Israel's Sordid History of Brutalizing Journalists
The killing of well-respected Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on 5/11 is only the latest in a series of murders Israel has carried out against those who would expose its atrocities.
Like all Apartheid states, Israel has a deadly and adversarial relationship with journalists who attempt to report on the truth of their oppression. Al Jazeera places the number of journalists killed by Israel at somewhere between 45 and 55 (the latter number comes from the Palestinian Journalists’ Union), with 144 journalists injured in the last four years alone. The above Al Jazeera article contains an overview of the lives lost, deaths which were chalked up in the Israeli media to the dangers of working within a conflict zone and the possible result the presence of non-Israeli militants. Shireen Abu Akleh’s death was initially similarly chalked up to Palestinian gunfire:
When word got out on Wednesday that esteemed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in the West Bank city of Jenin, where Israeli forces has been making military arrest raids, Israel convened its National PR staff to form a plan of action. It decided to circulate a video of a Palestinian gunmen shooting indiscriminately from inside the Jenin refugee camp and blame them for the Al Jazeera reporter’s death. But its strategy fell flat when another video revealed that Abu Akleh died nowhere near there.
Even accepting the excuse that the danger of operating in a warzone might cause some regrettable and unpreventable casualties, why is there a conflict taking place in Palestine? It did not spring into existence by accident—in every instance, it is instigated and escalated by Israeli forces, who are only met with justified resistance they freely choose to respond to in a disproportionate way. The aggressor in every case takes the greater share of the blame, even if they suffer some defensive wounds as a result of their provocations.
Al Jazeera also reports on the dutifully cowed Western media’s tendency to prevaricate and dissemble on behalf of the Israeli government:
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor of Middle East Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, said Israel has a track record of disseminating false information on social media and was attempting to “muddy the waters” surrounding Abu Akleh’s death.
“The Israeli state is very used to managing these crisis situations in which they kill Palestinian citizens or journalists,” said Jones. “So, what they have done is already had a narrative, and that narrative is that there’s ambiguity about the killing of Shireen. And in this case, there is a possibility that it could have been Palestinians.”
“We know this is implausible, however, this narrative was put out very early … If they can muddy the waters around the death of Shireen by possibly getting newspapers in the international sphere to suggest that she was killed by Palestinian, they have been successful.”
In return for reporting of this nature, an office building containing Associated Press and Al Jazeera offices was bombed by Israel with little forewarning in 2021:
Youmna al-Sayed had less than an hour to get to safety.
But with just one elevator working in al-Jalaa tower, an 11-storey building in Gaza City housing some 60 residential apartments and a number of offices, including those of Al Jazeera Media Network and The Associated Press, al-Sayed made a dash for the stairs.
“We left the elevator for the elderly and for the children to evacuate,” the Palestinian freelance journalist said. “And we were all running down the stairs and whoever could help children took them down,” she added. “I myself helped two children of the residents there and I took them downstairs – everyone was just running quickly.”
Moments earlier, the Israeli army, which has been bombarding Gaza for six straight days, had given a telephone warning that residents had just an hour to evacuate the building before its fighter jets attacked it.
Al Jazeera’s Safwat al-Kahlout also had to move quickly. He and his colleagues “started to collect as much as they could, from the personal and equipment of the office – especially the cameras”, al-Kahlout said.
But more time was needed.
The Israeli government’s stated rationale for the attack was a pat claim that Hamas was using the building to store military equipment:
A building that housed international media offices including Al Jazeera’s in the Gaza Strip has been hit by an Israeli air raid that demolished the structure.
It was not immediately clear if there were casualties in Saturday’s attack. Live Al Jazeera video showed the 11-storey al-Jalaa building, which also houses several residences and other offices, crashing to the ground after being bombed as dust and debris flew into the air. …
Israel said its “fighter jets attacked a high-rise building which hosted military assets belonging to the military intelligence of the Hamas terror organisation”.
“The building also hosted offices of civilian media outlets, which the Hamas terror group hides behind and uses as human shields,” it said. But it provided no evidence to back up the claims.
Vox details the shooting of Shireen Abu Akleh and the eyewitness accounts which overwhelmingly place the blame on Israeli forces:
Israel attributed Abu Akleh’s death to Palestinian gunmen, saying she was caught in the crossfire of clashes. Multiple witnesses, however, said that it is more likely she was shot by IDF forces than Palestinian. If that bears out, Abu Akleh’s killing will fit into a larger pattern of attacks on the press in Palestine and in the systemic violence against Palestinians more broadly.
The language that an Israeli spokesperson used Wednesday to describe the work of Palestinian journalists underscored that reality. Israeli military spokesperson Ran Kochav said, “They’re armed with cameras, if you’ll permit me to say so,” and in so doing drew a not-subtle comparison between the work of journalism and that of violence.
