likely behind the temporary ban decision, claims the network’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara.

“There is no doubt pressure by the Israeli authorities to ban Al Jazeera like it was banned in Israel,” Bishara said.

“The PA is foolishly and short-sightedly trying to prove its credentials to Israeli authorities . . . because they want a role in Gaza and the only way they can do that is by appeasing the Israeli occupation.”

Bishara said the suspension would fail to curtail the channel’s coverage of events in Palestine, just as it had failed to achieve the same goal in Israel.

“This is not going to stop us, this is not going to shut us up,” he said. “We question power and that’s what we do, we question the PA and every other authority in the world.”

Also condemning the PA ban, Mustafa Barghouti, the head of the opposition Palestinian National Initiative, said the ban was “a big mistake” and “should be reversed as soon as possible”.

“I think this is a wrong decision, especially in the light of the fact that Al Jazeera . . . has been at the avant garde in exposing the crimes against the Palestinian people, and continues to do so — especially the genocide that is taking place in Gaza,” said Barghouti, who had previously served as Palestinian minister of information.

“This is an issue of freedom of expression, an issue of freedom of press, an issue of freedom of media,” he told Al Jazeera.

He added that the Palestinian Authority was taking a “dangerous path” that underlines the lack of unified Palestinian leadership.

“At the end of the day, the Israeli occupation is targeting everybody, including Fatah and Hamas and everybody else,” he said.

“So our approach should be an approach of unity, encouraging freedom of expression, because at the end of the day, freedom of expression will only support the struggle against the occupation.”

Palestinian ban follows Israeli ban, killing of journalists
The PA’s temporary ban on Al Jazeera comes months after the network was banned from operating by the Israeli government.

Israel, which has sought to disrupt Al Jazeera’s coverage multiple times throughout its 18-year history, ordered the closure of Al Jazeera’s offices and a ban on its broadcasting in Israel in May.

A month earlier, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, passed a law that allowed Israel to temporarily shut down foreign media outlets deemed to be security threats.

Al Jazeera condemned the move as a “criminal act” and has stood by its coverage, particularly of Israeli operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

In September, Israeli authorities shut down Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, a move decried by Amnesty International’s MENA director as a “shameless attack on the right to freedom of expression and a crushing blow for press freedom”.

Several Al Jazeera journalists and their families have been killed while reporting in the occupied Palestinian territories in recent years, including Shireen Abu Akleh, a renowned correspondent fatally shot by Israel while reporting in Jenin in May 2022.

Amid the war in Gaza, Israeli strikes have killed Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa, correspondent Ismail Al-Ghoul and his cameraman Rami al-Rifi, cameraman Ahmed al-Louh, and journalist Hamza Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh.

Pacific Media Watch and news agencies.

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

Five Palestinian journalists have been killed in a new Israeli strike near a hospital in central Gaza after four reporters were killed last week, reports Al Jazeera citing authorities and media in the besieged enclave.

The journalists from the Al-Quds Today channel were covering events near al-Awda Hospital, located in the Nuseirat refugee camp, when their broadcasting van was hit by an Israeli air strike.

Footage from the scene circulating on social media shows a vehicle engulfed in flames.

• READ MORE: Israel kills five journalists in Gaza as babies freeze to death
• Other Gaza media reports

The video of the white-coloured van shows the word “press” in large red lettering across the back of the vehicle.

The dead journalists have been named as Fadi Hassouna, Ibrahim al-Sheikh Ali, Mohammed al-Ladah, Faisal Abu al-Qumsan and Ayman al-Jadi.

Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif reports that Ayman al-Jadi had been waiting for his wife in front of the hospital while she was in labour to give birth to their first child.

Civil defence teams retrieved the bodies of the victims and extinguished a fire at the scene, the Quds News Network said.

Israel claims ‘targeted’ attack
Israel’s military confirmed the strike.

It claimed it had carried out a “targeted” attack against a vehicle carrying members of Islamic Jihad and that it would continue to take action against “terrorist organisations” in Gaza.

BREAKING: 5 journalists were just killed by Israel.

An Israeli strike targeted the PRESS vehicle belonging to “Al-Quds Today” channel while the journalists were sleeping inside the vehicle in front of Al-Awda Hospital in Al-Nuseirat, Central Gaza. Their bodies were charred.… pic.twitter.com/B1u1eXIn3j

— Suppressed News. (@SuppressedNws) December 26, 2024

“Prior to the attack, many steps were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians, including the use of precision weapons, aerial observations, and additional intelligence information,” the military said in a post on X.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) earlier this month condemned Israel’s killing of four Palestinian journalists in the space of a week, calling on the international community to hold the country accountable for its attacks against the media.

The Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) also condemned the killing of the journalists last week as a “continuation of the war crimes committed by Israel”.

“On December 14 and 15, the Israeli army murdered three media professionals in northern Gaza and the central Gaza Strip,” RSF said in a statement.

“Some of the few remaining reporters in the northern region, subjected to a ground invasion by Israeli forces, were recently forced to evacuate their homes.”

RSF named three of the killed journalists as Al-Jazeera cameraman Ahmad al-Louh, a 39-year-old media worker who was was filming a report on the Palestinian Civil Defence in the Nuseirat camp when he was killed on December 15 by an air strike; Mohammed Balousha, a reporter for the Emirati channel Al-Mashhad who was mortally wounded by a targeted drone strike while reporting in the Sheikh Radwan district in northern Gaza, and correspondent Mohammed Jaber al-Qarinawi, 30, who was killed along with his wife and their three children by an isolated air strike — “a sign that his home had probably been targeted”.

‘Stark reminder’ on media attacks, says RSF
RSF’s director of campaigns Rebecca Vincent said: “These latest killings are a stark reminder of the ongoing assault by Israeli forces against media professionals in northern Gaza, where the handful of journalists remaining are now at risk of disappearing altogether.

“In parallel to ongoing attacks on media in central Gaza where displaced persons are now seeking refuge, this is a clear continuation of the Israeli authorities’ attempts to control the narrative on its war through any means possible.

“We repeat in the strongest possible terms that targeting journalists is a war crime, and these atrocious attacks must stop. It is time for concrete action by other states — in particular Israel’s allies — to urge the Israeli government to immediately comply with international law.”

Ninety-six percent of Gaza’s journalists have been forcibly evacuated from their homes, and 92 percent have lost essential reporting equipment, according to data from RSF’s local NGO partner, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ).

At least 141 journalists have been killed in Israel’s war in Gaza since October 7, 2023, according to the CPJ.

However, other monitoring agencies put the death toll higher — the Gaza-based Government Media Office has documented 201 killings of journalists by Israel.

Israel has continued a genocidal war on Gaza that has killed more than 45,000 people, most of them women and children, since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on 7 October 2023.

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

An Israeli air strike has killed Palestinian photojournalist Ahmed Al-Louh and five Palestinian Civil Defence workers in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp as Tel Aviv announces that it will double illegal settlements in the Golan Heights.

Al-Louh, who worked as a cameraman for Al Jazeera alongside other media outlets, was killed yesterday in the strike on the Civil Defence post in the central Gaza camp, according to medics and local journalists.

The attack occurred as Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 28 Palestinians on Sunday, medics said. Allouh is the third journalist killed in Gaza in the last 24 hours.

• READ MORE: Israeli forces bomb another UN-run school in Gaza, kill 20 Palestinians
• Global watchdog condemns Fiji for ‘blocking’ protest marches over Gaza genocide
• Other Gaza and Syria reports

Meanwhile, the Israeli government has approved a plan to increase the number of settlers in the illegally occupied Golan Heights, days after seizing more Syrian territory following the ousting of Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad, reports Al Jazeera.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the government had “unanimously approved” the “demographic development” of the occupied territory, which would seek to double the Israeli population there.

This new settlement plan is only for the portion of the Golan Heights that Israel has occupied since 1967. In 1981, Israel’s parliamentary Knesset moved to impose Israeli law over the territory, in an effective annexation.

Al Jazeera Arabic reports that journalist Al-louh was working while he was killed, wearing a “press” vest and helmet. He was taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza’s city of Deir el-Balah.

Al Jazeera condemns ‘heinous crime’
Al Jazeera Media Network condemned Al-Louh’s killing, and called on human rights and media organisations “to condemn the Israeli Occupation’s systematic killing of journalists in cold blood, the evasion of responsibilities under international humanitarian law, and to bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice”.

Israeli strike kills Al Jazeera journalist.        Video: CNN News

“We urge relevant international legal institutions to take practical and urgent measures to hold the Israeli authorities and all those who are responsible accountable for their heinous crimes and to adopt mechanisms to put an end to the targeting and killing of journalists,” the network added.

Al-Louh had been covering Israel’s war on Gaza when it first began in October 2023, embedded with the Gaza Strip’s Palestinian Civil Defence teams, Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary said.

Gaza’s media office said the head of the civil emergency service in Nuseirat, Nedal Abu Hjayyer, was also killed in Sunday’s attack.

“The civil emergency headquarters in Nuseirat camp was hit during the crews’ presence. They work around the clock to serve the people,” said Zaki Emadeldeen from the civil emergency service to reporters at the hospital.

“The civil emergency service is a humanitarian service and not political. They work in war and peace times for the service of the people,” he said, adding that the place was hit directly by an Israeli air strike.

The Israeli military said they were looking into the attack.

Journalists ‘paying highest price’
“Since the war in Gaza started, journalists have been paying the highest price — their lives – for their reporting. Without protection, equipment, international presence, communications, or food and water, they are still doing their crucial jobs to tell the world the truth,” said Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna in New York.

“Every time a journalist is killed, injured, arrested, or forced to go to exile, we lose fragments of the truth. Those responsible for these casualties face dual trials: one under international law and another before history’s unforgiving gaze.”

Several other Palestinian journalists were killed this past week, with 195 killed in Gaza since Israel’s war began, Khoudary said.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said earlier on Sunday that Palestinian journalist Mohammed Jabr al-Qrinawi was killed along with his wife and children in an Israeli air attack that targeted their home in Bureij refugee camp, in central Gaza, late on Saturday.

Earlier on Saturday, Al Mashhad Media said its journalist Mohammed Balousha was killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza.

Several AJ journalists killed
Several Al Jazeera journalists have been killed since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, including Ismail al-Ghoul, Rami al-Rifi, Samer Abudaqa and Hamza Dahdouh.

Also on Sunday, an air strike hit people protecting aid trucks west of Gaza City. Medics said several were killed or wounded but exact figures were not yet available.

Residents also said at least 11 people were killed in three separate Israeli air strikes in Gaza City. Nine were killed in the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoon and Jabalia camp when clusters of houses were bombed or set ablaze, and two were killed by drone fire in Rafah.

Earlier on Sunday, at least 15 Palestinians were killed after Israeli forces stormed Khalil Oweida School in Beit Hanoon, sources told Al Jazeera.

Several other Israeli attacks earlier on Sunday killed Palestinians near Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza; and in Shujayea, in Khan Younis.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 44,976 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7, 2023.

Pacific Media Watch, Al Jazeera and news agencies.

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

Mariam Shahin has been making films about Gaza for more than 30 years.

She has also made many documentaries and short films for Al Jazeera English since it launched in 2006.

When she moved to Gaza in 2005, she felt a powerful sense of optimism following the Israeli withdrawal.

• READ MORE: Israel’s three-week siege of north Gaza kills at least 1000 Palestinians
• Other Israel’s War on Gaza reports

But by 2009, war had badly damaged its infrastructure, neighbourhoods, businesses and communities — and that optimism had evaporated.

Now, in the wake of the even more destructive war that began on 7 October 2023, Shahin seeks out the people she has met in Gaza over the years.

She reflects on the wasted potential and devastated lives after 16 years of blockade and a year of one of the most destructive wars in Middle East history.

Echoes of a Lost Gaza: 2005-2024.     Video: Al Jazeera

• Other films Mariam Shahin is known for include Looting the Holy Land (2010), Gaza Fixer 2 (2009) and Al Jazeera World (2007).

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

Al Jazeera is demanding the safety of its staff in the Gaza Strip after Israel claimed that six of the network’s journalists there have ties to militant groups. Press freedom advocates say the Israeli accusation amounts to a preemptive justification for murder. Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza last October, at least 128 journalists have been killed, including many from Al Jazeera. The Committee to Protect Journalists says Israel has a history of smearing Palestinian journalists with unproven claims, including in July, when Israel killed Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul and later released documents claiming to prove al-Ghoul had received a Hamas military ranking when he was just 10 years old. “There is a pattern of Israel making these kinds of allegations, providing evidence that is, frankly, not credible or, in some cases, no evidence at all,” says Jodie Ginsberg, CPJ’s chief executive officer. “As we have fewer and fewer journalists reporting … we have less and less information coming out of Gaza. And it’s absolutely essential that we have that information, that we have those images, so that the international community can understand the scale of what’s happening.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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

The letter, a rare public plea, follows frustrated diplomatic efforts and direct appeals to COGAT by the three organizations since the journalists — Ali Al-Attar and Fadi Al Wahidi, camera operators for Al Jazeera — sustained severe injuries while working in Gaza last week. In the letter, the organizations called for expedited approval for the journalists’ medical evacuation to Jordan or Qatar.

“The Israeli military’s duty under international humanitarian law is to protect civilians, including journalists, and to ensure the wounded receive timely medical assistance,” the organizations wrote. “Targeting journalists is a clear violation of international law relating to situations of armed conflict. We respectfully ask for your immediate intervention to facilitate the necessary permissions for this evacuation.”

Read the full letter here.

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

A new documentary from Al Jazeera takes a look at evidence of war crimes in Gaza in the form of social media posted by Israeli soldiers recording and celebrating their own attacks on Palestinians. We play excerpts from the film Investigating War Crimes in Gaza, now available online, and speak to two of the journalists involved in its production, director Richard Sanders and Gaza-based correspondent Youmna ElSayed. “Israelis themselves were telling us precisely what they were doing and why they were doing it,” says Sanders about the evidence the team reviewed. “They don’t think it’s complicated. They don’t think it’s nuanced. Their rhetoric is often overtly genocidal.” ElSayed adds, “They’ve had all the courage to do that because they know that they are not even going to be condemned.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

A deliberate, man-made famine is underway in Gaza, according to many human rights experts. Starving Gaza is a new documentary by Al Jazeera English’s Fault Lines investigating how Israel has killed civilians seeking aid and attacked humanitarian networks. The harrowing film is based on the work of Palestinian reporters in Gaza who are suffering the same conditions as their subjects. “They’ve been displaced, they’ve been injured, they’ve watched their own children die in front of them, and yet they somehow conjure the professionalism to pick up a camera and record and tell other people’s trauma,” says journalist Hind Hassan. “They really will be remembered in history as the titans of journalists.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Israel stepped up its censorship of Al Jazeera on Sunday as soldiers raided the Qatar-based news network’s Ramallah offices in the occupied West Bank and ordered a 45-day closure of the bureau. This comes after the Netanyahu government banned the network inside of Israel in May under a new media law giving authorities broad power to censor foreign outlets deemed to be security threats. “It was a show of force, a show of intimidation to show journalists around the globe that what’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank isn’t allowed to be reported,” Al Jazeera managing editor Mohamed Moawad tells Democracy Now! Israeli forces have killed as many as 160 journalists in Gaza over the last year, including several who work for Al Jazeera. In 2022, an Israeli sniper killed the network’s acclaimed Palestinian American correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The International Press Institute (IPI) has strongly condemned the Israeli government’s recent decision to revoke the press passes of Al Jazeera journalists, months after the global news outlet was banned in the country.

