The Israeli government’s targeted destruction of a Gaza building housing offices of the AP and Al Jazeera has seemingly brought a new dimension to the latest military action against Palestinians.
Free press advocates slammed the action, and the Israeli government’s defense that the building was a Hamas military installation was met with eye-rolling skepticism—Hamas denies this (Intercept, 5/17/21), the US State Department claims it hasn’t seen evidence of this (Axios, 5/17/21) and AP president and CEO Gary Pruitt (AP, 5/16/21) said, “We have had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building.” Such an attack on two prominent news agencies is a sign that Israel seeks to stifle information coming out of Gaza, but also, as Israel’s political center of gravity moves sharply to the right, a sign that the nation is at war not just with its occupied population, but with the notion of a free society itself.
This is not the first such attack on media offices Israel has carried out in Gaza. In the fall of 2012, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, “Israel conducted a series of strikes that injured at least nine journalists and damaged several offices,” including an attack on “Al-Shawa and Housari Tower, which is home to Al-Quds TV…. Khader al-Zahhar, a cameraman for Al-Quds TV, lost his right leg in the explosion” (11/19/12).
This latest incident is an escalation of Israel’s harsh treatment of journalists and human rights activists, both inside the Green Line and in the occupied territories, for the last several years. For example, Israeli forces shot and killed Ahmed Abu Hussein of Gaza’s Al-Shaab radio station, and Yaser Murtaja of Ain Media, while they covered protests in 2018 (Reuters, 4/25/18). Reporters Without Borders ranked Israel 86th in the 2021 press freedom index, after Gambia and before Haiti. A few incidents showing Israel’s growing hostility toward journalists and other observers:
- “Freelance photographer and journalist Ahmad Tal’at was covering a protest in the West Bank…when he was shot in the leg,” Vox (2/28/20) reported. Tal’at said he was shot by a member of the IDF, but he was denied compensation, because an Israeli judge ruled “he was shot during an ‘act of war,’ and thus Israel is exempt from any liability.”
- Palestinian journalist and filmmaker Abdelrahman al-Thaher was arrested at his home in Nabulus (Middle East Eye, 10/27/20).
- Peter Beinart, a renowned journalist in both the Jewish and mainstream US press, was detained and questioned upon his arrival in Israel (ABC, 8/16/18).
- “Four journalists from the Palestinian Authority’s official television station…[were] filming a talkshow outside of Jerusalem’s walled Old City when Israeli officers detained them and took their equipment,” reported Reuters (12/6/19).
- Israel expelled Human Rights Watch’s chief officer in the country (HRW, 11/25/19).
- Israel denied entry to two human rights activists due to their connection to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (Ha’aretz, 5/3/18).
The list goes on. In the current crisis, Israeli forces injured and arrested several journalists before the attack on the AP and Al Jazeera building (Committee to Protect Journalists, 5/14/21) and injured eight journalists covering protests in Jerusalem (CPJ, 5/11/21). Mark Stone of Sky News (Twitter, 5/18/21) reported that Israeli police manhandled a CNN crew, in a scene that he said was now typical.
Ahmed Abu Hussein (left) and Yaser Murtaja, Palestinian journalists shot to death by Israel while covering protests.
Central to hasbara—public diplomacy to promote Israel in a positive light—is the notion that mainstream corporate media are inherently skewed to the pro-Palestine narrative. There are several organizations—like Honest Reporting and CAMERA—devoted to painting the media as pro-Palestine. Israel advocates often disregard gruesome footage of military assaults on Palestinians as “Pallywood” (Palestine plus Hollywood), which they say involves “media manipulation, distortion and outright fraud by the Palestinians…designed to win the public relations war against Israel” (Jerusalem Post, 10/11/07). The idea goes that Palestinian activists know that an old Arab woman throwing a stone at a Merkava tank or a child rescued from the rubble are the kinds of “David and Goliath” images that journalists are hungry for, and that activists are eager to provide them.
