“Media freedom is often a casualty of war, and Israel’s recent war with Iran is no exception. We have seen Israeli authorities use security fears to increase censorship, while extremist right-wing politicians have demonized the media, legitimizing attacks on journalists,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah. “Despite hopes that we will see a ceasefire in Gaza this week, Israel’s government appears relentless in its determination to silence those who report critically on its military actions.”

After Haaretz newspaper published an interview with Israeli soldiers who said they were ordered to shoot at unarmed Gazans waiting for food aid, a mayor in southern Israel threatened to shut shops selling the popular liberal paper. This follows the government’s decision last year to stop advertising with Haaretz, accusing it of “incitement.”

Authorities are also pushing ahead with a bill to dismantle the public broadcaster, Kan, and shutter its news division, the country’s third-largest news channel. Meanwhile, government support has seen the right-wing Channel 14 grow in popularity.

The hostile climate fueled by Israel’s right-wing government has emboldened settler violence against journalists. On July 5, two Deutsche Welle (DW) reporters wearing press vests were attacked by Israeli settlers in Sinjil, West Bank — an incident condemned by Germany’s ambassador and the German Journalists’ Association, which called it “unacceptable that radical settlers are hunting down media professionals with impunity.” Reporters from AFP, The New York Times, and The Washington Post were also present. Palestinian journalists had to flee.

“War is a dangerous time for civil rights – rights that Netanyahu’s government is actively undermining as it moves toward dismantling democracy,” Haaretz Editor-in-Chief Aluf Benn told CPJ.

‘Broadcasts that serve the enemy’

During the Israel-Iran war of June 13 to 24, anti-press government actions included:

• A June 18 military order requiring army approval before broadcasting the aftermath of Iranian attacks on Israeli military sites. Haaretz reported that this order was illegal as it was not made public in the official government gazette or authorized by a parliamentary committee.

• On June 19, security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called on Israelis who see people watching “Al Jazeera broadcasts or reporters” to report their sightings to authorities. Israel shut down the Qatari-based outlet in May 2024, and six of its journalists have been killed while reporting on Israel’s war in Gaza. Many Arabs in Israel still watch Al Jazeera broadcasts, and former Israeli officials have appeared on the network since the shutdown. 

“These are broadcasts that serve the enemy,” Ben-Gvir said. 

• On June 20, Ben-Gvir and communications minister Shlomo Karhi issued a directive that broadcasting from impact sites without written permission would be a criminal offense.

When Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara demanded that the ministers explain the legal basis for their announcement, the ministers said she was “trying to thwart” their efforts to ensure that foreign media “don’t help the enemy target us.”

• On June 23, Haaretz reported that the police’s legal adviser issued an order giving officers sweeping powers to censor journalists reporting from the impact sites.

“This directive, which primarily targets foreign media and joins a wave of police and ministerial efforts to obstruct news coverage, is unlawful and infringes on basic rights,” Tal Hassin, an attorney with Israel’s biggest human rights group, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), told CPJ.

ACRI petitioned the Attorney General, arguing that the police adviser did not have the legal authority to issue such an order. It has not received a response.

Journalists censored, detained, and abused

CPJ subsequently documented at least four incidents involving journalists who were abused and blocked from reporting.

• On June 20, police stopped a live broadcast from Tel Aviv by Turkish state-owned broadcaster TRT’s correspondent Mücahit Aydemir, although he told the officers he had the required permits, including authorization from the military censor. For several days afterwards, Aydemir received “unsettling phone calls” from unknown Hebrew-speakers, he told CPJ.

• On June 21, privately owned Channel 13’s journalist Ali Mughrabi and a camera operator, who declined to be named, citing fear of reprisals, were expelled from a drone crash site in Beit She’an, northern Israel, despite showing their press accreditation. During a live broadcast, Deputy Mayor Oshrat Barel questioned their credentials, shoved the cameraperson, and ordered them to leave. She later apologized.

