Journalists
Updated 2024-08-27
2024-08-21 Emmy Committee Stands Firm on Gaza Journalist’s Nomination The head of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which nominated Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda for an Emmy Award for her documentary on life under Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, rebuffed a demand on Tuesday from more than 150 actors, producers, and other industry leaders who wanted the nomination revoked.
Signing a letter released by the pro-Israel group Creative Community for Peace (CCP), which campaigns against cultural boycotts targeting Israel, actors including Debra Messing and Selma Blair were among those who accused Owda of being affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is designated as a terrorist group by the United States.
The signatories said Owda has “repeatedly participated in PFLP rallies” and accused her of “routinely” spreading antisemitism—an accusation that has been directed at many groups and people who have condemned Israel’s assault on Gaza that began last October in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack. The letter did not provide examples of antisemitic statements Owda has allegedly made.
Owda was nominated in the News and Documentary Emmys category of Outstanding Hard News Feature Story Short Form, for It’s Bisan From Gaza and I’m Still Alive—an eight-minute video report about her family’s forced evacuation of their home in Beit Hanoun as the Israel Defense Forces bombarded Gaza.https://www.commondreams.org/news/bisan-gaza
2024-08-09 CN Condemns FBI Raid on CN Columnist’s Home Consortium News strongly condemns the raid on the home of its columnist Scott Ritter by the F.B.l. on Thursday as a serious threat to press freedom.
In a video posted to his Substack page, Ritter said that normally in alleged FARA violation cases the authorities send a letter to the subject of the inquiry informing them of the investigation. They do not send numerous F.B.I. agents to the door with a warrant to search and remove potential evidence.
The warrant, a copy of which Ritter posted, only called for electronic devices to be removed, but the agents, whom Ritter said acted professionally, also removed boxes of paper United Nations files from his days as a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990s. As Ritter says in the video, U.N. documents are never classified and could have nothing to do with the alleged FARA case against him.
“So the idea that, this is normal procedure is absurd in the extreme. I’m not a foreign agent. What I am is a journalist. And this is how we need to couch this entire thing. What the F.B.I. did yesterday, what the United States government did yesterday, was a frontal assault not only on free speech, but a free press,” Ritter said in the video.
Ritter says he’s being targeted because of his freelance work for Russian media. In the wake of Russiagate, the U.S. Department of Justice in 2017 forced Russian-government financed media companies to register as foreign agents. But only the principal executives of RT and Sputnik need to register, not employees or freelancers such as Ritter.
“They are seeking to intimidate a journalist with a long record of journalism, to intimidate this journalist, me, from engaging in activities such as the research and publication of articles and materials critical of U.S. policy in Ukraine, supportive of Russian objectives,” he said.
“Just a quick reminder. The U.S. courts have determined that under FARA, coincidence of ideas between an individual such as myself and a foreign government, Russia, does not weigh in on FARA,” Ritter said. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/08/09/cn-condemns-fbi-raid-on-cn-columnists-home/
2024-08-09 US Rights Group Urges Media to Condemn Israel’s Killing of Journalists in Gaza “The only thing that can explain the shocking silence of American and international media professionals about the mass killing of their Palestinian colleagues is the decadeslong and systematic dehumanization of the Palestinian people.” The largest U.S. Muslim advocacy group on Friday implored American and international media outlets to speak out against Israel’s killing of more than 100 journalists, almost all of them Palestinians, during the ongoing assault on Gaza.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) renewed its plea following Israeli airstrikes on the homes of Palestine TV journalist Tamim Ma’mmar and Al-Aqsa TV’s Abdullah Al-Sousi. Ma’mmar was killed along with his wife and two of their children, while the other attack killed Al-Sousi and two of his nephews, according toQuds News Network. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-killing-journalists
2024-07-31 Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalists Ismail Al-Ghoul and Rami Al-Rifi in Gaza Israel killed Palestinian Al Jazeera journalists Ismail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi in Gaza on Wednesday, in what Al Jazeera Media Network called a “targeted assassination” of the two journalists known for their prolific coverage of the genocide as they, themselves, faced relentless persecution from Israeli forces. Correspondent al-Ghoul and cameraman al-Rifi were killed by an Israeli strike as they were working from al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza on Wednesday, reporting on the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran hours before.