“The Israeli government’s decision to revoke Al Jazeera press passes highlights a broader and deeply alarming pattern of harassment of journalists and attacks on press freedom in Israel and the region,” IPI interim executive director Scott Griffen said.

The Israeli government announced it will be revoking all press passes previously issued to Al Jazeera journalists.

• READ MORE: Hezbollah blames Israel after Lebanon pager blasts killed at least 9 and wounded 2750 across Lebanon and Syria
• UN General Assembly debates end to Israeli occupation of Palestine
• Beyond Gaza: The terror in the West Bank

Nitzan Chen, director of Israel’s Government Press Office (GPO), announced the decision via X on Thursday, accusing Al Jazeera of spreading “false content” and “incitement against Israelis”.

Use of press office cards in the course of the journalists’ work could in itself “jeopardise state security at this time”, claimed Chen.

The journalists affected by the decision would be given a hearing before their passes are officially revoked.

While the GPO press card is not mandatory, without it a journalist in Israel will not be able to access Parliament, Israeli government ministries, or military infrastructure.

Only Israeli recognised pass
It is also the only card recognised at Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank.

Griffen said the move was indicative of a “systematic effort” by Israeli authorities to “expand its control over media reporting about Israel, including reporting on and from Gaza”.

He added: “We strongly urge Israel to respect freedom of the press and access to information, which are fundamental human rights that all democracies must respect and protect.”

In May, Israel’s cabinet unanimously voted to shut down Al Jazeera in the country, immediately ordering the closure of its offices and a ban on the company’s broadcasts.

At the time, Al Jazeera described it as a “criminal act” and warned that Israel’s suppression of the free press “stands in contravention of international and humanitarian law”.

GPO Director Nitzan Chen: “Al Jazeera disseminates false content, which includes incitement against Israelis and Jews and constitutes a threat to IDF soldiers. Use of GPO cards in the course of the journalists’ work could in itself jeopardize state security at this time”.
(2/3)

— Gov’t Press Office (@GPOIsrael) September 12, 2024

Al Jazeera is widely regarded as the most balanced global news network covering the war on Gaza in contrast to many Western news services perceived as biased in favour of Israel.

Media freedom petition rejected
A petition for military authorities to allow foreign journalists to report inside Gaza was rejected by the Israeli Supreme Court in January 2024.

IPI and other media watchdogs have repeatedly called on Israel to allow international media access to Gaza and ensure the safety of journalists.

At least 173 Palestinian journalists are reported to have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza with the latest killing of reporter Abdullah Shakshak, who was shot by an Israeli military quadcopter in Rafah in southern Gaza.

UN General Assembly debates end to Israeli occupation of Palestine.    Video: Al Jazeera

Deadly pager attack
Meanwhile, the deadly en masse explosion of pagers in Lebanon and Syria killing 11 and wounding almost 3000 people that has widely been attributed to Israel raises questions about what the end game may be, amid rising tensions in the region, say analysts.

Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israeli analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that the attack was something that Israel had had in the works for several months and risked losing if Hezbollah became suspicious.

This concern may have led the Israeli army to trigger the blasts, but Israel’s strategy overall remains unclear.

“Where is Israel going to go from here? This question still hasn’t been answered,” Zonszein said.

“Without a ceasefire in Gaza, it’s unclear how Israel plans to de-escalate, or if Netanyahu is in fact trying to spark a broader war,” the analyst added, noting that more Israeli troops were now stationed in the West Bank and along the northern border than in the Gaza Strip.

In a historic moment, Palestine, newly promoted to observer status at the UN General Assembly (UNGA), has submitted a draft resolution at the body demanding an end to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

Building on a recent International Court of Justice ruling, the resolution calls for Israel to withdraw its troops, halt settlement expansion, and return land taken since 1967 within 12 months.

While the US opposes the resolution, it has no veto power in the UNGA, and the body has previously supported Palestinian recognition.

The resolution, which will be voted on by UNGA members today, is not legally binding, but reflects global opinion as leaders gather for high-level UN meetings next week.

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

A global media watchdog has expressed concern for the safety of an Al Jazeera reporter after false claims by the Israeli military.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was concerned for Anas al-Sharif, Al Jazeera Arabic’s correspondent in northern Gaza, after an Israel military spokesperson accused him of “presenting a lie” in his coverage of Israel’s air strike on al-Tabin School on August 10.

The Israeli military claimed al-Sharif was “‘covering up’ for Hamas and Islamic Jihad after Israel killed dozens in its strike on a Gaza City school complex,” said CPJ programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna.

• READ MORE: Guessing game over when Iran is about to strike Israel over assassination
• Israel ‘deliberately’ caused civilian death in al-Tabin strike: Exclusive
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

The strike killed some 100 people in a building housing Palestinians displaced by the war on the besieged enclave.

“Al Jazeera journalists have been paying a devastating price for documenting the war. They and all journalists should be protected and allowed to work freely,” Martinez de la Serna said.

Israel claims Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were operating from a mosque in the school complex.

Al-Sharif has been threatened previously over his work and his father was killed on December 11, 2023, in an Israeli air strike on the family home in Jabalia.

CPJ has documented the killing of at least seven journalists and media workers affiliated with Al Jazeera — which Israel has banned from operating inside Israel — since October 7.

‘Blatant intimidation’
In an earlier statement made by the Al Jazeera Media Network, it described the Israeli military views as a “blatant act of intimidation and incitement against our colleague Anas Al-Sharif”.

“Such remarks are not only an attack on Anas’s character and integrity but also a clear attempt to stifle the truth and silence those who are courageously reporting from Gaza.”

Meanwhile, Jordan’s Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ayman Safadi, has also accused the Israeli government of lying.

“No amount of disinformation by radical Israeli officials spreading lies, including about Jordan, will change the fact that Israel’s continued aggression on Gaza . . .  [is] the biggest threat to regional security,” he said.

In a post on X, Safadi added: “The facts about the horrors this most radical of Israeli governments is bringing upon innocent Palestinian[s] . . .  and the threat of its illegal actions and radical policies to the security and stability of [the] region are so clear and documented.

“No propaganda campaigns, no lies, no fabrications can cover that.”

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

“We are deeply concerned about the safety of Al Jazeera’s northern Gaza correspondent Anas Al Sharif after the IDF’s claim that he was ‘covering up’ for Hamas and Islamic Jihad after Israel killed dozens in its Saturday strike on a Gaza City school complex,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna. “Al Jazeera journalists have been paying a devastating price for documenting the war. They and all journalists should be protected and allowed to work freely.”

Israel has said that Hamas and Islamic Jihad were operating from a mosque inside the school complex.

Al Jazeera Media Network condemned Israel’s “blatant act of intimidation and incitement” against Anas, saying that the IDF’s comments “are not only an attack on Anas’s character and integrity but also a clear attempt to stifle the truth and silence those who are courageously reporting from Gaza.”

Al Sharif has previously received threats over his journalism work and his father was killed on December 11, 2023, after an Israeli airstrike hit the family home in Jabalia.

CPJ has documented the killing of at least seven journalists and media workers affiliated with Al Jazeera – which Israel has banned from operating inside Israel – since the start of the Israel-Gaza war last October.  

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

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.

Going after the motley press and news outlets while claiming to be a card-carrying member of the democracy club is far from prudent and more than a touch foolish, bound to make the critics croak and other fellow members decry.  And this is exactly what has happened in the context of Israel’s decision to shut down the Qatar-backed station Al Jazeera.

On May 5, police raided the offices of the network at the Ambassador hotel in Jerusalem.  According to Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, equipment had been seized in the raid.

Al Jazeera duly released a statement strongly condemning and denouncing “this criminal act that violates human rights and the basic right to access of information.”  The network went on to affirm “its right to continue to provide news and information to its global audiences.”  Oddly enough, the ban is far from being a watertight one, as the channel remains accessible in Israel via Facebook.

Al Jazeera has had a troubled relationship with Israel.  Sounding like paranoid family members who have imbibed a bit too much, accusations have frothed from various politicians accusing the network of being a Hamas front.  In a dubious honour, the network’s name became associated with a law passed by the Israeli Knesset on April 1.

The instrument authorises the Minister of Communication, with the consent of the Prime Minister and the Ministerial Committee on National Committee, to shut down foreign news outlets operating in Israel deemed a national security threat.  This entails halting broadcasts by Israeli content providers, restricting access to the relevant provider’s website, shutting down transmitters in Israel and the seizure of devices used in supplying the channel’s content, including mobile phones.  Betraying the Netanyahu government’s continued suspicion of the country’s judicial process, the law shackles the judiciary from overturning such a decision, notwithstanding any belief that it should be.

The dust had barely settled on the vote before Minister Karhi revealed plans had been hatched to shutter Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel on the grounds that it “promotes terrorism”.  According to a statement from the Israeli Communications Ministry, “There will be no freedom of expression to Hamas mouthpieces in Israel.”

Akiva Eldar, a political scribe who pushes pieces for Haaretz, suggested that the closing of the network was “a very populistic move to feed the beast of the public opinion that is very disappointed from the conduct of the government in Gaza and in the international arena”.  The tail-end of the remark did little to stir convention, as the move was designed “to please the partners from the radical right”.

The passage of the law prompted a High Court of Justice filing by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) on April 4.  The petition argues for the cancellation of “the temporary order allowing sanctions to be imposed on foreign broadcasting channels from Israel.”  On May 2, with rumours of imminent action being taken against the Qatari broadcaster, the same organisation sought an interim injunction, refused by the court, to instruct the government to refrain from issuing orders to a foreign broadcaster till the petition was decided.  The ACRI had every reason to be disappointed with the ruling, given that Al Jazeera had been refused a prior right of plea and denied effective judicial review.

On May 6, a further filing was made to join a separate proceeding in the Tel Aviv District Court regarding the sanctions imposed on Al Jazeera, with the ACRI challenging the propriety of the administrative process involved and whether there was, in fact, a “real security risk” posed by the network.

The Al Jazeera law is not a singular instance of state repression regarding matters of free speech. The signs point to a chronic ailing in the Israeli polity.  Adalah, a Palestinian-run non-profit NGO advocating for the rights of Palestinians in Israel has noted, by way of example, the “severe crackdown on the freedom of expression rights of Palestinian students seeking to suspend or even expel them for their posts on social media platforms.”  The posts in question “vary widely, ranging from expressions of solidarity with the people of Gaza, to Quranic verses, to scathingly critical views of the Israeli military’s actions, to seemingly arbitrary content unrelated to Hamas or to the war.”

On April 18, the Israeli police, in all its intimidating glory, entered the home of Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian in the Old City of Jerusalem.  Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who holds the Global Chair in Law at Queen Mary University of London and a post at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was subsequently detained for comments made the previous month on the Makdisi Street podcast.

Of particular interest to the authorities were comments purportedly calling for the abolition of Zionism and the uncontroversial call to halt the genocidal actions in Gaza.  She was strip-searched, handcuffed and interrogated, and denied access to such necessities as food, water and medication for a number of hours.  Her frigid cell also lacked blankets, while she was inadequately clothed. Her release on bail precipitated further interrogation sessions, with the police keen to tease out incriminating matters from previously published academic papers.

From targeting academics, activists and students, to drawing the covers over a network of renown, the Israeli state has made a vulgar statement against the role of free speech.  Such creeping authoritarianism, however, shows itself to be one-eyed and, eventually, self-defeating.  Ultimately, in the gallop, it is bound to fall over itself.

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

As the death toll in Gaza soars to more than 34,700, Israeli authorities have taken Al Jazeera off the air in Israel and ordered Palestinians in eastern Rafah to evacuate ahead of an Israeli offensive. “The Israeli government is trying to conceal what’s happening in Gaza and trying to intimidate Al Jazeera … and delegitimize the whole coverage,” says Al Jazeera’s managing editor Mohamed Moawad, explaining this is “a strategy” to “try to make sure that the story doesn’t reach the world.” Over the past eight months, Al Jazeera has been one of the only international outlets with reporters on the ground inside Gaza, where at least three of its employees have been killed by Israel’s monthslong assault. Israel has been threatening to ban Al Jazeera for “incitement” via “a series of intimidations” for months, culminating in “a criminal act,” says Moawad. He calls on the international community, including the U.S. government, to condemn Israel’s suppression of a free press.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Haggai Matar, executive director of the independent +972 Magazine, has described the Tel Aviv government’s decision to shut down Al Jazeera in Israel as “an attack on free speech and freedom of the press”.

The Israeli journalist told Al Jazeera the ban was “clearly a criminal and very dangerous decision”.

He described the move as an attack on Israel itself because it denies the country’s citizens alternative sources of information.

• READ MORE: Al Jazeera condemns Israeli government decision to shut down local offices

“We have very limited access to information coming out of Gaza in Israeli media outlets,” Matar said.

He said the absence of Al Jazeera journalists within Israel meant that different voices from Israeli society would also be heard less around the world.

His condemnation joined criticism from media freedom watchdogs and news media around the world.

+972 Magazine is an independent, online, nonprofit magazine run by a group of Palestinian and Israeli journalists.

Founded in 2010, its mission is described on its website as to provide in-depth reporting, analysis, and opinions from the ground in Israel-Palestine.

The name of the site is derived from the telephone country code that can be used to dial throughout Israel-Palestine.

The Israeli government decision to close the award-winning Al Jazeera network’s operations in Israel came just two days after World Press Freedom Day when the Palestinian journalists covering the war on Gaza were awarded the Guillermo Cano world press freedom prize.

Al Jazeera Media Network condemned the Israeli government’s decision as a “criminal act” and warned that the country’s suppression of the free press “stands in contravention of international and humanitarian law”.

‘Violates human rights’
“Al Jazeera Media Network strongly condemns and denounces this criminal act that violates human rights and the basic right to access of information. Al Jazeera affirms its right to continue to provide news and information to its global audiences,” the network said in a statement last night.

“Israel’s ongoing suppression of the free press, seen as an effort to conceal its actions in the Gaza Strip, stands in contravention of international and humanitarian law.

Israel’s direct targeting and killing of journalists, arrests, intimidation and threats will not deter Al Jazeera from its commitment to cover, whilst more than 140 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the beginning of the war on Gaza.

“The Network vehemently rejects the allegations presented by Israeli authorities suggesting professional media standards have been violated. It reaffirms its unwavering commitment to the values embodied by its Code of Ethics,” it said.

The statement comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet voted unanimously to close Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel, weeks after Israel’s Parliament passed a law allowing the temporary closure of foreign broadcasters considered to be a threat to national security during the seven-month war in Gaza.

