The Freedoms Committee of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate says the Israeli occupation forces have killed 44 Palestinian journalists inside displacement tents in the Gaza Strip.

The committee said that these journalists were among 254 media workers who had been killed since the beginning of the Israeli assault on Gaza in October 2023 until the end of October 2025, reports Middle East Monitor.

According to the report, the attacks were systematic, targeting displacement tents located around hospitals and UNRWA shelters, in addition to direct sniper shootings inside displacement areas.

It added that the victims were working for local and international media outlets, and most of them were killed while covering the humanitarian situation in the displacement camps.

The syndicate affirmed that such targeting reflects a deliberate attempt to silence the Palestinian press and prevent the truth from reaching the world.

It also stressed the need to hold the Israeli occupation accountable for its crimes against journalists and to ensure international protection for media crews working in Gaza.

Israel’s audiovisual media bill ‘a nail in coffin of editorial independence’
Meanwhile, the Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has sounded the alarm following the first reading of a bill sponsored by Israel’s Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi that would strengthen the executive branch’s control over the audiovisual media, despite opposition from the Attorney General and the Union of Journalists in Israel.

The bill includes measures that RSF condemned a year ago.

Although the rest of the legislative process is likely to be difficult, Israel’s Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, has managed to get a foot in the door. On the evening of November 3, around midnight, his media broadcasting bill was adopted after its first reading, as part of a voting pact with ultra-Orthodox MPs.

The bill calls for the creation of a Broadcast Media Authority largely composed of members appointed by the Communications Minister himself. His ministry would also be entrusted with calculating television audiences, a measure approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation a year ago that was condemned by RSF.

Legal and legislative barriers are already being put in place in response to this attempt to strengthen the Israeli government’s control over the media landscape.

Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, who is responsible for advising the government on legislative matters, is opposed to the bill, which has been deemed unconstitutional by the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.

Two petitions against the bill have also been filed with the Supreme Court. One was submitted by the Union of Journalists in Israel, which represents around 3000 media professionals. The other was instigated by the NGO Hatzlacha (meaning “success” in Hebrew), which promotes social justice.

“This first reading vote is the first nail in the coffin of broadcast media’s editorial independence in Israel,” said RSF editorial director Anne Bocandé.

“Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi is openly attacking a pillar of democracy. Against a backdrop of war and an upcoming election campaign, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is seeking to silence voices that are critical of the far-right coalition in power.

“RSF reiterates the warning it issued a year ago: these legislative attacks will have lasting, negative consequences on Israel’s media landscape.”

Incorporating the ‘Al Jazeera’ ban on foreign broadcasters into common law
In parallel with his legislative attack on the editorial independence of the country’s broadcast media, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi is also continuing his battle against international broadcasters operating in Israel.

Although his so-called “Al Jazeera law” — which allowed Israeli authorities to shut down any foreign broadcasters perceived as undermining national security and was condemned by RSF in April 2024 — expired on October 27 with the end of the state of emergency, the minister informed the National Security Council — which is attached to the Ministry of National Security — that he now intended to turn the measure into common law.

After the missile exchanges between Israel and Iran in June 2024, the Prime Minister’s party had already attempted to amend the “Al Jazeera law” in an attempt to give additional powers to the Minister of Communications to stop the broadcasting of foreign channels in the country.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

After a year and a half of war, nearly 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed by the Israeli army — including at least 43 slain on the job.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has brought multiple complaints before the International Criminal Court (ICC) and continues to tirelessly support Gazan journalists, working to halt the extraordinary bloodshed and the media blackout imposed on the strip.

Now, RSF has launched a petition in World Press Freedom Day week demanding an end to the ongoing massacres and calling for the besieged enclave to be opened to foreign media.

“Journalists are being targeted and then slandered after their deaths,” RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin said during a recent RSF demonstration in Paris in solidarity with Gazan journalists.

“I have never before seen a war in which, when a journalist is killed, you are told they are really a ‘terrorist’.”

The journalists gathered together with the main organisations defending French media workers and press freedom on April 16 in front of the steps of the Opéra-Bastille to condemn the news blackout and the fate of Palestinian journalists.

The slaughter of journalists is one of the largest media massacres this century being carried out as part of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

RSF said there was “every reason to believe that the Israeli army is seeking to establish a total silence about what is happening in Gaza”.

This was being done by preventing the international press from entering the territory freely and by targeting those who, on the ground, continue to bear witness despite the risks.

Mobilisation of journalists in Paris, France, in solidarity with their Gazan colleagues.  Video: RSF

Last year, Palestinian journalists covering Gaza were named as laureates of the 2024 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, following the recommendation of an International Jury of media professionals.

Republished in collaboration with Reporters Without Borders.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Paris-based global watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has expressed support for Gaza’s media professionals and called on Israel to urgently lift the blockade on the territory.

It said the humanitarian catastrophe was continuing in Gaza and hampering journalists’ work on a daily basis.

The Israeli army had killed their colleagues and destroyed their homes and newsrooms, said RSF in a statement.

Gaza’s remaining journalists, who had survived 15 months of intensive bombardment, continued to face immense challenges despite the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that came into effect on 19 January 2025 with the first stage expiring last weekend.

Humanitarian aid, filtered by the Israeli authorities, is merely trickling into the blockaded territory, and Israel continues to deny entry access to foreign journalists, forbidding independent outlets from covering the aftermath of the war and the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.

Exiled Palestinian journalists are also prevented from returning to the Gaza Strip.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

SPECIAL REPORT: By Mariam Barghouti in Jenin for Drop Site News

On December 28, 21-year-old Palestinian journalist Shatha Sabbagh was standing on the stairs of her home on the outskirts of the Jenin refugee camp when she was shot and killed.

The bullets weren’t fired by Israeli troops but, according to eyewitnesses and forensic evidence, by Palestinian Authority security forces.

The Palestinian Authority has been conducting a large-scale military operation in Jenin since early December, dubbing it “Operation Homeland Protection”.

A stronghold of Palestinian armed resistance in the occupied West Bank, the city of Jenin and the refugee camp within it have been repeatedly raided, bombed, and besieged by the Israeli military in an attempt to crush the Jenin Brigade — a politically diverse militant group of mostly third-generation refugees who believe armed resistance is key to liberating Palestinian lands from Israeli occupation and annexation.

Over the past 15 months, the Israeli military has killed at least 225 Palestinians in Jenin, making it the deadliest area in the West Bank.

The real aim, residents say, is to crush Palestinian armed resistance at the behest of Israel. Dubbed the “Wasps’ Nest” by Israeli officials, Jenin refugee camp has posed a constant threat to Israel’s settler colonial project.

But the current operation, which is being billed as a campaign to “restore law and order,” is the longest and most lethal assault by Palestinian security forces in recent memory. While the PA claims to be rooting out armed factions and individuals accused of being “Iranian-backed outlaws,” according to multiple residents and eyewitnesses, the operation is a suffocating siege, with indiscriminate violence, mass arrests, and collective punishment.

