JOURNALISM IS NOT A CRIME!

In 2008, I watched Pakistan’s President, General Pervez Musharraf, dismiss a long march by lawyers and judges as “a mere irritant” that didn’t threaten his rule.
But the all-powerful general soon learned – much too late – that he’d badly misread Pakistan’s political tea leaves, the march having started the end of his rule when he forcibly resigned under public pressure, soon after.

I felt the same way when Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed on May 11, 2022, while covering an operation by the Israel Defence Force (IDF) in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

The popular Arab reporter was also a dual US citizen and was killed while wearing the internationally-recognised blue PRESS ID marks emblazoned across her chest and back.
It was absolutely clear the Al Jazeera correspondent was targeted and killed by an IDF sniper, but Israel’s government was reported as having made it absolutely clear that “No Israeli soldier will be prosecuted…”

That story gave me that same Musharraf feeling — and I told myself Prime Minister Netanyahu would, like the Pakistani general with a similar disdain for public institutions, also live to regret that statement.

Shireen’s internationally-broadcast funeral was attacked by IDF soldiers and the world saw how the coffin was almost pushed to the ground – and again I concluded it was just a matter of time before this case assumed desired international proportions.

Indeed, much to Tel Aviv’s chagrin, the US undertook the usual investigation of an American citizen killed abroad; and the United Nations (UN) mandated an investigative body to do likewise.
On October 16, 2023, the UN body was reported as having found that “Israeli forces used lethal force without justification” against the Al Jazeera reporter and had also fatally “violated her right to life.”

The UN investigators recommended too, that Israel cooperate with the Washington probe.

Al Jazeera TV screened daily appeals for Israel to accept its responsibility for its reporter’s death and the UN team indicated it could take its findings to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
But 18 months after Shireen’s killing came the latest Israel-Palestine conflict that followed Hamas’ deadly October 7, 2023 attack on Southern Israel on Yom Kippur — the holiest day in the Jewish calendar — killing 1,200 Israelis and taking 237 captives into Gaza.

It was the worst loss of life Israel ever suffered in any single Palestinian armed attack; and it also coincided with the 50th anniversary of one — on same holy day in 1973 — when Arab states (led by Egypt and Syria) attacked Israel in what was then described as ‘The 4th Arab-Israeli War.’

Israel hit back with more-than-expected brute force in which no one was spared in Gaza — including women and children, elderly and disabled people – and journalists.
Six days after the Hamas attack initiated the sixth Israel-Palestine war after Hamas’ October 7, 2023 Al Aqsa Flood surprise attack — and after 1,900 Palestinians were killed – journalists started dying on the job.

On Friday, October 13, a Reuters journalist from France was killed and an Al Jazeera reporter was among many wounded after what all insist was a “targeted” attack on journalists in an area they’d been told was safe.

I asked myself whether this was the beginning of a new age in war reporting…
The Netanyahu government had decided against giving journalists free access to Gaza, the IDF selecting and giving guided tours even to senior correspondents from international media houses it trusted.

But while this was not clear in reports from the Western media, Arab journalists and media workers started dying from targeted attacks, killed like never before in coverage of any conflict anywhere since World War II ended in 1945.
By October 24 – 17 days into the war on Gaza — 23 journalists were killed in the line of duty.

Al Jazeera journalist, Wael Dahdoua, lost his wife, daughter, son and grand-child at this time, after they moved from their home in Gaza’s City on IDF orders to their neighbourhood to evacuate before bombardment.

By November I – one week later — another Al Jazeera staffer lost 19 members of his family in an Israeli attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza.
And two days later (November 3) some Arab journalists in Gaza removed their blue PRESS vests and helmets and waved their official ID cards in public and among international colleagues, arguing they were all useless and didn’t protect them from being targeted and killed on the job.

Five days later (November 8), the number of journalists killed jumped to 39, the highest number in any conflict; and nine days later (November 17) the number of media personnel killed jumped to 47.

Three days later (November 20), the number skyrocketed to 62, with 43 journalists dead; and the next day (November 21) three more journalists were killed, this time on the West Bank — in another alleged targeted killing — leading to colleagues covering the war adopting the phrases: “Journalism is not a crime!” and “Killing journalists is a crime!”

In an age when everyone with a cell phone can be an i-Reporter, journalists are dying in Palestine for simply working to keep the world informed of what they see and hear.
On November 21, Jodie Ginsberg, President of the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Anthiny Belanger, President of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), were both reported as saying their respective entities will file cases at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Over the weekend of November 25-27, Israel banned Palestinians from celebrating the release of prisoners, while those released by Hamas were joyously welcomed home in the streets.
And ahead of the resumption of fighting dearly promised by Israel, journalists covering the war were understandably quivering over their chances of surviving, or also dying on the job.