“What we’re experiencing isn’t just about the media — it’s about citizenship,” Mughrab, an Israeli citizen of Palestinian origin, told CPJ.

• On June 22, a civilian police volunteer squad, led by far-right activist and rapper Yoav Eliasi, known as “The Shadow,” detained three Jerusalem-based, Arab Israeli journalists and one international journalist, after separating them from their non-Arab colleagues outside a building in Tel Aviv that had been damaged by an Iranian strike.

Mustafa Kharouf and Amir Abed Rabbo from the Turkish state-owned Anadolu Agency, Ahmad Gharabli, with Agence France-Presse news agency, and another journalist who declined to be named, citing fear of reprisal, were held for three hours.  

Kharouf told CPJ, the unit asked them who was “Israeli” and allowed the non-Arab journalists to leave. 

“One officer accused us of working for Al Jazeera, even though we showed official press credentials,” said Kharouf.

“When I showed my ID, they told me I wasn’t allowed to film because I’m not Israeli – even though they treat us like Israelis when it comes to taxes,” Gharabli told CPJ.

Armed volunteer squads have rapidly grown from four before the October 2023 Hamas attack to around 900 new units, an expansion that “had negative effects on Arab-Jewish relations,” Dr. Ark Rudnitzky of Tel Aviv University told CPJ in an email. Squad members “tend to suspect an Arab solely because they are Arab,” he said.

“It was clear they targeted the journalists because they were Arab,” said Israeli journalist and witness Oren Ziv, who wrote about the incident.

The Central District Police told CPJ via email that the journalists were “evacuated from the building for security reasons related to their safety and were directed to alternative reporting locations.”

• On June 24,  Channel 13 correspondent Paz Robinson and a camera operator who declined to be named were reporting on a missile strike in southern Israel’s Be’er Sheva when a woman shouted that he was a “Nazi” and “Al Jazeera” and blocked him from filming, screaming, “You came to celebrate over dead bodies.”

“After I saw the woman wasn’t backing down, I decided to leave. I’m not here to fight with my own people. I’m not a politician. I came to cover events,” Robinson told CPJ.

Earlier in the war with Iran, CPJ documented eight incidents in which 14 journalists faced harassment, obstruction, equipment confiscation, incitement, or forced removal by the police.

The Israel Police Spokesperson’s Unit told CPJ via email that police “made significant efforts to facilitate safe, meaningful access for journalists” during the war with Iran.  “While isolated misunderstandings may occur…case was addressed promptly and professionally.”

CPJ’s emails to the Attorney General, Israel Defense Forces’ North America Media Desk, Ben-Gvir, and Shlomo requesting comment did not receive any replies. 

Kholod Massalha is a CPJ consultant on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory and a researcher with years of experience in press freedom and freedom of expression issues.

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

Mallohi was 18 when security police detained her in 2009 after posting on the then-popular Blogger platform poems and articles about Palestinian rights and other political issues. She spent 15 years behind bars – three times as long as her five-year sentence on state security charges in 2011. The fates of four other journalists whose cases are documented on CPJ’s prison census – Akram Raslan,  Austin Tice, Fares Maamou, and Jihad As’ad Mohamed – remain unknown. CPJ is also investigating cases of missing journalists in Syria.  

For years, CPJ’s research ranked Syria as one of the most dangerous place in the world for journalists with 145 journalist killed in the country between 2011 and 2025.

Al-Mallohi spoke to CPJ via a video call from her living room in the city of Homs about her 15 years behind bars, how she is coping with the way the world has changed, her family’s sacrifices to keep her alive, and what it means to be a journalist in post-Assad Syria. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

CPJ texted Mohamad Al Asmar, the media relations officer at the Syrian Ministry of Information for comment on the fate of missing journalists in Syria and the government’s plans for media and journalism in the country, but did not receive any response.

What led to your arrest in 2009?