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

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel says he will “act immediately” to ban Al Jazeera in the country after the Knesset passed a law Monday that allows the government to shut down foreign news networks deemed to be threats to national security. Al Jazeera, one of the few outlets with local reporters in Gaza, denounced the move and said it was part of a pattern of Israeli attacks on the Qatar-based network, including targeting its journalists in Gaza since October 7 and the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh in the occupied West Bank in 2022. For more, we speak with Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and president of the U.S./Middle East Project, who says Netanyahu’s move to ban Al Jazeera is “red meat to his own base … in a situation in which the war is not going particularly well for Israel. He’s looking for distractions.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The New York-based media watchdog Committee to Protect Journalists says the announcement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of his intention to ban Al Jazeera follows a similar pattern of media interference, including the killing of media workers.

“We’ve seen this kind of language before from Netanyahu and Israeli officials in which they try to paint journalists as ‘terrorists’, as ‘criminals’. This is nothing new,” Jodie Ginsberg told Al Jazeera.

“It’s another example of the tightening of the free press and the stranglehold the Israeli government would like to exercise. It’s an incredibly worrying move by the government.”

• READ MORE: Other Gaza media freedom reports

Netanyahu wrote on X on Monday that “Al Jazeera harmed Israel’s security, actively participated in the October 7 massacre, and incited against Israeli soldiers.

“The terrorist channel Al Jazeera will no longer broadcast from Israel. I intend to act immediately in accordance with the new law to stop the channel’s activity.’

The Israeli parliament approved a law granting the government authority to ban foreign news networks, including Al Jazeera. PM Netanyahu pledged to “act immediately” to close the network’s local office pic.twitter.com/L2RXOzVi5t

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) April 2, 2024

The Qatar-based network rejected what it described as “slanderous accusations” and accused Netanyahu of “incitement”.

“Al Jazeera holds the Israeli Prime Minister responsible for the safety of its staff and network premises around the world, following his incitement and this false accusation in a disgraceful manner,” it said in a statement.

‘Slanderous accusations’
“Al Jazeera reiterates that such slanderous accusations will not deter us from continuing our bold and professional coverage, and reserves the right to pursue every legal step.”

Netanyahu has long sought to shut down broadcasts from Al Jazeera, alleging anti-Israel bias, the network reports on its website.

The law, which passed in a 71-10 vote in the Knesset, gives the prime minister and communications minister the authority to order the closure of foreign networks operating in Israel and confiscate their equipment if it is believed they pose “harm to the state’s security”.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said that an Israeli move to shut down Al Jazeera would be “concerning”.

“The United States supports the critically important work of journalists around the world and that includes those who are reporting in the conflict in Gaza,” Jean-Pierre told reporters.

“So we believe that work is important. The freedom of the press is important. And if those reports are true, it is concerning to us.”

The legislation’s passage comes nearly five months after Israel said it would block Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen. It refrained from shutting Al Jazeera at the same time.

Move with closure
After the vote on Monday, Israel’s Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said he intended to move forward with the closure. He said Al Jazeera had been acting as a “propaganda arm of Hamas” by “encouraging armed struggle against Israel”.

“It is impossible to tolerate a media outlet, with press credentials from the Government Press Office and offices in Israel, acting from within against us, certainly during wartime,” he said.

According to news agencies, his office said the order would seek to block the channel’s broadcasts in Israel and prevent it from operating in the country. The order would not apply to the occupied West Bank or Gaza.

Israel has often lashed out at Al Jazeera, which has offices in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

In May 2022, Israeli forces shot dead senior Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh while she was covering an Israeli military raid in the West Bank town of Jenin.

A UN-commissioned report concluded that Israeli forces used “lethal force without justification” in the killing, violating her “right to life”.

During the war in Gaza, several of the channel’s journalists and their family members have been killed by Israeli bombardments.

On October 25, an air raid killed the family of Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, including his wife, son, daughter, grandson and at least eight other relatives.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 32,782 people, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian authorities.

Pacific Media Watch and news agencies.

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

For weeks, as Gaza was battered with bombs and the body count in the tiny enclave rose inexorably, western publics had little choice but to rely on Israel’s word for what happened on 7 October. Some 1,150 Israelis were killed during an unprecedented attack on Israeli communities and military posts next to Gaza.

Beheaded babies, a pregnant woman with her womb cut open and the foetus stabbed, children put in ovens, hundreds of people burned alive, mutilation of corpses, a systematic campaign of indescribably savage rapes and acts of necrophilia.

Western politicians and media lapped it up, repeating the allegations uncritically while ignoring Israel’s genocidal rhetoric and increasingly genocidal military operations these claims supported.

Then, as the mountain of bodies in Gaza grew still higher, the supposed evidence was shared with a few, select western journalists and influencers. They were invited to private screenings of footage carefully curated by Israeli officials to paint the worst possible picture of the Hamas operation.

These new initiates offered few details but implied the footage confirmed many of the horrors. They readily repeated Israeli claims that Hamas was “worse than Isis”, the Islamic State group.

The impression of unparalleled depravity from Hamas was reinforced by the willingness of the western media to allow Israeli spokespeople, Israel’s supporters and western politicians to continue spreading unchallenged the claim that Hamas had committed unspeakable, sadistic atrocities – from beheading and burning babies to carrying out a campaign of rapes.

The only journalist in the British mainstream media to dissent was Owen Jones. Agreeing that Israel’s video showed terrible crimes committed against civilians, he noted that none of the barbarous acts listed above were included.

What was shown instead were the kind of terrible crimes against civilians all too familiar in wars and uprisings.

Whitewashing genocide

Jones faced a barrage of attacks from colleagues accusing him of being an atrocity apologist. His own newspaper, the Guardian, appears to have prevented him from writing about Gaza in its pages as a consequence.

Now, after nearly six months, the exclusive narrative stranglehold on those events by Israel and its media acolytes has finally been broken.

Last week, Al Jazeera aired an hour-long documentary, called simply “October 7”, that lets western publics see for themselves what took place. It seems that Jones’ account was closest to the truth.

Yet, Al Jazeera’s film goes further still, divulging for the first time to a wider audience facts that have been all over the Israeli media for months but have been carefully excluded from western coverage. The reason is clear: those facts would implicate Israel in some of the atrocities it has been ascribing to Hamas for months.

Middle East Eye highlighted these glaring plot holes in the West’s media narrative way back in December. Nothing has been done to correct the record since.

The BBC and other media outlets keep revisiting the crimes Hamas committed on October 7, but have failed to report on growing evidence that Israel killed its own citizens that day, often in grotesque fashion.

My latest article can be read here: https://t.co/MHxdUxRrCV

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) December 15, 2023

The establishment media has proved it is not to be trusted. For months it has credulously recited Israeli propaganda in support of a genocide.

But that is only part of the indictment against it. Its continuing refusal to report on the mounting evidence of Israel’s perpetration of crimes against its own civilians and soldiers on 7 October suggests it has been intentionally whitewashing Israel’s slaughter in Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s investigations unit has gathered many hundreds of hours of film from bodycams worn by Hamas fighters and Israeli soldiers, dashcams and CCTV to compile its myth-busting documentary.

It demonstrates five things that upend the dominant narrative that has been imposed by Israel and the western media.

First, the crimes Hamas committed against civilians in Israel on 7 October – and those it did not – have been used to overshadow the fact that it carried out a spectacularly sophisticated military operation on 7 October in breaking out of a long-besieged Gaza.

The group knocked out Israel’s top-flight surveillance systems that had kept the enclave’s 2.3 million inhabitants imprisoned for decades. It smashed holes in Israel’s highly fortified barrier surrounding Gaza in at least 10 locations. And it caught unawares Israel’s many military camps next to the enclave that had been enforcing the occupation at arms’ length.

More than 350 Israeli soldiers, armed police and guards were killed that day.

A colonial arrogance

Second, the documentary undermines the conspiracy theory that Israeli leaders allowed the Hamas attack to justify the ethnic cleansing of Gaza – a plan Israel has been actively working on since at least 2007, when it appears to have received US approval.

All the signs are in place that, once again, Israel is seriously considering a massive ethnic cleansing operation of Palestinians, conducted at lightning speed and with US assistance.

My latest on Gaza: https://t.co/HNzFt6xERK

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 1, 2023

True, Israeli intelligence officials involved in the surveillance of Gaza had been warning that Hamas was preparing a major operation. But those warnings were discounted not because of a conspiracy. After all, none of the senior echelons in Israel stood to benefit from what unfolded on 7 October.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is finished politically as a result of the Hamas attack, and will likely end up in jail after the current carnage in Gaza ends.

Israel’s genocidal response to 7 October has made Israel’s brand so toxic internationally, and more so with Arab publics in the region, that Saudi Arabia has had to break off plans for a normalisation agreement, which had been Israel and Washington’s ultimate hope.

And the Hamas operation has crushed the worldwide reputation of the Israeli military for invincibility. It has inspired Yemen’s Ansar Allah (the Houthis) to attack vessels in the Red Sea. It is emboldening Israel’s arch-enemy, Hezbollah, in neighbouring Lebanon. It has reinvigorated the idea that resistance is possible across the much-oppressed Middle East.

No, it was not a conspiracy that opened the door to Hamas’ attack. It was colonial arrogance, based on a dehumanising view shared by the vast majority of Israelis that they were the masters and that the Palestinians – their slaves – were far too primitive to strike a meaningful blow.

The attacks of 7 October should have forced Israelis to reassess their dismissive attitude towards the Palestinians and address the question of whether Israel’s decades-long regime of apartheid and brutal subjugation could – and should – continue indefinitely.

Predictably, Israelis ignored the message of Hamas’ attack and dug deeper into their colonial mindset.

The supposed primitivism that, it was assumed, made the Palestinians too feeble an opponent to take on Israel’s sophisticated military machine has now been reframed as proof of a Palestinian barbarousness that makes Gaza’s entire population so dangerous, so threatening, that they have to be wiped out.

The Palestinians who, most Israelis had concluded, could be caged like battery chickens indefinitely, and in ever-shrinking pens, are now viewed as monsters that have to be culled. That impulse was the genesis of Israel’s current genocidal plan for Gaza.

Suicide mission

The third point the documentary clarifies is that Hamas’s wildly successful prison break undid the larger operation.

The group had worked so hard on the fearsome logistics of the breakout – and prepared for a rapid and savage response from Israel’s oppressive military machine – that it had no serious plan for dealing with a situation it could not conceive of: the freedom to scour Israel’s periphery, often undisturbed for many hours or days.

Hamas fighters entering Israel had assumed that most were on a suicide mission. According to the documentary, the fighters’ own assumption was that between 80 and 90 per cent would not make it back.

The aim was not to strike some kind of existential blow against Israel, as Israeli officials have asserted ever since in their determined rationalisation of genocide. It was to strike a blow against Israel’s reputation for invincibility by attacking its military bases and nearby communities, and dragging as many hostages as possible back into Gaza.

They would then be exchanged for the thousands of Palestinian men, women and children held in Israel’s military incarceration system – hostages labelled “prisoners”.

As Hamas spokesman Bassem Naim explained to Al Jazeera, the breakout was meant to thrust Gaza’s desperate plight back into the spotlight after many years in which international interest in ending Israel’s siege had waned.

Of discussions in the group’s political bureau, he says the consensus was: “We have to take action. If we don’t do it, Palestine will be forgotten, totally deleted from the international map.”

For 17 years, Gaza had gradually been strangled to death. Its population had tried peaceful protests at the militarised fence around their enclave and been picked off by Israeli snipers. The world had grown so used to Palestinian suffering, it had switched off.

The 7 October attack was intended to change that, especially by re-inspiring solidarity with Gaza in the Arab world and by bolstering Hamas’ regional political position.

It was intended to make it impossible for Saudi Arabia – the main Arab power broker in Washington – to normalise with Israel, completing the marginalisation of the Palestinian cause in the Arab world.

Judged by these criteria, Hamas’s attack was a success.

Loss of focus

But for many long hours – with Israel caught entirely off-guard, and with its surveillance systems neutralised – Hamas did not face the military counter-strike it expected.

Three factors seem to have led to a rapid erosion of discipline and purpose.

With no meaningful enemy to confront or limit Hamas’ room for manoeuvre, the fighters lost focus. Footage shows them squabbling about what to do next as they freely wander around Israeli communities.

That was compounded by the influx of other armed Palestinians who piggybacked on Hamas’ successful breakout and the lack of an Israeli response. Many suddenly found themselves with the chance to loot or settle scores with Israel – by killing Israelis – for years of suffering in Gaza.

And the third factor was Hamas stumbling into the Nova music festival, which had been relocated by the organisers at short notice close to the fence around Gaza.

It quickly became the scene of some of the worst atrocities, though none resembling the savage excesses described by Israel and the western media.

Footage shows, for example, Palestinian fighters throwing grenades into concrete shelters where many dozens of festivalgoers were sheltering from the Hamas attack. In one clip, a man who runs out is gunned down.

Fourth, Al Jazeera was able to confirm that the most extreme, sadistic and depraved atrocities never took place. They were fabricated by Israeli soldiers, officials and emergency responders.

One figure central to this deception was Yossi Landau, a leader of the Jewish religious emergency response organisation, Zaka. He and his staff concocted outlandish tales that were readily amplified not only by a credulous western press corps but by senior US officials too.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken graphically told of a family of four being butchered at the breakfast table. The father’s eye was gouged out in front of his two children, aged eight and six. The mother’s breast was cut off. The girl’s foot was amputated, and the boy’s fingers cut off, before they were all executed. The executioners then sat down and had a meal next to their victims.

Except the evidence shows none of that actually happened.

Landau has also claimed that Hamas tied up dozens of children and burned them alive at Kibbutz Be’eri. Elsewhere, he has recalled a pregnant woman who was shot dead and her belly cut open and the foetus stabbed.

Officials at the kibbutz deny any evidence for these atrocities. Landau’s accounts do not tally with any of the known facts. Only two babies died on 7 October, both killed unintentionally.

When challenged, Landau offers to show Al Jazeera a photo on his phone of the stabbed foetus, but is filmed admitting he is unable to do so.

Fabricating atrocities 

Similarly, Al Jazeera’s research finds no evidence of systematic or mass rape on 7 October. In fact, it is Israel that has been blocking efforts by international bodies to investigate any sexual violence that day.

Respected outlets like the New York Times, the BBC and Guardian have repeatedly breathed credibility into the claims of systematic rape by Hamas, but only by unquestioningly repeating Israeli atrocity propaganda.

From obscuring the West’s role in starving Gaza to sensationalised accounts of mass rape by Hamas, journalists are playing the role of propagandists, not reporters.

My latest piece, on how the western media built the case for Israel to commit genocide:https://t.co/AwbVHryfqB

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) March 20, 2024

Madeleine Rees, secretary general of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, told Al Jazeera: “A state has instrumentalised the horrific attacks on women in order, we believe, to justify an attack on Gaza, of which the majority suffering are other women.”

In other cases, Israel has blamed Hamas for mutilating the bodies of Israeli victims, including by driving over them, smashing their pelvises. In several cases, Al Jazeera’s investigation showed that the bodies were of Hamas fighters mutilated or driven over by Israeli soldiers.

The documentary notes that reporting by the Israeli media – followed by the western media – “focuses not on the crimes they [Hamas] committed but on the crimes they did not”.

