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al jazeera
Israel Calling Journalists Terrorists Decried as 'An Attempt to Preemptively Justify Their Murder'
"Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence," said the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Oct 23, 2024
Seasoned observers of Israeli disinformation campaigns on Wednesday responded with pointed skepticism to a claim by the country's military that half a dozen Al Jazeera journalists are linked to militant Palestinian resistance groups.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed Wednesday that intelligence recovered during the ongoing invasion of Gaza revealed that Al Jazeera journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Alaa Salama, Hossam Shabat, Ashraf Saraj, Ismail Abu Amr, and Talal Aruki are affiliated with either Hamas—which governs Palestine's coastal enclave and led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel—or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
This, the IDF said, "unequivocally proves that they function as military terrorist operatives of the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip."
However, critics accused Israel of targeting the six journalists for exposing Israeli war crimes to the world.
"There's a very clear reason why Israel has been killing journalists," asserted U.S. investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill:
As the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Public Accuracy noted:
Shabat... wrote Tuesday: "I'm a reporter on the ground in North Gaza, and I'm here to tell you that no aid has entered the besieged area for the past 21 days. The Israeli and American governments are spreading inaccurate information.
Al-Sharif yesterday posted a video of children killed, one with their head literally blown off. He just posted a video of civil defense crews working five hours to rescue a child.
University of Edinburgh professor Nicola Perugini noted that some of the six journalists "are covering the new phase of the genocide, the complete depopulation of northern Gaza."
"The aim is to transform the last witnesses into killable targets," he said.
Al Jazeera —which is banned from operating in Israel but is the only major international media network on the ground in Gaza, as Israeli authorities prohibit foreign reporters from entering the besieged strip—denies the IDF's claim.
Others noted that Israeli forces have killed numerous Al Jazeera workers as part of a war on journalists in which at least 128 media professionals have been killed, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The United Nations says more than 170 media workers have been killed by Israeli forces.
"This is an assassination threat and an attempt to preemptively justify their murder," Scahill said of Israel's claim against the six Al Jazeera journalists.
"Anyone claiming Israel has offered 'irrefutable' proof to back up these allegations is either ignorant of the systematic campaign of lies, propaganda, and fake news unleashed by Israel or is trying to aid and abet the murder of more journalists," he added. "That is what is irrefutable."
CPJ said on social media that it "is aware of accusations made by the Israel Defense Forces against several journalists in Gaza accusing them of being members of militant groups."
"Israel has repeatedly made similar unproven claims without producing credible evidence," the group noted. "After killing Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Al Ghoul in July, the IDF previously produced a similar document, which contained contradictory information, showing that Al Ghoul, born in 1997, received a Hamas military ranking in 2007—when he would have been 10 years old."
The Paris-based international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has filed multiple complaints at the International Criminal Court alleging "war crimes against journalists in Gaza," including the apparently intentional targeting of media professionals.
In one filing, RSF said it "has reasonable grounds for thinking that some of these journalists were deliberately killed and that the others were the victims of deliberate IDF attacks against civilians" and accused Israel of "an eradication of the Palestinian media."
"You don't shut down the media unless you have something to hide."
In June, the Gaza Project—an investigative journalism initiative led by the Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories—"analyzed nearly 100 cases of journalists and media workers killed in Gaza, as well as other cases in which members of the press have been allegedly targeted, threatened, or injured."
The project found "a chilling pattern" of journalists who "may have been targeted even though they were identifiable as press."
In one case that enraged journalists and others around the world, at least one IDF member sent 19-year-old Palestinian reporter Hassan Hamad text messages threatening him and his family if he did not stop documenting Israel's assault on Gaza, which has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, millions more starved or sickened, and much of the territory in ruins.
Hamad refused. Earlier this month, Israeli forces assassinated him in a drone strike on his home in the Jabalia refugee camp.
U.S. citizens working in media have also been harmed by Israeli forces while on the job in Gaza and Lebanon, where IDF bombardment and invasion have killed and wounded thousands of people.
On Tuesday, a dozen members of U.S. Congress led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) urged the Biden administration—which supports Israeli with billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover—to investigate Israeli attacks on journalists including Dylan Collins, who was with a group of six other reporters covering cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon when an IDF tank opened fire on their position despite their clear identification as press. Collins and five others were injured, and Lebanese Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed.
Israel's targeting of American journalists predates the current war and includes the 2022 killing of renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh. Multiple probes have concluded Abu Akleh was deliberately targeted by an IDF sniper as she was covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the illegally occupied West Bank.
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Critics Say IDF Shutdown of Al Jazeera's West Bank Bureau Is 'Aimed at Erasing the Truth'
"Why would Israel shut Al Jazeera's bureau in Ramallah?" asked one human rights defender. "Because it has been the center of Al Jazeera's reporting on Israeli repression—the apartheid—in the occupied West Bank."
Sep 22, 2024
Press freedom advocates accused Israel of "trying to erase the truth" after heavily armed soldiers raided Al Jazeera's bureau in the West Bank of Palestine early Sunday morning and ordered the outlet—which has been the world's sole media window on the Gaza genocide—to shut down for 45 days.
Al Jazeera—which is owned by the Qatari government—said Israel Defense Forces troops stormed its bureau in Ramallah, the capital of the illegally occupied West Bank, at 3:00 am Sunday during a live broadcast. IDF troops confiscated documents and equipment and took the microphone from the hand of bureau chief Walid al-Omari as he reported on the raid.