Israel’s defense minister Benny Gantz announced an investigation and released body-cam footage from the army, striking a more cautious tone than earlier Israeli statements. Palestinian authorities declined to participate in the investigation.
If an investigation ultimately does find Israeli soldiers responsible, it wouldn’t be the first time the country’s military has targeted the press. Israel has killed more than 50 Palestinian journalists since 2001, according to the Palestinian Journalism Syndicate, and Reporters Without Borders has recorded more than 144 journalists injured in just the last four years. “In terms of the event itself, unfortunately, it is not unique, not different,” says Saleh Hijazi, the deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East program. “It fits a pattern, a pattern of unlawful killing, and also a pattern of targeting journalists and human rights defenders.”
This is the logic of the apartheid state: if violence is required in the course of maintaining our existence, and the exposure of that violence in any way threatens our ability to freely dole it out to our victims, then that exposure is itself violence. This has been made apparent throughout the history of Israel as it has gone to great lengths to control the narrative and ensure that the world does not wake up to its brutal settler project. In “Zionists are the Real Anti-Semites” I outlined the Israeli tendency to smear all critics as anti-Semites in an effort to shut down discussion and criticism. It is clear that the effort goes far beyond overusing (and therefore cheapening) slurs for their benefit.
“They’re armed with cameras” is a revealing and poignant statement from spokesman Ran Kochav. In a very real sense, the camera is Israel’s greatest enemy because it tells no lies and stark images, once freely distributed, cannot be controlled. It is a conception of danger shared by Israel’s main benefactor the US, which has engaged in military and intelligence coverups on a scale the Israelis could only ever dream of. The Israeli government can simply state that any atrocity was necessary due to the presence of militants or Hamas weaponry and its Western facilitators are happy enough to move on, a perfunctory rationalization that brings to mind the American military’s use of drop weapons to justify their own butchery of civilians.
Why then would Israeli police attack Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral procession, beating mourners and using flash bombs and tear gas (video of the attack)? If Israeli forces were interested in presenting themselves as the victims in all situations, surely this vicious and unnecessary brutalization of the mourners is counterproductive and reveals them to be a nation which at the very least cannot or will not control its more violent members. There are several possibilities here: 1) the attack was genuinely unplanned and uncontrolled, the logical outcome of a campaign to dehumanize and marginalize Palestinians in the service of settling on their land and casting them as second class citizens; 2) it was instead a controlled display of force encouraged by Western media complicity in the whitewashing of murder after Israel noted that even Shireen Abu Akleh’s American citizenship did not elicit any reaction stronger than a few calls for investigation into her death. The lesson of Rachel Corrie was not lost on the Israelis—they can kill American citizens with impunity and still expect continually increasing funding to the tune of billions of dollars, tempered only occasionally by feckless requests from representatives of the government that they would appreciate it if Israeli forces would stop killing American citizens.
In either case, the cruelty is the point. Whether the attack was encouraged or allowed to happen, Israel is sending a deliberately confrontational message to the world that its ability to repress is not to be challenged. Similarly, the ultimate origin of the bullet which took Shireen Abu Akleh’s life is immaterial. Whether it came from an Israeli oppressor, a Palestinian resistance fighter, or some other source, Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israel. Her death was not the passive result of her willingly conducting a dangerous job; this is the real reason she was murdered (from the above Vox article):
Abu Akleh had become a leading media voice when she reported on the 2000 uprising, or intifada, that came to define the past two decades of violent inertia between Israel and Palestine. She had continued documenting the Israeli occupation and the daily lives of those living in Palestine, and was one of the most well-known faces of Palestinian journalism.
“She was the voice of Palestine to the rest of the Arab world and its diaspora,” said Mezna Qato, a historian at the University of Cambridge. “She was the one who forced the Arab world to remember, to contend with, and to take seriously what it means to disengage from the question of Palestine.”
Addendum from Mondoweiss, more Israeli rationalization:
And even while some Israeli representatives were trying to absolve themselves of the crime, other statements from Israeli officials constituted an implicit admission of guilt.
Avi Benyahu, a former spokesperson of the Israeli army stated, “Suppose that Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli army fire. There’s no need to apologize for that.”
Knesset member Itamar Ben Gvir said, “When ‘terrorists’ fire at our soldiers in Jenin, the soldiers must retaliate in full force even in the presence of journalists in from Aljazeera in the area—who usually stand in the army’s way and impede their work.”
The Israeli occupation’s spokespersons are trying to draw us into irrelevant details, but Gvir’s lies must be recognized because they are dangerous, and ultimately justify the targeting, and killing, of journalists even when they are identified.
Therefore, we must always remember the bigger picture of what’s taking place in Palestine. That is, there is a racist and colonial power embodied in the state of Israel which has been committing systematic crimes for seven decades against the indigenous people who have lived here for thousands of years. Its goal is to displace our people and to kill their will to resist.