Al Jazeera Media Network strongly condemned the attack. “The Israeli occupation forces targeted the vehicle in which Ismail and Rami were targeted with a missile, resulting in cold-blooded assassination,” the network wrote in a statement. https://truthout.org/articles/israel-kills-al-jazeera-journalists-ismail-al-ghoul-and-rami-al-rifi-in-gaza/
2024-07-14 Israel Faces No Apparent Red Line, But Pro-Palestinian Media Workers Do A study released in May by the U.S.-based National Writers Union (NWU) demonstrates that there is a clear pattern of reprisal against Western media workers who oppose the ongoing Israeli genocide that has killed nearly 40,000 Gazans during the last nine months. The report documents 44 cases of workplace recrimination between October 7, 2023, and February 1, 2024, in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany, with the majority of dismissals, suspensions, speech cancellations and censorship impacting workers of color (76 percent), Muslims (38 percent) and those from the Middle East. (This, of course, pales in comparison to what is happening in the Middle East: According to Al Jazeera, 158 journalists and media workers were killed between October 2023 and July 7, 2024 — the majority of them Palestinian; an additional 32 were injured.)
“Since Hamas’s attack on October 7 and Israel’s subsequent military operation in Gaza, leaders of Western media companies and cultural institutions have acted to suppress the speech of media workers who seek to elevate Palestinian voices or express concern over Israel’s human rights violations,” according to the report. https://truthout.org/articles/israel-faces-no-apparent-red-line-but-pro-palestinian-media-workers-do/
2024-05-26 Remembering Palestinian journalist Amna Homaid Israeli Channel 14 aired her photo, claiming she was a ‘terrorist’. A few weeks later an Israeli missile killed her and her son. On April 24, Amna Homaid’s torn body lay in the rubble of a house in Shati camp, in the Western part of Gaza city, as rescuers tried to find survivors. An Israeli attack had struck the building, killing her and her eldest son Mahdi. Her brother and her other five children were injured but survived.
Her death was added to the dark statistic of more than 140 journalists and medical workers murdered in Gaza by Israel’s genocidal onslaught, per the count maintained by the Gaza Media Office. This year – like last – more journalists have been killed from Palestine than from any other nation.https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/5/26/remembering-palestinian-journalist-amna-homaid
2024-04-16 “I’m Jewish, and I’ve Covered Wars. I Know War Crimes When I See Them”: Reporter Peter Maass on Gaza We speak with veteran journalist Peter Maass about the Israeli war on Gaza and his new opinion piece for The Washington Post headlined “I’m Jewish, and I’ve covered wars. I know war crimes when I see them.” Maass, who was a senior editor at The Intercept until earlier this year, has spent decades covering wars, including the Bosnian genocide in the 1990s that killed about 100,000 people over nearly four years. He says many of the same war crimes he reported then are part of Israel’s current assault, including sniper attacks on civilians, bombing of civilian infrastructure, attacks on bread lines and besieging whole populations by preventing food and other aid from entering. “What seems to be unfolding in Gaza is even worse than what I saw in Bosnia,” says Maass. Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQV6s0tASGI
2024-03-01 Global News Leaders Voice Solidarity With Gaza Journalists Under Israeli Attack As Palestinian journalists brave Israeli bombs and bullets to show the world the Gaza genocide, leaders of three dozen prominent international media outlets on Thursday signed an open letter voicing solidarity with Palestinian media professionals “in their call for safety, protection, and the freedom to report.”
“For nearly five months, journalists and media workers in Gaza—overwhelmingly, the sole source of on-the-ground reporting from within the Palestinian territory—have been working in unprecedented conditions: At least 89 have been killed in the war… more journalists than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year,” states the letter, which was coordinated by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) with the support of the World Association of News Publishers. https://www.commondreams.org/news/journalists-killed-in-gaza-2667408264
2024-02-06 From ‘Jihadist’ Dearborn to Middle East’s ‘Insects’ Editorials and op-eds often have a greater influence on public consciousness than news articles because they can express authoritative opinion, provide in-depth analysis and advocate for specific viewpoints. Emotional appeals and rhetoric have the potential to engage readers on a deeper level and to shape public opinion more effectively. When irresponsibly written, however, echoing government propaganda or lacking a basis in fact, opinion pieces can turn from a public service to a detriment to democracy.