The question is why, when there were plenty of real atrocities by Hamas to report, did Israel feel the need to fabricate even worse ones? And why, especially after the initial fabrication of beheaded babies was debunked, did the western media carry on credulously recycling improbable stories of Hamas savagery?

The answer to the first question is that Israel needed to manufacture a favourable political climate that would excuse its genocide in Gaza as necessary.

Netanyahu is shown congratulating Zaka’s leaders on their role in influencing world opinion: “We need to buy time, which we gain by turning to world leaders and to public opinion. You have an important role in influencing public opinion, which also influences leaders.”

The answer to the second is that western journalists’ racist preconceptions ensured they would be easily persuaded that brown people were capable of such barbarity.

‘Hannibal directive’

Fifth, Al Jazeera documents months of Israeli media coverage demonstrating that some of the atrocities blamed on Hamas – particularly relating to the burning alive of Israelis – were actually Israel’s responsibility.

Deprived of functioning surveillance, an enraged Israeli military machine lashed out blindly. Video footage from Apache helicopters shows them firing wildly on cars and figures heading towards Gaza, unable to determine whether they are targeting fleeing Hamas fighters or Israelis taken hostage by Hamas.

In at least one case, an Israeli tank fired a shell into a building in Kibbutz Be’eri, killing the 12 Israeli hostages inside. One, 12-year-old Liel Hetsroni, whose charred remains meant she could not be identified for weeks, became the poster child for Israel’s campaign to tar Hamas as barbarians for burning her alive.

The commander in charge of the rescue efforts at Be’eri, Colonel Golan Vach, is shown fabricating to the media a story about the house Israel itself had shelled. He claimed Hamas had executed and burned eight babies in the house. In fact, no babies were killed there – and those who did die in the house were killed by Israel.

The widespread devastation in kibbutz communities – still blamed on Hamas – suggests that Israel’s shelling of this particular house was far from a one-off. It is impossible to determine how many more Israelis were killed by “friendly fire”.

These deaths appear to have been related to the hurried invocation by Israel that day of its so-called “Hannibal directive” – a secretive military protocol to kill Israeli soldiers to prevent them from being taken hostage and becoming bargaining chips for the release of Palestinians held hostage in Israeli jails.

In this case, the directive looks to have been repurposed and used against Israeli civilians too. Extraordinarily, though there has been furious debate inside Israel about the Hannibal directive’s use on 7 October, the western media has remained completely silent on the subject.

Woeful imbalance

The one issue largely overlooked by Al Jazeera is the astonishing failure of the western media across the board to cover 7 October seriously or investigate any of the atrocities independently of Israel’s own self-serving accounts.

The question hanging over Al Jazeera’s documentary is this: how is it possible that no British or US media organisation has undertaken the task that Al Jazeera took on? And further, why is it that none of them appear ready to use Al Jazeera’s coverage as an opportunity to revisit the events of 7 October?

In part, that is because they themselves would be indicted by any reassessment of the past five months. Their coverage has been woefully unbalanced: wide-eyed acceptance of any Israeli claim of Hamas atrocities, and similar wide-eyed acceptance of any Israeli excuse for its slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza.

But the problem runs deeper.

This is not the first time that Al Jazeera has shamed the western press corps on a subject that has dominated headlines for months or years.

Back in 2017, an Al Jazeera investigation called The Lobby showed that Israel was behind a campaign to smear Palestinian solidarity activists as antisemites in Britain, with Jeremy Corbyn the ultimate target.

That smear campaign continued to be wildly successful even after the Al Jazeera series aired, not least because the investigation was uniformly ignored. British media outlets swallowed every piece of disinformation spread by Israeli lobbyists on the issue of antisemitism.

A follow-up on a similar disinformation campaign waged by the pro-Israel lobby in the US was never broadcast, apparently after diplomatic threats from Washington to Qatar. The series was eventually leaked to the Electronic Intifada website.

Then 18 months ago, Al Jazeera broadcast an investigation called The Labour Files, showing how senior officials in Britain’s Labour Party, assisted by the UK media, waged a covert plot to stop Corbyn from ever becoming prime minister. Corbyn, Labour’s democratically elected leader, was an outspoken critic of Israel and supporter of justice for the Palestinian people.

Once again, the British media, which had played such a critical role in helping to destroy Corbyn, ignored the Al Jazeera investigation.

There is a pattern here that can be ignored only through wilful blindness.

Israel and its partisans have unfettered access to western establishments, where they fabricate claims and smears that are readily amplified by a credulous press corps.

And those claims only ever work to Israel’s advantage, and harm the cause of ending decades of brutal subjugation of the Palestinian people by an Israeli apartheid regime now committing genocide.

Al Jazeera has once again shown that, on matters that western establishments consider the most vital to their interests – such as support for a highly militarised client state promoting the West’s control over the oil-rich Middle East – the western press is not a watchdog on power but the establishment’s public relations arm.

Al Jazeera’s investigation has not just revealed the lies Israel spread about 7 October to justify its genocide in Gaza. It reveals the utter complicity of western journalists in that genocide.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

For weeks, as Gaza was battered with bombs and the body count in the tiny enclave rose inexorably, western publics had little choice but to rely on Israel’s word for what happened on 7 October. Some 1,150 Israelis were killed during an unprecedented attack on Israeli communities and military posts next to Gaza.

Beheaded babies, a pregnant woman with her womb cut open and the foetus stabbed, children put in ovens, hundreds of people burned alive, mutilation of corpses, a systematic campaign of indescribably savage rapes and acts of necrophilia.

Western politicians and media lapped it up, repeating the allegations uncritically while ignoring Israel’s genocidal rhetoric and increasingly genocidal military operations these claims supported.

Then, as the mountain of bodies in Gaza grew still higher, the supposed evidence was shared with a few, select western journalists and influencers. They were invited to private screenings of footage carefully curated by Israeli officials to paint the worst possible picture of the Hamas operation.

These new initiates offered few details but implied the footage confirmed many of the horrors. They readily repeated Israeli claims that Hamas was “worse than Isis”, the Islamic State group.

The impression of unparalleled depravity from Hamas was reinforced by the willingness of the western media to allow Israeli spokespeople, Israel’s supporters and western politicians to continue spreading unchallenged the claim that Hamas had committed unspeakable, sadistic atrocities – from beheading and burning babies to carrying out a campaign of rapes.

The only journalist in the British mainstream media to dissent was Owen Jones. Agreeing that Israel’s video showed terrible crimes committed against civilians, he noted that none of the barbarous acts listed above were included.

What was shown instead were the kind of terrible crimes against civilians all too familiar in wars and uprisings.

Whitewashing genocide

Jones faced a barrage of attacks from colleagues accusing him of being an atrocity apologist. His own newspaper, the Guardian, appears to have prevented him from writing about Gaza in its pages as a consequence.

Now, after nearly six months, the exclusive narrative stranglehold on those events by Israel and its media acolytes has finally been broken.

Last week, Al Jazeera aired an hour-long documentary, called simply “October 7”, that lets western publics see for themselves what took place. It seems that Jones’ account was closest to the truth.

Yet, Al Jazeera’s film goes further still, divulging for the first time to a wider audience facts that have been all over the Israeli media for months but have been carefully excluded from western coverage. The reason is clear: those facts would implicate Israel in some of the atrocities it has been ascribing to Hamas for months.

Middle East Eye highlighted these glaring plot holes in the West’s media narrative way back in December. Nothing has been done to correct the record since.

The BBC and other media outlets keep revisiting the crimes Hamas committed on October 7, but have failed to report on growing evidence that Israel killed its own citizens that day, often in grotesque fashion.

My latest article can be read here: https://t.co/MHxdUxRrCV

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) December 15, 2023

The establishment media has proved it is not to be trusted. For months it has credulously recited Israeli propaganda in support of a genocide.

But that is only part of the indictment against it. Its continuing refusal to report on the mounting evidence of Israel’s perpetration of crimes against its own civilians and soldiers on 7 October suggests it has been intentionally whitewashing Israel’s slaughter in Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s investigations unit has gathered many hundreds of hours of film from bodycams worn by Hamas fighters and Israeli soldiers, dashcams and CCTV to compile its myth-busting documentary.

It demonstrates five things that upend the dominant narrative that has been imposed by Israel and the western media.

First, the crimes Hamas committed against civilians in Israel on 7 October – and those it did not – have been used to overshadow the fact that it carried out a spectacularly sophisticated military operation on 7 October in breaking out of a long-besieged Gaza.

The group knocked out Israel’s top-flight surveillance systems that had kept the enclave’s 2.3 million inhabitants imprisoned for decades. It smashed holes in Israel’s highly fortified barrier surrounding Gaza in at least 10 locations. And it caught unawares Israel’s many military camps next to the enclave that had been enforcing the occupation at arms’ length.

More than 350 Israeli soldiers, armed police and guards were killed that day.

A colonial arrogance

Second, the documentary undermines the conspiracy theory that Israeli leaders allowed the Hamas attack to justify the ethnic cleansing of Gaza – a plan Israel has been actively working on since at least 2007, when it appears to have received US approval.

All the signs are in place that, once again, Israel is seriously considering a massive ethnic cleansing operation of Palestinians, conducted at lightning speed and with US assistance.

My latest on Gaza: https://t.co/HNzFt6xERK

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 1, 2023

True, Israeli intelligence officials involved in the surveillance of Gaza had been warning that Hamas was preparing a major operation. But those warnings were discounted not because of a conspiracy. After all, none of the senior echelons in Israel stood to benefit from what unfolded on 7 October.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is finished politically as a result of the Hamas attack, and will likely end up in jail after the current carnage in Gaza ends.

Israel’s genocidal response to 7 October has made Israel’s brand so toxic internationally, and more so with Arab publics in the region, that Saudi Arabia has had to break off plans for a normalisation agreement, which had been Israel and Washington’s ultimate hope.

And the Hamas operation has crushed the worldwide reputation of the Israeli military for invincibility. It has inspired Yemen’s Ansar Allah (the Houthis) to attack vessels in the Red Sea. It is emboldening Israel’s arch-enemy, Hezbollah, in neighbouring Lebanon. It has reinvigorated the idea that resistance is possible across the much-oppressed Middle East.

No, it was not a conspiracy that opened the door to Hamas’ attack. It was colonial arrogance, based on a dehumanising view shared by the vast majority of Israelis that they were the masters and that the Palestinians – their slaves – were far too primitive to strike a meaningful blow.

The attacks of 7 October should have forced Israelis to reassess their dismissive attitude towards the Palestinians and address the question of whether Israel’s decades-long regime of apartheid and brutal subjugation could – and should – continue indefinitely.

Predictably, Israelis ignored the message of Hamas’ attack and dug deeper into their colonial mindset.

The supposed primitivism that, it was assumed, made the Palestinians too feeble an opponent to take on Israel’s sophisticated military machine has now been reframed as proof of a Palestinian barbarousness that makes Gaza’s entire population so dangerous, so threatening, that they have to be wiped out.

The Palestinians who, most Israelis had concluded, could be caged like battery chickens indefinitely, and in ever-shrinking pens, are now viewed as monsters that have to be culled. That impulse was the genesis of Israel’s current genocidal plan for Gaza.

Suicide mission

The third point the documentary clarifies is that Hamas’s wildly successful prison break undid the larger operation.

The group had worked so hard on the fearsome logistics of the breakout – and prepared for a rapid and savage response from Israel’s oppressive military machine – that it had no serious plan for dealing with a situation it could not conceive of: the freedom to scour Israel’s periphery, often undisturbed for many hours or days.

Hamas fighters entering Israel had assumed that most were on a suicide mission. According to the documentary, the fighters’ own assumption was that between 80 and 90 per cent would not make it back.

The aim was not to strike some kind of existential blow against Israel, as Israeli officials have asserted ever since in their determined rationalisation of genocide. It was to strike a blow against Israel’s reputation for invincibility by attacking its military bases and nearby communities, and dragging as many hostages as possible back into Gaza.

They would then be exchanged for the thousands of Palestinian men, women and children held in Israel’s military incarceration system – hostages labelled “prisoners”.

As Hamas spokesman Bassem Naim explained to Al Jazeera, the breakout was meant to thrust Gaza’s desperate plight back into the spotlight after many years in which international interest in ending Israel’s siege had waned.

Of discussions in the group’s political bureau, he says the consensus was: “We have to take action. If we don’t do it, Palestine will be forgotten, totally deleted from the international map.”

For 17 years, Gaza had gradually been strangled to death. Its population had tried peaceful protests at the militarised fence around their enclave and been picked off by Israeli snipers. The world had grown so used to Palestinian suffering, it had switched off.

The 7 October attack was intended to change that, especially by re-inspiring solidarity with Gaza in the Arab world and by bolstering Hamas’ regional political position.

It was intended to make it impossible for Saudi Arabia – the main Arab power broker in Washington – to normalise with Israel, completing the marginalisation of the Palestinian cause in the Arab world.

Judged by these criteria, Hamas’s attack was a success.

Loss of focus

But for many long hours – with Israel caught entirely off-guard, and with its surveillance systems neutralised – Hamas did not face the military counter-strike it expected.

Three factors seem to have led to a rapid erosion of discipline and purpose.

With no meaningful enemy to confront or limit Hamas’ room for manoeuvre, the fighters lost focus. Footage shows them squabbling about what to do next as they freely wander around Israeli communities.

That was compounded by the influx of other armed Palestinians who piggybacked on Hamas’ successful breakout and the lack of an Israeli response. Many suddenly found themselves with the chance to loot or settle scores with Israel – by killing Israelis – for years of suffering in Gaza.

And the third factor was Hamas stumbling into the Nova music festival, which had been relocated by the organisers at short notice close to the fence around Gaza.

It quickly became the scene of some of the worst atrocities, though none resembling the savage excesses described by Israel and the western media.

Footage shows, for example, Palestinian fighters throwing grenades into concrete shelters where many dozens of festivalgoers were sheltering from the Hamas attack. In one clip, a man who runs out is gunned down.

Fourth, Al Jazeera was able to confirm that the most extreme, sadistic and depraved atrocities never took place. They were fabricated by Israeli soldiers, officials and emergency responders.

One figure central to this deception was Yossi Landau, a leader of the Jewish religious emergency response organisation, Zaka. He and his staff concocted outlandish tales that were readily amplified not only by a credulous western press corps but by senior US officials too.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken graphically told of a family of four being butchered at the breakfast table. The father’s eye was gouged out in front of his two children, aged eight and six. The mother’s breast was cut off. The girl’s foot was amputated, and the boy’s fingers cut off, before they were all executed. The executioners then sat down and had a meal next to their victims.

Except the evidence shows none of that actually happened.

Landau has also claimed that Hamas tied up dozens of children and burned them alive at Kibbutz Be’eri. Elsewhere, he has recalled a pregnant woman who was shot dead and her belly cut open and the foetus stabbed.

Officials at the kibbutz deny any evidence for these atrocities. Landau’s accounts do not tally with any of the known facts. Only two babies died on 7 October, both killed unintentionally.

When challenged, Landau offers to show Al Jazeera a photo on his phone of the stabbed foetus, but is filmed admitting he is unable to do so.