Sixteen Palestinians have been killed so far, with security forces setting up checkpoints around the city and refugee camp, cutting electricity to the area, and engaging in fierce gun battles. Among those killed are six members of the security forces and one resistance fighter, Yazeed Ja’aysa.

Yet the overwhelming majority of those killed have been civilians, including Sabbagh, and at least three children — Majd Zeidan, 16, Qasm Hajj, 14, and Mohammad Al-Amer, 13.

“It’s reached levels I have never seen before. Even journalists aren’t allowed to cover it,” M., 24, a local journalist and resident of Jenin, told Drop Site News on condition of anonymity for fear of being arrested or targeted by PA security forces.

Dozens of residents, including journalists, have been arrested from Jenin and across the West Bank by the PA in the past six weeks under the pretext of supporting the so-called Iranian-backed “outlaws.”

PA security forces spokesperson Brigadier-General Anwar Rajab has justified the assault as “in response to the supreme national interest of the Palestinian people, and within the framework of ongoing continued efforts to maintain security and civil peace, establish the rule of law, and eradicate sedition and chaos”.

‘Wasps’ Nest’ threat to Israel’s settler colonial project
But the real aim, residents say, is to crush Palestinian armed resistance at the behest of Israel. Dubbed the “Wasps’ Nest” by Israeli officials, Jenin refugee camp has posed a constant threat to Israel’s settler colonial project.

Just one week into the operation, on December 12, PA security forces shot and killed the first civilian, 19-year-old Ribhi Shalabi, and injured his 15-year-old brother in the head. Although the PA initially denied killing Shalabi and claimed he was targeting its security forces with IEDs, video captured by CCTV shows Ribhi being shot execution-style while riding his Vespa.

The PA later admitted to killing Shalabi, saying “the Palestinian National Authority bears full responsibility for his martyrdom, and announces that it is committed to dealing with the repercussions of the incident in a manner consistent with and in accordance with the law, ensuring justice and respect for rights”.

Just two days later, the PA began escalating their attack on Jenin. At approximately 5:00 am on December 14, the Palestinian Authority officially declared the large-scale operation, dubbing it “Himayat Watan” or “Homeland Protection.”

By 8:00 am, Jenin refugee camp was under siege and two more Palestinians had been killed, including prominent Palestinian resistance fighter Yazeed Ja’aisa, and 13-year-old Mohammad Al-Amer. At least two other children were injured with live ammunition.

The roads leading to Jenin are now riddled with Israeli checkpoints while the entrance to the city is surrounded by PA armoured vehicles and security forces brandishing assault rifles, their faces hidden behind black balaclavas.

Eerily reminiscent of past Israeli incursions, snipers fire continuously from within the PA security headquarters toward the refugee camp just to the west, sending the sound of live ammunition echoing through the city. The PA also imposed a curfew on the city of Jenin, warning residents that anyone moving in the streets would be shot.

PA counterterrorism units have also been stationed at the entrance to Jenin’s public hospital, while the National Guard blocked roads with armoured vehicles and personnel carriers, denying entry to journalists.

When I attempted to reach the hospital on December 14 with another journalist to gather information for Drop Site on the injuries sustained during the earlier firefight and follow up on the killing of Al-Amer, the 13-year-old, armed and masked PA security forces claimed the area was a closed security zone. When we attempted to carry out field interviews outside the camp instead, two armed men in civilian clothing who identified themselves as members of the mukhabarat — Palestinian General Intelligence — requested that we leave the area.

“If you stay here, you might get shot by the outlaws,” he warned. Yet, from where we stood between the hospital, the PA security headquarters, and Jenin refugee camp, the only bullets being fired were coming from the direction of the PA headquarters towards the camp.

PA security forces also appear to have been using one of the hospital wards as a makeshift detention center where detainees are being mistreated. While Brigadier-General Rajab, the PA’s spokesperson, denied this; several young men detained by the PA told Drop Site they were taken to the third floor of Jenin public hospital where they were interrogated and beaten.

“They kept asking me about the fighters,” said A., a 31-year-old medical service provider from Jenin refugee camp, who says he was held for hours, blindfolded, and denied legal representation.

“They kept beating me, cursing at me, asking me questions that I don’t have answers for.”

Fear of being arrested, abused again
Since his arbitrary detention, A. has not returned to work out of fear of being arrested and abused again.

According to residents, the PA also stationed snipers in the hospital, firing at the camp from inside the facility. During the past six weeks, according to interviews with several medics in Jenin, PA security forces shot at medics, burned two medical vehicles, beat paramedics, and detained medical workers throughout the siege.

“What exactly are they protecting?” Abu Yasir, 50, asks as he stands outside the hospital, waiting for any news of the security operation to end.

A father of three, Abu Yasir grew up in the Jenin refugee camp. “There are people being killed in the camp just for being there. They didn’t do anything,” he told Drop Site as he burst into tears.

By December 14, with Operation Homeland Protection entering its 10th day, families in the refugee camp had run out of food, the chronically ill needed life-saving medication, and with electricity and water punitively cut from the camp, families found themselves under siege and increasingly desperate.

Women and their children tried to protest in an attempt to break the PA-imposed blockade. They also wanted to challenge the PA’s claim of targeting outlaws. As the women gathered in the dark towards the edge of the camp, several men worked to fix an electricity box to restore power to the camp.

When the lights came on, cheers echoed in the camp — but barely 15 minutes later, PA forces shot at the box, plunging the area into darkness again.

Denying electricity for families
According to residents of the camp, over the course of 10 days, the PA shot at the electric power boxes more than a dozen times, denying families electricity just as temperatures began to plummet.

Elderly women confronted soldiers of the Special Administrative Tasks squad (SAT), a specialised branch of the PA security forces, SAT is trained by the Office of the United States Security Coordinator (USSC) and is responsible for coordinating operations with the United States and Israel, including joint-operations and intelligence sharing.

“I yelled at them,” said Umm Salamah, 62. “They burst through the door, and at first, I thought they were Israelis’” she told Drop Site, pointing to the destroyed door. “I told them I have children in the house. But they forced their way in.

“I told them we already have the Israeli army constantly raiding us, and now you?”

Not only were homes raided, according to Umm Salameh, but PA security forces also fired at water tanks, effectively cutting water supplies to the camp. Jenin refugee camp had already been severely damaged in the last Israeli invasion, during which Israeli military and border-police bulldozed the city’s civilian infrastructure, turning streets into hills of rubble.

Operation Homeland Protection comes just three months following “Operation Summer Camps,” Israel’s large-scale military operation between August and October.

Under the pretext of targeting “Iran-backed terrorists,” Israeli forces destroyed large swathes of civilian infrastructure in the northern districts of the West Bank, namely Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus and Tubas, and killed more than 150 Palestinians over three months, a fifth of whom were children.

