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issam abdallah
Journalist Who Lost Leg in Israeli Attack Carries Olympic Torch in Paris
Meanwhile, calls to ban Israel from the 2024 Games are growing following the World Court's ruling against illegal Israeli occupation and apartheid in Palestine.
Jul 22, 2024
Lebanese photojournalist Christina Assi, who lost a leg in an Israeli tank strike while working in southern Lebanon last year, carried the Olympic torch through Paris on Sunday amid renewed calls to ban Israel from the 2024 Games following a World Court ruling against the illegal occupation of Palestine and the ongoing obliteration of Gaza.
Assi, who works for Agence France-Presse (AFP), carried the Olympic flame through Parisian streets in a wheelchair pushed by Dylan Collins, an American deputy editor at Al Jazeera English who was also wounded in the October 13 attack.
"This is all for my best friend, Issam Abdallah, and all the other journalists who we have lost this year," Assi said, according toDemocracy Now! "This is all for them and to pay tribute and to honor them, to honor their memory. And I will keep Issam's memory alive in everything I do. It's all for him."
🏅JO-2024 : Christina Assi et Dylan Collins, journalistes de l'AFP blessés lors d'un reportage en octobre 2023 au Liban, ont porté la flamme olympique dimanche à Vincennes, en hommage "à tous les journalistes, à nos collègues et amis tués cette année" #AFPVertical ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/DvODwOUU6t
— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) July 21, 2024
Abdallah, Assi, and Collins were part of an international group of journalists who were covering cross-border clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon on October 13 when they came under Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank fire. Abdallah, a 37-year-old Reuters videographer, was killed in the attack.
Noticing that Assi's leg was "blown off at the kneecap," Collins rushed to help his colleague and was wounded when a second Israeli shell exploded nearby, injuring him.
AFP, Al Jazeera, and Reuters all concluded that Israel deliberately targeted the journalists, who were clearly identifiable as members of the press. Groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also said the attack was "apparently deliberate" and demanded a war crimes investigation. Reporters Without Borders concluded that "it is unlikely that the journalists were mistaken for combatants."
"This is a chance to continue talking about justice, and the targeted attack on October 13 that needs to be investigated as a war crime," Collins toldThe Associated Press on Sunday.
At least 108 media professionals—nearly all of them Palestinian—have been killed in Gaza since October, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Israel's alleged deliberate targeting of journalists is part of the evidence presented in a South Africa-led genocide case against Israel being reviewed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
Since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 139,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 11,000 people who are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of homes and other buildings. Around 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, and Israel's siege has caused widespread—and sometimes deadly—starvation.
In the wake of Friday's ICJ ruling that Israel's 57-year occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid that must end, the Palestine Olympic Committee (POC) called for a last-minute International Olympic Committee (IOC) ban on Israeli participation in the 2024 Paris Games, which are set to start Friday.
"We have requested a ban of Israel at the Olympics because we believe that such ethics don't reflect the spirit of the Olympics."
"We have requested a ban of Israel at the Olympics because we believe that such ethics don't reflect the spirit of the Olympics," POC deputy secretary-general Nader Jayousi toldKyodo News, pointing to evidence including Israeli athletes visiting IDF troops and posting pictures of signed bombs.
Jayousi said it "should be the concern of the IOC" that Israelis who are "proud of slaughtering people"—a clear violation of the Olympic spirit—are set to compete in Paris.
Activists also renewed calls for an IOC ban on Israeli participation in Paris.
"With ICJ confirming Israel is committing the crime of apartheid in the [occupied Palestinian territories], the IOC and FIFA must immediately suspend Israel from international sport," Francis Awaritefe, an attorney and former member of the Australian men's national soccer team, said on social media, referring to soccer's world governing body.
"Apartheid is incompatible with the values of sport and membership of the international sports community," he added.
Sophia Brooks, a California-based activist focused on the intersection of Palestine and sports, on Monday cited "ample evidence" of why Israel should be banned from the games, including the destruction of sports facilities in Gaza and the killing of hundreds of Palestinian athletes.
According to Jayousi, around 400 Palestinian athletes and coaches have been killed since October 7. Israeli forces have also used facilities including Yarmouk Stadium for the detention of Palestinian men, women, and children—many of whom have reported torture and other abuse at the hands of their captors.
Numerous social media accounts posted video footage of French police telling attendees at Sunday's Olympic flame procession that they cannot display Palestinian flags during the event, despite the participation of Palestinian athletes in the Paris Games.
“You cannot display that flag”
Macron's police were ordered to take down only Palestinian flags, while flags from other countries were allowed to be displayed freely during the Olympic flame procession in Vitry-sur-Seine, Paris. pic.twitter.com/fB2kEIWwg2
— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) July 22, 2024
The Palestine Chroniclereported Monday that a record eight Palestinian athletes are set to compete in six different Olympic sports.