Israel’s public relations advocates hold that the nation is not simply at war with terrorist organizations, but with an entire apparatus of human rights organizations, academic institutions, media outlets and the United Nations that is dedicated to treating Israel unfairly. And that sentiment has intensified as the country, which prides itself as the “only democracy in the Middle East,” faces a crisis of legitimacy. Two major human rights groups, Human Rights Watch (4/27/21) and B’Tselem (1/12/21), have accused Israel of administering an “apartheid” regime. The country has held five national elections since 2015, and the Knesset still can’t resolve who is in charge of the government. Rabbi Meir Kahane’s fanatical religious party was banned in Israel—but his ideology is now a viable force (AP, 5/14/21).
Journalists who cover the Middle East historically have considered Israel and the occupied territories as a safer place to work than, say, Syria or Yemen. But if a country’s parliamentary structure weakens and it becomes more authoritarian, its tolerance for the press will only shrink. In this context, the attack on the AP and Al Jazeera doesn’t just indicate a military willing to indiscriminately set targets in a densely populated area (as harrowing as that is), but that it has broadened its enemies list to include a larger set of democratic norms, like a free press and international cooperation.
Blaming the destruction of media outlets’ offices on dubious claims of Hamas controlling the building, Israel thinks it has a “get out of jail free” card for what would otherwise be a war crime. But the linkage also signals that the Israeli government sees journalists themselves as somehow embedded with the dreaded enemy. Reporters who continue to work in the territory will be branded as associates of a combatant group, which compromises their safety, discredits their work and discourages reporters from taking on the job.
The rest of the world will be worse off, and the Israeli government will get more of what it wants: darkness, and freedom from outside scrutiny.
Featured image: AP image of its Gaza offices, destroyed by the Israeli military (photo: Khalil Hamra).
Speaking of hasbara, I’m surprised that the comments section isn’t already full of hasbarats.
Israel is laying claim to the same types of amoral, unethical freedoms that every colonial settler country, including the United States, has used to justify its violent actions, refuse recourse to its victims, to selectively apply both force and rationale in the service of stealing and cleansing land and resources, and finally to control the narrative.
What’s happening in Israel and Palestine since before WWII with the Balfour Declaration and then the relocation of European and Russian Jews to that piece of land is basically a retelling of the story of how the USA was formed, but with better weapons and it being slightly harder to conceal the truth of apartheid and genocide.
https://mondoweiss.net/2021/05/israels-illusion-of-normality-collapses-may-2021/
A journalist is shot during a conflict and expects to be compensated? Ever hear of friendly fire? No soldier purposely shoots an ally, but during the heat of the battle, mistakes happen.
A journalist questioned and detained? So? Was he imprisoned? You don’t think journalists have ever spied? It’s a WAR.
Israel doesn’t want a biased human rights activist in their country? Shocking!!!!
Hamas hides rockets in hospitals and schools. They might have held them in another “safe haven.” If they had a military compound and only held their rockets there, then you would have a case. Right now, you have nothing other than a hatred of Jews.
Ari, how old are you? Grow up.
Give us a break. Israel didn’t just “shoot a journalist”, they leveled a building housing numerous international news outlets – intentionally – and made up some BS about Hamas using the building as a shield but failed to provide transparent evidence. Go figure. The USA doesn’t care either. Ever heard of “collateral murder”?
And you replied to me as though you were replying to Ari. Apparently you’re not even grown up enough to understand how commenting works.
Grown up? You’re the person who effectively grammar flamed.
Do you know if Hamas housed missiles in that building? I don’t and neither do you. When you hide missiles in schools and hospitals, you get these kinds of bombs.
Tim,
Typical. The news agencies were in the buildings, and they didn’t were unable to locate a Hamas cell there? Neither was the US state department?
Your answer is: believe Israel because SURELY they aren’t just trying to keep Journalists from reporting on what is happening there.
It doesn’t even pass the most basic smell test.
Your logic is: “I believe Israel, mostly because I want to, not because there is any evidence.”
And, like I said before, none of this is a surprise.
Let me guess, you also believe that, despite occupying another country, Israel is allowed to claim “defensive retaliation”?
You see, when you attack another country, and take over their land, then at that point, anything THEY do is defensive.
Unfortunately, until you get out of their country, NOTHING that you do is defensive.
I don’t expect you to understand any of this, but I thought it should be provided to others in the conversation.
Journalists were blown up? Everything I read stated that the people were told in advance that the building was going to be blown up. They all left. Can Kyle tell the truth or does he just emote?
When you house missiles in hospitals and schools, you play with fire.