I was arrested on December 27, 2009, because I was writing and posting on my blog online. I always knew that the Syrian regime was against writing and thinking critically, especially online. Back then, you needed so many permissions to be able to post safely online, even the intelligence services would be involved to approve that you were loyal enough to the regime and thus eligible to write. The price of writing and sharing your opinion under the rule of the Syrian regime cost many people their lives or time in prison – everything was at stake. I was summoned for investigation many times when I first launched my blog, and even though my family and I were not living in Syria full time, the regime still insisted on questioning me every time I visited the country.

The series that caught the regime’s attention was “Letters to humans in the world,” as I had vaguely mentioned the al-Assad regime in one of my posts while discussing freedom of expression.

The specific article that got me imprisoned was the one I wrote about Hafez and Bashar al-Assad titled, “From the father’s train to the son’s station,” which discussed the undemocratic transition of the regime from father to son.

Because of those letters and that article, they [security police] summoned me about four times for questioning in Station 279, which is the external security branch in Syria. During one of the investigation sessions I was not allowed to leave, and it became clear to me that I was being arrested.

One of the main questions they kept asking me was how I managed to open the blog and get access to it knowing that it’s a blocked website in Syria. My answers to them were always inaccurate, I had to deny my knowledge of anything technical, and I had to tell them that I opened the blog’s website when I’m in Egypt, and that my only aim was to write about Palestine. You can’t but lie when you are in that situation, being questioned over and over again by the Syrian intelligence personnel. I was scared, so I told them what I thought they wanted to hear, about how it’s the Syrian regime that taught us that Palestine is the primary cause in the Arab world and that all our focus should be on it. They made fun of my answers, and they believed I was also communicating with the Syrian opposition in Cairo, so they arrested me.

After your arrest, what did they tell you? Did you have any idea what would happen next?

After the investigation, I was sent to Adra prison, an all-women prison located in Adra in the suburbs of Damascus. The accusations that the Syrian regime used against me were the pre-packaged accusations that the regime used to arrest any person who opposed it. I was accused of being an anti-regime operative, an Israeli spy, and a traitor to the country.

Since the first day, the regime did not show any intention of releasing me. In all the time I spent in prison and through all the shouting that happened in the first year during their interrogation sessions with me, which included a lot of psychological pressure and threats, the officers present always said to me, “Never dream of getting out of this jail. You will never be released.” During my first year in Adra prison I was always told “You will never see the sunlight again in your life” and it became clear to me throughout the first year and the years that followed, that my only hope for being released would be the toppling of the Syrian regime.

I also know that sometimes the media’s attention to my case made the situation worse for me. The more the media spoke about me in that first year, the more intense the interrogation sessions became, verbal threats, physical threats, making sure to torture me psychologically by telling me that no one could have me released from the prison, that they would kill my family. But at times that media attention also protected me because this made them hesitant to physically hurt or kill me.

Was there any legal case against you?

I was originally sentenced to five years by the Supreme State Security court. The court explained that I have to serve this sentence for spying on the government, even though in Syria the sentencing or jail time for such an accusation is a lifetime in prison or even the death penalty. That’s when I understood that this whole sentence was a facade for what was happening, and they were manipulating the law and issuing an illegal sentence to keep me in jail.

When I served three years and nine months in prison, I was eligible to apply for an early release. The judiciary approved it, but Ali Mamlouk, then head of the national security branch, refused. He also sent a letter to the national security branch ordering them to keep me in jail “until further notice” – and what that meant was keep her in prison indefinitely.

Were you allowed visitors?

When I was first arrested first, I was not allowed any visitation rights. My mom had to beg them to allow visitation, she sent so many official handwritten letters to the prison, she even wrote letters to Bashar al-Assad, to his wife Asma al-Assad, asking them to allow her to see me. Months later, the prison officials allowed us to have one visit every 15 days for 30 minutes under close supervision. I could not see my family alone.