"I'm very proud and happy to say to have made it this far," said Omar Yaser Ismail, an 18-year-old taekwondo athlete set to compete in Paris. "I've been dreaming of this moment since I was a little boy."
"I was very happy to imagine myself in Paris with the best athletes in the world," he said, adding that he would be "very happy to show my flag on the podium."
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Israel's Killing of Journalists in Gaza 'Unparalleled,' Says Watchdog
The Committee to Protect Journalists—which recorded 68 media professionals killed since October 7—said it is particularly concerned by Israel's "apparent pattern of targeting journalists and their families."
Dec 22, 2023
Journalists are being slain during Israel's current assault on Gaza at a rate unseen in modern history—with more killed in the last 10 weeks alone than have been killed in any country in any whole year since records began, the Committee to Protect Journalists revealed on Thursday.
CPJ said that at least 68 media professionals—61 Palestinians, four Israelis, and three Lebanese—have been killed since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the Israeli military's retaliatory obliteration of the Gaza Strip.
Of particular concern to CPJ is Israel's "apparent
pattern of targeting journalists and their families."
"In at least one case, a journalist was killed while clearly wearing press insignia in a location where no fighting was taking place," the group said. "In at least two other cases, journalists reported receiving threats from Israeli officials and IDF officers before their family members were killed."
In October, Al Jazeera reporter and Gaza bureau chief Wael Al-Dahdouh found out during a live broadcast that his wife, son, daughter, and grandson had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Additionally, CPJ said 15 journalists have been injured—some seriously, like Agence France-Presse photojournalist Christina Assi, whose legs were blown off while she and a group of journalists were covering cross-border clashes between Israel and the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah.
At least 20 media professionals have also been arrested and others have reported being abused by Israeli troops—including one CNN Türk photojournalist who was assaulted during a live broadcast. Three other journalists are missing.
"The concentration of journalists killed in the Israel-Gaza war is unparalleled in CPJ's history and underscores how grave the situation is for press on the ground," CPJ president Jodie Ginsberg said Thursday.
CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program coordinator Sherif Mansour asserted that "with every journalist killed, the war becomes harder to document and to understand."
Some critics say that's the point—and the same reason that Israel denies permission for foreign journalists to report from Gaza.
"They don't want us to see the truth. That's why they're taking out the journalists," U.S. journalist Abby Martin toldMiddle East Eye earlier this month.
After Israeli forces killed Lebanese Reuters photojournalist Issam Abdallah in an attack that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called "apparently deliberate," Ziad Makary, Lebanon's information minister, asserted that "it is in the military strategy of Israel to kill journalists so that they kill the truth."
Previous probes—like the investigation into Israeli troops' 2022 killing of renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh—have confirmed that Israel has deliberately targeted journalists and other civilians in the past.
In May, CPJ published Deadly Pattern, a report that found Israeli troops had killed at least 20 journalists over the past 22 years with utter 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 completely destroyed in an airstrike.
The new CPJ report comes as the death toll from Israel's 77-day war on Gaza topped 20,000, with more than 50,000 other Palestinians maimed or missing. More than 1.9 million of the besieged enclave's 2.3 million people have also been forcibly displaced, with most of their homes damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombardment. Gazans are also facing an imminent risk of famine and contagious disease.
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Groups Demand Probe of 'Apparently Deliberate' IDF Attack on Journalists
Amnesty International said that the October 13 Israeli tank strike that killed Issam Abdallah and blew the legs off Christina Assi was "likely a direct attack on civilians that must be investigated as a war crime."
Dec 07, 2023
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International on Thursday called for an official investigation of a deadly Israeli attack on a group of journalists, which HRW called "apparently deliberate" and a likely "war crime."
HRW, Amnesty, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse on Thursday all published their own separate investigations into the October 13 Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attack that killed 37-year-old Lebanese Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded half a dozen other journalists who were covering cross-border clashes between Israeli and Hezbollah troops near the village of Alma al-Shaab in southern Lebanon.
"This is not the first time that Israeli forces have apparently deliberately attacked journalists, with deadly and devastating results."
Reutersdetermined that an Israeli tank crew "fired two shells in quick succession" at the journalists, who HRW said were "clearly identifiable as members of the media, and had been stationary for at least 75 minutes." HRW "found no evidence of a military target near the journalists' location."
"This is not the first time that Israeli forces have apparently deliberately attacked journalists, with deadly and devastating results," HRW Lebanon researcher Ramzi Kaiss said in a statement. "Those responsible need to be held to account, and it needs to be made clear that journalists and other civilians are not lawful targets."