Protest over ‘outlaws’ framing
Outside in the mud-filled streets, the group of women began to chant “Kateebeh!” (Brigade) in support of the Jenin Brigade, and in protest of the PA’s attempt to frame them as “outlaws” and a “threat to national security.”

Within minutes, the SAT unit responded with teargas and stun grenades fired directly at the crowd, which included journalists clearly marked with fluorescent PRESS insignia. While elderly women tripped and fell to the ground, children ran back towards the camp as PA security forces kept lobbing stun grenades at the fleeing crowd.

In an interview with Drop Site that evening, Brigadier-General Rajab affirmed that “this operation comes to achieve its goals which are the reclaiming of safety and security of Palestinians and reclaiming Jenin refugee camp from the outlaws that kidnapped it and spread corruption in it while threatening the lives of civilians.”

Days later, the PA had expanded its operations to Tulkarem, where clashes between resistance fighters and PA security forces erupted on December 19. This came just one day following an Israeli airstrike which killed three Palestinian fighters in Tulkarem refugee camp: Dusam Al-Oufi, Mohammad Al-Oufi, and Mohammad Rahayma.

On December 22, Saher Irheil, a Palestinian officer in the PA’s presidential guard was killed in Jenin, and two others injured.

According to official state media and statements by the PA, Lieutenant Irheil was killed by the “outlaws” of Jenin refugee camp. Brigadier-General Rajab claimed “this heinous crime will only increase [the PA’s] determination to pursue those outside the law and impose the rule of law, in order to preserve the security and safety of our people.”

By military order, speakers from mosques across the West Bank echoed in a public tribute to the fallen officer. The same was not done for those killed by the PA, including Shalabi, the 19-year-old whom the PA dubbed “a martyr of the nation” after being forced to admit they killed him.

That week, PA security forces escalated their attack on the Jenin refugee camp, using rocket-propelled grenades and firing indiscriminately at families sheltering in their own homes. PA security officers even posted photos and videos of themselves online, similar to those taken by Israeli soldiers while invading the camp in August and September.

On December 23, security forces shot and killed 16-year-old Majd Zeidan while he was returning to his home from a nearby corner store. The PA claimed Zeidan was an Iranian-backed saboteur.

Killed teenager had bag of chips
“They killed him, then said he was a 26-year-old Iranian-backed outlaw,” Zeidan’s mother, Yusra, told Drop Site. “Look,” she said while pulling her son’s ID card from her pocket. “My son was 16 years old, killed while returning from the store with a bag of chips.”

According to Yusra, not only was her son killed, but her brother who lives in Nablus, was arrested by the PA a few days later for holding a wake for his slain nephew.

“The Preventative Security are detaining my brother because he was mourning a mukhareb,” she said. The term “mukhareb” which roughly translates to “saboteur” is a term derived from the Israeli term “mekhablim” which is commonly used when arresting Palestinians.

A few days later, on December 28, Shatha Sabbagh, a young journalist, was shot and killed as she stood on the stairs of her home at the edges of the camp. Official PA statements claim that Sabbagh was killed by resistance fighters, not its security forces.

However, accounts by eyewitnesses and the victim’s family belie those claims.

According to testimonies from her family and residents, Sabbagh was killed while holding her 18-month-old nephew; her sister lives nearby, on Mahyoub Street in the refugee camp — the same area PA snipers were targeting. Initial autopsy findings shared with Drop Site show that the bullet that struck her came from the area in which PA snipers were positioned in the camp.

Known for her reliable reporting during both Israeli and PA raids on Jenin, local residents claim that PA loyalists had been inciting against Sabbagh for some time. Further inflaming tensions, Sabbagh’s killing underscored the risks faced by Palestinian journalists in documenting what the PA would rather conceal.

Soon afterward, Brigadier-General Rajab spoke about the killing of Sabbagh in a live interview with Al Jazeera. He turned off his camera and left the interview, however, as soon as Sabbagh’s mother was brought on air. Sabbagh’s mother, Umm Al-Mutasem, was next to her daughter when she was killed.

Two days after Sabbagh’s killing, the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate, which is closely affiliated with the PA, released a statement accusing Al Jazeera of incitement, bias and attempts to stir internal discord.

On January 5, the Magistrate Court of Ramallah announced a suspension of Al Jazeera’s broadcasting operations in the West Bank, citing a “failure to meet regulations.” This move followed Israel’s closure of Al Jazeera offices during Operation Summer Camps in September of last year.

100 Palestinians arrested in operation
The Preventative Security, an internal intelligence organisation led by the Minister of Interior, and part of the Palestinian Security Services, arrested more than a hundred Palestinians as part of Operation Homeland Protection, including five journalists in Nablus and Jenin. Palestinians were summoned and interrogated, at times tortured, and detained without legal representation.

The PA not only targeted residents of the camp, but also expanded its repressive campaign to target anyone that would sympathise with the camp or is suspected of having any solidarity with the armed resistance.

Amro Shami, 22, who was arrested by the PA from his home in Jenin on December 25 had markings of torture on his body during his court hearing in the Nablus Court the following day. Shami was reported to have bruising on his body and was unable to lift his arms in court.

Despite appeals by his lawyer, the court denied Amro release on bail. Amro’s lawyer was only able to visit 15 days later when he reported additional torture against Amro, including breaking his leg.

At the very end of December, as the operation stretched into its fifth week, journalists were able to enter the camp at their own risk. With water and electricity cut off, families huddled outside, burning wood and paper in old metal barrels to try and keep warm.

The camp reeked with uncollected trash piled in the alleyways due to the PA cutting all social services from the camp.

Inside the camp, armed resistance fighters patrolled the streets. After confirming our IDs as journalists they helped us move safely in the dark.

“In the beginning there were clashes between the Brigade and the PA, but we told them we are willing to collaborate with anything that does not harm the community,” H., a 26-year-old fighter with the brigade, told Drop Site. The young fighter was referring to the PA’s claims that they are targeting “outlaws”, in which the Jenin Brigade agreed to hand over anyone that is indeed breaking the law.

However, the PA seemed more interested in the resistance fighters.

Spokesmen of the Jenin Brigade have made several public statements informing the PA that as long as the operation was not targeting resistance efforts, they would fully comply and coordinate to ensure law and order.

‘We are with the law . . .  but which law?’
“We are with the law, we are not outside the law. We are with the enforcement of law, but which law? When an Israeli jeep comes into Jenin to kill me, where are you as law enforcement?”

Abu Issam, a spokesman for the Jenin Brigade told Drop Site: “As I speak right now, the PA armoured vehicles and jeeps are parked over our planted IEDs, and we are not detonating them,” he said.

A former member of the PA presidential guard, Abu Issam is no stranger to the PA’s repressive tactics to quell resistance.

“Our compass is clear, it’s against the occupation,” he said. “Come protect us from the Israeli settlers, and by all means here is my gun as a gift. Get them out of our lands, and execute me.