Fabricating atrocities 

Similarly, Al Jazeera’s research finds no evidence of systematic or mass rape on 7 October. In fact, it is Israel that has been blocking efforts by international bodies to investigate any sexual violence that day.

Respected outlets like the New York Times, the BBC and Guardian have repeatedly breathed credibility into the claims of systematic rape by Hamas, but only by unquestioningly repeating Israeli atrocity propaganda.

From obscuring the West’s role in starving Gaza to sensationalised accounts of mass rape by Hamas, journalists are playing the role of propagandists, not reporters.

My latest piece, on how the western media built the case for Israel to commit genocide:https://t.co/AwbVHryfqB

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) March 20, 2024

Madeleine Rees, secretary general of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, told Al Jazeera: “A state has instrumentalised the horrific attacks on women in order, we believe, to justify an attack on Gaza, of which the majority suffering are other women.”

In other cases, Israel has blamed Hamas for mutilating the bodies of Israeli victims, including by driving over them, smashing their pelvises. In several cases, Al Jazeera’s investigation showed that the bodies were of Hamas fighters mutilated or driven over by Israeli soldiers.

The documentary notes that reporting by the Israeli media – followed by the western media – “focuses not on the crimes they [Hamas] committed but on the crimes they did not”.

The question is why, when there were plenty of real atrocities by Hamas to report, did Israel feel the need to fabricate even worse ones? And why, especially after the initial fabrication of beheaded babies was debunked, did the western media carry on credulously recycling improbable stories of Hamas savagery?

The answer to the first question is that Israel needed to manufacture a favourable political climate that would excuse its genocide in Gaza as necessary.

Netanyahu is shown congratulating Zaka’s leaders on their role in influencing world opinion: “We need to buy time, which we gain by turning to world leaders and to public opinion. You have an important role in influencing public opinion, which also influences leaders.”

The answer to the second is that western journalists’ racist preconceptions ensured they would be easily persuaded that brown people were capable of such barbarity.

‘Hannibal directive’

Fifth, Al Jazeera documents months of Israeli media coverage demonstrating that some of the atrocities blamed on Hamas – particularly relating to the burning alive of Israelis – were actually Israel’s responsibility.

Deprived of functioning surveillance, an enraged Israeli military machine lashed out blindly. Video footage from Apache helicopters shows them firing wildly on cars and figures heading towards Gaza, unable to determine whether they are targeting fleeing Hamas fighters or Israelis taken hostage by Hamas.

In at least one case, an Israeli tank fired a shell into a building in Kibbutz Be’eri, killing the 12 Israeli hostages inside. One, 12-year-old Liel Hetsroni, whose charred remains meant she could not be identified for weeks, became the poster child for Israel’s campaign to tar Hamas as barbarians for burning her alive.

The commander in charge of the rescue efforts at Be’eri, Colonel Golan Vach, is shown fabricating to the media a story about the house Israel itself had shelled. He claimed Hamas had executed and burned eight babies in the house. In fact, no babies were killed there – and those who did die in the house were killed by Israel.

The widespread devastation in kibbutz communities – still blamed on Hamas – suggests that Israel’s shelling of this particular house was far from a one-off. It is impossible to determine how many more Israelis were killed by “friendly fire”.

These deaths appear to have been related to the hurried invocation by Israel that day of its so-called “Hannibal directive” – a secretive military protocol to kill Israeli soldiers to prevent them from being taken hostage and becoming bargaining chips for the release of Palestinians held hostage in Israeli jails.

In this case, the directive looks to have been repurposed and used against Israeli civilians too. Extraordinarily, though there has been furious debate inside Israel about the Hannibal directive’s use on 7 October, the western media has remained completely silent on the subject.

Woeful imbalance

The one issue largely overlooked by Al Jazeera is the astonishing failure of the western media across the board to cover 7 October seriously or investigate any of the atrocities independently of Israel’s own self-serving accounts.

The question hanging over Al Jazeera’s documentary is this: how is it possible that no British or US media organisation has undertaken the task that Al Jazeera took on? And further, why is it that none of them appear ready to use Al Jazeera’s coverage as an opportunity to revisit the events of 7 October?

In part, that is because they themselves would be indicted by any reassessment of the past five months. Their coverage has been woefully unbalanced: wide-eyed acceptance of any Israeli claim of Hamas atrocities, and similar wide-eyed acceptance of any Israeli excuse for its slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza.

But the problem runs deeper.

This is not the first time that Al Jazeera has shamed the western press corps on a subject that has dominated headlines for months or years.

Back in 2017, an Al Jazeera investigation called The Lobby showed that Israel was behind a campaign to smear Palestinian solidarity activists as antisemites in Britain, with Jeremy Corbyn the ultimate target.

That smear campaign continued to be wildly successful even after the Al Jazeera series aired, not least because the investigation was uniformly ignored. British media outlets swallowed every piece of disinformation spread by Israeli lobbyists on the issue of antisemitism.

A follow-up on a similar disinformation campaign waged by the pro-Israel lobby in the US was never broadcast, apparently after diplomatic threats from Washington to Qatar. The series was eventually leaked to the Electronic Intifada website.

Then 18 months ago, Al Jazeera broadcast an investigation called The Labour Files, showing how senior officials in Britain’s Labour Party, assisted by the UK media, waged a covert plot to stop Corbyn from ever becoming prime minister. Corbyn, Labour’s democratically elected leader, was an outspoken critic of Israel and supporter of justice for the Palestinian people.

Once again, the British media, which had played such a critical role in helping to destroy Corbyn, ignored the Al Jazeera investigation.

There is a pattern here that can be ignored only through wilful blindness.

Israel and its partisans have unfettered access to western establishments, where they fabricate claims and smears that are readily amplified by a credulous press corps.

And those claims only ever work to Israel’s advantage, and harm the cause of ending decades of brutal subjugation of the Palestinian people by an Israeli apartheid regime now committing genocide.

Al Jazeera has once again shown that, on matters that western establishments consider the most vital to their interests – such as support for a highly militarised client state promoting the West’s control over the oil-rich Middle East – the western press is not a watchdog on power but the establishment’s public relations arm.

Al Jazeera’s investigation has not just revealed the lies Israel spread about 7 October to justify its genocide in Gaza. It reveals the utter complicity of western journalists in that genocide.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

The United States’ airdrops of aid into Gaza are a textbook case of cognitive dissonance on the part of the US administration — dropping food while continuing to send Israel bombs with which to pulverise Gaza, reports Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post.

And, says the media watch programme presenter Richard Gizbert, the gulf between what is happening on the ground and the mainstream media’s reportage continues to widen.

Gizbert criticises the airdrops, what he calls the “optics of urgency, the illusions of aid”.

• READ MORE: Israel’s war on Gaza live: Nearly 100 people killed in last 24 hours
• Other Listening Post items

“An absurd spectacle as the US drops aid into Gaza while also arming Israel,” he says.

Gizbert critically examines the Israeli disinformation strategy over atrocities such as the gunning down of at least 116 starving Gazans in the so-called “flour massacre” of 29 February 2024 — first denial, then blame the Palestinians, and finally accept only limited responsibility.

“The US air drops into the Gaza Strip are pure theatre. The US has been supplying thousands of tonnes into the Gaza Strip — but those have been high explosives,” says Mouin Rabbani, co-editor of Jadaliyya.

“And then to claim that somehow it is ameliorated by 38,000 meals ready to eat is quite obscene to put it politely.

“People have compared these scenes to The Hunger Games and for good reason.”

‘Who is the superpower?’
Australian author Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, says: “When I saw the US drop food, my first response was really anger; it was horror that this is apparently the best the US can do.

Absurd Aid Air Drops in Gaza.   Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post, 9 March 2024

“Who is the superpower here? Is it the US or Israel? There is no place that is safe. There is no place where you can find reliable food, where people can get shelter.

“Gazans are exhausted, angry and scared, and do not buy this argument that the US is suddenly caring about them by airdropping a handful of food.”

“People have compared these scenes to The Hunger Games and for good reason.

Contributors:
Laura Albast — Fellow, Institute for Palestine Studies
Mohamad Bazzi — Director of NYU’s Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies
Antony Loewenstein — Author, The Palestine Laboratory
Mouin Rabbani — Co-editor, Jadaliyya

On Our Radar:
Since Israel launched its assault on Gaza, the war has been a delicate subject for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The war has led to censorship of news coverage and suppression of public protest. Meenakshi Ravi reports.

Israel’s cultural annihilation in Gaza
The Listening Post has covered Israel’s war on Gaza through the prism of the media, including the unprecedented killing of Palestinian journalists. But there is another level to what is unfolding in Gaza: the genocidal assault on Palestinian history, existence and culture.

Featuring:
Jehad Abusalim – Executive director, The Jerusalem Fund

• The Listening Post is a weekly media watchdog programme at Al Jazeera

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

We hear from Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, whose recent article for The Intercept documents how Israel bombed two Al Jazeera journalists in mid-December while they were accompanying rescue workers, seriously injuring both. But while the network’s Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh managed to get to an ambulance nearby, his cameraman Samer Abudaqa bled to death from his wounds as Israeli forces prevented medical workers from reaching him for about five hours, despite the desperate entreaties of many foreign journalists to save the life of their colleague. “The world should be outraged about this killing, about all the killings that are happening to Palestinian journalists in Gaza,” says Abdel Kouddous.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We hear from Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous, whose recent article for The Intercept documents how Israel bombed two Al Jazeera journalists in mid-December while they were accompanying rescue workers, seriously injuring both. But while the network’s Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh managed to get to an ambulance nearby, his cameraman Samer Abudaqa bled to death from his wounds as Israeli forces prevented medical workers from reaching him for about five hours, despite the desperate entreaties of many foreign journalists to save the life of their colleague. “The world should be outraged about this killing, about all the killings that are happening to Palestinian journalists in Gaza,” says Abdel Kouddous.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“It was as if a storm had targeted us.” On the afternoon of December 15, an Israeli airstrike slammed into the Farhana school in Khan Younis where Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh and his cameraman, Samer Abu Daqqa, had just wrapped up filming the aftermath of an earlier bombardment in the area.

Dahdouh was thrown to the ground. “I lost balance to the point of faintly losing consciousness until I regained my strength,” he told The Intercept. “I tried to get up in any way because I was sure that another missile would target us — from our experience that’s what usually happens.” Dahdouh realized he was bleeding profusely from the arm and that if he didn’t get medical attention, he would die. He had also temporarily lost much of his hearing from the blast. He looked over and saw the three Civil Defense workers who had been accompanying the two journalists had been killed.

“In those milliseconds I thought I couldn’t offer him anything. I couldn’t. And he couldn’t move, he couldn’t get up.”

Then, he saw Abu Daqqa lying on the ground some distance away. “He was trying to get up and it seemed like he was screaming,” Dahdouh said. “In those milliseconds I thought I couldn’t offer him anything. I couldn’t. And he couldn’t move, he couldn’t get up. I decided to take advantage of the remaining glimmer of hope, which was to try to go towards the ambulance.”

Dahdouh somehow managed to make his way across the rubble to an ambulance hundreds of meters away and was evacuated to a nearby hospital. But Abu Daqqa, wounded in the lower part of his body, could not walk to the ambulance and was left lying on the ground. Hours went by, but emergency workers were unable to reach him without approval from the Israeli military. As his life slipped away, Al Jazeera posted a live counter on its broadcast showing the number of hours and minutes since Abu Daqqa had been wounded. When emergency crews were finally able to reach Abu Daqqa over five hours later, he was dead.

A still from a video published by Al Jazeera of Samer Abu Daqqa speaking to a colleague while working in Gaza in early December before he was killed by an Israeli airstrike on Dec. 15, 2023.

Over the course of those five hours, humanitarian organizations and fellow journalists repeatedly pressed the Israeli military to facilitate the evacuation of Abu Daqqa, according to people involved in the efforts as well as chat logs obtained by The Intercept from multiple journalists. The in-depth timeline of the hours before Abu Daqqa’s death shows that Israeli forces did not allow safe passage for emergency crews for hours, though they were aware a journalist was urgently in need of help.  

All told, Abu Daqqa had lain wounded and bleeding just two kilometers away from the nearest hospital, yet no one could reach him for well over five hours while his colleagues and much of the world watched. The Israeli military were well aware that an Al Jazeera journalist was lying helpless, The Intercept’s reporting shows, yet it did not allow emergency teams to safely pass for nearly four hours and did not send a bulldozer for over an hour after that. (The Israeli military did not respond to questions from The Intercept.)

Much of the evidence points toward a targeted Israeli strike on the Al Jazeera journalists. “In this area there was no one but us. Therefore there was no room for error by the Israeli army considering that drones, large and small, were in the sky in the area,” Dahdouh said. “They knew everything we were doing the whole time, and we were targeted as we were returning — of this there is no doubt.”

Smoke rises following Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, on Dec. 15, 2023.

Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza, and Abu Daqqa, a veteran cameraperson for the network, arrived at the Farhana school at around noon that day to cover the aftermath of an Israeli bombardment in the area, Dahdouh told The Intercept. Wearing helmets and flak jackets with the word “press” emblazoned on them, they made their way toward the school in an ambulance with a crew of uniformed Palestinian Civil Defense workers — a government branch responsible for emergency services and rescue — who had coordinated with and received approval from the Israeli military through the Red Cross to be in the area, according to Dahdouh.

Repeated Israeli airstrikes had left many of the roads impassable with rubble blocking the streets. Dahdouh said that on their way to the school, the ambulance had to stop at least three or four times over a distance of just 600 to 800 meters for the crew to clear rubble to allow for it to pass. Eventually, the Al Jazeera journalists and Civil Defense workers covered the final distance to the school on foot with the ambulance drivers agreeing to wait for the team up the street.

Dahdouh and Abu Daqqa spent around two and a half hours filming in the school and surrounding area, the buzz of Israeli drones filling the sky overhead the entire time. At around 2:30 p.m., they started to make their way back to the ambulance when an Israeli airstrike hit. 

Dahdouh put pressure on his wounds and stumbled to the ambulance, a distance of some 800 to 1,000 meters. Upon reaching the ambulance, he immediately told the emergency workers to go in and rescue Abu Daqqa. They insisted on first evacuating Dahdouh to a hospital and said they would send another ambulance to retrieve Abu Daqqa. Videos of Dahdouh in Nasser Hospital show him wincing in pain as he is treated for his wounds and calling for Abu Daqqa to be saved. “Coordinate with the [Red] Cross,” he says repeatedly. “Let someone get him.”

The head of Al Jazeera’s bureau in Ramallah, Walid al-Omari, was doing just that. Omari told The Intercept that he first contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross at 3:35 p.m. and asked them to liaise with the Israeli military to facilitate a rescue effort for Abu Daqqa. Omari said he kept in close contact with the ICRC both locally and abroad and that they put in a “great effort” to try and coordinate with Israeli authorities.

Al Jazeera correspondent Wael al-Dahdouh receives medical treatment at Nasser Hospital after he was wounded by an Israeli airstrike on Khan Younis, Gaza, on Dec. 15, 2023.