The network—which was ordered to cease operations for 45 days—said the soldiers tore down a poster of Shireen Abu Akleh, the renowned Palestinian-American Al Jazeera correspondent who was shot dead by Israeli troops in May 2022 while covering an IDF raid on the Jenin refugee camp.
"This is part of a larger campaign against the Palestinian outlets and media in general aimed at erasing the truth," al-Omari said in an interview with Al Araby Al Jadeed. "We've been under increasing incitement since the beginning of the war."
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate condemned the shutdown as an "arbitrary military decision" and "a new aggression against journalistic work and media outlets."
Israel's Foreign Press Association said it is "deeply troubled by this escalation, which threatens press freedom, and urges the Israeli government to reconsider these actions," adding that "restricting foreign reporters and closing news channels signals a shift away from democratic values."
The IDF acknowledged the raid later Sunday, claiming without evidence that Al Jazeera's Ramallah bureau was "being used to incite terror [and] to support terrorist activities."
Sunday's raid followed a May raid and shutdown of Al Jazeera's Jerusalem bureau, which is believed to be the first such action against a foreign media outlet operating in Israel.
Responding to the raid, Carlos Martínez de la Serna, program director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said that the group "is deeply alarmed by Israel's closure of Al Jazeera's office in the occupied West Bank, just months after it shuttered Al Jazeera's operations in Israel after deeming it a threat to national security."
Al Jazeera is the only international news network providing nonstop on-the-ground coverage of Israel's war on Gaza. Its reporters work under constant risk to life and limb, as more than 100 media professionals, the vast majority of them Palestinians, have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7. CPJ and others say have decried what they say are deliberate attacks on media workers and their families.
In December, Israeli troops killedAl Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa as he reported on the war in southern Gaza, an attack that also injured the network'sGaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, whose wife, son, daughter, and grandson were killed in a separate IDF strike.
Previous independent probes—including investigations of Abu Akleh's killing—have confirmed that Israel has deliberately targeted journalists.
Last May, CPJ published Deadly Pattern, an investigation that found the IDF killed at least 20 journalists over the past 22 years with impunity. While some of the slain journalists have been foreigners—including Italian Associated Press reporter Simone Camilli and British cameraman and filmmaker James Miller—the vast majority of victims have been Palestinian.
Israeli forces have also attacked newsrooms in every major assault on Gaza, including in May 2021 when the 11-story al-Jalaa Tower, which housed offices of Al Jazeera, The Associated Press, and other media outlets, was destroyed in an airstrike.
U.S. investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill pointed out Sunday that Al Jazeera has also been targeted by American forces during the so-called War on Terror. He noted that U.S. forces "bombed its facilities, killed its Baghdad correspondent, and locked a cameraman in Guantánamo."
"Israel has repeated this pattern," Scahill added. "All journalists must condemn these violent assaults on freedom of the press."
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Emmy Committee Stands Firm on Gaza Journalist's Nomination
The call for Bisan Owda's nomination to be rescinded was "an incredible testament to the threat posed by a single young woman with an iPhone," said one author.
Aug 21, 2024
The head of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which nominated Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda for an Emmy Award for her documentary on life under Israel's bombardment of Gaza, rebuffed a demand on Tuesday from more than 150 actors, producers, and other industry leaders who wanted the nomination revoked.
Signing a letter released by the pro-Israel group Creative Community for Peace (CCP), which campaigns against cultural boycotts targeting Israel, actors including Debra Messing and Selma Blair were among those who accused Owda of being affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is designated as a terrorist group by the United States.
The signatories said Owda has "repeatedly participated in PFLP rallies" and accused her of "routinely" spreading antisemitism—an accusation that has been directed at many groups and people who have condemned Israel's assault on Gaza that began last October in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack. The letter did not provide examples of antisemitic statements Owda has allegedly made.
Owda was nominated in the News and Documentary Emmys category of Outstanding Hard News Feature Story Short Form, for It's Bisan From Gaza and I'm Still Alive—an eight-minute video report about her family's forced evacuation of their home in Beit Hanoun as the Israel Defense Forces bombarded Gaza.
"Absolutely despicable to use your power to try to take more from a woman surviving literal hell."
The documentary was produced by AJ+, Al Jazeera's digital platform.
Adam Sharp, president and CEO of the academy, was clear in his response to the CCP letter, telling executive director Ari Ingel that many documentaries honored by the Emmy Awards in the past "have been controversial, giving a platform to voices that certain viewers may find objectionable or even abhorrent. But all have been in the service of the journalistic mission to capture every facet of the story."
Sharp said the organization was aware of reports cited in the CCP letter "that appear to show a then-teenaged Bisan Owda speaking at various PFLP-associated events between six and nine years ago," but said it "has been unable to corroborate these reports, nor has it been able, to date, to surface any evidence of more contemporary or active involvement by Owda with the PFLP organization."
"Accordingly, NATAS has found no grounds, to date, upon which to overturn the editorial judgment of the independent journalists who reviewed the material," wrote Sharp.
The attempt by influential celebrities and Hollywood power brokers to rescind the recognition given to Owda was condemned by creative artists including NPR broadcaster Raina Douris, who called the CCP's effort "truly depressing and horrifying."
"Absolutely despicable to use your power to try to take more from a woman surviving literal hell," said Douris.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 110 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since Israel's assault began.
Author Lydia Kiesling added that the CCP letter demonstrated "soullessness," but was also "an incredible testament to the threat posed by a single young woman with an iPhone."
"It eats people alive," said Kiesling, "that 2,000-pound bombs have not been able to snuff out the power of witness and narrative."
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