“We were surprised with the demands of the PA. They offered us three choices: to turn ourselves in along with our weapons, offering us jobs for amnesty; to leave the camp and allow the PA to take over; or to confront them.

“We have no choice but to confront,” he says, holding his M16 to his chest. “We want a dignified life, a free life, not a life of security coordination with our oppressors,” H. said.

By the second week of January, not only did the PA expand its security operations to Tulkarem and Tubas, but intensified its violence against Palestinians in Jenin refugee camp as well.

On January 3, PA snipers shot and killed 43-year-old Mahmoud Al-Jaqlamousi and his 14-year-son, Qasm, as they were gathering water. Two days later, PA security forces began burning homes of residents near the Ghubz quarter of the camp.

“Why burn it? I didn’t build this home in an hour, it was years of work, why burn it?” Issam Abu Ameira asks while standing in front of the charred walls of his home.

The operation, ostensibly intended to restore security and order, has instead brought devastation, raising troubling questions about governance and resistance in the West Bank.

“This is not solely the PA. This is also the United States and Israel’s attempt to crush resistance in the West Bank,” H. said. Like him, other fighters find the timing of the operation to be questionable.

“This is an organisation that negotiated with the occupation for more than 30 years, but can’t sit and talk with the Jenin refugee camp for 30 hours?” Abu Al-Nathmi, a spokesperson for the Jenin Brigade, said as he huddled inside the camp while fighters patrolled around us and live ammunition fired continuously in the area.

‘PA acting like group of gangs’
“The PA is acting like a group of gangs, each trying to prove their power and dominance at the expense of Jenin refugee camp,” Abu Al-Nathmi tells Drop Site. “Right now the PA is trying to prove itself to the United States to take over Gaza, but there was no position taken to defend Gaza.”

Last week, the PA requested an additional US$680 million from the US for security assistance. “What the PA is doing now is destroying the homeland, and breaking the law” Abu Al-Nathmi said.

While the PA continued its attack on Jenin refugee camp, the Israeli military waged military operations on the neighboring villages of Jenin, as well as Tubas and Tulkarem where 11 Palestinians were killed in the first week of January, three of whom were children.

In the 39 days since the PA launched Operation Homeland Protection, more than 40 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military in the West Bank, including six children. Over that same time period, Israeli courts have issued confiscation orders for thousands of hectares of land belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank.

The PA is failing to provide protection to the Palestinian people against continuous settler expansion and amid an ongoing genocide in Gaza, residents of the Jenin refugee camp say.

“The PA is claiming they don’t want what happened to Gaza to happen here, but here we are dying a hundred times,” Abu Amjad, 50, told Drop Site. Huddled near a fire outside the rubble of his home, he cries “we are being humiliated, attacked, beaten, and told there’s nothing we can do about it. In this way, it’s better to die.”

Mariam Barghouti is a writer and a journalist based in the West Bank. She is a member of the Marie Colvin Journalist Network. This article was first published by Drop News.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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.

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.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Western publics are being subjected to a campaign of psychological warfare, where genocide is classed as ‘self-defence’ and opposition to it ‘terrorism’. Jonathan Cook reports as the world marked the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists at the weekend.

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

Israel knew that, if it could stop foreign correspondents from reporting directly from Gaza, those journalists would end up covering events in ways far more to its liking.

They would hedge every report of a new Israeli atrocity – if they covered them at all – with a “Hamas claims” or “Gaza family members allege”. Everything would be presented in terms of conflicting narratives rather than witnessed facts. Audiences would feel uncertain, hesitant, detached.

Israel could shroud its slaughter in a fog of confusion and disputation. The natural revulsion evoked by a genocide would be tempered and attenuated.

For a year, the networks’ most experienced war reporters have stayed put in their hotels in Israel, watching Gaza from afar. Their human-interest stories, always at the heart of war reporting, have focused on the far more limited suffering of Israelis than the vast catastrophe unfolding for Palestinians.

That is why Western audiences have been forced to relive a single day of horror for Israel, on October 7, 2023, as intensely as they have a year of greater horrors in Gaza — in what the World Court has judged to be a “plausible” genocide by Israel.

That is why the media have immersed their audiences in the agonies of the families of some 250 Israelis — civilians taken hostage and soldiers taken captive — as much as they have the agonies of 2.3 million Palestinians bombed and starved to death week after week, month after month.

That is why audiences have been subjected to gaslighting narratives that frame Gaza’s destruction as a “humanitarian crisis” rather than the canvas on which Israel is erasing all the known rules of war.

While foreign correspondents sit obediently in their hotel rooms, Palestinian journalists have been picked off one by one — in the greatest massacre of journalists in history.

Israel is now repeating that process in Lebanon. On the night of October 24, it struck a residence in south Lebanon where three journalists were staying. All were killed.

In an indication of how deliberate and cynical Israel’s actions are, it put its military’s crosshairs on six Al Jazeera reporters last month, smearing them as “terrorists” working for Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They are reportedly the last surviving Palestinian journalists in northern Gaza, which Israel has sealed off while it carries out the so-called “General’s Plan”.

Israel wants no one reporting its final push to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza by starving out the 400,000 Palestinians still there and executing anyone who remains as a “terrorist”.

These six join a long list of professionals defamed by Israel in the interests of advancing its genocide — from doctors and aid workers to UN peacekeepers.

Sympathy for Israel
Perhaps the nadir of Israel’s domestication of foreign journalists was reached last month in a report by CNN. Back in February whistleblowing staff there revealed that the network’s executives have been actively obscuring Israeli atrocities to portray Israel in a more sympathetic light.

In a story whose framing should have been unthinkable — but sadly was all too predictable — CNN reported on the psychological trauma some Israeli soldiers are suffering from time spent in Gaza, in some cases leading to suicide.

Committing a genocide can be bad for your mental health, it seems. Or as CNN explained, its interviews “provide a window into the psychological burden that the war is casting on Israeli society”.

In its lengthy piece, titled “He got out of Gaza, but Gaza did not get out of him”, the atrocities the soldiers admit committing are little more than the backdrop as CNN finds yet another angle on Israeli suffering. Israeli soldiers are the real victims — even as they perpetrate a genocide on the Palestinian people.

One bulldozer driver, Guy Zaken, told CNN he could not sleep and had become vegetarian because of the “very, very difficult things” he had seen and had to do in Gaza.

What things? Zaken had earlier told a hearing of the Israeli Parliament that his unit’s job was to drive over many hundreds of Palestinians, some of them alive.

CNN reported: “Zaken says he can no longer eat meat, as it reminds him of the gruesome scenes he witnessed from his bulldozer in Gaza.”

Doubtless some Nazi concentration camp guards committed suicide in the 1940s after witnessing the horrors there — because they were responsible for them. Only in some weird parallel news universe, would their “psychological burden” be the story.