Dahdouh said he later learned from colleagues that early on in the ordeal, when ambulances initially approached the area to reach Abu Daqqa, Israeli forces fired in their proximity, forcing them to return and wait for approval from the Israeli military to go in. He also said Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance crews had demanded a Red Cross vehicle accompany them so that they would not be targeted by the Israeli military.

Meanwhile, news had begun to spread about Abu Daqqa’s dire state.

Orly Halpern, a freelance reporter and producer based in Jerusalem, learned what had happened when an acquaintance sent her a link to a story at 3:08 p.m. Halpern decided to post about it on a WhatsApp group of over 140 journalists of the Foreign Press Association, or FPA, a Jerusalem-based nonprofit representing reporters from over 30 countries. According to screenshots of the WhatsApp group obtained by The Intercept, at 4:27 p.m. Halpern outlined what happened and wrote: “Samer Abu Daqqa is seriously injured and still trapped at the school. The ambulance is waiting for Israeli forces to let it evacuate him. But that has yet to happen….Walid al-Umari, the AJ bureau chief said that ICRC is trying to liaise with the IDF. But still no progress. It has been two hours since they got hit. Maybe we can all call the IDF spox and demand that he be allowed to be evacuated.”

She continued in another post three minutes later: “What matters is to save the cameraman. And the Israelis need to allow the ambulance to reach him.” Halpern tagged Ellen Krosney, the FPA’s executive secretary, and added, “would the FPA be able to contact the IDF, too?” At 4:57, Krosney responded, “I’m getting involved in this.”

Meanwhile, other journalists in the group worked to confirm Abu Daqqa’s location, and one posted a photo of a map showing the position of two schools in Khan Younis — Haifa and Farhana — while another journalist confirmed that Abu Daqqa was at Farhana.

Halpern then posted contact information for three Israeli officials at 5:17 p.m., including the press office for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, an Israeli Defense Ministry agency, as well as the contact information for three senior Israeli military spokespeople.

Explaining her reasoning for sharing the contacts, Halpern told The Intercept, “I believe there is power in numbers. Even more so when those numbers are journalists. I don’t think my voice alone would have gotten the army to do something, particularly if the Red Cross hadn’t succeeded. But I thought that if many journalists contacted the army, along with the Foreign Press Association, then the army might be more pressed to act, particularly knowing that we were aware of the situation and that we would report on it.”

At 5:27 p.m., a full three hours after Abu Daqqa was wounded in the airstrike, Krosney wrote that Israeli authorities had still not granted permission for emergency teams to reach him: “Ambulances still not cleared, but I am in touch with IDF, who know about this. And they know the fpa members are deeply upset.”

Halpern continued to urge journalists in the group to individually message Daniel Hagari or Richard Hecht — both Israeli military spokespeople whose contact information she had just shared — to pressure them to facilitate a rescue effort. “If everyone who cares about fellow journalists writes a message to Hagari or Hecht and tells him that we as journalists are following this case, then there’s a much better chance that this will be resolved before Samer dies, if that’s still possible,” Halpern wrote.

“What matters is to save the cameraman. And the Israelis need to allow the ambulance to reach him.”

In parallel, a more focused effort by a smaller group of more senior FPA members was yielding responses from the army, but no real action. At 5:31 p.m., a journalist in the smaller group had messaged an army official and was told that the IDF was aware and handling the situation. Two minutes later, he got a new message back saying that the military’s Southern Command, which oversees Gaza, had been informed, but there were problems with “passage” from the school to the hospital. This was despite the fact that it was the Israeli military that had reduced many of the streets to rubble in earlier airstrikes and maintains near-constant drone surveillance of Gaza.

The smaller group got another message at 6:22 p.m. that the military was still working on it. At 6:27 p.m., four hours after Abu Daqqa was wounded, Halpern received word from her producer in Gaza that ambulances were still unable to reach the school. Meanwhile, Omari, who had been added to the WhatsApp group shortly after the discussion began, wrote: “The road is closed. A destroyed building blocks the road, they need bulldozer to open it. They can’t reach the school.” Halpern then posted to the group that they needed to request the Israeli military to send in a bulldozer to clear the way. At 7:02 p.m., Tania Kraemer, a Jerusalem-based correspondent for Deutsche Welle and the chair of the FPA, responded: “In touch with the IDF Orly. No news yet on the above.” At 7:23 — now after five hours of bleeding — the smaller group was told that the IDF was sending a bulldozer within 10 minutes and that it would take 20 minutes to reach the location.

Meanwhile, Halpern posted an update on the larger group chat at 7:25 p.m. that the Israeli military had approved a Palestinian bulldozer to come through.

It was too late. Palestinian emergency crews had finally managed to reach the school after a Palestinian-operated bulldozer cleared a path for an ambulance only to find Abu Daqqa dead. At 7:55 p.m., Halpern posted a message in the group chat she had received from her producer in Gaza that he had been killed.

A stretcher carries the body of Samer Abu Daqqa in Khan Younis, Gaza, after his body was recovered in the evening hours of Dec. 15, 2023.

Al Jazeera reported that Abu Daqqa had been subjected to continued shelling while he tried to crawl to safety. Dahdouh and Halpern said they received reports that Abu Daqqa was found without his flak jacket, several meters from where he was wounded.

The FPA released a statement shortly afterward, saying it was “alarmed by the [Israeli] military’s silence and [called] for an immediate inquiry and explanation as to why it apparently attacked the area and why Samer could not be evacuated in time to be treated and potentially saved.”

The next day, Al Jazeera announced it was preparing a legal file to submit to the International Criminal Court, or the ICC, over what it called the “assassination” of Abu Daqqa by Israeli forces in Gaza. The brief would also encompass “recurrent attacks on the Network’s crews working and operating in the occupied Palestinian territories.” In a statement, the network said, “Following Samer’s injury, he was left to bleed to death for over 5 hours, as Israeli forces prevented ambulances and rescue workers from reaching him, denying the much-needed emergency treatment.”

Gaza is now the deadliest place for journalists on record.

Reporters Without Borders also included Abu Daqqa in a war crimes complaint the group filed with the ICC regarding the deaths of seven Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza between October 22 and December 15.

Gaza is now the deadliest place for journalists on record. The Palestinian Journalist Syndicate has documented the killing of over 100 journalists in just three months. Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists found that more journalists have been killed in the first 10 weeks of the Israel’s war on Gaza — nearly all of them Palestinian — than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year. Many of the journalists still alive in Gaza have lost multiple family members and their homes.

Al Jazeera correspondent Wael al-Dahdouh, center, attends the funeral of Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa in Khan Younis, Gaza, on Dec. 16, 2023. Dahdouh was injured in the same Israeli attack the previous day that killed Abu Daqqa.

Dahdouh himself has become a symbol of both the suffering and resilience of Palestinian journalists in Gaza. In October, his wife, son, daughter, and grandson were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp where they had sought shelter after their house was bombed. On Sunday, his eldest son, Hamza, also a journalist, was killed alongside another journalist, Mustafa Thuraya, in an airstrike on their car in the western part of Khan Younis.

“Holding the killer accountable is the least that can be done so that they don’t escape punishment every time, which leads to the continuation of the targeting and attacks of Palestinian journalists without accountability and without trial,” Dahdouh said. “The targeting and destruction of offices, like Al Jazeera’s offices; the targeting of Palestinian families, such as is the case with my family; and the targeting of homes, like my home that was destroyed and where there are no houses around it in the first place, so they know they are targeting the house of the head of Al Jazeera. It is clear that this is all happening in the context of pressure and punishment of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli military. Yet, as I always say, despite all the hurt and pain, we will continue in carrying this message and fulfilling our duty and relaying information and pictures and news to our viewers, so they can be the first ones with everything that is happening in the Gaza Strip.”

Ryan Grim and Natasha Lennard contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Sharif Abdel Kouddous.

Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, has been killed along with another journalist in an Israeli air strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the news channel reports.

The 27-year-old photojournalist was killed when a missile directly hit the vehicle he was travelling in to “document new atrocities” in the latest Israel attack.

Gaza’s media office condemned the killing of two more Palestinian journalists, describing it as a “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists”.

• READ MORE: Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
• Israel is eradicating journalism in Gaza, with ten reporters killed in three days

Hamza Dahdouh and colleague Mustafa Thuraya, who has worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse news agency, were in the car at the time it was targeted, Al Jazeera reports.

Thuraya also died.

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son in October in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.

Dozens of journalists have been killed in the Israeli strikes since the war began on October 7 and Al Jazeera reports that a total of 109 Palestianian journalists have died.

Journalists ‘being targeted’
Interviewed live on Al Jazeera, another AJ correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, described the work of Dahdouh and other Palestinians journalists documenting the war.

He said “journalists are being targeted and killed for telling the true story” as an Israeli drone hovered overhead during the interview.

Hamza and his colleagues were doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction that was caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road that connects Khan Younis with Rafah.

Reporting from Rafah, Mahmoud said that Hamza and his colleagues had been doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road connecting Khan Younis with Rafah.

“Every airstrike has an aftermath — it does not only cause a great deal of damage to the targeted home but also to the surrounding area,” he said.

“So they were documenting these crimes — destruction, displacement, and people under the rubble — when they were targeted.”

An Al Jazeera news executive compared the war on Gaza and on Palestinians with the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, saying “it is genocide”.

Israel aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage”, the Gaza media office said.

It also demanded “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenceless people in the Gaza Strip”.

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

Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, has been killed along with another journalist in an Israeli air strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the news channel reports.

The 27-year-old photojournalist was killed when a missile directly hit the vehicle he was travelling in to “document new atrocities” in the latest Israel attack.

Gaza’s media office condemned the killing of two more Palestinian journalists, describing it as a “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists”.

• READ MORE: Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
• Israel is eradicating journalism in Gaza, with ten reporters killed in three days

Hamza Dahdouh and colleague Mustafa Thuraya, who has worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse news agency, were in the car at the time it was targeted, Al Jazeera reports.

Thuraya also died.

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son in October in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.

Dozens of journalists have been killed in the Israeli strikes since the war began on October 7 and Al Jazeera reports that a total of 109 Palestianian journalists have died.

Journalists ‘being targeted’
Interviewed live on Al Jazeera, another AJ correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, described the work of Dahdouh and other Palestinians journalists documenting the war.

He said “journalists are being targeted and killed for telling the true story” as an Israeli drone hovered overhead during the interview.

Hamza and his colleagues were doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction that was caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road that connects Khan Younis with Rafah.

Reporting from Rafah, Mahmoud said that Hamza and his colleagues had been doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road connecting Khan Younis with Rafah.

“Every airstrike has an aftermath — it does not only cause a great deal of damage to the targeted home but also to the surrounding area,” he said.

“So they were documenting these crimes — destruction, displacement, and people under the rubble — when they were targeted.”

An Al Jazeera news executive compared the war on Gaza and on Palestinians with the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, saying “it is genocide”.

Israel aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage”, the Gaza media office said.

It also demanded “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenceless people in the Gaza Strip”.

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

Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, has been killed along with another journalist in an Israeli air strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the news channel reports.

The 27-year-old photojournalist was killed when a missile directly hit the vehicle he was travelling in to “document new atrocities” in the latest Israel attack.

Gaza’s media office condemned the killing of two more Palestinian journalists, describing it as a “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists”.

• READ MORE: Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
• Israel is eradicating journalism in Gaza, with ten reporters killed in three days

Hamza Dahdouh and colleague Mustafa Thuraya, who has worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse news agency, were in the car at the time it was targeted, Al Jazeera reports.

Thuraya also died.

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son in October in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.

Dozens of journalists have been killed in the Israeli strikes since the war began on October 7 and Al Jazeera reports that a total of 109 Palestianian journalists have died.

Journalists ‘being targeted’
Interviewed live on Al Jazeera, another AJ correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, described the work of Dahdouh and other Palestinians journalists documenting the war.

He said “journalists are being targeted and killed for telling the true story” as an Israeli drone hovered overhead during the interview.

Hamza and his colleagues were doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction that was caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road that connects Khan Younis with Rafah.

Reporting from Rafah, Mahmoud said that Hamza and his colleagues had been doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road connecting Khan Younis with Rafah.

“Every airstrike has an aftermath — it does not only cause a great deal of damage to the targeted home but also to the surrounding area,” he said.

“So they were documenting these crimes — destruction, displacement, and people under the rubble — when they were targeted.”

An Al Jazeera news executive compared the war on Gaza and on Palestinians with the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, saying “it is genocide”.

Israel aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage”, the Gaza media office said.

It also demanded “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenceless people in the Gaza Strip”.

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

Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, has been killed along with another journalist in an Israeli air strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the news channel reports.

The 27-year-old photojournalist was killed when a missile directly hit the vehicle he was travelling in to “document new atrocities” in the latest Israel attack.

Gaza’s media office condemned the killing of two more Palestinian journalists, describing it as a “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists”.

• READ MORE: Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
• Israel is eradicating journalism in Gaza, with ten reporters killed in three days

Hamza Dahdouh and colleague Mustafa Thuraya, who has worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse news agency, were in the car at the time it was targeted, Al Jazeera reports.

Thuraya also died.

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son in October in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.

Dozens of journalists have been killed in the Israeli strikes since the war began on October 7 and Al Jazeera reports that a total of 109 Palestianian journalists have died.

Journalists ‘being targeted’
Interviewed live on Al Jazeera, another AJ correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, described the work of Dahdouh and other Palestinians journalists documenting the war.

He said “journalists are being targeted and killed for telling the true story” as an Israeli drone hovered overhead during the interview.

Hamza and his colleagues were doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction that was caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road that connects Khan Younis with Rafah.

Reporting from Rafah, Mahmoud said that Hamza and his colleagues had been doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road connecting Khan Younis with Rafah.

“Every airstrike has an aftermath — it does not only cause a great deal of damage to the targeted home but also to the surrounding area,” he said.

“So they were documenting these crimes — destruction, displacement, and people under the rubble — when they were targeted.”

An Al Jazeera news executive compared the war on Gaza and on Palestinians with the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, saying “it is genocide”.

Israel aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage”, the Gaza media office said.

It also demanded “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenceless people in the Gaza Strip”.

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

Hamza Dahdouh, son of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh, has been killed along with another journalist in an Israeli air strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the news channel reports.

The 27-year-old photojournalist was killed when a missile directly hit the vehicle he was travelling in to “document new atrocities” in the latest Israel attack.

Gaza’s media office condemned the killing of two more Palestinian journalists, describing it as a “heinous crime” committed by the “Israeli occupation army against journalists”.

• READ MORE: Why NZ should join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel
• Israel is eradicating journalism in Gaza, with ten reporters killed in three days

Hamza Dahdouh and colleague Mustafa Thuraya, who has worked as a journalist for Agence France-Presse news agency, were in the car at the time it was targeted, Al Jazeera reports.

Thuraya also died.

Wael Dahdouh, 52, lost his wife, daughter, grandson and 15-year-old son in October in an Israeli air raid that hit the house they were sheltering in.

Dozens of journalists have been killed in the Israeli strikes since the war began on October 7 and Al Jazeera reports that a total of 109 Palestianian journalists have died.

Journalists ‘being targeted’
Interviewed live on Al Jazeera, another AJ correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, described the work of Dahdouh and other Palestinians journalists documenting the war.