I had great legal support from Khalil Maatouk, who is now among the disappeared in Syria and we don’t know what his fate is. They arrested him after he took the lead on my case. Michel Chammas is another lawyer who supported my court case a lot and pushed a lot for my visitation rights. Other lawyers also tried to support me, including Mazen Darwish, Anwar al-Bunni, and Jihan Amin. Razan Zaytouneh used to welcome my mom at her house; she was one of the main sources of support for my family during that time. These people helped them survive mentally, they truly risked themselves to defend me. I did not know what was going on with my family when I was in prison, I was always hoping that they were okay. Now that I know how supported they felt, it makes me feel better.

Can you tell us about your prison conditions?

I want to start by saying that any photos [of me] that were shared from inside the prison were taken by prison officers who were against the regime and were actively trying to help me but could not defect at that time. It was never the Syrian regime itself that leaked any photos or information about me. The Syrian regime wanted me to be invisible. At the same time, other officers were pushed by the regime to blackmail my parents and promise them to release me if they paid big amounts of money in return. All of these promises were lies.

I knew back then that the only way for me to be released was the fall of the Syrian regime, so what I did every day after my first year in prison was to sit on my bed and wait for the toppling of the Syrian regime. I honestly did not undergo any physical assaults or physical torture in jail, and while I understand how “lucky” and “privileged” I am compared to what other prisoners in other notorious prisons Syrian experienced, I was in a civil prison in Adra, and generally its conditions were different than Sednaya prison and others. In a civil prison if you bribe guards and officers, you can have access to basic needs and cook and eat and sleep and even have visitation rights. They always portrayed it as a “good prison” because it’s a civil prison that international organizations, specifically humanitarian ones, had access to. I also want to say that many people commented on how I looked after being released, considering the horrific situation in Syria prisons. It’s important to clarify that I was in a civil jail where I had access to basic needs, I could even shower and take vitamins, that was my experience and I want to be transparent about it, but my experience does not reflect the reality of other Syrian prisons at all.

But in that prison, they also accused me of drug possession to prove to international organizations why I was still in jail when international entities like the International Red Cross tried to ask for information about my status.

The conditions varied, there were good guards and bad guards. Good guards often allowed me to hug and kiss my mother from behind the jail bars when it was “safe” and when their supervisors were not present.

I was still subjected to constant psychological torture. If you are not sentenced to a life in prison, yet you are not released, you sit and wait indefinitely and you start losing hope every day. That was to me the biggest psychological torture, trying to keep myself hopeful. I tried to write, I wrote every day, whenever I got access to a pencil and paper, but the officers always confiscated my writing and forbid me from buying pens. When I was released, I tried to retrieve my writings from the prison, but in vain. I could not find anything.

Were you ever optimistic about the possibility of your release?

Yes, I always had hope, and I held on to hope. If I hadn’t, I would honestly have died in that prison. I had hope that the revolution would topple the regime and that would be my only way out of jail.

What are you left with today after 15 years in prison?

Nightmares. I wake up at night sometimes and run to wake my father up and ask him if this is real, if I am really at home now. Some sentences will also haunt me forever, like what an investigator said to me during one of the investigation sessions in my first year in prison: “I can now bring your father, mother and siblings and kill them in front of you.”

The regime took away from me the feeling of belonging, but I am surrounded by a great support system and my family. Despite the bad dreams and fear, I am recovering. I enrolled in university to learn English and I hope to continue writing in time. I want to write about human rights, freedom, children’s rights, and about the children I met in jail who were born there before being taken away from their mothers once they turned 5.

The Syrian regime used my family, the same way they used the family of every detainee. In order for them to provide any updates about my situation or to allow them to visit me, they extorted money from my parents, my parents had to get a mortgage for the house, they had to pay thousands of dollars. Of course, this worked because I made it out alive, but I am also broke now, and so is my family. Since I was released, my primary goals are to recover and to be active. I want to work, I always loved working, and I want to work and to try to make it up to my family who did more than they could while I was in jail.

I am trying to find jobs in any organization related to human rights and especially children rights, that’s what I am mostly invested in and interested in.