After a huge online backlash, CNN amended an editor’s note at the start of the article that originally read: “This story includes details about suicide that some readers may find upsetting.”

Readers, it was assumed, would find the suicide of Israeli soldiers upsetting, but apparently not the revelation that those soldiers were routinely driving over Palestinians so that, as Zaken explained, “everything squirts out”.

Banned from Gaza
Finally, a year into Israel’s genocidal war, now rapidly spreading into Lebanon, some voices are being raised very belatedly to demand the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza.

This week — in a move presumably designed, as November’s elections loom, to ingratiate themselves with voters angry at the party’s complicity in genocide — dozens of Democratic members of the US Congress wrote to President Joe Biden asking him to pressure Israel to give journalists “unimpeded access” to the enclave.

Don’t hold your breath.

Western media have done very little themselves to protest their exclusion from Gaza over the past year — for a number of reasons.

Given the utterly indiscriminate nature of Israel’s bombardment, major outlets have not wanted their journalists getting hit by a 2000lb bomb for being in the wrong place.

That may in part be out of concern for their welfare. But there are likely to be more cynical concerns.

Having foreign journalists in Gaza blown up or executed by snipers would drag media organisations into direct confrontation with Israel and its well-oiled lobby machine.

The response would be entirely predictable, insinuating that the journalists died because they were colluding with “the terrorists” or that they were being used as “human shields” — the excuse Israel has rolled out time and again to justify its targeting of doctors in Gaza and UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.

But there’s a bigger problem. The establishment media have not wanted to be in a position where their journalists are so close to the “action” that they are in danger of providing a clearer picture of Israel’s war crimes and its genocide.

The media’s current distance from the crime scene offers them plausible deniability as they both-sides every Israeli atrocity.

In previous conflicts, western reporters have served as witnesses, assisting in the prosecution of foreign leaders for war crimes. That happened in the wars that attended the break-up of Yugoslavia, and will doubtless happen once again if Russian President Valdimir Putin is ever delivered to The Hague.

But those journalistic testimonies were harnessed to put the West’s enemies behind bars, not its closest ally.

The media do not want their reporters to become chief witnesses for the prosecution in the future trials of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, at the International Criminal Court. The ICC’s Prosecutor, Karim Khan, is seeking arrest warrants for them both.

After all, any such testimony from journalists would not stop at Israel’s door. They would implicate Western capitals too, and put establishment media organisations on a collision course with their own governments.

The Western media does not see its job as holding power to account when the West is the one committing the crimes.

Censoring Palestinians
Journalist whistleblowers have gradually been coming forward to explain how establishment news organisations — including the BBC and the supposedly liberal Guardian — are sidelining Palestinian voices and minimising the genocide.

An investigation by Novara Media recently revealed mounting unhappiness in parts of The Guardian newsroom at its double standards on Israel and Palestine.

Its editors recently censored a commentary by preeminent Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa after she insisted on being allowed to refer to the slaughter in Gaza as “the holocaust of our times”.

Senior Guardian columnists such as Jonathan Freedland made much during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as leader of the Labour party that Jews, and Jews alone, had the right to define and name their own oppression.

That right, however, does not appear to extend to Palestinians.

As staff who spoke to Novara noted, The Guardian’s Sunday sister paper, The Observer, had no problem opening its pages to British Jewish writer Howard Jacobson to smear as a “blood libel” any reporting of the provable fact that Israel has killed many, many thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza.

One veteran journalist there said: “Is The Guardian more worried about the reaction to what is said about Israel than Palestine? Absolutely.”

Another staff member admitted it would be inconceivable for the paper to be seen censoring a Jewish writer. But censoring a Palestinian one is fine, it seems.

Other journalists report being under “suffocating control” from senior editors, and say this pressure exists “only if you’re publishing something critical of Israel”.

According to staff there, the word “genocide” is all but banned in the paper except in coverage of the International Court of Justice, whose judges ruled nine months ago that a “plausible” case had been made that Israel was committing genocide. Things have got far worse since.

Whistleblowing journalists
Similarly, “Sara”, a whistleblower who recently resigned from the BBC newsroom and spoke of her experiences to Al Jazeera’s Listening Post, said Palestinians and their supporters were routinely kept off air or subjected to humiliating and insensitive lines of questioning.

Some producers have reportedly grown increasingly reluctant to bring on air vulnerable Palestinians, some of whom have lost family members in Gaza, because of concerns about the effect on their mental health from the aggressive interrogations they were being subjected to from anchors.

According to Sara, BBC vetting of potential guests overwhelmingly targets Palestinians, as well as those sympathetic to their cause and human rights organisations. Background checks are rarely done of Israelis or Jewish guests.

She added that a search showing that a guest had used the word “Zionism” — Israel’s state ideology — in a social media post could be enough to get them disqualified from a programme.

Even officials from one of the biggest rights group in the world, the New York-based Human Rights Watch, became persona non grata at the BBC for their criticisms of Israel, even though the corporation had previously relied on their reports in covering Ukraine and other global conflicts.

Israeli guests, by contrast, “were given free rein to say whatever they wanted with very little pushback”, including lies about Hamas burning or beheading babies and committing mass rape.

An email cited by Al Jazeera from more than 20 BBC journalists sent last February to Tim Davie, the BBC’s director-general, warned that the corporation’s coverage risked “aiding and abetting genocide through story suppression”.

Upside-down values
These biases have been only too evident in the BBC’s coverage, first of Gaza and now, as media interest wanes in the genocide, of Lebanon.

Headlines — the mood music of journalism, and the only part of a story many of the audience read — have been uniformly dire.

For example, Netanyahu’s threats of a Gaza-style genocide against the Lebanese people last month if they did not overthrow their leaders were soft-soaped by the BBC headline: “Netanyahu’s appeal to Lebanese people falls on deaf ears in Beirut.”

Reasonable readers would have wrongly inferred both that Netanyahu was trying to do the Lebanese people a favour (by preparing to murder them), and that they were being ungrateful in not taking up his offer.

It has been the same story everywhere in the establishment media. In another extraordinary, revealing moment, Kay Burley of Sky News announced last month the deaths of four Israeli soldiers from a Hezbollah drone strike on a military base inside Israel.

With a solemnity usually reserved for the passing of a member of the British royal family, she slowly named the four soldiers, with a photo of each shown on screen. She stressed twice that all four were only 19 years old.

Sky News seemed not to understand that these were not British soldiers, and that there was no reason for a British audience to be especially disturbed by their deaths. Soldiers are killed in wars all the time — it is an occupational hazard.

And further, if Israel considered them old enough to fight in Gaza and Lebanon, then they were old enough to die too without their age being treated as particularly noteworthy.

But more significantly still, Israel’s Golani Brigade to which these soldiers belonged has been centrally involved in the slaughter of Palestinians over the past year. Its troops have been responsible for many of the tens of thousands of children killed and maimed in Gaza.

