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jeremy scahill
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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Not Held Accountable for Gaza, IDF Launches Largest Attack on West Bank in Decades
"This is the predictable culmination of the actions of an Israeli regime that has been fully empowered, armed, supported, and encouraged by the Biden-Harris administration in its genocidal war," Jeremy Scahill said.
Aug 28, 2024
Israeli forces on Wednesday conducted a series of deadly raids in the West Bank, killing at least 10 Palestinians in the largest assault on the occupied territory in over two decades.
In coordinated raids on four cities in the northern West Bank, Israel employed hundreds of ground troops as well as fighter aircraft, drones, and bulldozers. Israel Katz, Israel's foreign minister, indicated that this was a planned escalation, saying the military was operating in "full force." He called for evacuations in the West Bank, as in Gaza, and "whatever steps are required," explaining that "this is a war for everything and we must win it."
The incursion follows a recent uptick in Israeli violence in the West Bank—5 Palestinians, including two children, were killed in an airstrike there on Monday—and came on the same day that the United Nations Human Rights Office released a statement condemning it.
Humanitarian and pro-Palestinian voices denounced Wednesday's offensive. Aida Touma-Suleiman, an Israeli-Arab member of the Knesset, called it the "Gazafication of all Palestinian land" and part of a plan to "ethnically cleanse the West Bank."
Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian physician and politician, toldDemocracy Now! that Israeli leaders, some of whom he named as "fascist," are "trying to repeat the Nakba."
"They are trying to repeat the same ethnic cleansing, the same genocide that is committed in Gaza," he added.
Progressives in the U.S., Israel's primary diplomatic ally and arms supplier, argued that Wednesday's incursion was the direct result of American foreign policy choices.
"This is the predictable culmination of the actions of an Israeli regime that has been fully empowered, armed, supported, and encouraged by the Biden-Harris administration in its genocidal war," Jeremy Scahill, a co-founder of The Intercept who recently formed a new investigative outlet called Drop Site News, wrote on social media.
"Israel has received the message from Biden and Harris loud and clear for almost 11 months: There is no scale of war crimes too great for the administration to take any meaningful steps to stop Israel’s mass slaughter operations," Scahill added, referring to U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is the Democratic presidential nominee.
🚑Since dawn today, Palestine Red Crescent crews have transported 10 martyrs and 22 injured due to the Israeli occupation's raids in the #WestBank governorates. pic.twitter.com/AJ3VzHy29E
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) August 28, 2024
Israeli raids on the cities of Jenin, Nablus, Tubas, and Tulkarem began early Wednesday. Al Jazeerareported that it was the largest Israeli incursion into the West Bank since 2002.
The Israeli military said that the Palestinians who were killed in the West Bank were "armed terrorists who posed a threat to security forces." Israeli media reports indicated that the raids are expected to continue for several days.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said in a statement relayed to Al Jazeera on Wednesday that Israeli forces had disrupted medical and emergency services at several locations in the West Bank. Israeli forces stormed the Al-Far'a refugee camp, detained the PRCS team there, and cut off their communications, according to PRCS.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza since 1967. The International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion last month declaring the occupation of these Palestinian territories unlawful, saying it must end "as rapidly as possible."
Most of the world's nations have long declared Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal under international law, a position that Israel disputes. Settler violence has increased markedly since October 7 under cover of the even greater carnage in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed more than 40,000 Palestinians. Hamas and allied militant groups killed more than 1,100 Israelis in a brutal massacre on October 7.
In the West Bank, where nightly raids have become commonplace, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 646 people over the last 11 months, including 148 children, according to Palestinian health officials.
In addition to the military raid that killed five on Monday, an Israeli settler or reservist attack in Wadi Rahal village reportedly led to a Palestinian man being shot in the back, according to the United Nations' news service.
Omar Baddar, a Middle East political analyst, argued that Wednesday's incursion was part of a longstanding Israeli plan.
"I think the context of it is worth noting, which is the fact that Israel has been intending to annex and ethnically cleanse huge parts of the West Bank for a very, very long time," Baddar told Al Jazeera.
In its condemnation of Israeli aggression in the West Bank, the U.N. Human Rights Office wrote that the situation "could worsen dramatically if [Israeli security forces] continue to systematically use unlawful lethal force and ignore violence perpetrated by settlers."
The agency warned of "extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings and destruction of Palestinian homes and infrastructure," and said that the settler violence was made possible by political support from Israel's leadership.
"The U.N. Human Rights Office has reported for years on settlers attacking Palestinian communities in their land in the West Bank with impunity," the statement says. "This longstanding trend has dramatically escalated since October 7, as the settler movement, with political backing at the highest levels of Israeli government, has seized the opportunity to escalate attacks against Palestinians, forcing them to leave their lands, and expand settlements and Israel's control over the West Bank."
The assault on the West Bank has not stopped Israel from continuing its assault on Gaza. Israeli forces killed eight Gazans in a strike on a school-turned-shelter in eastern Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeerareported.
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