Are you optimistic about Syria’s future? And what about the remaining missing journalists in Syria?

I care very much about the issue of missing journalists. I want to follow up on other cases and I hope to be involved if I can help. I feel an immense pain for other missing journalists and for their families. I hope that their whereabouts will be clear soon, and we will keep fighting for them.

I am very optimistic about the future of freedoms in Syria. I think that the new government is trying to be more open – imagine that now we can even like posts on social media that criticize the new government without worrying about being imprisoned, it’s surreal to me, everything changed so quickly.

What do you wish for today, what is your future role in Syria? What is the role of Syrian journalists now?

I don’t think it is worse than the al-Assad regime, nothing worse will happen if you ask me. I feel that people will hold accountable any politician in Syria after the toppling of the regime. I expect and hope that the new government will issue new laws to protect any journalists working in Syria, Syrians or internationals coming to cover Syria.

I’m optimistic that we will have a more tangible rule of law in Syria that will have the Syrians’ best interest at heart, unlike the old regime.

Personally, I will always continue to write. Writing is something I will always practice and do and carry with me no matter what I am doing. But I also want to focus on humanitarian journalism, maybe, to be able to write and support those who have endured similar prison experiences, maybe that could help them heal and recover in a way.

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

They offered to release Guaita if her mother, Xiomara Barreto, who worked on the opposition campaign to defeat President Nicolás Maduro, turned herself in. Barreto, who is in hiding, rejected the proposal.

“My daughter is being held hostage,” Barreto said in an August 25 voice recording posted on social media five days after her daughter’s arrest. Then, addressing authorities holding Guaita, she said: “You are doing great damage to an innocent person just because you were unable to arrest me.”

Such extortion schemes are part of what press watchdog groups describe as an unprecedented government crackdown on the Venezuelan media following the election that Maduro claims to have won despite strong evidence that he lost to opposition candidate Edmundo González.

Besides Guaita, his regime has jailed at least five other journalists – Paúl León, Yousner Alvarado, Deysi Peña, Eleángel Navas, and Gilberto Reina. (Another, Carmela Longo, has been released but faces criminal charges and has been barred from leaving the country.)

These journalists are among more than 2,000 anti-government protesters and opposition activists who have been detained following the July 28 balloting, a wave or repression that prompted González, who may have beaten Maduro by a 2-to-1 margin according to opposition tallies, to flee to Spain where he has been granted political asylum.

‘This government has gone crazy’

Venezuela has now reached a decades-long high of journalists it has imprisoned, according to Marianela Balbi, director of the Caracas-based Instituto Prensa y Sociedad, and CPJ’s own data from prior years.

Like Guaita, several were arrested while covering anti-government protests. They face charges of terrorism, instigating violence, and hate crimes. If convicted, Balbi said, they could face up to 30 years in prison each, yet they have no access to private lawyers and have instead been assigned public defenders loyal to the Maduro regime.

Carlos Correa, director of the Caracas free press group Espacio Público, said security agents don’t even bother to secure arrest warrants and have, in some cases, demanded bribes of up to US$4,000 not to detain journalists. In addition, at least 14 journalists have had their passports canceled with no explanation, according to Balbi.

“This government has gone crazy,” Correa told CPJ. “The most hardline elements are now in control and they are angry about being rejected at the polls.”

Among the hardliners is Diosdado Cabello, the number two figure in the ruling United Socialist Party who last month was appointed interior minister. Cabello, who is now in charge of police forces, is a frequent press basher whose defamation lawsuit against the Caracas daily El Nacional prompted the Maduro regime to seize the newspaper’s building as damages in 2021.

Cabello also uses his weekly program on state TV to insult and stigmatize journalists. On the September 5 episode, for example, Cabello accused the online news outlets Efecto Cocuyo, El Pitazo, Armando.Info, Tal Cual, and El Estimulo, of trying to destabilize Venezuela and, without evidence, claimed they were financed by drug traffickers.

All this has created “a lot of fear and frustration,” Balbi said. “This is what happens in countries with no rule of law.”