Each of the four soldiers was far, far less deserving of Burley’s sympathy and concern than the thousands of children who have been slaughtered at the hands of their brigade. Those children are almost never named and their pictures are rarely shown, not least because their injuries are usually too horrifying to be seen.

It was yet more evidence of the upside-down world the establishment media has been trying to normalise for its audiences.

It is why statistics from the United States, where the coverage of Gaza and Lebanon may be even more unhinged, show faith in the media is at rock bottom. Fewer than one in three respondents — 31 percent — said they still had a “great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media”.

Crushing dissent
Israel is the one dictating the coverage of its genocide. First by murdering the Palestinian journalists reporting it on the ground, and then by making sure house-trained foreign correspondents stay well clear of the slaughter, out of harm’s way in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

And as ever, Israel has been able to rely on the complicity of its Western patrons in crushing dissent at home.

Last week, a British investigative journalist, Asa Winstanley, an outspoken critic of Israel and its lobbyists in the UK, had his home in London raided at dawn by counter-terrorism police.

Though the police have not arrested or charged him — at least not yet — they snatched his electronic devices. He was warned that he is being investigated for “encouragement of terrorism” in his social media posts.

Police told Middle East Eye that his devices had been seized as part of an investigation into suspected terrorism offences of “support for a proscribed organisation” and “dissemination of terrorist documents”.

The police can act only because of Britain’s draconian, anti-speech Terrorism Act.

Section 12, for example, makes the expression of an opinion that could be interpreted as sympathetic to armed Palestinian resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation — a right enshrined in international law but sweepingly dismissed as “terrorism” in the West — itself a terrorism offence.

Those journalists who haven’t been house-trained in the establishment media, as well as solidarity activists, must now chart a treacherous path across intentionally ill-defined legal terrain when talking about Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Winstanley is not the first journalist to be accused of falling foul of the Terrorism Act. In recent weeks, Richard Medhurst, a freelance journalist, was arrested at Heathrow airport on his return from a trip abroad. Another journalist-activist, Sarah Wilkinson, was briefly arrested after her home was ransacked by police.

Their electronic devices were seized too.

Meanwhile, Richard Barnard, co-founder of Palestine Action, which seeks to disrupt the UK’s supply of weapons to Israel’s genocide, has been charged over speeches he has made against the genocide.

It now appears that all these actions are part of a specific police campaign targeting journalists and Palestinian solidarity activists: “Operation Incessantness”.

The message this clumsy title is presumably supposed to convey is that the British state is coming after anyone who speaks out too loudly against the British government’s continuing arming and complicity in Israel’s genocide.

Notably, the establishment media have failed to cover this latest assault on journalism and the role of a free press — supposedly the very things they are there to protect.

The raid on Winstanley’s home and the arrests are intended to intimidate others, including independent journalists, into silence for fear of the consequences of speaking up.

This has nothing to do with terrorism. Rather, it is terrorism by the British state.

Once again the world is being turned upside down.

Echoes from history
The West is waging a campaign of psychological warfare on its populations: it is gaslighting and disorientating them, classing genocide as “self-defence” and opposition to it a form of “terrorism”.

This is an expansion of the persecution suffered by Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who spent years locked up in London’s Belmarsh high-security prison.

His unprecedented journalism — revealing the darkest secrets of Western states — was redefined as espionage. His “offence” was revealing that Britain and the US had committed systematic war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, on the back of that precedent, the British state is coming after journalists simply for embarrassing it.

Late last month I attended a meeting in Bristol against the genocide in Gaza at which the main speaker was physically absent after the British state failed to issue him an entry visa.

The missing guest — he had to join us by zoom — was Mandla Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, who was locked up for decades as a terrorist before becoming the first leader of post-apartheid South Africa and a feted, international statesman.

Mandla Mandela was until recently a member of the South African Parliament.

A Home Office spokesperson told Middle East Eye that the UK only issued visas “to those who we want to welcome to our country”.

Media reports suggest Britain was determined to exclude Mandela because, like his grandfather, he views the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid as intimately linked to the earlier struggle against South Africa’s apartheid.

The echoes from history are apparently entirely lost on officials: the UK is once again associating the Mandela family with terrorism. Before it was to protect South Africa’s apartheid regime. Now it is to protect Israel’s even worse apartheid and genocidal regime.

The world is indeed turned on its head. And the West’s supposedly “free media” is playing a critical role in trying to make our upside-down world seem normal.

That can only be achieved by failing to report the Gaza genocide as a genocide. Instead, Western journalists are serving as little more than stenographers. Their job: to take dictation from Israel.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years and returned to the UK in 2021. He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, including Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011, Cook was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism for his work on Palestine and Israel. This article was first published in Middle East Eye and is republished with the author’s permission.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon.

Christina Assi of Agence France-Presse was among six journalists struck by Israeli shelling last October 13 while reporting on an exchange of fire along the border between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants, reports The New Arab.

The same attack killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah.

Assi was severely wounded and had part of her right leg amputated.

AFP videographer Dylan Collins, also wounded in the Israeli attack, pushed Assi’s wheelchair as she carried the torch across the suburb of Vincennes last Sunday. Their colleagues from the press agency and hundreds of spectators cheered them on.

AFP, Reuters and Al Jazeera have all accused Israel of targeting their journalists who maintained they were positioned far from where the clashes were raging, and with vehicles clearly marked as “press”.

International human rights organisations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said the October 13 attack was deliberate and should be investigated as a war crime.

The Israeli military at the time said that the incident was “under review”, claiming that it did not target journalists.

While Assi does not believe there will be retribution for the events of that fateful October day, she hopes her participation in the Olympic torch relay this week can bring attention to the importance of protecting journalists.

The torch relay, which started in May, is part of celebrations in which thousands of people from various walks of life are chosen to carry the flame across France before the Paris Olympic Games opening ceremony later today (5.30am Saturday NZST).

The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reports 106 journalists being killed covering Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, but the Palestinian Media Office has documented 163 deaths of journalists.

Video report on AFP photojournalist Christina Assi.   Video: The New Arab

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

About 500 people honoured Palestinian journalists in the heart of the New Zealand city of Auckland today for their brave coverage of Israel’s War on Gaza, now in its seventh month with almost 35,000 people killed, mostly women and children.

Marking the annual May 3 World Press Freedom Day “plus two”, the crowd also strongly applauded UNESCO’s Guillermo Cano Award being presented to the Palestinian journalists for their “courage and commitment”.

Several speakers gave tributes to the journalists, the more than 100 Gazan news workers killed had their names read out and put on display, and cellphones were lit up due to the breeze preventing candle flames.

Activist MC Anna Lee praised the journalists and said they set an example to the world.

Shut the Gaza war down chants in Auckland.     Video: Café Pacific

Journalist Dr David Robie, convenor of Pacific Media Watch, said 143 journalists had been killed, according to Al Jazeera and the Gaza Media Office, and it was mostly targeted “assassination by design”.