On Feb. 2, The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by Steven Stalinsky, titled “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital.” The headline sums up Stalinsky’s intent to portray Dearborn, Michigan, as a hotbed of terrorism.
Also on Feb. 2, The New York Times published opinion writer Thomas L. Friedman’s “Understanding the Middle East through the Animal Kingdom.” In his imaginings, the Middle East is a “jungle.” He likens Iran to a “parasitoid wasp,” Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq are “caterpillars,” Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas are “eggs that hatch inside the host,” but Hamas is also equated to a “trap-door spider.” https://consortiumnews.com/2024/02/06/from-jihadist-dearborn-to-middle-easts-insects/
2024-02-06 ACTION ALERT: Friedman’s Vermin Analogies Echo Ugly Pro-Genocide Propaganda Friedman’s piece compared the nation of Iran to “a recently discovered species of parasitoid wasp,” which (according to Science Daily) “injects its eggs into live caterpillars, and the baby wasp larvae slowly eat the caterpillar from the inside out, bursting out once they have eaten their fill.” Friedman asks:
Is there a better description of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq today? They are the caterpillars. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the wasp. The Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and Kataib Hezbollah are the eggs that hatch inside the host—Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq—and eat it from the inside out.
The comparison of official enemies to vermin is a hallmark of propaganda in defense of genocide. The group Genocide Watch lists “dehumanization” as the fourth of ten stages of genocide, in which members of a targeted group “are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases” in a process that “overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder.” “It’s very difficult, psychologically, to kill another human being,” David Livingstone Smith, author of a book on dehumanization called Less Than Human, told NPR (3/29/11). “When people dehumanize others, they actually conceive of them as subhuman creatures,” Smith said, allowing would-be genocidaires to “exclude the target of aggression from the moral community.” https://fair.org/home/action-alert-friedmans-vermin-analogies-echo-ugly-pro-genocide-propaganda/
2024-01-10 Israeli Journalist SLAMS Netanyahu’s Brutal Assault On Gaza Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy spoke with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour about Israel’s brutal bombing on Gaza. Ana Kasparian discusses on The Young Turks. “During an interview with CNN International’s Christiane Amanpour Tuesday, Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy slammed the Netanyahu government for setting no limits to the bombing campaign in Gaza, and for now simply “killing for the purpose of killing.” Levy writes a weekly column for Haaretz a liberal Israeli newspaper and he has won human rights awards for reporting on Palestinian suffering.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSqYjOFGNgE
2023-12-29 The Impossibility of Reporting the Story of Gaza Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has now killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, journalists have been on the front lines, both as witnesses and victims. For more than two months, as Israel has rained bombs on Gaza, they have rushed from refugee camps to hospitals, and from hospitals to schools and back, trying to stay safe while covering what they describe as their own genocide. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 68 journalists have been killed in Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon since October 7, making this the deadliest conflict since CPJ began tallying press fatalities. The International Federation of Journalists estimates that at least 66 journalists have been killed in Gaza alone. Many have also lost their families. On October 26, Ahmed Abu Artema, a contributor to The Nation as well as a poet and activist, was seriously injured and lost his young son when Israel bombed his father’s house.
“What is happening now is unprecedented,” said Sherif Mansour, the Middle East and North Africa program coordinator at CPJ. In 2022, CPJ reported that a total of 68 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide; Gaza reached that number in just over two months.