Journalists flee amid sharp drop in press freedom

To be sure, Venezuela’s press freedom erosion predated the election, as the Maduro government has closed TV and radio stations, blocked news websites, confiscated newspapers, and fomented fear and self-censorship over its 11 years in power. But since the vote, the situation has deteriorated precipitously with the government imposing internet shutdowns and blocking communication platforms, while individual journalists face impossible choices to continue their work.

Several reporters have fled the country. One journalist, who had been covering anti-government protests in the western state of Trujillo, was tipped off last month by a government security agent that her name was on an arrest list. She hid with friends and then, after learning that police were staking out her home, made her way to neighboring Colombia.

“There is so much dread,” said the journalist who, like several sources for this story, spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity. Government officials “don’t care that you are innocent. Never before have I felt so fragile and vulnerable.”

Those who remain in Venezuela are exercising extreme caution. They are self-censoring, staying off-camera in video reports, leaving their bylines off digital stories, and avoiding opposition rallies. Some radio news programs have gone off the air or have switched to musical formats.

A journalist in western Falcón state told CPJ that security agents are tracking the articles and social media posts of individual journalists and said they have filmed her while covering opposition rallies.

“They make you feel like a criminal or a fugitive from justice,” said the reporter who is considering leaving journalism and fleeing Venezuela.

A veteran reporter in Carabobo state, just west of Caracas, told CPJ that she has worked for years to make a name for herself as a fair and balanced journalist but is now being told by her editors to remove her byline from her stories for her own protection.

Meanwhile, it’s become more difficult for reporters to interview trusted sources and average Venezuelans because, even when they are promised anonymity, they fear government reprisals, a journalist based in western Zulia state told CPJ.

CPJ called Maduro’s press office and the Interior Ministry for comment but there was no answer.

Outlets band together and use AI to shield individual reporters

To protect themselves, many journalists are staying off social media and are erasing photos, text messages, and contacts from their mobile phones in case they are arrested and the devices are confiscated. Some have gone to opposition marches posing as members of the crowd rather than taking out their notebooks and recording gear and identifying as journalists. On such outings, some are required to check in with their editors every 20 minutes to make sure they are safe.

“We are trying to report the news while also protecting our people,” said César Batiz, the editor of El Pitazo, who fled the country several years ago and works from exile in Florida. “We realize that no story is more important that our journalists’ safety.”

Since the election, El Pitazo is jointly publishing stories with several other media outlets in an effort to make it harder for the regime to target any individual news organization. For added protection, many of these same news sites are taking part in Operación Retuit, or Operation Retweet, in which their journalists put together stories that are narrated on video by newsreaders created by artificial intelligence.

“So, for security reasons, we will use AI to provide information from a dozen independent Venezuelan news organizations,” says one of the avatars, who appears as a smiling young man in a plaid shirt in the initial Operación Retuit video posted on X on August 13.

Thanks to all of these efforts important stories are still being published, including reports on regime killings of protesters, the imprisonment of minors arrested at anti-government demonstrations, and electoral observers describing government fraud during the July 28 balloting.

Or, in the words of Batiz: “The regime is cracking down so we have to be more creative.”

Still, Correa, of Espacio Público, says the repression is taking its toll. “Without a doubt there are fewer journalists covering important stories in Venezuela, and much more caution and fear.”

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

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to continue the assault on Gaza, we speak with the first Israeli to refuse mandatory military service since Israel’s offensive began over three months ago. Last month, 18-year-old Tal Mitnick announced he would refuse military service in what he called a “revenge war” on Gaza, and was sentenced to 30 days in a military prison. Just released from jail, Mitnick faces another draft summons and says he will refuse “over and over until someone gives up, until the army gives me an exemption.” Mitnick says the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel broke the idea Israel could live with occupation. “We need to keep fighting for a just future,” he says, urging the younger generation of Israelis to use their voices for peace. “We’re the future, and we can change.”

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