He said “journalists are being targeted and killed for telling the true story” as an Israeli drone hovered overhead during the interview.

Hamza and his colleagues were doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction that was caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road that connects Khan Younis with Rafah.

Reporting from Rafah, Mahmoud said that Hamza and his colleagues had been doing fieldwork, documenting the level of destruction caused by an overnight airstrike targeting a residential zone near the road connecting Khan Younis with Rafah.

“Every airstrike has an aftermath — it does not only cause a great deal of damage to the targeted home but also to the surrounding area,” he said.

“So they were documenting these crimes — destruction, displacement, and people under the rubble — when they were targeted.”

An Al Jazeera news executive compared the war on Gaza and on Palestinians with the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War, saying “it is genocide”.

Israel aims to “intimidate journalists in a failed attempt to obscure the truth and prevent media coverage”, the Gaza media office said.

It also demanded “the occupation to stop the genocidal war against our defenceless people in the Gaza Strip”.

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

We speak with Al Jazeera correspondent Youmna ElSayed in Gaza, where an Israeli airstrike killed the family of the news outlet’s Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh on Wednesday. The Qatar-based news network is one of the few international outlets with reporters in Gaza. The Israeli strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp killed at least 25 in total, and Dahdouh had fled to the refugee camp with his family after Israel ordered residents of northern Gaza to vacate their homes. He learned of the deaths of his wife, son, daughter and grandson while reporting live on the air. “When we say there’s no safe place in Gaza, we’re not lying,” says ElSayed, who criticizes Israel for its history of targeting media. The killings on Wednesday came after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly urged Qatari leaders to pressure Al Jazeera to tone down its coverage of the war. Palestinian authorities say the death toll from Israel’s 20-day bombardment of the Gaza Strip has topped 7,000, including over 2,900 children.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Following an investigation that Al Jazeera said uncovered new evidence regarding the fatal shooting of Palestinian-America journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May, the international news network said Tuesday that it has filed a lawsuit against Israeli military forces at the International Criminal Court.

"The claim by the Israeli authorities that Shireen was killed by mistake in an exchange of fire is completely unfounded."

"Al Jazeera's legal team has conducted a full and detailed investigation into the case and unearthed new evidence based on several eyewitness accounts, the examination of multiple items of video footage, and forensic evidence pertaining to the case," said the network in a statement.

The investigation reportedly showed that Abu Akleh and her colleagues "were directly fired at by the Israeli occupation forces" when they were covering a raid by the forces in Jenin in the occupied West Bank on May 11.

"The claim by the Israeli authorities that Shireen was killed by mistake in an exchange of fire is completely unfounded," said Al Jazeera.

Rodney Dixon, a lawyer for the network, told reporters that the ICC should identify the individuals responsible for Abu Akleh's killing.

"The rulings of the International Criminal Court stipulate that those responsible be investigated and held accountable," said Dixon. "Otherwise, they bear the same responsibility as if they were the ones who opened fire."

The legal filing comes weeks after Israeli officials said they would not cooperate with an FBI investigation into the death of Abu Akleh, who was wearing a vest and helmet identifying her as a member of the press when she was shot in the head.

Israel has said it conducted an investigation which found the origin of the bullet that killed the veteran Al Jazeera journalist could not be determined because it was too damaged, suggesting that Palestinian forces could have fired the bullet.

Other investigations—including a U.S.-led forensic and ballistic probe and one by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights—found that Israeli forces may have unintentionally fired the weapon that killed Abu Akleh, while an independent investigation by Forensic Architecture in the U.K. and the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq concluded that Israel Defense Forces had intentionally killed the journalist.

Dixon said the ICC should consider the lawsuit "in the context of a wider attack on Al Jazeera, and journalists in Palestine," referring to the bombing of a building that housed Associated Press and Al Jazeera offices in May 2021.

"It's not a single incident, it's a killing that is part of a wider pattern that the prosecution should be investigating to identify those who are responsible for the killing, and to bring charges against them," said Dixon.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

An investigation by Al Jazeera has obtained an image of the bullet used to kill the network’s journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, reports Al Jazeera staff.

The photograph for the first time shows the type of ammunition used to kill the veteran Al Jazeera correspondent in the occupied West Bank last month.

According to ballistic and forensic experts, the green-tipped bullet was designed to pierce armour and is used in an M4 rifle. The round was extracted from her head.

• READ MORE: Other reports on the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh

The bullet was analysed using 3D models and, according to experts, it was 5.56mm calibre – the same as used by Israeli forces. The round was designed and manufactured in the United States, experts said.

In this undated photo, Shireen Abu Akleh stands next to a TV camera above the Old City of Jerusalem [Al Jazeera Media Network]

Fayez al-Dwairi, a former Jordanian major-general, told Al Jazeera the weapon and round used to kill Abu Akleh are regularly carried by Israeli forces.

“This M4 and this munition is used by the Israeli army. It is available and used by the units. I cannot say the whole unit, or most of the soldiers, but they use it,” al-Dwairi told Al Jazeera.

“When any soldier uses it, he uses it for a definite target — he wants to hunt, he wants to kill … There is no way to use it for another thing.”

Palestinian assistant Multilateral Affairs Minister Ammar Hijazi told Al Jazeera the bullet will remain with the Palestinian government for further investigation.

Abu Akleh, a longtime TV correspondent for Al Jazeera Arabic, was killed last month while covering Israeli army raids in the city of Jenin.

Abu Akleh’s case was sent to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the investigation was recently handed over to the ICC prosecutor. The status of the case, however, remains unclear.

“We think there is enough evidence with the prosecutor … that proves without reasonable doubt that the crime committed against Shireen Abu Akleh was done by the Israeli occupation and they are the perpetrators of this awful crime and they should be held responsible for it,” said Hijazi.

‘Trigger-happy policies’
Abu Akleh was wearing a press vest and standing with other journalists when she was killed.

Israeli authorities initially said Palestinian fighters were responsible for her death, circulating video of Palestinian men shooting down an alleyway. However, researchers from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem found the spot where the clip was filmed and proved it was impossible to shoot Abu Akleh from there.

In an interview, Omar Shakir — Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch — said all evidence indicates the kill shot came from an Israeli soldier.

Sherif Mansour, MENA programme coordinator of the Committee to Protect Journalists, told Al Jazeera from Washington, DC, that “the pattern” of killing Palestinian media workers “is well known”.

“We have documented at least 19 journalists who were killed by Israeli fire, some of them in the Gaza wars in vehicles marked as press in 2012 and 2014,” Mansour said.

“Some of them were also killed by Israeli snipers while wearing vests with press signs, away from any threatening situation, two of them in 2018. Clearly, we have a problem here of trigger-happy policies that allows this to continue.”

Shireen Abu Akleh: What happened? Video: Al Jazeera

‘Justice and accountability’
In what appeared to be an unprovoked assault at the Al Jazeera correspondent’s funeral days after she was killed, Israeli officers attacked pallbearers, which almost caused them to drop Abu Akleh’s coffin — an incident broadcast live that caused international outrage.

An Israeli police investigation into the attack concluded no one should be punished, despite finding there had been police misconduct, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, said for Palestinians their version of events is being “confirmed by so many investigations”, including the latest one by Al Jazeera.

“Palestinians have been saying from day one that they know that the bullet that hit Shireen came from Israeli soldiers. The witnesses, the videos that we’ve seen from Palestinians who were there, show there were no Palestinian fighters around the area where Shireen was in,” Ibrahim said.

“Palestinians are seeking now is justice and accountability.”

‘The root cause’
A dual Palestinian-US national, Abu Akleh was one of Al Jazeera’s first field correspondents, joining the network in 1997.

Ori Givati, a former Israeli soldier now with the advocacy group Breaking the Silence, said the round that was analysed was a “very common bullet”.

“It is the bullet that most [Israeli] soldiers use during their service,” he told Al Jazeera.

“This investigation into Shireen’s killing is extremely important, but we also have to remember these incidents happen on a weekly basis.

“Our country understands that if you really look into these cases it all goes back to the root cause. It is why the system is terrified from actually conducting investigations. I haven’t seen Israel really investigate any incident.”

Al Jazeera emailed Israel’s Foreign Press Department for comment early Friday but did not immediately receive a response.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

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

The Al Jazeera Media Network announced Thursday it will submit to the International Criminal Court a case file regarding the killing of its veteran reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.

Abu Akleh was shot dead on May 11 while covering a raid by Israeli forces on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. She was wearing a helmet and a blue protective vest clearly marked "Press."

Al Jazeera previously called the shooting "a blatant murder" that defies international law and warrants global condemnation.

The network said in its Thursday statement that it formed an international legal team preparing the murder case file for The Hague court.

The dossier, the statement says, will not be limited to Abu Akleh's shooting but will additionally include the May 2021 "bombing and total destruction" by Israeli forces of the network's office in Gaza "as well as the continuous incitements and attacks on its journalists operating in the occupied Palestinian territories."

"According to Article 8 of the Charter of the International Criminal Court," the document states, "targeting war correspondents, or journalists working in war zones or occupied territories by killing or physically assaulting them, is a war crime."

The Palestinian foreign ministry announced earlier in the week that it had already submitted a file to the ICC regarding Abu Akleh's death.

Al Jazeera's contention that the well-known journalist was targeted has been backed up by independent analyses.

A CNN investigation published this week and based on eyewitness accounts and assessments by a forensic analyst and an explosive weapons expert suggests that Abu Akleh was intentionally fired upon. A separate review by The Associated Press came to the same conclusion.

The Palestinian Authority's investigation also determined that Abu Akleh was targeted by an Israeli sniper, an assertion Israel swiftly denied.

Israel, for its part, has asked for the fatal bullet to investigate, a request Palestinian authorities have rejected over lack of trust.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Andrea Germanos.

Shireen Abu Akleh, the Al Jazeera reporter with more than two decades of experience covering armed conflicts, knew the protocol. She and other reporters remained last Wednesday in the open, clearly visible to Israeli snipers about 650 feet away in a building. Her flak jacket and helmet were emblazoned with the word "PRESS."

The killing of Abu Akleh would have been treated very differently if she was killed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

There were three shots fired in her direction. The second bullet hit the Al Jazeera producer Ali al-Samoudi in the back. The third shot, al-Samoudi remembered, hit Abu Akleh in the face below the rim of her helmet.

There were a few seconds when the Israeli sniper saw profiled in his scope Abu Akleh, one of the most recognizable faces in the Middle East. The 5.56 mm bullet from the M-16, designed to spin end over end upon impact, would have obliterated most of Abu Akleh's head. The accuracy of the M-16, especially the M16A4s equipped with the Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight (ACOG), a prismatic telescopic sight, is very high. In the fighting in Fallujah so many dead insurgents were found with head wounds that observers at first thought they had been executed. The bullet that killed Abu Akleh was deftly placed between the very slim opening separating her helmet and the collar of her flak jacket.

I have been in combat, including in clashes between Israeli and Palestinian forces. Snipers are dreaded on a battlefield because each kill is calculated. The execution of Abu Akleh was not an accident. She was singled out for elimination. Whether this killing was ordered by commanding officers, or whether it was the whim of an Israeli sniper, I cannot answer. Israelis shoot so many Palestinians with impunity my guess is the sniper knew he or she could kill Abu Akleh and never face any consequences. 

The shooting, Al Jazeera said in a statement, was "a blatant murder, violating international laws and norms." Abu Akleh, the network added, was "assassinated in cold blood."

Abu Akleh, who was 51 and a Palestinian-American, was a familiar and trusted presence on television screens throughout the region, revered for her courage and integrity and beloved for her careful and sensitive reporting on the intricacies of daily life under the occupation. Her reporting from the occupied territories routinely punctured Israeli narratives and exposed Israeli abuses and crimes, making her the bête noire of the Israeli government. She was a heroine for young Palestinian women, as Dalia Hatuqa, a Palestinian-American journalist and friend of Abu Akleh's, related to The New York Times.

"I know of a lot of girls who grew up basically standing in front of a mirror and holding their hair brushes and pretending to be Shireen," Hatuqa told the paper. "That's how lasting and important her presence was."

"I chose journalism to be close to the people," Abu Akleh said in a clip shared by Al Jazeera after she was killed. "It might not be easy to change the reality, but at least I was able to bring their voice to the world." 

In a 2017 interview with the Palestinian television channel An-Najah NBC, she was asked if she was worried about being shot.

"Of course, I get scared," she said. "In a specific moment you forget that fear. We don't throw ourselves to death. We go and we try to find where we can stand and how to protect the team with me before I think about how I am going to go up on the screen and what I am going to say."

Her funeral attracted thousands of mourners, the largest in Jerusalem since the death in 2002 of the Palestinian leader Faisal Husseini. Israeli police in full riot gear disrupted the procession, confiscating and ripping down Palestinian flags. The police fired stun grenades and pushed, clubbed and beat mourners and pallbearers, causing them to lose their grip on the coffin. Thousands chanted: "We sacrifice our soul and blood for you, Shireen." It was another example of the daily humiliation meted out to Palestinians by their Israeli occupiers. It was also a moving tribute to a reporter who understood that the role of journalism is to give a voice to those the powerful seek to silence.

I covered the Israeli occupation for seven years, two years with The Dallas Morning News and five with The New York Times, where I was the paper's Middle East Bureau Chief. One of the chief objectives of the Israeli army was to prevent our reporting from the occupied territories. If we were able get past Israeli checkpoints, not always possible, to document murderous assaults by Israeli soldiers on unarmed Palestinians then Israel's well-oiled propaganda machine was rolled out to obscure our reporting. Israeli officials swiftly issued counter narratives. The Israeli Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Defense Minister and Israeli Defense Force (IDF) spokesperson, for example, immediately blamed the killing of Abu Akleh on Palestinian gunmen until video footage examined by B'Tselem Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories exposed the falsehood. 

When Israel is caught lying, as it was with the murder of Abu Akleh, it immediately promises an investigation. The narrative shifts from one of blaming the Palestinians to the outcome of an inquiry. Impartial investigations into the hundreds of killings by soldiers and Jewish settlers of Palestinians are rarely carried out. Perpetrators are almost never brought to trial or held accountable. The pattern of Israeli obfuscation is pathetically predictable. So is the collusion of much of the corporate media along with Republican and Democratic politicians. US politicians decried the murder of Abu Akleh and dutifully repeated the old mantra, calling for a "thorough investigation" by the army that carried out the crime.

The dramatic footage captured in September 2000 at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip by France 2 TV of a father trying to shield his 12-year-old son Muhammad al-Durrah from the Israeli gunfire that killed him resulted in a typical propaganda campaign by Israel. Israeli officials spent years lying about the killing of the boy, first blaming the Palestinians for the shooting, and later suggesting that the scene was faked, and Muhammad was still alive.

Israel has a long history of blocking investigations into the plethora of war crimes it commits in Gaza, the world's largest open-air prison, and the West Bank.

One thing is certain, the Israeli military knows which one of its snipers killed Abu Akleh, although the name of the soldier will probably never be made public. Nor will, I expect, the sniper be reprimanded.