The “colonist” argument is ignorant. No ethnicity, race, or religion owns the territory that they are sitting on right this very moment. It’s completely arbitrary to call anyone a colonist. If you go back through history, we are all descendents of some sort of colonist or refugee. Palestinian Arabs are themselves descendents of colonists (circa 700 CE). Today’s refugee or migrant is tomorrow’s colonist.
This doesn’t excuse the human rights violations employed by both the State or Israel or the Palestinian Authority. Neither has any legitimate claim to “that piece of land” which justifies them to blow up unarmed civilians.
I need your house
Are you joking? Israel, like the USA, is exactly a colonial settler project. Read the article I linked or look up the Balfour mandate. Israel was intentionally populated with European and Russian Jews starting before, but intensifying after WWII.
Arbitrary LOL. Have you ever read a history book?
Serious. What gives the Palestinian Arabs the right to the land and not someone else? The Arabs colonised the place in the 8th century. Prior to that it was the Jews that were colonised by the Romans, the Greeks, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Who owns that land? The Jews were there in 400 BCE and pushed out the Canaanites. Should we give it back to them? How far back do we need to go before someone gets the right to the land?
Kyle only reads leftist history book. He’s probably never read the Bible. Tells us Kyle, where did the Jews live for all those years? When Romans occupied their land, whose land did they occupy? Read some Roman history.
We all know the recent history. We all know about the allies and the Jewish settlement. You think you have a corner on RECENT history?
Where would you like them to live?
Where would you like them to live?
The Jews and Palestinians shared the territory for many years prior to the British arriving. Of course Arabs are the majority in the region as has been the case since the Biblical times Fritz speaks (erroneously) of.
The majority of Israeli Jews are of European and Russian descent. Russian is the third most spoken language among them. Britain and the former colonial powers should have created a state for them in Europe or, rather, simply not gotten into the game of artificially over-settling an already occupied bit of land in the Levant.
But since that ship has sailed, it’s not a question of where anyone, including myself, would like them to live. They should remain where they are, but they must agree to either end apartheid or accept a two-state solution in earnest. Enough of the neocon/neolib rhetoric and fear mongering. Give the Palestinians right of return or let them create their own country not shackled and walled in, not blockaded and sanctioned, not asymmetrically attacked and sabotaged. In other words, a REAL country.
It isn’t the surrounding Arab majority states’ obligation to create a home for the Palestinians in their territories. It is Israel’s to stop illegal settlements and land grabs and to accept the already larger land mass they occupy while giving the Palestinians a state. Why can’t they do this? (here comes where you scaremonger with out of context quotes from mean pro-Palestinian advocates)
Where would you like RETALIATORY bombs to be dropped? Hamas doesn’t have a base from which they fire their missiles. They store them in hospitals and schools. The area is dense. Is Israel supposed to not fire back (after Hamas started the fight)? If they are allowed to fire back, where are they allowed to hit?
Maybe they shouldn’t have knowingly had an office that in a building that was used by Hamas and didn’t report on Hamas shootings, bombings happening next door and abetting Hamas with coverups
Blowing them up because you don’t like what stories they do and don’t cover, huh? Yeah… That kinda thinking always ends well. [jerk off motion]
In regards to the frankly pathetic, tired attempts at hasbara in these comments:
1. The Occupied Territories are, well, occupied. The UN has been telling Israel to end the occupation for 54 years now. Israel refuses (and spare us the claim that it ended in 2005. The territories are kept under permanent blockade, that is not an ending of the occupation).
Israel has literally no legal or moral standing to be doing *anything* to the Occupied Territories. Period. All of the claims that “Hamas did this or that”, “Hamas is hiding weapons here or there”, etc, are irrelevant. Israel doesn’t get to do anything to the Occupied Territories, at all. It is the occupying power; it has zero standing to claim self-defense against areas it exercises control over.
Further, the UN has repeatedly recognized the legitimacy of the struggle of subject peoples for self-determination, up to and including armed action, not just generically but explicitly in regards to Palestinians. It’s irrelevant that the US and Israel have declared Palestinian fighters to be terrorists; international law is on the side of Hamas, and any other Palestinian armed group. Hamas gets to launch rockets, Israel does not get to respond. If Israel doesn’t like this, they need to end the occupation and stop waging war against the Palestinians.