Amnesty International, meanwhile, asserted that the IDF strike was "likely a direct attack on civilians that must be investigated as a war crime."
The organization said it "verified over 100 videos and photographs, analyzed weapons fragments from the site, and interviewed nine witnesses. The findings indicate that the group was visibly identifiable as journalists and that the Israeli military knew or should have known that they were civilians yet attacked them anyway in two separate strikes 37 seconds apart."
Aya Majzoub, Amnesty's deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, noted that "direct attacks on civilians and indiscriminate attacks are absolutely prohibited by international humanitarian law and can amount to war crimes."
"Those responsible for Issam Abdallah's unlawful killing and the injuring of six other journalists must be held accountable," Majzoub added. "No journalist should ever be targeted or killed simply for carrying out their work. Israel must not be allowed to kill and attack journalists with impunity. There must be an independent and impartial investigation into this deadly attack."
According to HRW:
The journalists interviewed said that the first munition struck Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and a short concrete wall, killing him instantly and badly injuring an Agence France-Presse photojournalist, Christina Assi. Thirty-seven seconds later, another attack destroyed the car belonging to Al Jazeera, igniting it in flames, and injuring six journalists, including Carmen Joukhadar and Elie Brakhya from Al Jazeera, Dylan Collins and Christina Assi from AFP, and Thaer al-Sudani and Maher Nazeh from Reuters.
Brakhya, an Al Jazeera cameraman, told Amnesty: "I was looking at Issam when we heard the [first] explosion. I saw Issam's body fly, with the glow and the heat behind his back… [I] ran up the hill, heard Christina shouting 'I can't feel my legs,' ran back to where she was, saw Dylan searching for the tourniquet."
Collins, an American deputy editor at Al Jazeera English, said that "as soon as I turned around, I heard Christina's voice saying, 'Oh my God!' I say, 'You're okay.' I ran to her directly and I see that her legs are blown off at the kneecap."
The second Israeli shell exploded as Collins tried to tie a tourniquet around Assi's legs.
"When the second blast hit, I was stunned and dizzy, but in my blurry memory, I remember Issam's leg falling in front of me, I remember looking up and seeing Carmen by the car, her face is black and she is walking like a zombie," he recalled. "Her entire back is covered in shrapnel."
The day after the attacks, IDF spokesperson Richard Hecht said that the Israeli military was "very sorry for the journalist's death."
Presented with Reuters' findings, Hecht later said that "we don't target journalists."
However, Kaiss argued that "the evidence strongly suggests that Israeli forces knew or should have known that the group that they were attacking were journalists."
"This was an unlawful and apparently deliberate attack on a very visible group of journalists," he added.
"They don't want us to see the truth. That's why they're taking out the journalists."
Numerous international observers accused Israeli forces of intentionally targeting journalists in an effort to prevent them from reporting the truth about what many critics call a genocidal war against Palestinians.
"I believe that it is in the military strategy of Israel to kill journalists so that they kill the truth," Lebanese Information Minister Ziad Makary told Reuters.
U.S. journalist Abby Martin toldMiddle East Eye Wednesday that Israel is "killing the truth."
"They don't want us to see the truth," she said. "That's why they're taking out the journalists."
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) responded to the rights groups' and media probes into the October 13 attacks by demanding an "immediate, independent, and transparent investigation that holds the perpetrators to account."
CPJ cited its May 2023 report, "which showed a pattern of lethal force by the Israel Defense Forces that left 20 journalists dead over the last 22 years. No one was ever held accountable."
According to the report, "The majority of the 20 journalists killed—at least 13—were clearly identified as members of the media or were inside vehicles with press insignia at the time of their deaths."
Since the IDF launched its war on Gaza following the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, CPJ has documented the killing of at least 63 media professionals, including 56 Palestinians, three Lebanese, and four Israelis.
"CPJ emphasizes that journalists are civilians doing important work during times of crisis and must not be targeted by warring parties," said Sherif Mansour, the group's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator.
Last month, after also concluding that the group in Lebanon was "deliberately targeted," the international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders called on the International Criminal Court to formally investigate the deaths of all journalists killed by Israeli troops and Hamas militants during the war.
"Journalists across the region are making great sacrifices to cover this heartbreaking conflict. Those in Gaza, in particular, have paid, and continue to pay, an unprecedented toll and face exponential threats," Mansour said. "Many have lost colleagues, families, and media facilities, and have fled seeking safety when there is no safe haven or exit."
Nazeh, a Reuters camera operator who survived the October 13 attack, demanded justice for his slain colleague Abdallah.
"We can't bring Issam back. Issam is gone," he said. "But he hears us, he sees us, and he's waiting for us to do something for him... to expose who hit him, who killed him, to the world."
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