"With all due respect to us, let's say that Israel's credibility is not very high in such cases," Israel's Minister of Diaspora Affairs Nachman Shai said of an Israeli investigation into the killing. "We know this. It is based on the past."

Israel has a long history of blocking investigations into the plethora of war crimes it commits in Gaza, the world's largest open-air prison, and the West Bank. It refuses to cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) into possible war crimes in the occupied territories. It does not cooperate with the U.N. Human Rights Council and prohibits the United Nations Special Rapporteur (UNSR) for Human Rights from entering the country. Israel revoked the work permit for Omar Shakir, the Director of Human Rights Watch (Israel and Palestine), in 2018 and expelled him. In May 2018, Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy published a report calling on the European Union (EU) and European states to halt their direct and indirect financial support and funding to Palestinian and international human rights organizations that "have ties to terror and promote boycotts against Israel."

Israel relies on campaigns of terror, with random and indiscriminate killings, to beat back Palestinian resistance. Israeli strategists describe the tactic as "mowing the grass," part of an endless war of attrition. Israeli terror keeps Palestinians perpetually off-balance, fearful, and living at a subsistence level. This state terrorism also contributes to Israel's main goal, a slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinian land.

The 2014 bombing and shelling of Gaza, which lasted 51 days, killed more than 2,250 Palestinians, including 551 children. Israel's use of its military against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery, and command and control, not to mention a US commitment to provide $38 billion dollars in defense-aid to Israel over the next decade, is not justifiable under international law. Israel is not exercising the right to defend itself. It is carrying out mass murder. It is a war crime. The attacks are designed to degrade civilian infrastructure, destroying power plants, water and sewage treatment facilities, residential high-rises, government buildings, roads, bridges, public facilities, agricultural lands, schools and mosques.

Israel used state terror to crush the International Solidarity Movement that saw activists come to the occupied territories from around the world, often using their bodies to block Israel from demolishing Palestinian homes, as well as filming and recording human rights abuses.

As the author and journalist Jonathan Cook writes:

But Abu Akleh's US passport was no more able to save her from Israeli retribution than that of Rachel Corrie, murdered in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer driver as she tried to protect Palestinian homes in Gaza. Similarly, Tom Hurndall's British passport did not stop him from being shot in the head as he tried to protect Palestinian children in Gaza from Israeli gunfire. Nor did filmmaker James Miller's British passport prevent an Israeli soldier from executing him in 2003 in Gaza, as he documented Israel's assault on the tiny, overcrowded enclave.

All were seen as having taken a side by acting as witnesses and by refusing to remain quiet as Palestinians suffered – and for that reason, they and those who thought like them had to be taught a lesson.

It worked. Soon, the contingent of foreign volunteers – those who had come to Palestine to record Israel's atrocities and serve, when necessary, as human shields to protect Palestinians from a trigger-happy Israeli army – were gone. Israel denounced the International Solidarity Movement for supporting terrorism, and given the clear threat to their lives, the pool of volunteers gradually dried up. 

Israel has a deep hostility to the press, especially Al Jazeera which has large viewership throughout the Arab world. Al Jazeera reporters are routinely denied press credentials, harassed, and blocked from reporting. Israeli warplanes in May 2021 destroyed the al-Jalaa building in Gaza that housed dozens of international news agencies, including the Gaza offices of Al Jazeera and the Associated Press.

At least 144 Palestinian journalists have been wounded by Israeli forces in the occupied territories since 2018 and three, including Abu Akleh, have been killed in the same period, according to Reporters Without Borders. Palestinian reporters Ahmed Abu Hussein and Yasser Mortaja, also clearly identified as press, were shot dead by Israeli snipers in Gaza in 2018. At least 45 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli soldiers since 2000, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Information.

"Abu Akleh was most likely shot precisely because she was a high-profile Al Jazeera reporter, known for her fearless reporting of Israeli crimes," Cook writes. "Both the army and its soldiers bear grudges, and they have lethal weapons with which to settle scores."

The war crimes carried out by Israel go unheeded and unpunished. The Palestinians doggedly refuse to give up. This makes them as heroic, maybe more heroic, than Ukrainian fighters.

Israel does little to hide its callous disregard for the lives of Palestinians, international activists, and journalists.

"Suppose that Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli army fire," Avi Benyahu, a former IDF spokesperson stated. "There's no need to apologize for that."  

Reporters and photographers, in Israel's eyes, are responsible for their own deaths.

 "When 'terrorists' fire at our soldiers in Jenin, the soldiers must retaliate in full force even in the presence of journalists in from Al Jazeera in the area—who usually stand in the army's way and impede their work," said Knesset member Itamar Ben Gvir.

Israeli forces have killed at least 380 Palestinians, including 90 children, during the past year, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). This includes at least 260 Palestinians killed in Gaza during Israel's latest assault in May 2021. The pace of Israeli killings of Palestinians has been steadily increasing in the wake of armed Palestinians murdering 18 people in cities across Israel since the end of March. In March, Israeli forces killed 12 Palestinians, including three children. In April, Israeli forces killed at least 22 Palestinians, including three children. Abu Akleh was covering an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp where army units said they were hunting for Palestinian attackers.

The killing of Abu Akleh would have been treated very differently if she was killed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine. There would have been no equivocations about who carried out the murder. Her death would have been denounced as a war crime. No one would have acquiesced to let the Russian military carry out the investigation. 

The world is divided into worthy and unworthy victims, those who deserve our compassion and support and those who do not. Ukrainians are white and largely Christian. We see the struggle against the Russian occupier as a battle for freedom and democracy. We provide $40 billion in weapons and humanitarian aid. We impose punishing sanctions on Moscow. We make the Ukrainian cause our own.

The 55-year-long fight for Palestinian freedom is no less just, no less worthy of our support. But Palestinians are occupied by our Israeli ally. They are not white. Most are not Christian, although Abu Akleh was Christian. They are not deemed worthy. They suffer and die alone. The war crimes carried out by Israel go unheeded and unpunished. The Palestinians doggedly refuse to give up. This makes them as heroic, maybe more heroic, than Ukrainian fighters. We are on the wrong side of history in Israel. Abu Akleh's blood is on our hands. 

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Chris Hedges.

Israel’s fatal shooting of leading Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh as she covered clashes in the West Bank city of Jenin is a serious violation of the Geneva Conventions and UN Security Council Resolution 2222 on the protection of journalists, says the Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

It has called for an independent international investigation into her death as soon as possible.

Witnesses said Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American, was killed by a shot to the head although she was wearing a bulletproof vest with the word “PRESS” that clearly identified her as a journalist.

• READ MORE: John Minto: NZ government and media must own up to their silence over Shireen Abu Akleh
• Behind the tears for Shireen, more evidence of Israel’s daily crimes with impunity
• Photos: Israeli forces attack Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral
• Other Shireen Abu Akleh reports

Ali al-Samudi, a Palestinian journalist working as an Al Jazeera producer who was beside her at the time, was also targeted, sustaining a gunshot wound in the back, RSF reported.

Samudi, who is now in hospital, said in a video: “We were filming. They did not ask us to stop filming or to leave. They fired a shot that hit me and another shot that killed Shireen in cold blood.”

Following Abu Akleh’s death, Israeli security forces raided her East Jerusalem home as her family was making arrangements for her funeral.

Her body was transferred to Nablus for an autopsy prior to be taken to Jerusalem, where her funeral took place yesterday in emotional scenes with massive crowds. She was buried beside her parents in Mount Zion.

Israeli riot police attacked the pallbearers and a hearse carrying her coffin in the peaceful march, and ripped away Palestinian flags. International protests have followed this latest attack.

Popular in Middle East
Abu Akleh was very popular in the Middle East and was respected by fellow journalists for her experience in the field.

Al Jazeera issued a statement accusing the Israeli security forces of “deliberately” targeting Abu Akleh and of killing her “in cold blood.”

The Israel Defence Forces announced an investigation into her death, but IDF spokesman Amnon Shefler said Israeli soldiers “would never deliberately target non-combatants”.

Several witnesses, including an AFP photographer, denied seeing any armed Palestinians at the place where Abu Akleh was killed. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas said he held the Israeli authorities “fully responsible” for her death.

“RSF is not satisfied with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s proposal of a joint investigation into this journalist’s death,” said RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire.

“An independent international investigation must be launched as soon as possible.”

The shooting of these two Palestinian reporters during an IDF “anti-terrorist operation” in Jenin is the latest of many disturbing cases.

Two journalists fatally shot
In the spring of 2018, two Palestinian journalists were fatally shot by Israeli snipers while covering the weekly “Great March of Return” protests near the Israeli border in the Gaza Strip.

Also in 2018, Ain Media founder Yaser Murtaja was killed on the spot on March 30, while Radio Sawt al Shabab reporter Ahmed Abu Hussein died in hospital on April 25 from the gunshot injury he suffered on April 13.

According to RSF’s tallies, more than 140 journalists have been the victims of violations by the Israeli security forces on Friday’s marches since 2018, and at least 30 journalists have been killed since 2000.

Israel is 86th in the RSF 2022 World Press Freedom Index, and Palestine is 170th.

And now they won’t even let one of Palestine’s giants in journalism have a dignified and peaceful funeral — all in plain sight. (There’s a reason Reporters Without Borders ranks Israel 86th in Press Freedom.) https://t.co/y8SLL1qY7P

— Abdallah Fayyad (@abdallah_fayyad) May 13, 2022

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

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

Israel’s fatal shooting of leading Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh as she covered clashes in the West Bank city of Jenin is a serious violation of the Geneva Conventions and UN Security Council Resolution 2222 on the protection of journalists, says the Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

It has called for an independent international investigation into her death as soon as possible.

Witnesses said Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American, was killed by a shot to the head although she was wearing a bulletproof vest with the word “PRESS” that clearly identified her as a journalist.

• READ MORE: John Minto: NZ government and media must own up to their silence over Shireen Abu Akleh
• Behind the tears for Shireen, more evidence of Israel’s daily crimes with impunity
• Photos: Israeli forces attack Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral
• Other Shireen Abu Akleh reports

Ali al-Samudi, a Palestinian journalist working as an Al Jazeera producer who was beside her at the time, was also targeted, sustaining a gunshot wound in the back, RSF reported.

Samudi, who is now in hospital, said in a video: “We were filming. They did not ask us to stop filming or to leave. They fired a shot that hit me and another shot that killed Shireen in cold blood.”

Following Abu Akleh’s death, Israeli security forces raided her East Jerusalem home as her family was making arrangements for her funeral.

Her body was transferred to Nablus for an autopsy prior to be taken to Jerusalem, where her funeral took place yesterday in emotional scenes with massive crowds. She was buried beside her parents in Mount Zion.

Israeli riot police attacked the pallbearers and a hearse carrying her coffin in the peaceful march, and ripped away Palestinian flags. International protests have followed this latest attack.

Popular in Middle East
Abu Akleh was very popular in the Middle East and was respected by fellow journalists for her experience in the field.

Al Jazeera issued a statement accusing the Israeli security forces of “deliberately” targeting Abu Akleh and of killing her “in cold blood.”

The Israel Defence Forces announced an investigation into her death, but IDF spokesman Amnon Shefler said Israeli soldiers “would never deliberately target non-combatants”.

Several witnesses, including an AFP photographer, denied seeing any armed Palestinians at the place where Abu Akleh was killed. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas said he held the Israeli authorities “fully responsible” for her death.

“RSF is not satisfied with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s proposal of a joint investigation into this journalist’s death,” said RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire.

“An independent international investigation must be launched as soon as possible.”

The shooting of these two Palestinian reporters during an IDF “anti-terrorist operation” in Jenin is the latest of many disturbing cases.

Two journalists fatally shot
In the spring of 2018, two Palestinian journalists were fatally shot by Israeli snipers while covering the weekly “Great March of Return” protests near the Israeli border in the Gaza Strip.

Also in 2018, Ain Media founder Yaser Murtaja was killed on the spot on March 30, while Radio Sawt al Shabab reporter Ahmed Abu Hussein died in hospital on April 25 from the gunshot injury he suffered on April 13.

According to RSF’s tallies, more than 140 journalists have been the victims of violations by the Israeli security forces on Friday’s marches since 2018, and at least 30 journalists have been killed since 2000.

Israel is 86th in the RSF 2022 World Press Freedom Index, and Palestine is 170th.

And now they won’t even let one of Palestine’s giants in journalism have a dignified and peaceful funeral — all in plain sight. (There’s a reason Reporters Without Borders ranks Israel 86th in Press Freedom.) https://t.co/y8SLL1qY7P

— Abdallah Fayyad (@abdallah_fayyad) May 13, 2022

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

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

This is a developing news story... Check back for possible updates...

The media outlet Al Jazeera accused Israeli forces of "deliberately targeting and killing our colleague" on Wednesday after Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot in the face while covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

In a statement, the Al Jazeera Media Network said that Abu Akleh—who worked as the publication's Palestine correspondent—was wearing a press jacket that clearly identified her as a journalist when Israeli forces shot her "with live fire."

Al Jazeera, which is based in Qatar, called the attack "a blatant murder," saying Abu Akleh, 51, was "assassinated in cold blood."

The statement continued:

Al Jazeera Media Network condemns this heinous crime, which intends to only prevent the media from conducting their duty. Al Jazeera holds the Israeli government and the occupation forces responsible for the killing of Shireen. It also calls on the international community to condemn and hold the Israeli occupation forces accountable for their intentional targeting and killing of Shireen.

The Israeli authorities are also responsible for the targeting of Al Jazeera producer Ali al-Samudi, who was also shot in the back while covering the same event, and he is currently undergoing treatment.

Al Jazeera extends its sincere condolences to the family of Shireen in Palestine, and to her extended family around the world, and we pledge to prosecute the perpetrators legally, no matter how hard they try to cover up their crime, and bring them to justice.

Footage from the scene shows the moments after Abu Akleh was shot.

(Warning: The video is disturbing)

The Israeli government swiftly denied responsibility for killing Abu Akleh and wounding al-Samudi, claiming that they may have been shot by "Palestinian gunmen."

"There is a considerable chance that armed Palestinians, who fired wildly, were the ones who brought about the journalist's unfortunate death," said Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

But al-Samudi, speaking to the Associated Press following the incident, dismissed the Israeli government's narrative as a "complete lie."

"He said they were all wearing protective gear that clearly marked them as reporters, and they passed by Israeli troops so the soldiers would know that they were there," AP reported. "He said a first shot missed them, then a second struck him, and a third killed Abu Akleh. He said there were no militants or other civilians in the area—only the reporters and the army."

An outpouring of grief and tributes followed news of Abu Akleh's killing.

Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian-American political analyst, wrote on Twitter that "Shireen was one of the bravest, longest-standing Palestinian journos and an inspiration to so many Palestinians, especially young women in the field of journalism."

In an interview, Abu Akleh's friend and colleague Dalia Hatuqa said that Shireen "was there in every town, every Palestinian town, village, alleyway, refugee camp."

"Everybody knew her name," Hatuqa continued. "Everybody welcomed her. She wanted to do the stories that nobody else wanted to do. And she gave a voice to a lot of people who we otherwise wouldn't have heard from."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.