Journalists, said Mansour, “are the ones on the frontlines and they are the ones we need the most, but they are also the most vulnerable.” It’s hard to overestimate the importance of the Palestinian journalists in Gaza right now. They, after all, are the only ones who have been reporting from the Strip since Israel instituted a total siege on October 9 and banned foreign press from entering. Their work has been essential and their commitment unceasing; yet, as the weeks have passed, the mounting challenges of reporting have meant that the world outside of Gaza is getting only a fraction of the story. Even social media has offered only a partial solution as many of the platforms regularly censor Palestinian voices. By far, the biggest challenge for journalists is simply staying alive. The struggle to survive while reporting is an all-consuming endeavor. But this struggle has been seriously compounded both by the conditions of war and the shattering effects of Israel’s total siege of the Strip. Food and water are scarce, fuel is dwindling, electricity inconsistent, and cell service undependable; many journalists no longer even have homes to return to. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-impossibility-of-reporting-the-story-of-gaza/ar-AA1mctHH
2023-12-22 Israel’s Killing of Journalists in Gaza ‘Unparalleled,’ Says Watchdog Journalists are being slain during Israel’s current assault on Gaza at a rate unseen in modern history—with more killed in the last 10 weeks alone than have been killed in any country in any whole year since records began, the Committee to Protect Journalists revealed on Thursday. CPJ said that at least 68 media professionals—61 Palestinians, four Israelis, and three Lebanese—have been killed since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the Israeli military’s retaliatory obliteration of the Gaza Strip.
Of particular concern to CPJ is Israel’s “apparent pattern of targeting journalists and their families.” “In at least one case, a journalist was killed while clearly wearing press insignia in a location where no fighting was taking place,” the group said. “In at least two other cases, journalists reported receiving threats from Israeli officials and IDF officers before their family members were killed.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/journalists-killed-in-gaza-2666788920
2023-12-15 NYT Misrepresents Zionism’s Opponents as Anti-Jewish Bigots “Is Anti-Zionism Always Antisemitic?” a New York Times article (12/10/23) by Jonathan Weisman asked. Trying to pinpoint the moment when “anti-Zionism crosses from political belief to bigotry,” Weisman suggested there were different kinds of anti-Zionism based on different visions of what Zionism means. But his effort to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable critics of Israel painted principled supporters of equal rights as antisemitic bigots.
Weisman offered one definition of Zionism—the way it was “once clearly understood”—as “the belief that Jews, who have endured persecution for millenniums, needed refuge and self-determination in the land of their ancestors.” To oppose this kind of Zionism “suggests the elimination of Israel as the sovereign homeland of the Jews”—which he said to many Jews “is indistinguishable from hatred of Jews generally, or antisemitism.”
To call Zionism a belief in Jewish “self-determination,” however, perverts the concept to include moving to a geographic region and forcibly expelling many of the people who already live there, in order to create a situation where members of your group can have a “sovereign homeland” where they “are assured of governing themselves.” Ensuring the dominance of a particular ethnic group through forced migration is not usually called “self-determination,” but rather “ethnic cleansing.” This is the older version of Zionism that Weisman seems to suggest can only be opposed by antisemites. https://fair.org/home/action-alert-nyt-misrepresents-zionisms-opponents-as-anti-jewish-bigots/
2023-12-05 U.S. Journalists THREATENED By Attorneys General For Covering Hamas News organizations like New York Times and Reuters received an ominous letter from attorney generals about their coverage of Hamas. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian discuss on The Young Turks. “FIRST ON FOX: More than a dozen state attorneys general signed a letter to media outlets such as the New York Times and Reuters, putting them “on notice” that providing material support to terrorist organizations such as Hamas is illegal, Fox News Digital exclusively learned.
“We will continue to follow your reporting to ensure that your organizations do not violate any federal or State laws by giving material support to terrorists abroad. Now your organizations are on notice. Follow the law,” 14 state attorneys general stated in a letter to the chiefs of CNN, The New York Times, Reuters and The Associated Press on Monday afternoon.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCnTtNDqko0
2023-11-24 When the First Casualty of War Is Truth, Journalists Are the Second No amount of censorship or attacks on reporters will be able to suppress the reality of chaos and carnage that Israelis have unleashed in Gaza. Truth – and journalists – are the first casualties of the war on Gaza. As Israel’s 7-week bombardment of the Gaza Strip has killed over 14,000 Palestinians, 5,000 of whom were children, courageous Palestinian journalists, working in Gaza under unbelievably difficult and dangerous circumstances, are being killed, one by one. This week, a grim milestone was reached, as the number of journalists killed in the conflict surpassed 50. While a negotiated pause gives civilians in Gaza a brief respite, and 50 Israeli hostages held in Gaza will be released, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised the violence will continue immediately afterwards.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 53 journalists and media workers have been killed in what the organization calls “the deadliest month for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.” To date, 46 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese reporters have been killed. Eleven have been injured, three remain missing, and 18 Palestinian journalists have been arrested by Israel.