2. Hamas is the elected government of the Gaza Strip. Every bureaucrat and government employee in Gaza is, by definition, a ‘member of Hamas’. By never bothering to point out this little factoid, Israel can pretend that whenever it does something like blow up a Gazan police station it is ‘striking against Hamas terrorists’.
3. Putting aside the already mentioned fact that Israel has no legal or moral standing to be bombing Gaza in the first place, Israel consistently fails to actually provide evidence that its targets are really housing Hamas fighters or weapons. It just asserts this every time it blows a building up.
On top of this, even if it’s true, it isn’t an excuse. Knowingly murdering civilians isn’t acceptable. If Hamas ever does actually use human shields, there is an onus on the Israelis to not butcher those shields. And lest someone attempt to draw comparisons to allied bombing in WW2, there is no comparison. There is a difference between accidentally hitting a school down the street from the factory you were actually targeting with your very crude munitions, and deliberately bombing a school with precision munitions because you claim terrorists are hiding in it.
Speaking of schools, Israel has a long record of targeting buildings it knows full well are UN schools and shelters. What’s the hasbara excuse for that I wonder.
4. In response to Tim specifically, the Bible isn’t history. It’s myth. But, hilariously, even if we accept the narrative of the Torah, the Hebrews are in fact not indigenous to the Levant. They came from elsewhere and claimed it by right of conquest by murdering and raping the natives. Now, if you want to make an argument that modern Israelis get the land because they won it through force of arms, at least be honest and make the argument. It’s a horrible, inhuman argument, but at least it’s a coherent and consistent one.
In reality, however, the evidence is very robust that the Jews emerged from within the tribes of Canaan, and were never outsiders who invaded. Furthermore, the evidence is strong that the Palestinian ‘Arabs’ mostly aren’t Arabs. They’re the descendants of people already living there. In other words, Jews who never left the region and converted to Christianity and Islam over time. Zionists have been murdering their own cousins.
As for where I expect Jews to live, either Israel becomes a single state for all its citizens, and gives up its racist, colonialist dreams of a Jewish ethnostate, or the Jews can move back to the countries they emmigrated from in the first place.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. The US recognizes them as such. They celebrated on the attacks on 9/11. Let’s not lose perspective on them. Even if you hate Jews Ben, you should know that they also hate us.
There is no land that hasn’t been under siege at some point. The victor keeps the land or if you’re the US, gives it back. That’s the way it goes. Name an exception. This land is the Jews. Just because you hate Jews doesn’t mean this isn’t the Jews land.
Why doesn’t ben criticize Egypt? Why doesn’t Palestine attack Egypt. Antisemetic much?
Yes yes, I know. Everyone is an antisemite, okay.
I hope you aren’t getting paid for this, because if you are your employers are not getting their money’s worth.
Reporters are the bravest people! Anybody holding arms is guilty.
Photography provides just visual expression of the truth. It can’t record feelings of:
– sad people living behind huge wall (like in a concentration camp)
– children in any deep shelter hiding from violent (not Brave) humans
– astonishment of Mother seeing broken window and her Kitchen and Living Room full of dust, shrapnels, dead pets or human parts…
We are spiritual beings not Grab Land/Money/Share Holders. Any Ownership of material property is stupid, against Any higher consciousness beings. Only ownership of Responsibly toward kindness, clean health Kitchen and Bedroom, and front door is morally good! Street is a Shared, god given to all Humans, cats, dogs and holly cows.
Let the JSG members decide how it will be? Jerusalem Skating Girls or members (children) of Free Democratic Schools.
Army, violent people are creating very BAD Karma for them and their loved ones. It will come back… with 3 digit Interest.
Post scriptum:
Violent and Brave humans are the one who fight in a ring, with the rule of FAIR.
But, when they win, the children of both parties should make any decision.
Ari Paul,
do you really believe, there reigns freedom of the press in Gaza?
Do you really believe, Hamas allows the free flow of information?
Do you really believe Hamas does not control the press agencies and does not dictate what they publish?
Do you really believe Hamas chose this building as a headquarter by chance? They also hide in hospitals, schools and housing areas.
FAIRNESS & ACCURACY IN REPORTING? Are you kidding me?