He paid tribute to several individual journalists as well as the group, including Shireen Abu Akleh, shot by an Israeli sniper more than a year before the October 7 war outbreak, and Hind Khoudary, a young journalist who had inspired people around the world.

The Guillermo Cano Prize was awarded to the Gaza journalists in Santiago, Chile, as part of World Press Freedom Day global events.

Nasser Abu Baker, president of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS) and vice-president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), received the UNESCO prize on behalf of his colleagues in Gaza.

‘Unique suffering, fearless reporting’
The UN cultural agency has recognised the “unique suffering and fearless reporting” of Gaza’s journalists by awarding them the freedom prize.

Apart from those journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza since October 7, nearly all the rest have been injured, displaced or bereaved.

From the start of the conflict, Israel closed Gaza’s borders to international journalists, and none have been allowed free access to the enclave since.

A thousand Gazan journalists were working at the start of the war, and more than a 100 of them have been killed.

“As a result,” reports the IFJ, “the profession has suffered a mortality rate in excess of 10 percent — about six times higher than the mortality rate of the general population of Gaza and around three times higher than that of health professionals.

PJS president Baker said: “Journalists in Gaza have endured a sustained attack by the Israeli army of unprecedented ferocity — but have continued to do their jobs, as witnesses to the carnage around them.

“It is justified that they should be honoured on World Press Freedom Day.

Naming the martyred Gaza journalists.   Video: Café Pacific

‘Most deadly attack on press freedom’
“What we have seen in Gaza is surely the most sustained and deadly attack on press freedom in history. This award shows that the world has not forgotten and salutes their sacrifice for information.”

IFJ general secretary Anthony Bellanger said: “This prize is a real tribute to the commitment to information of journalists in Gaza.

“Journalists in Gaza are starving, homeless and in mortal danger. UNESCO’s recognition of what they are still enduring is a huge and well-deserved boost.”

Kia Ora Gaza – doctors speak out.      Video: Café Pacific

Gaza Freedom Flotilla blocked
Also at the rally today were Kia Ora Gaza’s organiser Roger Fowler and two of the three New Zealand doctors who travelled to Turkiye to embark on the Freedom Flotilla which was sending three ships with humanitarian aid to break the Gaza siege.

Israel thwarted the mission for the time being by pressuring the African nation of Guinea-Bissau to withdraw the maritime flag the ships would have been sailing under.

However, flotilla organisers are working hard to find another flag country for the ships and the doctors vowed to rejoin the mission.

Pacific Media Watch

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

More than two dozen Palestinian journalists had called for a boycott of the dinner, writing an open letter urging their American colleagues not to attend.

“You have a unique responsibility to speak truth to power and uphold journalistic integrity,” said the letter from the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.

“It is unacceptable to stay silent out of fear or professional concern while journalists in Gaza continue to be detained, tortured, and killed for doing our jobs.”

‘It hurts our souls’
Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary was one of the signatories of the letter calling for the boycott.

She spoke to the network from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, saying she did not “have the words” to describe what she had been going through.

“This isn’t something that has been ending. It has been continuous every single day for more than 200 days.

“We have been killed, displaced and homeless, and we’re not only reporting on this, but we’re also living it with every single detail.

“We’re living this war in all aspects of life. We have not seen our families as journalists. We have not been able to eat well. We have been dehydrated.

“We have been reporting in one of the harshest conditions any reporter can go through despite losing a lot of colleagues, and it hurts our souls and our hearts every single day.

“We have been constantly targeted by the Israeli air strikes and shelling.

“All of these daily things we have been living as journalists are overwhelming [and] exhausting, but we still continue because there have been at least 100 Palestinian journalists whom I personally know that have been killed since October 7.

“If they were here today with us, they would be reporting, and they would be raising the voice of the voiceless Palestinians.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The toll of four months of war in Gaza on journalism is “nothing short of horrifying” — Palestinian journalists killed, wounded, and prevented from working without any possibility of safe refuge, reports he Paris-based global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

RSF has strongly condemned the “eradication of journalism and the right to information” in Gaza by the Israeli army, and has called on states and international organisations to increase pressure on Israel to “immediately cease this carnage”.

In 124 days of conflict, at least 84 journalists have been killed in Gaza, including at least 20 in the course of their journalistic work or in connection with it, according to RSF statistics.

Journalists are being decimated as the days of this interminable war go by, through incessant Israeli strikes from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip, the watchdog said.

Journalists who had survived these four months were “living a daily hell” — in inhumane conditions, they suffered shortages of all kinds, particularly of equipment, as well as regular media blackouts, RSF said.

“In four months of conflict, Palestinian journalism has been decimated by Israeli armed forces with complete impunity, with a staggering death toll of more than 84 journalists killed — at least 20 in the line of duty,” said RSF’s Middle East desk in their statement.

“After filing two complaints with the International Criminal Court and making repeated appeals to States and international organisations, RSF is once again urging the UN Security Council to immediately enforce Resolution 2222 (2015) on the protection of journalists.

Journalists trapped in Rafah
Journalists in Gaza have no way out or any place of safe refuge. Forced to flee to the south of the enclave since October 7, the vast majority have taken refuge in Rafah, where the crossing point with Egypt is still closed and where an invasion of the city could lead to a new bloodbath.

Rafah was described by Israel as a “security zone” at the start of the conflict. Despite RSF’s calls for the Rafah gate to be opened, the Israeli authorities continue to prevent Gazan journalists from leaving and to block access to the enclave for foreign journalists.

As Gaza killings rise, so does the toll on Palestinian journalists.   Video: Al Jazeera

A chilling toll
According to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS), about 50 local and international media outlets in Gaza have been totally or partially destroyed by the Israeli army since October 7, in addition to the appalling death toll.

RSF filed two complaints with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 31 October and 22 December 2023 in connection with the killings of journalists and the destruction of media outlets.

In the aftermath of the killings of independent videographer Moustafa Thuraya and Al Jazeera journalist Hamza Dahdouh on January 7, RSF obtained a decision from the ICC prosecutor to include crimes against journalists in its investigation into the situation in Palestine.

Two days later, RSF called on the UN Security Council to urgently address Israel’s violations of Resolution 2222 on the protection of journalists.

The struggle of journalists in the field
Against this terrifying backdrop, Palestinian reporters in Gaza are showing untold courage in continuing to report on the war.

Most have lost loved ones. Forced to move, they live in tents, with no electricity and very little food or water.

Wounded journalists have very limited access to medical care. In partnership with Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), RSF has been providing grants to Gazan journalists since the start of the war to support their reporting work.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

Al Jazeera rejects Israeli forces’ attempt to justify crimes against journalists

Al Jazeera Media Network has rejected the Israeli occupation forces’ attempt to justify the killing and targeting of journalists.