“We’ve never seen anything like this. It’s unprecedented,” Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “For journalists in Gaza specifically, the exponential risk is possibly the most dangerous we have seen.”https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/journalists-killed-in-gaza
2023-11-22 Truth – and Journalists – Are the First Casualties of the War on Gaza. Truth – and journalists – are the first casualties of the war on Gaza. As Israel’s 7-week bombardment of the Gaza Strip has killed over 14,000 Palestinians, 5,000 of whom were children, courageous Palestinian journalists, working in Gaza under unbelievably difficult and dangerous circumstances, are being killed, one by one. This week, a grim milestone was reached, as the number of journalists killed in the conflict surpassed 50. While a negotiated pause gives civilians in Gaza a brief respite, and 50 Israeli hostages held in Gaza will be released, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised the violence will continue immediately afterwards.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 53 journalists and media workers have been killed in what the organization calls “the deadliest month for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.” To date, 46 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese reporters have been killed. Eleven have been injured, three remain missing, and 18 Palestinian journalists have been arrested by Israel. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/22/truth_and_journalists_are_the_first
2023-11-21 A Grim Milestone: Journalist Death Toll Tops 53 as Israel Kills More Reporters in Gaza and Lebanon The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that at least 50 journalists and media workers have been killed in Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza. Forty-five of the slain journalists have been Palestinian. Others have been arrested or injured. According to CPJ, this has been the deadliest period for journalists covering conflict since the media group began tracking deaths over 30 years ago. Meanwhile, journalists in Israel and the West Bank have been confronted with cyberattacks, physical assault and other forms of censorship for allegedly “harming national morale and harming national security” while reporting on Israel. It’s a “news blackout,” says CPJ’s program coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Sherif Mansour, under which the Israeli government is blocking “essential media coverage” and withholding “lifesaving information” from Gaza in order to win its Western propaganda war. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/21/gaza_israel_committee_to_protect_journalists
2023-11-14 We Are Not Numbers: Palestinian Journalist Ahmed Alnaouq Mourns 21 Family Members Killed by Israel One-and-a-half million residents of Gaza have been displaced by Israeli bombing and siege since October 7 in what many Palestinians are calling a second Nakba, or catastrophe, referencing the 1948 expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians to create the state of Israel. “It’s what has been going on for the past 75 years,” says Palestinian journalist Ahmed Alnaouq, who describes how 21 members of his family were killed in Gaza, including his father and several siblings. Alnaouq had not been able to visit his family for four years prior to their deaths, due to restrictions upon entry into Gaza. He joins us from London, where historic protests calling for a ceasefire were deemed “hate marches” by Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who was fired shortly thereafter. Alnaouq speaks about global support for Palestinians and responds to U.S. President Joe Biden’s latest comments on Israel’s targeting of hospitals in Gaza. Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-1dmng0TCk
2023-11-14 NY Times Writers Jazmine Hughes & Jamie Keiles Resign, Join Letter Against Israeli War on Gaza Democracy Now! speaks to award-winning writers Jazmine Hughes and Jamie Lauren Keiles in their first broadcast interview since being forced out of The New York Times Magazine for signing an open letter condemning Israel’s siege on Gaza. The magazine’s editor Jake Silverstein said the letter violated the outlet’s policy on public protest, but Keiles says there are no clear guidelines, especially for contributing writers. He explains he signed on to the letter due to his disappointment in the journalistic standards missing from mainstream coverage of the war in Gaza, saying “this is an industrywide question.” Both writers say their former institution’s scrutiny of pro-Palestinian activism is a double standard that indicates tacit support for Israel. Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRk-iR6gGoU
2023-11-14 ‘The fear is everywhere’: Israel’s fascist internal crackdown | The Marc Steiner Show Al Aqsa Flood and its consequences are shaking Israeli society from within. While Netanyahu’s government continues a brutal campaign of collective punishment against Gaza, some Israelis are questioning why their government is more committed to massacring Palestinians than effectively securing the swift release of hostages. As dissent spreads, the government is turning to fascist methods to repress those who speak out, effectively eliminating freedom of speech and arresting those who defy them. Israeli photojournalist Oren Ziv joins The Marc Steiner Show for a special discussion co-hosted with Israeli filmmaker Lia Tarachansky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o10D7WBdNS0
2023-11-11 Why are Western media accused of bias on Israel-Palestine? | Inside Story A letter signed by hundreds of international journalists says Western media coverage of the Gaza war has been biased in favour of Israel and against Palestine. Newsrooms are accused of dehumanising Palestinians. Are the allegations fair? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtFocW6gi5c
2023-11-10 750+ Journalists to Colleagues: ‘Tell the Full Truth’ About Israeli Atrocities in Gaza Hundreds of international media professionals have signed on to an open letter published Thursday demanding an end to Israel’s killing of journalists in Gaza and urging Western newsrooms to call Israeli crimes—including “apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide”—by their names. “The urgency of this moment cannot be overstated,” the journalists wrote. “It is imperative that we change course.”
Citing the Committee to Protect Journalists—which says at least 34 Palestinian media professionals have been killed during Israel’s monthlong assault on Gaza—the letter states that “as reporters, editors, photographers, producers, and other workers in newsrooms around the world, we are appalled at the slaughter of our colleagues and their families by the Israeli military and government.”
“An investigation from Reporters Without Borders also shows deliberate targeting of journalists during two October 13 Israeli strikes in south Lebanon, which killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and injured six other journalists,” the signers said. https://www.commondreams.org/news/journalist-gaza
2023-10-27 Israeli targets journalists, kills their families as Big Tech & Biden admin silence Palestinians With Israeli airstrikes on Gaza killing at least twenty Palestinian journalists—and the Biden administration working to muzzle others—Big Tech is quietly coordinating with Tel Aviv to muzzle Palestinian media outfits.
Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip killed three Palestinian journalists on October 25 in one of the deadliest days for local reporters since the military’s bombing campaign began nearly three weeks before. As the hours passed, footage appeared showing the moment Ramallah-based journalist Mohammed Farra learned that his wife and children were all killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza’s Khan Younes neighborhood. Similarly heart-rending scenes would play out more than once over the course of the day. Elsewhere in the besieged coastal enclave, an Israeli airstrike killed the wife, son, daughter and infant grandson of Al Jazeera Arabic’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh.
Suspicions that Israeli forces deliberately targeted Dahdouh’s family were quickly bolstered by comments from News 13 journalist Zvi Yehezkeli. “Generally we know the target,” Yehezkeli told audiences within hours of the strike, adding, “for example, today there was a target: the family of an Al Jazeera reporter.”
If true, it wouldn’t be the first time the Dahdouh’s outlet found itself in Israeli crosshairs. In 2021, the Israeli military leveled the Gaza tower that housed the officers of both the Associated Press and Al Jazeera. The following year, Israeli forces assassinated renowned Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh, a veteran Jerusalem-based correspondent for Al Jazeera, in a shooting that drew international condemnation but was largely ignored by the US government, which echoes the Israeli government’s position that her killing was “unintentional.” Under Blinken, the State Department has distanced itself from its initial expressions of outrage and no longer calls for either an independent investigation or criminal charges for the perpetrators.
Big Tech censorship has proven indispensable to Israel’s propaganda war. In the aftermath of October 7, multiple social media platforms have suspended or deactivated profiles belonging to numerous prominent journalists, human rights advocates, and Palestinian activists. The crackdown follows years of complaints alleging double standards when it comes to anti-Zionist content on social media.
Despite Meta’s denial, it is worth recalling the company’s record of complying with Israeli government censorship requests. Following the approval of a so-called “Facebook Bill” aimed at clamping down on digital “incitement” in 2016, fanatical former Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked bragged that Facebook, Twitter and Google were complying with 70 percent of their takedown orders. https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israeli-assassinates-journalists-big-tech-biden-palestinians/
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