In a statement this week, the network has condemned the accusations against its journalists and recalled Israel’s “long record of lies and fabrication of evidence through which it seeks to hide its heinous crimes”.

The statement continued:

“At a time when its correspondents and field crews are making great sacrifices to cover what is happening in Gaza, Al Jazeera’s employment policies stipulate that employees are not to engage in any political affiliations that may affect their professionalism, and to adhere to the controls and directives contained in the Network’s code of ethics and code of conduct.

“Al Jazeera ensures that all its journalists and correspondents adhere to the editorial standards.

“The network recalls the systematic targeting of Al Jazeera by the Israeli authorities, which includes:

• the bombing of its office in Gaza twice,
• the assassination of its correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh,
• the killing of colleagues Samer Abu Daqa and Hamza Al-Dahdouh,
• the deliberate targeting of a number of Al Jazeera journalists and their family members, and
• the arrest and intimidation of its correspondents in the field.

“Given Israel’s unprecedented campaign against journalists, Al Jazeera urges media outlets worldwide to exercise the utmost caution and responsibility when headlining Israel’s justifications for its crimes against journalists in Gaza.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The mother of Al Jazeera’s award-winning Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh has died at a hospital in Gaza due to illness, reports Al Jazeera.

Dahdouh, who has become a symbol for the perseverance of Palestinian journalists in Gaza, had lost his wife Amna, son Mahmoud, daughter Sham and grandson Adam to an Israeli air raid in October.

Dahdouh was later wounded in an Israeli drone attack that killed his colleague, Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa. He is currently being treated for his injuries in a hospital Doha, Qatar.

Last month, his eldest son, Hamza — a journalist who worked with Al Jazeera — was also killed in an Israeli attack alongside fellow journalist Mustafa Thuraya, a freelancer.

Last Friday, India’s Kerala Media Academy announced that its Media Person of the Year award has been given to Wael Al-Dahdouh in recognition of his exceptional journalistic courage.

‘Global face of courage’
The academy said in a statement that Al-Dahdouh was “a global face of journalistic courage, who continues to work despite the heavy losses borne by his family”.

Anil Bhaskar, secretary of the academy, told Arab News that Al-Dahdouh was recognised for his fearless reporting that allowed the world see the “true picture of the catastrophe” in Gaza.

“His commitment and bravery are exemplary and set an example for other journalists not only in India but all over the world,” Bhaskar said.

According to UN reports, more than 122 journalists and media workers have been among more than 27,000 people killed in Israel’s nearly four-month offensive in Gaza.

Press freedom watchdog the Committee to Protect Journalists said last month that journalists were being killed in Gaza at a rate with no parallel in modern history and that there was “an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military.”

‘Struggling to keep alive’
Meanwhile, Ayman Nobani, reporting from Nablus in the occupied West Bank, says Palestinian journalists are “struggling to keep alive”.

He reported that Shorouk al-Assad, a member of the general secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, as saying that journalists in the besieged coastal enclave were living through unprecedented times as they were being targeted by Israeli forces.

“The most important challenge today is the survival of journalists in light of their targeting and bombardment by Israel, in addition to the killing of their families, the destruction of their neighbourhoods, and the death of their colleagues,” she told Al Jazeera.

She also said:

• At least 73 media offices have been bombed since October 7;
• All of Gaza’s radio stations are no longer operating due to bombardment, power outages, or the killing or displacement of staff;
• Only 40 journalists remain in northern Gaza and they are besieged and isolated, with no means to send food or relief items to them; and
• Some 70 journalists have lost close family members

Earlier reports have indicated 78 Palestinian journalists have been killed in the Israeli war on Gaza, many of them targeted.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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”.

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”.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Israeli occupation forces are intentionally targeting Palestinian journalists in the besieged Gaza Strip, media outlets warned after three reporters were killed Tuesday bringing the total number of journalists killed since Saturday to seven, reports Middle East Monitor.

The Government Media Office’s Monitoring and Follow-up Unit in Gaza has documented dozens of attacks and crimes against journalists and media outlets.

Israeli attacks have resulted in the killing of seven journalists: Ibrahim Lafi, Muhammad Jarghun, Muhammad Al-Salhi, Asaad Shamlikh, Saeed Al-Taweel, Muhammad Subh Abu Rizq and Hisham Al-Nawajaha.

In addition, “more than 10 journalists have been injured with varying degrees of severity, and they lost contact with two colleagues, Nidal Al-Wahidi and Haitham Abdul-Wahed”.

The monitoring unit added that the homes of journalists Rami Al-Sharafi and Basel Khair Al-Din had been targeted and destroyed.

In contrast, the homes of dozens of other journalists were partially damaged.

Furthermore, dozens of media institutions were either completely or partially damaged by Israeli strikes including on Palestine Tower and Al-Watan Tower, with more than 40 media headquarters being affected, the unit reported.

Despite the risks, the government media office emphasised that their journalists will continue their professional role and national duty in covering the events, exposing the crimes of the occupation and debunking its false claims.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The International Federation of Journalists has called for the urgent reinstatement of Nasser Abu Bakr, head of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, following his victimisation by the French news agency AFP.

Abu Bakr, who has worked for Agence France-Presse (AFP) for more than 20 years, was sacked without valid reason, in what the IFJ’s leading body has called “a clear case of victimisation for his trade union activities, in contravention of the law and international standards”.

The dismissal came following the agency’s concerns over his strong public defence of the rights of Palestinian journalists in his role as president of the PJS.

Abu Bakr, who is an elected member of the IFJ’s executive committee, had been instrumental in filing complaints about the systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists by Israeli forces to the United Nations Special Rapporteurs and in documenting and exposing attacks on Palestinian journalists and media.

The IFJ will launch a global campaign to demand justice for Nasser.

Already support has flowed in from public bodies in Palestine, from unions around the world and from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions.

Journalists in Palestine have staged protests outside the offices of AFP. Unions representing staff at AFP’s headquarters and other offices around the world have pledged their support.

The IFJ has already been in contact with AFP management in Paris.

IFJ general secretary Anthony Bellanger said: “The dismissal of Nasser, an elected trade union leader, for nothing more than giving a voice to Palestinian journalists under threat and facing daily attacks is totally unacceptable.

“He must be reinstated.”

12 plus Palestinian journalists arrested
Al Jazeera reports that more than a dozen Palestinian journalists were recently arrested by Israeli authorities after attempting to report the news under often “extremely stressful and dangerous” conditions.

Wahbe Mikkieh, one of the journalists detained and later released, told Al Jazeera the message the Israeli police was trying to send was meant to frighten journalists.

“The occupation forces claimed that I tried to obstruct the arrest of my colleague Zeina [Halawani] and that I assaulted the occupation army. That did not happen,” said Mikkieh, who was hit on the head with the butt of a gun causing him to bleed, describing the five days in prison as the hardest in his life.

Republished from the International Federation of Journalists.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz